Who said, “The clever will be deceived”?
This is copilot:
“No widely recognized historical, literary, or philosophical source is known to have said the exact quote “The clever will be deceived.” None of the major searchable quote databases or attributed sources show this phrase as a standard or famous quotation. “
I remember this from my reading of Taoism but can’t find the exact quote.
Clever person definition:
“A clever person is someone who combines intelligence, quick thinking, creativity, and adaptability to solve problems and navigate life effectively.”
We all want to be clever, right.
I felt like mentioning this quote this morning because our collective lives are barreling towards what tech people call Singularity. AI is the ultimate in clever. The definition is:
“a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence and other technologies have become so advanced that humanity undergoes a dramatic and irreversible change:”
I agree with this but from a different viewpoint, instead of growth what is really occurring is decline. In my view of life, humanity is in a tipping over into decline. This is fractal and hence non-negotiable regarding the cycles of life. The machine does not mesh with life. It is anti-life and because of this life will snuff it out.
This process is the Anthropocene emerging from the wonderfully productive Holocene. It is a process of humanism also in regard to wisdom, which is the guarantor of proper knowledge. Proper human wisdom regarding our place in nature is now effectively mute. Knowledge is increasingly being transformed by the machine not man. We now look to the machine for wisdom.
I mention fractal because AI is not fractal in the sense of life. It is purely technical and it contains no spirituality. Life is strangely spiritual in a fractal sense. I say strangely because we are so wrapped up in our technology these days we humans experience spirituality in ways that can’t be defined so we find it strange.
The machine can’t let go into grace that the spiritual demands. It can act spiritual, but it can’t participate in a spiritual experience. It can’t even assist such an experience because grace is juxtaposed to knowing. Grace is the opening up to the fractal nature of the universe and letting go into it which in a mystical sense is the nothingness of the ego.
AI is quickly using up high quality energy and resources that an advanced society demands. It is layering complexity in such a way that resilience and sustainability are no longer possible. The car culture was bad enough but now the automation and substitution of human agency by the machine will one day leave us cold and hungry.
This will probably happen sooner rather than later because life is speeding up. In addition, we are in what many call a fourth turning where we are battling amongst ourselves, which seems to occur in cycles. This time around, because of our interconnectedness and technical advancement, this turning is particularly dangerous.
If we could only stop here, then maybe we could use these powers for a power down into something balanced and enduring. The problem with introducing such wisdom to this process is technology is now in charge. It is important to realize what this means. Carl Schmidt sums it up best:
“A society built exclusively on progressive technology would thus be nothing but revolutionary; but it would soon destroy itself and its technology.”
This process is self-organizing in competitive cooperation which is a wonderful example of an incongruous juxtaposition. It is a paradox of humanism which is well grounded in the cycles of life meaning humans advance and decline also.
Humans play a game of advancement with accepted rules whereby the game becomes a deadly serious endgame that humans inevitably fall into in what C.S Lewis called Hell:
“Picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passion of envy, self-importance, and resentment”.
This points to scaling. Humans no longer scale properly to long term survival. This does not need to be species extinction, but it does point to cultural collapse.
Now more than ever I recommend REAL Green. I would recommend this to those advanced parts of society that will experience destructive changes from AI. We do not know how long this complexity layering can go on. We do not know how long this fourth turning of human conflict can continue.
REAL Green could be a place for all those people who lose their livelihood and meaning by being replaced by automation and robots to go to. If society could send back a significant amount of these displaced people back to the land it would create a buffer for decline and collapse.
Since this is unlikely, I recommend REAL Green to those who can who are very few. I am struggling with REAL Green myself. I am in my 60’s with very little help with my homesteading and permaculture farming. I am physically finding it hard to keep up. I tell myself “what the hell else am I going to do”? I need projects and to be close to the land so I will do this until I can’t.
I am in the purgatory of modern life trying to maintain a quality of life and at the same time returning to an earlier time of biomass and localism. To be honest I am throwing money at it because that’s all I have to work with. People are generally not interested in the earlier ways and localism. If they are they don’t have the luxury of time and money.
I am one man tending many acres, animals, and things. It should be a large family with animal power with the support of a local community much like it was around the 1850’s. That time is gone but it may return in a rhyme.
REAL Green Adaptation 
This is one of your best, albeit heartbreaking posts. Given our current circumstances and trajectory, my hope is that somehow there will be at least a handful of people who survive the (apparently) inevitable collapse who have gained some semblance of wisdom and can pass that along to their children. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and I have mad respect for your perseverance and willingness to stay the course. Future generations will need examples like yourself for inspiration. Hugs, hugs to you and yours.
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Thanks, Heather, for your thoughts. It helps to get encouragement. The status quo looks upon what I do as if it is a novel hobby. I could change my direction and become a big cattle operation and make some money. Yet, I would spoil the natural hotspot I have created. I would lose my green prepping focus. My special goat herd would be gone. This is because to make money I must get big and focused on profit.
I am a spiritual person so this would damage me. I may need to expand and focus on production if a collapse occurs. This would be different because circumstances would change to where I must produce as much food as I can for my local that may be in a dangerously exposed situation.
My farm has the potential to expand dramatically to produce livestock. Anyway, I am very happy with my life with some sadness that likely all I have done will be a fun estate sale when I die. My kids might show some interest but right now my boys are 18 with other interests.
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Shoal, thank you for these contemplative thoughts. I’m just responding to your first few lines which triggered these thoughts:
AI is being pushed by every browser and and app and my approach is to completely avoid it. I have made a decision to not “consult” AI for anything as a matter of principle. I believe that the only way that I can preserve my integrity as in authentic (100% human) writer is to not use AI under any circumstances – and to date I am able to claim that I have totally abstained even from testing its “intelligence”. However, where I have “fallen” is in the fact that when I do a search on Youtube for music, lets say jazz or ambient music or any genre for that matter, the algorithms dish up AI creations at the top of the search lists – and I have had to go in an verify on the account descriptions to see if it is AI or not, because its impossible to discern … (I will be writing about this on one of my blogs shortly).
AI is not clever. It is a copycat and an appropriator (stronger words exist). 100’s or 1000’s of years of human creativity, thought and effort is hoovered up from around the world and synthesized and IA then delivers all of those achievements which it input into its own databases to provide the results of human endeavors nos stripped of copyright and intellectual property … (like I said, stronger words exist for such behavior). However, it is also the case that there was never major resistance against AI and this is where the real problem lies, which has to do with the decline of humanity in itself at the end of this World Cycle. Humanity brings itself to an end with its own tools and devices, as is also depicted in the Mayan Creation Story – every 5,125 years humanity destroys itself – seem we are no exception this time around.
J.J.
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JJ, I am not using AI regularly. Occasionally for amusement or to see how advanced it is with results I check it. I feel I am intellectually handicapping myself if I were to use it regularly much like being athletic and using some kind of assistance.
Sometimes I feel like I want to disconnect from all electronic interfaces like I did for 6 years following my 2003 spiritual experience where I was told by a Beaver that the electric web is not the real web (see) “A Beaver and the Whales and Dolphins”. This experience was partly delusional but in the tradition of the Native American Vision Quest. At that time I went Native American on a special farm I once owned that had two magical streams that came together ½ mile from the great Missouri River. The real web is the water connections of the earth.
I am now retiring in a sense of a power down of my intellectual pursuits and focusing on my green prepping homestead and permaculture farm. I am just finding enjoyment where I can.
People don’t read books anymore. I collect good books BTW I wish you would offer some paperback books I could add to my collections. I completely agree with you to shun AI for your work. You must remain authentic and unadulterated because your message has an important spiritual message. I eagerly await your next work. Good to hear from you.
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Shoal thanks for your reply – I believe you deserve to take it easy, you have already done all the groundwork and hardest work both in relation to your permaculture farm and in terms of your guidance and the important messages you have shared from your experiences.
I feel that I still have to keep going for a couple of years (if possible) and get the second book completed – will then also work on making them available in paper format – thanks for your encouragement.
Yes, the issue with A.I. for me is that it is incompatible with the messages I want to convey, so I will have to take the purist path on that issue.
We have entered the time of serious instability now (economically) and it remains to see what’s going to happen with oil prices globally and how that’s going to affect the cost of living everywhere …
Just to let you know I have published my latest chapter if you’d like to check it out before I send the Substack notification on Monday:
https://energyshifts.net/the-great-crossing-and-practical-transition-pathways/
We are: The Lights Along the Way, Shining Lights on the Pathways.
J.J.
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Re: “instead of growth what is really occurring is decline. In my view of life, humanity is in a tipping over into decline”
Yes! And humanity has long been in decline, in plain sight of every “awake” person. Why though?
Because ‘advanced’ or ‘clever’ or ‘civilized’ people have a pernicious malignant terminal disease… a “Soullessness Spectrum Disorder” — see “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room” … https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html
“The world is the way that it is because most people do not care enough (even if they SAY they want things to be different) to change it through their actions.” — Mark Passio, Spiritual Teacher
“If we have learned anything in the past six years, it is that vaccinologists, doctors, and the government in general do not have good intentions and never did. The clear intention of everyone concerned was and is to make as much dirty money as possible, letting any amount of collateral damage slide, including a genocide and mass poisoning [with Covid-19 jabs]. The fact [is] that Big Pharma just murdered millions of people, with the full support of government, media, and “science”. With Covid, everyone is part of the fraud, many of them paid off, so no one has any reason to expose it, and big reasons to bury it. Don’t believe anything these people tell you, ABOUT ANYTHING. It isn’t time for a civil war against your neighbors, it is time for a revolution against these hoaxers and thieves.” — Miles Mathis, American author, in 2025
“Becoming an “antivaxxer” means you are smart enough to say NO to being poisoned.” —Ana Maria Mihalcea, M.D., Ph.D., 2024 (https://substack.com/@anamihalceamdphd/p-149191470)
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