Unmediated

Credit: Pierre Lemos

A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with my astrologer friend, Jonah Emerson-Bell. We were talking about the astrology of the times, as astrologers tend to do. At some point during our meandering conversation, Jonah used the word “unmediated,” and it lodged itself in my mind. I haven’t been able to dislodge it for weeks now. I’ve come to think of that word as something that I’ve been craving during these odd and challenging times.

On February 20^th, crotchety Saturn and nebulous Neptune joined at the hip by conjunction for the first time in decades. This prompted a lot of chatter on the internet from astrologers about what it might mean, ranging from the very profound to what I might see as improbable. I’ve had to sit with how I felt and thought about the transit. There are layers to it for me, of course.

First, Saturn’s return into Aries signals my second Saturn return. That’s its own post. I’ll come back to that another time.

However, the reason I believe Jonah’s word, unmediated, has stayed with me is that the Saturn-Neptune conjunction signals a moment where everything seems…mediated. It’s hard to know things for yourself. The usual and celebrated subject for this is AI. But this filters through every aspect of anything mediated, whether we’re talking “legacy” media, social media, or the very air between you and a friend as you communicate via your cell phones. With the last example, it comes in the form of talking about “Alaska,” and suddenly, your social media feed or favorite shopping sites allude to, you guess it, “Alaska.”

So, it prompted a question for me, “Where are the unmediated spaces?” This is not as easy to answer as you might suspect. You could say the privacy of your own home. Sure, if you’ve been careful enough to silence the microphones on all your devices. You can forget about any aspect of no mediation if you have active digital assistants like Alexa, Siri, or Google in your home. You might say alone in nature. But that’s only if you think of the natural world as unmediated by other humans. One noticeable change I’ve experienced while living in the Southwest is that some creatures are always watching you, even if you don’t see them at the time. I’m particularly aware of this with the surplus of crows and ravens here in Santa Fe. Here’s the other thing to know: if you don’t know, they also could be talking about you, and will remember you if you give them adequate reason to remember you, as will their offspring. It’s fascinating research. This encapsulates some of it.

This isn’t paranoia or the stuff of conspiracy theories, per se, though it could be. Rather than singularly relying on others as intermediaries or your own senses, it’s more about cultivating an active wildness both within yourself and with others. We often think of wildness as license to be free to do whatever, whenever. This is false. The wildest animals, including crows, are the most disciplined. They can’t afford to be willy-nilly about their lives since that could lead to injury, death, or starvation. Wildness is to live a truly unmediated life.

But what does such wildness really mean for a person? Wild living can mean many different things to different people: living off the grid, eating only the food you grow, or sourcing as many of your needs as possible. These kinds of things can be achieved, honestly, by both rich and poor alike. However, for most of us, including myself, it’s less than ideal or not entirely possible. What we can do is start a process of restoration to create more unmediated states and spaces.

This starts by examining all the ways you’re tied to mediated sources for things like information, sustenance, and support. This is mostly how and why I find AI very challenging. I’m not going to get into larger issues with AI, such as environmental resource use, its threat to many layers and kinds of employment, or its tendency to produce lackluster commercial art. Okay, let me say it: it’s often ugly! I’m more concerned about how it can make us lazier, and, well, more domesticated—the very opposite of wildness. Many have come to rely on ChatGPT for everything without mediating or remediating any other sources, including vetting ChatGPT’s own sources. And one aspect of human wildness is through our ability to dream and imagine.

Over the last week, I’ve taken to asking various AI platforms this question: when you look up into the night sky, what do you see? Now, I know that AI technically can’t look up, per se, but I found the answers intriguing. None of the answers were poetic, and mostly focused on the chemical and material properties of the stars. AI would not have created astrology. It couldn’t. It couldn’t be just because I suspect many of its programmers have skipped studying the humanities. Yet the other reason is simpler: AI isn’t built to be wild. You are.

This return to wildness is happening on a global level, too. Many countries heard a call to reconsider how they mediate through trade or “protection,” even before the most recent conflict in the Middle East. In fact, it’s interesting to consider that more nations are considering different options for obtaining oil since Neptune, in a more modern sense, is said to rule oil.

But let’s be clear: wildness is unsettling. We don’t know how a wild thing may go. There’s often a conflict or even confusion about a wild thing’s intentions. Reclaiming your own wildness means recovering sovereignty over your senses while finding or creating the time to order them in a way that cultivates more sustainability. This is, of course, disorienting at first. Domestication conditions us to love and embrace routine. Becoming unmediated dissolves trust if whatever we’ve come to trust has become stale, habitual, and even singular in our lives. Wildness affords little of this. It’s learning to look at all that’s mediated for us. We must remember to look closer at all of it. No easy task, to be sure. But that’s one of the reasons why I’ve been quiet. I’ve had to listen. I’m still listening. But I’m sharing what I’ve heard so far. I hope it resonates with you and you also hear a call to the wild, more unmediated.