The Human Layer
The Human Layer is a podcast for those who refuse to be optimized, for the builders and breakers at the intersection of emergent technology, political resistance, and the fight for a positive-sum future.
The Human Layer
OS Upgrades & Archetypes
Fire as Practice: Building Human Operating Systems for Unstable Times
The weather is getting strange. Instead of pretending otherwise, we step into the cremation ground and practice transmutation together.
This conversation tracks how we're debugging our "human OS" for 2026—not as self-help, but as actual survival infrastructure. We're building executable commands that work under pressure, treating collapse as composting material rather than catastrophe to bypass.
We start with fire as both terror and teacher. What survives the burn isn't what performs resilience—it's what's already rooted in practice. From journalism to local government, the institutions we relied on are entering their own cremation grounds. The question isn't whether systems collapse, but whether we can metabolize the energy released without fragmenting.
This is where archetypes become operational: La Loba gathers scattered bones and sings them back to coherence. Kali strikes down ego-attachment so authentic alignment can flow. These aren't metaphors—they're runtime patterns that help transmute rage into evidence, grief into capacity, institutional death into distributed infrastructure.
Then we get technical. Our "human OS" consists of simple commands you can actually execute when your nervous system is activated: resume_without_shame(), notice_reality(), listen_past_words().
No borrowed dogma. No wellness theater. Just debugged responses that preserve dignity under extraction.
We trace this through music as portal—from the Grateful Dead's improvisational practice to tantric teachings on death and rebirth. The pattern is the same: service requires ego-death requires community. Not the performed kind, but ride-or-die crews where language, values, and response patterns align so mutual aid is fast and human.
What we're documenting isn't a solution. It's a practice for staying sovereign while touching power, building post-institutional infrastructure while institutions collapse around us, and transmuting extraction's energy into actual capacity.
The bones are scattered. The singing has begun. The wild-knowing ones are waiting for these maps.
For listeners navigating their own cremation grounds: Subscribe. Share with someone in the fire with you. Leave us one command from your own OS that's keeping you coherent.
Be sure to follow The Human Layer's signals on Substack to stay in the loop!
Hello everyone and welcome to the human layer. It's 2026. And holy shit.
Taylor:Happy New Year.
Crystal :Happy New Year. We skipped all of that.
Taylor:It's not going to be boring. That's what we keep saying. That's for sure.
Crystal :I'm ready to send it back, honestly. We didn't do any end-of-the-year summaries. We're probably not going to do any here we go to 26. Um, but what we did do for the past few weeks is work on our own personal, what would you call them? Upgrades. Um, and then archetypes. And the archetypes really kind of, for me anyway, it spawned from our last conversation with Luca, where he mentioned transitioning into marriage in this next chapter in his life and looking at it as an archetype. And I thought that really um was something I needed to unpack more. So that really kind of set me down. What is the archetype to get me through the next five to ten years, basically? What does that look like?
Taylor:Yeah, yeah. This folks that hear these know that this is a pretty selfish endeavor. Uh, but I like already there is a clear thread, you know, probably from even the first episode all the way through. And yeah, the chat with Luca totally set us on course for for this for this chat.
Crystal :Yeah, I kind of feel like our podcast is just us exploring like our own lives, and then doesn't even feel like not that this is a job or anything, but I feel like these conversations are just there to, I don't know, expand our own lives, and then hopefully somebody else takes a nugget, gets to use it.
Taylor:It's a it's a real-time peel back the peel back the curtain. I've had to do the same thing with writing, as you know. I've finally gotten over my own, like, you know, self-critique around whether or not I should write for everyone or just keep it keep it to myself. And it has been nice to finally start just publishing a little more publicly. So I think this is an extension of that.
Crystal :Yeah. It forces you to really analyze yourself and your writing and your art in public. I know when I first started publishing, it I would get so uncomfortable hitting the publish button, and now I'm just like, that's just throw it all out there, and then as soon as it's out there, I'm like, ooh, let's bring that back in, because then it just feels awkward. But I I like to reverse engineer that and just push it out and see see where it goes.
Taylor:Yeah, well, off we go into 26. So I think that was the yes. We've got some high-level themes, but all kind of centering around how the hell we're thinking about living and taking another stab at another trip around the sun. I'll I'll let you I'll let you kick things off a little bit. I know, yeah. Yeah, we all have uh yeah, we all have fires, I think, that are ablaze currently.
Crystal :So yes, and that is gonna be the theme of this goodness. So what we're gonna explore is basically you know the tool set that we're using to get through 2026 and then beyond. And hopefully, you know, Taylor and I have been messing with this for a while, and hopefully we're putting structure into it so that other people can use whatever frameworks or protocols or human stacks that we create that they can then make their own. Um, and I think two big ones we're gonna talk about on this um podcast episode is operating system upgrades, um, both individually and as a collective, as the human layer itself, and also the archetypes that we both individually worked with and then wove into the podcast itself. So basically each individual is powered by their own operating system. It's a 2.0 upgrade, um, which I think is really fascinating to play with. And then we've woven our archetypes into the operating system upgrade, which is like some nerdy shit right there. It really just sounds so nerdy to say.
Taylor:So unapologetically nerdy. I whatever, yeah. Think what you will. We happen to enjoy it. It doesn't have to be for everybody.
Crystal :Exactly. The filter. So I guess the big core premise we're looking at here is um, and we're gonna get deeper into um some tantric philosophies in a little while. Um, but a lot of it comes back to fire. And I think right now, one of the big questions I know that I'm looking at, I think many people are too, is yes, the world is burning, and that's just not debatable at this point. But I think the question is what is going to rise in those flames or what is going to survive in those flames? And I think that is the thing that if we begin unpacking that, we can really look, you know, in any in relationships, communities, um, infrastructure, institutions, are they resilient enough to handle this type of fire? And what comes out on the other side? Because normally in any wisdom tradition, you have a fire that burns something to the ground that needs to die. And then something rises up in it if there's enough resiliency in the burn itself, then something can come in its place, and it's usually the thing that needs to exist. It's just that we can't see it, or we're just stuck in our human minds and our bodies, and we avoid it. So that is the big question.
Taylor:The overgrowth in the forest. I mean, that's a perfect, it's a very real. I mean, I've I've I've lived it certainly growing up in the mountains, but it's a natural process in a lot of ways, you know.
unknown:Yeah.
Taylor:And and and yeah, we're I think that's maybe maybe the the question to toss to anybody listening is you know, what is what is burning currently for you? Because I think we are are done questioning whether or not there are fires. Like if you say all is well and there's nothing wrong in the world and and nothing is on fire, then I, you know, I think our reply would be, well, you're delusional and that's just not the case, or you're not tapped into or don't have an appetite for actually like following, you know, global geopolitics or any sort of news. But I think everyone has some version of that. Um so yeah, like what whether it's an institution, an industry, I think for us, like journalism, academia, the places we know and have come from, um, government, uh yeah, the what landing on what you can point to and say, oh, I am in the fire actually right now. I think that's the step one, at least for us, was becoming very transparent and honest about that just being the case. And then from there, then it's at least easier to be like, are you are we trying to escape it or are we working from within it? And I think we've both landed on like, let's embrace it, we're in it, now what do we do next?
Crystal :Yeah. And I feel like we're the nerds that have, and I think part of this comes back to the ecosystem that we work in, you know, in Ethereum infrastructure and impact side, impact goods, or public goods, whatever. Um, a lot of what that technology's premise is, is you know, surviving accelerated collapse, the metacrisis, this technology should be able to rise up. Well, here we are now in it. Don't know if the technology is actually going to rise up. I doubt it. I think parts of it will. Um, I think the parts that need to rise up will. But I think at the same time, we all I know I had hoped that this stuff would be in place. And I know this is the Disney version of the apocalypse, that it would be ready when the fire happened to like journalism, that we could just, you know, watch it burn, and then, oh, here's the thing we use to save the art of journalism. And I think that for me, and you can apply this to any, to academia, to government, to anything, that for me has been very challenging, even given my skill set, is to watch and still watch it happen in real time, to watch the media burn, to watch CBS become Fox News in real time openly. And I feel like that is a real test to these archetypes and operating systems and skill sets to acknowledge that that thing is happening in front of you, the thing you care deeply about is dying, a slow death. And you know what's gonna happen across society when that when it it's what's happening now. You know it's gonna happen. And so I think that for a lot of people seeing things like that that they care about die away, the initial instinct to protect yourself is bypassing. How can I bypass this? You know, just not pay attention. Um each choice like that has ramifications. And I think what's interesting that what we're doing here is instead of bypassing, is forcing ourselves to actually see it. And then what do you use internally to anchor yourself when that thing that is huge burns and it takes everything with it.
Taylor:Yeah, yeah, and and having to got we've had to get past the there's some some seven levels of, you know, we're we're in this like acceptance that the whether it's crypto or you know, web three broadly, whatever the the thing that we always knew we could point to to be the safety net, and having seen it be built, and we're like, you know, oh, I there was a part of me that was sort of excited to start to see some of this even years ago, where it was like, well, this is you know the expected natural progression of things, and we happen to have been working on and building the resilient systems underneath that are gonna catch us when we fall. And now we've also had to get to this place of like accepting the fact that all these safety nets aren't what we thought they were, or have been, you know, totally perverted in a way that actually are not serving us. So yeah, it's been a hard, hard road to get to that place. Um, but it feels better now that we're like at least in an honest in the fire. Oh, it's hot. And you know, gotta work through it. What else can we do?
Crystal :I think that's the key point is that acknowledging that you're in the fire and that you're not gonna walk away from it, and that you pull people in to help you get through it together. So I really this is one thing that gives me hope is watching community organizers right now rise up in each little community in their own way and create rules, create protective mechanisms so they can continue to function. I think that is fascinating. And I feel like when you get into you know creative partnerships and community partnerships, do you have the people around you who have done this type of work and you're on the same level so that when it is really hard, you can be like, hey, I need you to take this, or hey, can I take this for you? Or hey, what can we do now that we have this core set over here? What can we plug into and this community over there to bring our specialized knowledge into what they have? And I feel like that um that is really interesting to watch happen because I think we have we both have insights into that with you know small communities that we're a part of, and then also larger communities at the same time.
Taylor:Yeah. Yeah. The uh and maybe this will lead us into sort of the uh one of the more, I guess, uh mythic layers of thinking about how being in the fire, accepting it, then leads to like the containers that we work in or work on, um, and how we've we've landed on this idea of uh the cremation ground as the co-working space, which uh I think that's the that's the framing we're in right now is like yes, there's this substance. So now the question is like how do we how do we show up and practice within that? What what like you know, uh keeping on the the the cheery, fiery death metaphors, like what are the bones? I love this you've embraced this, like what are the bones and the the things that we need to gather in the in the ashes in the sort of rubble? Um like what what exists where where are those bones that we can pick up and actually still work with? Um, you know, what what can we capture within that clear cremation grounds right now? Um and what you know, what structure can we build from the inside out? And who else is, yeah, like you said, who else is still part of the fight? Who else is in that container that's willing to be a part of it? And sometimes it's just proximity. I think we've all felt this like relocalizing what can I affect, you know, local tribe, family out into these next. I've certainly felt the broader concentric circle. I used to have maybe three or four out into these broader communities, that's all tightened down into you know two or three pretty small containers.
unknown:Yeah.
Taylor:Just because it's those, those are the ones that I feel like are the ones I want to keep keep uh firefighting with.
Crystal :At Journal Dow we call our ride or die ride or die bitches. I can't remember who I stole that from, but that basically is, you know, and that's going back to the very beginning, that that's what that fire does is it really exposes the relationships that are surface level that were fine, like that got you to this point. And then when the fire is really intense, you need the people with you that speak the same language so that you intuitively know how to work together and then can go out into another group that speaks a different language, but also has that core centric part to them, so that you can move together and then also disconnect when you need to.
Taylor:Um, and and who's willing to like, and I'd be curious. Uh I love the idea of there, there's there's still a heat source, like this process of death and rebirth, and uh you know, even coming back to the uh you know, the actual forest fires and how the nutrients that ultimately get reinjected into the soil and how that then you know becomes the the new fertile ground. The heat itself is an energy source. This came out in a lot of the stuff we've done. Like, I think that's to me one of the still like pieces I'm grappling with or uncertain of is where the obvious heat sources are that can actually be useful and transmuted into positive energy instead of all the heat sources that we encounter that we're also like, oh, you know, shit, that what felt like heat that I could actually make use of is actually like you know, fraud or corruption or just outright like, you know, those also feel like they have this heat source currently. So I don't know what where do you feel like you're feeling the best forms of heat within the within the crematorium?
Crystal :Yeah, so that's a great question. I feel like there's so there's different types of flames. And how do I say that? Like each one, each instance, each encounter with a flame causes a certain type of physical reaction. So your nervous system is gonna react to a smaller flame, like you know, you touch the stove or something in a different way. And the deeper you get into those more intense layers of flames, the more your nervous system is gonna react. And I think it depends on how you work with your nervous system. So for me, a light flame is something that I can get past pretty quick. I'm gonna bitch, I might blow your phone out and be like, God damn it, I can't believe this shit happened again. I do that often. So, but then that's me processing in real time with whomever is handy. And they're like, Yeah, and then I saw this, and then we bounce, bounce, bounce, done, processed. The bigger stuff.
Taylor:It's hard, it's hard when the the the literal flames, too. This is Iran as we're as we're talking. I just saw another update from like, I don't know, something Elon had magically provided, you know, by way of Starlink or something. Sorry, but yeah, it's it's hard when it's the metaphoric fire alongside literal blaze, you know, and war.
Crystal :And yeah, I mean, on a personal level, like the big flames that cause the nervous system to crash. Um, for me, I'm able to, it not for everything, but for certain things, my body's able to now because I've done the work already in understanding this stuff. I can usually process intense flames within you know 12 to 24 hours and then turn that rage into action. And I feel like that is a place where a lot of people are right now is how what is the intensity of the afflictive emotion? How fast can I safely move it through my body? And then what comes out on the other side? And that is the transmutation part. So for me, I have outlets for rage that turn into action that are either like writing or art or turning on a mic and bitching, or does it need is it is it you know, deep fraud? Do I need to, you know, talk to authorities? Sure, let's have that conversation. So yeah, that's I'd say that I don't know if that's the right answer, but I think the transmutation process is gonna be different for each person, but that is the work. And if you we step into the actually, before I dive deeper, do you have anything you want to add to that?
Taylor:Or no, I think it's the it's the it feels right as far as my own practice, I guess. And I know this is also a good segue into some of the operating system thinking, but like maybe that's the the right way to think about it is you know, acceptance of whatever that fire looks like in your context, and then the measured version of like touch the so stove or or whatever feels like this isn't gonna be catastrophic. And how do you then think about what that self-regulation is, what's your very felt response, your body, what's your nervous system doing, and finding easy small outlets. I think everyone's gonna you know have a different version of that. But the thing that obviously is not the solution is what I think 90% of people end up doing, which is like doom scrolling or like checkout and go, or the usual, you know, drug, sex, rock and roll, whatever. Yeah, but like progressively going through those motions and and finding where you do know it's a healthy outlet. And then so it, you know, I think we're both ready to kind of be in some of the bigger, bigger flames and fires, having been through some shit, but like many may not be, and that's fine. And there's this like progressive graduation process where you don't totally get burned and can't cope and you know aren't part of the solution at that point.
Crystal :And you can see it trickle through society when when 90% of a population can't control their nervous system or don't understand it. I mean, I see this in corporate a lot too. If you don't under if you don't recognize the physical trigger, then that stress cortisol cycle continues, and then you end up doing the doom scrolling and and the drugs and the alcohol. And to be clear, all of that, all of the above, we all use those as coping mechanisms. That's not a judgment. But if they continue to be the way that you are processing that thing in your stomach or your your physical reaction, like for me, a a Intense nervous system. I can feel it in my gut first and then it's adrenaline. And then after the adrenaline comes, I get cold. I just crank the heat up, or I have to dance around and physically get it out of my body. Or then I spiral more and more and more. I'm not able to get to action. If I can't get to action, then that shit just stays inside and it festers. And that's where you get a lot of the issues in society come from that festering part. And I mean all of our stress issues, relationship issues, all of that stuff is mostly just the inability to process and the long-term ramifications of cortisol pumping through your body constantly. Eventually your body just kind of collapses.
Taylor:Yeah. We we would both be bullshitting to say we don't, you know, uh use what would be considered, you know, some checking out or some vice, you know, the occasional edible. But I think we uh again, it's this transmutation process that I now feel like I have a really healthy relationship with any of this, and I'm like, and have the right people around me, to be fair, to give you and others credit. Like you also have to be within the the tribe that'll call you on your shit, you know, if all of a sudden you're you're drunk at noon on a Tuesday. Like I'm pretty sure I got some people that would be like, yeah, maybe a little too far.
Crystal :Yeah, let's bring that part back in. And also it comes from your elders. Like, I learned this stuff. I mean, I've been doing yoga for a long time, but then I went to a place to learn very specific wisdom traditions because I knew I didn't have the skill set for what we're stepping into. And to bring it back to our conversation from my mentors, spiritual guides, whatever at Naropa, there were two archetypes that resonated with me, and they come into this conversation here. So I'm gonna blow through them really quick. The first one is Women Who Run with Wolves, which is an amazing book. Go grab that. Um, this is an indigenous story. I'm probably gonna butcher lineage a little bit because I'm really bad at names. But basically, the the short version of this is La Loba, which is um the bone collector. She's kind of like the old hag in the story, goes around the desert and collects the wolf bones and brings them back into the cave. And once she has a full skeleton, she sings it to life and then it runs out into the desert and becomes a laughing woman. So you're gathering death and bringing it back to life in its next form. And then part of that, too, of that same story is the woman stumbles into, and this is the part that I get hazy at. I meant to read it before, but whatever. Um Bluebeard, the male figure in the story, has a room full of ex-wives' dead bodies just piled up in there. And the woman accidentally stumbles into the room with this key, and now the key is covered in blood, and she can't get rid of the key because she's seen the bodies. And we have all been in situations in our lives where we have stumbled into something we weren't supposed to see, and what do we do with it? So that is the those two things are kind of where I personally am at. Seen too many things in situations, and now I have to deal with that being the steward of that information. And what does that mean? And there are a lot of people right now who are blowing whistles, literally, like all over Minneapolis and Chicago and all these places, warning people. And then also within these institutions that are failing, you have plenty of people who are stumbling into bloody rooms right now, holding bloody keys. Don't know what the hell to do with that. And that becomes the place where the work is done, and that leads us into the cremation ground. And this part of the story gets into a classic Tantra. Um, basically, Vamachara is the left-hand path for tantric yogis. And way back thousands of years ago, you had an orthodox lineage of yoga, and then you had the crazies, and crazy in a in a good way. I don't mean that in a negative context. Um, and on the left-hand path, which were the unorthodox, they used shock to make that part of their spiritual practice. And really what they were getting at is that transmutation. Can we be as as ridiculous as possible and get in touch with the things that society does not want to see, like death? So a lot of their rituals would happen in in graveyards. And in Hindu culture, you know, the graveyard is where the body is shown to everyone because death is part of the culture, and the burning of the body and the returning to earth, that is also celebrated. So tantric yogis would just have a good old time in in the graveyard, play with the bones. They would just dig up skulls and like drink out of them and all kinds of things. So society was like, ooh, what's going on over here? But they were actually getting deeper into their own type of spiritual practice. And I feel like that's where we are as a society right now is everything is burning. It is undeniable that we are in it, and you just can't step away from it anymore. So either we bypass it completely, which I'd say probably 75% of the population is going to do. And then it's going to be upon the 25% of us to step into the crematorium and look at that as the space where the work gets done. So on the community level, what does that mean? That means you need mutual aid networks. You've got, I mean, right now in Minneapolis, you've got people, you've got phone trees where people can't leave their house and other people are going out shopping for them because they've got white skin and they're making sure that people can stay fed. And so, and they're getting ready for a general strike. I think they're looking at one in two weeks. And what does that mean for a city to go under a general strike? So those kinds of things, those people that are initiating this, they're doing the work inside of the cremation ground. They're saying, yeah, this this has to be done.
Taylor:Yeah, it I don't think this is a it's not familiar territory for a lot of folks in the West. Certainly, I mean, you've put more time into it uh from a like academic standpoint at Neuropa. I sort of accidentally went down that path just because I leaned into what felt like was feeding my curiosity, honestly, more than anything. Um but yeah, the the work to go inward has to be first, which is why you point to like, you know, a large percentage probably not having done the work and not knowing how to respond within that fire, whatever that is. Um and I think the yeah, looking to other traditions and looking for, yeah, like what better way to look inward than to be directly uh exposed to like ritualistic death practices? I've certainly never been like directly in front of, I've been closer to it and you know, done things that were again more curiosity, but like to live across generations in that direct exposure to death being part of the rebirth and that all being a cycle, and that's just as normal as life. Like, you know, I think there's yeah, a lot in short order. I hope a lot of a lot of us can do that can continue to uh move inward in in order to affect what we can do on the outside or within our communities.
unknown:Yeah.
Crystal :And to look inward, you still need to framework. And whatever that framework is, whatever your, you know, if you have a spiritual practice, if you have a religious community, or if you have just people you can get together and and have those conversations with to peel back the onion, because it it is, and I think this is maybe this is one of the things that will come out of all of this burning is that people will have to do the ego death. And oh, I forgot to bring in Kali. That was the other part. We didn't even get the okay. We'll we'll oh that's the darker side that I love.
Taylor:Yeah.
Crystal :Yeah, I'll bring it back around. Maybe I'll answer my own question right here. So in the cremator, in the in the place where everything's burning, Kali Ma is one of the uh what I I think lots of people call it different things, but deity, goddess, whatever. Um, this is she's the one you summon when it's time to burn things down. And we can step back and look out now, and Kali is definitely part of this conversation. And in the myth, Kali is the we'll have to put it in the show notes, but she's standing on top of Shiva's body. And oh my god, if I get this wrong, please, not a Raja, don't kill me. Um, and she's wearing a necklace of skulls. And in the tradition, those skulls are ego death. So she's not going around killing people, she's going around striking down the ego and keeping that as a memoriam once the ego has died. And then the blood begins to flow again once the ego is the ego death has happened. And if you get into any any wisdom tradition has has this in it, and really like the hero's journey, it is that ego process. And if you can find people who have done the work on their ego, and it's not that you're trying to do away with your ego. We all need egos to function in this world. But is your ego in alignment with who you really are at the core? And this really gets into you can look at postmodern theory, some, you know, Gita Borg, Society of the Spectacle, whatever. Is your ego tied to the spectacle or is it tied to alignment with the stuff that we're talking about? You know, where is your ego in all this? Can you put the ego on the shelf when you need to go ask someone to get you groceries because the goons might kidnap you because you got a tan or something? You know, we're there. So, and when Kali is in the conversation, there's no mercy, really. And it's it's done from a place of compassion because it has to die, whatever it is, has to die and burn so the next thing can come. And that's when Kali enters the conversation, and it is one of the main deities for for tantric yogis. Um yeah, it's game on.
Taylor:Yeah, I love it. I mean, I I'd never really, you know, just in the last month was sort of my crash course on some of this. Um, but I think it's important to have some version of that to lean on, you know, it's not gonna not gonna sit with everybody. It's funny, the the um I think we're recording this something like a week after Bob Weir, I'm I'm wearing uh my tribute hat to the Grateful Dead. Um, but like it's funny how as we were diving in, uh that was a hard, uh way more like difficult and emotional moment than I thought it would be. I I never had like a really deep connection, um, but certainly uh through my family, and you know, I I did have I I slowly unpacked and realized that there was a deeper connection uh to him and to that band and you know what music represented for me. And that was like the closest I could I could draw this correlation. He talked a lot about just and and you know, anyone that has uh a connection to music knows that there is this um what feels to be uh musicians that transcend the human form, and they're just these conduits, and they all talk about it. He talked about this directly of how he eventually you know got to a place where every more or less every show was an ego death where then he evaporated and the music from the you know the the gods that be were just using him and sort of playing through him and and the band. Um so it's been it's been fun and a wild parallel and just a lot also to take on to for me. That was Kali in a weird way, like that was my version of being able to sink my teeth into you know these really crazy deep traditions that go obviously you know back millennia, things like Kali. Um, but it's the same, it's why it spoke to me, and it's why it speaks to you know everybody having that version of that uh ego death and rebirth process, and it can come in a lot of forms. So anyway, our RIP to Bobby Weir. But yeah, uh that was my connection to it.
Crystal :Now I'm glad you brought that up because I was gonna go there next. I was been staring at your hat the whole time. I'm like, oh yep, let's bring let's bring Kali into the dead. And let's see, where to start? Like for me, The Grateful Dead, I was grateful. I was grateful. I was lucky enough to first see Garcia when I was 17 on Acid. That was the first time I ever did Acid. And it was the first time that Garcia band and Jerry played in Hampton Road since they've been kicked out in the 80s. And then after that, a few months after that, we went and saw The Grateful Dead play. I think it was at RFK. So that's when I got to see the whole band. And that that thing you were talking about, when I first started listening to their live music, I'm like, oh my god, why would I want to listen to Drums in Space for like 45 minutes? This is fucking nuts. And then after doing the acid, one song three hours. Yeah, I'm like, oh, that's what it is. But that transcendence that happened, that is a that's one of the most beautiful things about any kind of music and art that you can get into that allows you to connect into the divine. I think it's way easier than a spiritual practice, honestly. If you can, music is the conduit, but with the Grateful Dead specifically, they embraced the iconography of the tantric yogis in the 60s and also from Buddhist Buddhism as well. Tibetan Book of the Dead is a big part of their art. And Bob Weir specifically worked with Christopher Wallace, who is also Harish, Harish, I think is the name that he was given. Um, he wrote the textbook that I studied for my tantra class, and he was Bob Weir's Sanskritist. And so Bob Weir went above and beyond to understand all of this, and it was in his art, probably from long before he knew what it was. You know, I think he was really young when he joined the band. I think Phil Lesh was 14, and I think Weir was in his teens as well when he when they joined him. And there's no way they understood what any of this was. But then it just began to evolve through them. And then when the psychedelic movement was really taking off with Ram Das and Robert, um Albert, what's his um shit? I forgot his first name. Um, and Leary, based on Ram Das and Leary, when they were doing this research in Harper.
Taylor:It's like Alpert Alpert. I always I always want to say Albert Richard Alpert.
Crystal :I was gonna say dick, but I'm like, no one needing to go by dick. So um, but then they began to, I think they're in his autobiography, they said there was there was a three-week period where him and Alan Watts and Leary did acid for three weeks in an apartment and didn't leave. And somebody threw the Tibetan Book of the Dead at him at that frame. And then that was also when The Grateful Dead and Um Kin Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, all of that stuff was happening. And again, that was also at a at a very similar, I don't think it was as intense as where it is we are right now, but it was a very similar time of unrest when fires were burning shit everywhere. So they turned to to wisdom tradition through psychedelics into music, and that is how a lot of them got through. Now, unfortunately, a lot of the boomers didn't continue that mission and we're back here again. So maybe this time Kylie's like, y'all don't finish that shit. Let's burn it down again and don't make the same mistake.
Taylor:Yeah, that that feel this feels like the last. I mean, it's always easy to be like, you know, oh, this time's different, but I think, you know, most most close enough to to AI and just seeing what's happening at a global scale, there is something different. So it does feel like kind of the last chance. I mean, yeah, early like John Perry Barlow and that connection, that time frame, it felt like there, I'm sure there's a you know, a full PhD to work on connecting those, you know, this with that time frame and the parallels. Yeah, but this does feel like that same level of of gravity and also a lot harder to see what's on the other side if we yeah, can't can't quite get it right.
Crystal :And I it's yeah, like this is also the end, I don't want to say the end result, but this is also an accumulation of action that has never been that's never had reparation around it. So if you step back and look at the big picture of this country, you know, it was built on all the bad things genocide, you know, colonialism, imperialism, all of it. We never made peace with that. We just kept it going. We just called it different things, hid it under other things. Racism is the the dominant policy right now. And that to burn that, that's where yeah, it it it both scares me and fascinates me at the same time, because to fix that type of institutional systemic trauma does require the system itself to burn down. And then somebody has to build or somebody's all of us have to build the infrastructure once that does happen. I think that is one thing that a lot of people are figuring out in real time. And hopefully there's enough of us, like us, and people that have worked with wisdom traditions and that have these frameworks in place to stand up solutions and experiment with solutions, because that's a kind of collapse that I know most people aren't mentally prepared for.
Taylor:Yeah, I I think the what feels to be the, and and this comes up more and more, certainly with like close friends, uh the obvious answer now is not you know, either putting your head in the sand and sort of let's let's let this blow over. There's that sort of reaction. Um, or there's, you know, or there's also just outright, whether it's known and on the surface, or I think a lot of it through, you know, just other life circumstances and trauma gets buried down where it's like it's just this denial, you know, um uh uh an outright sort of unwillingness. I point to hypernormalization that Adam Curtis dock more and more because it's just such a in-your face aggressive version of what's happen what happens when a lot of people aren't willing to be open and honest about the current state of reality. Um it's yeah, that's the the the work, at least that I've been trying to take on is just being you know, caring and kind, but also super direct about owning, owning this current state, you know. This is maybe where some of the operating system comes into play, which it's been a nice the layer of that that was helpful was like we're dealing with different operating conditions. We don't have to take this on as like my operating system is broken. Um all of our operating systems are fried to some degree. It's because the operating conditions are are totally different, you know?
Crystal :Yeah. So tell walk us through that more because yeah, that's a great segue. We need to get into the operating system.
Taylor:I mean, I c it'd be hard to point to like some genesis, but uh yeah, I I think slowly um I just started to put packaging around like what are the things that feel like I'm doing that are a little bit different that are responses to the current state of the world or current operating conditions? Like I think everyone's got some version of that, and most of it, unfortunately, because of the information landscape, it's fed back to us like all your typical self-help bullshit. Yes, you know, and this is the you know, both uh military industrial complex, it's now these sort of medical industrial complex, it's Ozympic, it's all of this is like these very, you know, quick fix. You're you're broken in some way, let me let me being, you know, sort of uh, I guess Western culture as it exists, feed you back the the little thing, the the little self-help that'll you know finally get your life back on track. And it's like that I always felt like that is like such a broken way to think about it. Um so anyway, yeah, late last year, I guess, knowing that we'd keep doing some of this, the human layer, like a lot of the things I knew I'd invest time in, um just and and us working with AI and like starting to have this objective mirror to unpack some of it, slowly materialized into, you know, yeah, some nice, uh again, very personal. We always say like fork it, take it, but it's certainly not prescriptive. What is gonna work for me is certainly not gonna work for anyone else. Um, but at least having some framework that feels like it maps who I am to the wild new, you know, flaming operating conditions. So the um the practical, and I don't have any of this because now it's like actually built in. I realize I'm running some of these commands. You you see the the uh resume without shame. Yeah, I use that now, and it's like a nice, they're they're these really nice, just little like bite-sized reorient my thinking in real time kind of things. Um notice reality. That's another one I come back to quite a bit. Um like it's often nice to just stop and just like stop taking in all the input. Notice reality in the current moment right now. It's hard to do, I think, sometimes. Um uh uh, what's another one? Listen, listen past words. I like that. Um I'll post this was my quarterly update that a lot of this is, and you have a version of this too. We'll we'll link to all of it. Um but yeah, listening beyond what someone's saying, what is actually the intention or what's meant? Is there actually kindness behind what you're interpreting as you know, some some insult, whatever it might be? Um anyway, got a whole list of these things. But I'm realizing it is like it's become this upgraded operating system that I am slowly filtering into very real day-to-day actions.
Crystal :Yeah, we've been playing with it for about what three weeks now. I think that's when we spun it up one night on some AI stuff. And actually, I'll put um if anybody wants to do this exercise, I'll put the prompt that I used in the show notes.
Taylor:Um, so people can I think it came out of like the human layer operating system, maybe. I don't know, I can't remember which was first, but it was us in that zone, and then it and then we forked it into a more personal version.
Crystal :Yeah, there was like a dance somewhere where at the end it just spit out code. I'm like, wow, that's interesting. And then, yeah, and then you ran with it. And I think what I find interesting is I need to print them out because every time they pop into an output or something, and I've printed out a few, but not like in just like a uh, you know, like, you know, here's here's the code I need right now, here's the line. Um, because I haven't there's a few. The shame one is definitely one. When when we text them back and forth, I'm like, oh yeah, that's one. Then it sticks in my brain. Um I have some here in the in the show notes for this. I think for the crematory conversation here, it said the technology is detect death and then an arrow to gather bones and then the next step, assemble skeleton, next step, sing alive. And so those little things, it's very like there are times where like when I'm working and I'm like, oh wait, I saw that code somewhere. Yeah, let me not overreact like I normally do and spiral. I'm gonna run that code right here in my brain. And it it is, I do find it more accessible than the the wellness industry stuff. I think this is much more brass tacks, doesn't have the emotion or or spiritual thing attached to it. You don't have to like adhere to someone else's belief system or pattern. You know, you can just use this snippet of code like you would if you're building a website, you know.
Taylor:Yeah. And it's I mean, I the the world is built on irony, so I love the fact that it like it feels like it's this, you know, uh embracing machinery and like leaning in to turn humans more into machines, but it's I think we both have used it in a way that feels like the complete like bait and switch. Yes, it's this like easily accessible. I mean, we we still have hardware and wetware, software um that we operate on. Like, don't don't deny that. Um so it's this nice sort of uh judo move with what feels to be just really objective, useful, um, but ultimately like more human than machine speak. Get the the shit that humans can't do well, the all the emotional response, all the like it strips that away and actually uses machines for what they're really good at, which is you know, pretty clear, concise. So I don't know. It's it's still hard because it does feel like a little hypocritical in sometimes.
Crystal :Um, but I'm okay with that.
Taylor:It feels healthy.
Crystal :Yeah, yeah. That that attention I'm okay with because, and I guess you know, we're both accidental technologists, so maybe that's just we work in, you know, we have one foot in the world of technology and one foot foot in the world of humanity, human layer. Um, but for me, sometimes I need it to be binary. And especially and what I'm finding, which I think this is really interesting, in the past I would have used the wellness industrial complex for this kind of stuff. And then I would, you know, let me journal it and let me. And it needs to happen faster. It needs to not have some random bloggers two cents on it. Like code is code and it's binary and it doesn't have emotion. And I think that that might be what we need, especially when you're deploying these things on the fly. Um, you know, how do I respond to the situation right now? Three lines of code, there it is. There's no emotion in that. Like boom, boom, boom, done. And then some things are gonna need emotion, and you know, you gotta burn something down and do all the stuff I was talking about earlier. There's you know, that's necessary too. But if you're gonna take that other route using a wisdom tradition or something, you need to make it your own. Like I highly recommend. Like when I got into this world, yeah, I read the books, the bloggers, the wellness stuff. I mean, yeah, there's some really good lived knowledge in there. But one of the main reasons I went to Naropa is like I'm tired of reading someone else's version of a 2,000-year-old document that I already know I resonate with because I practiced this physical thing that came from it. So I wanted to go learn the source. And you can learn that with books, libraries, ashrams. I could have just gone to ashram, saved 50 grand, but I like academia.
unknown:Yeah.
Crystal :Um but in doing that, I was able to leave Naropa with that shit embedded in me. So now it is part of my operating system. And I half the time don't even notice that I'm running this stuff. Um, but that is I think one of the biggest takeaways from that type of academic study is that now it is just embodied and now it can trickle out into all of these other things.
Taylor:Yeah. I was I was gonna say it's it's it's so obvious when someone's leaning into the the the work, obviously they've done wherever that comes from, and it's it's so much a part of who they are, and they're unwilling to let it go and and unapologetic about what it serves for them, and then then that naturally is gonna you know filter out and affect everybody else around you. And it's you know, I I get the osmosis is real with all of that that you've gotten, and you know, the fact that we do this and spend time, like I'm getting the unintentional benefits of of all of that work, and everybody can have some version of that, you know. Yeah, but it first starts with like, yeah, what's the what's the piece you're fighting or the mask that you're putting on that actually doesn't speak to you, and you know, as long as it's done, you know, with benefit in mind and not, you know, looking to extract from somebody else or some other community, like then you lean into it, and over time you start to just you know, you can you can radiate. This is why I love, you know, I've totally flipped too. I used to be, you know, totally uh absorbed by the sort of tech philosopher types, um, and and yeah, like have totally inverted. I feel good about my base knowledge of like technology, and now it's been a ton of time spent with Ron Das and you know, yeah, Alan Watts and these all these types of folks to kind of feel the other side of it.
Crystal :And you've already done a lot of that work too. Like, that's the reason you and I connect, is because you've done that work. So we can speak a similar language, and it's a soul-level language. And I have a handful of friends, like one from Naropa, who also, or a handful from there that speak that language too, because they've done the work also. And then your nervous system immediately recognizes that. And I feel like that's another beautiful thing that's happening in real time, is that those who have done whatever the work is, and then they find someone else has done the work, whatever that is, they connect. And it's it happens inherently because that ego death has already happened, or you've already worked through whatever. So you can speak the same language and it's intuitive, it's not even really words. Um, yeah, that I think is what we're gonna see more of as people have to figure this out, have to navigate through the flames and find those connecting points. And if you find the people that have done the work on themselves, that that is the starting point. It has to start there.
Taylor:Yeah. Yeah. Well, good, I think good good for full circle is you like at least putting time into thinking about what you can honestly say is burning.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
Taylor:We could sit here for another hour and just list all the things we know that we are not on the outside watching burn. We're like at the base of the flame, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
Taylor:Um, so that does feel like a good. I don't know. I I would have trouble honestly, like being real with anybody these days that I couldn't ask that question to. And you know, I think the natural response is like, yeah, there's some difficult things in the world, and yeah, there's but it's just like not coming to terms with what you can point to that you you can have an effect on or that you're directly involved in.
Crystal :Yeah. And I get that this stuff is hard. It's hard to bear witness. It's never easy. I mean, I just trained as a documentarian, so I know how to do it, but I'm getting to the point where I I really struggle with when I'm with friends or just strangers, and they're like, oh yeah, I didn't hear like some massive thing happened. And they're like, Oh, I didn't hear about that. I don't watch the news. I don't do the news. Like that ship has sailed. It's not the news anymore, it's your neighbors. Like, you at least gotta pay attention and know what's coming at you and your neighbors. And I think that if we could start there, um get more involved on the local level, then when these flames do get big, because they're coming here. I mean, we can watch certain cities and see what's going on. It's a playbook, it's not hidden. Then, you know, if you've already got your people in place, then when the flames do hit, you know what's gonna you know what's gonna rise up in those flames. Because you're gonna help it, you're gonna make sure that the ones that need to get to the other side are there with you.
Taylor:Yeah. Yep, and it and it won't go as expected. You will make you will make the misstep, and this is where it's you know, baseline, some new operating system that maps to that new terrain. Yeah, resume without shame. Stop beating yourself up. Yeah, the sun's gonna come up tomorrow. You know, toom scroll to get yeah, if you got a doom scroll to get through tonight, fucking do it.
Crystal :I mean, I'll probably do that later. There'll be probably be an hour where I'm gonna pop an edible like, what the fuck happened in Minneapolis today? Let me doom scroll that, and then I'll go, you know, eat a cupcake and find something else to think about, find a solution or find something to work on that is related in some way to something better.
Taylor:I I I had to I had to learn the hard way of like uh was which was mostly ego-driven to say I'm somehow in a better position because I like really have tried to cut off any you know traditional media sources or social media. And I always used to talk, and I and my wife and others now have like been very direct about the shows and what they mean and why they matter, and all of it. And I'm like, oh yeah, well, that's an operating system that is I have to like appreciate because it works for you, and that's important. That cupcake's important, you know. Uh if it's yeah, for the right reason and you know why you're doing it and not just being reactive.
Crystal :Yeah. And giving yourself grace when you are reactive. You know, fuck it. There's gonna be days where, yeah, just gonna be a hot mess. And then if you can get to the point where you can kind of laugh at yourself in the hot mess, it does, it is kind of fascinating when you can witness and not judge your own self as you're spiraling. That's kind of fun too. Like, oh, look what I just did there. Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
Crystal :Hope I contain that at least, you know, to a few people who understand me and can be like, yep, she just had to spiral for a hot second.
Taylor:So just somehow I I don't know how many times I've had that, but the the step back and you're just a conduit, you're just Bob Weir. The the wild reaction is just sort of flowing through you. You have to be able to look at it and laugh.
Crystal :Yep. Just lean in.
Taylor:Yep. Awesome.
Crystal :Well, yeah, I think we've I don't think I have any notes left, or maybe I do, and it doesn't matter.
Taylor:So more more to come. Yeah, I'm excited. We've got uh a few other folks lined up that I think will continue the thread or at least let us pressure test some of the the new operating systems we're working with.
Crystal :Yeah, we'll get some archetype experts, put them on the hot seat. I'm excited about that. Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you. Thank you everyone for listening if you're still with us. And uh yeah, until next time.
Taylor:Onward. Until the next layer.
