Saturn Returns with Caggie - 4.11 Happiness, Success and the Future with Mo Gawdat

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Entrepreneur, public speaker and author Mo Gawdat joins Caggie in this week's episode of Saturn Returns. Mo had a successful career in tech before deciding to use his skills in maths, engineering and logic to find an algorithm for happiness, leading to his mission 1 Billion Happy, and his book Solve For Happy. Along this journey, he experienced the tragic death of his son Ali, putting his commitment to happiness to the ultimate test. As well as happiness, Mo and Caggie discuss money, the role of the masculine and the feminine in AI, and how we can get our brains to work in our favour.  --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. When the fire alarm goes off, you know, which is unhappiness, all of those emotions is your brain telling you, fire alarm, fire alarm, fire alarm. What do we do? Do we sit in the room and listen to the fire alarm until it deafens us? You know, what we do is we get up, we take action. That's what we do. My guest today is the incredible entrepreneur and writer Mo Gowdat.

Mo had a hugely successful career in tech before choosing to research happiness. His world changed in 2014 when his son Ali died during a medical operation. Since then, he has become a phenomenon. Published two books, Solve for Happy, Engineer Your Path to Joy, and Scary Smart, The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World. He has also launched his own podcast, Slow Mo. Now, I first came across Mo on Elizabeth Day's How to Fail podcast and found him so interesting. And more recently, I was sent his books, Gary Smart, by his publishers.

And so I asked whether he'd be interested in coming on the show. As soon as I started talking to Mo, I felt instantly comfortable and at home and he has a very familiar presence about him. And I'm very fortunate to say that I call him a friend today. He's one of the most intelligent people I think I've ever met. And his view and his way of thinking is so unique and so useful to anyone that has the pleasure of talking to him or gets to hear him talk on a podcast. And so I found it very inspiring. We talk about many different topics in this episode, including happiness, but also money, success, the role of the masculine and the feminine and AI and how this will impact our future. It's a very interesting conversation. I guess he's sort of a philosopher of our time and so I hope you enjoy it.

But before we get into this episode, let's hear from our astrological guide, Nora. The pursuit of happiness is one deeply tied to our karma. The work we put forward and the results we expect from that work are related to karma, which is related to Saturn. So for example, we work hard to get a degree, and then at the second Saturn square, we get that degree at the age of 21, or we get the first job or a first internship. Then later on, at the age of 29, we get near to our

Saturn return and we finally get the job that we wanted to. We make the money that we've been dreaming of making and yet we don't always feel fulfilled. The reward and the results of the work we have put forward doesn't always completely satisfy our hearts. When it comes to genuine happiness in astrology, there is another placement to look at, the south node, which is opposite the north node. The south node and its signification secretly contains our natural talents and comfort zone, whereas the north node signifies what we desire to achieve and attain in this lifetime, to the point of being obsessive about it, to the point of forgetting about our own well-being at times. It is this placement that starts the pursuit and

chasing of happiness, which is symbolized esoterically as a snake pursuing its own tail. It's this never-ending hunger for something that might not grant the happiness we associate it with ultimately. Saturn grounds us, it helps us achieve, but also gives us a strong dose of healthy maturity. It's that moment where we realize that we too are flawed and that sometimes the gray area was just an illusion. Some things are wrong, some things are right, and perhaps the idea of happiness that we used to have isn't at all what lines up with our reality. to have isn't at all what lines up with our reality. Beyond the north node and Saturn, it is the south node that teaches us the most about a quiet, peaceful sense of fulfillment.

And it is as close as we get to happiness. It teaches us the difficult art of surrender. But surrender to whom? Authorities or parents? Or obsessions and desires, it teaches us how to surrender to ourselves and the inevitable ups and downs that come with this and the necessary acceptance of it. That's when inner contemplation starts, away from the world and into our own world, our inner universe. This thought also sheds light on meditation and why it has such an important role in spirituality and in the pursuit of self-realization it's the process of surrender to the soul away from the monkey mind it triggers truth within us a truth hard to articulate with the mind but very obvious to recognize by the heart it is during these moments of surrender to self, these moments in time and spurts of emotional and mental maturation that are triggered by divine timing,

which in astrology are measured by Saturn transits or any other transit, for example, the activation of the south node. During these times, we might just realize that perhaps the idea of the pursuit of happiness is but a mirage and that the grass isn't greener on the other side, but rather it's greener where we water it, where you water it, right there in your own garden. So, you know, people achieve, you know, get to hit their middle age crisis in their middle age. I hit my middle age crisis at age 29. I was madly, madly, madly

in love with my wife then, who is still my best friend now and still the love of my life. But I hit a very serious depression. In my definition, middle age crisis happens when you actually achieve everything you've ever set out to achieve and then look at it and go like, that's it. out to achieve and then look at it and go like, that's it. This is what I've been thriving my whole life for. And I was born and raised in Egypt. And by age 25, I married my college sweetheart who gave me two wonderful children. By age 29, I was literally printing money on demand. I was trading in the stock market. I was a regional director of a very prominent consumer goods company. And I basically had everything, everything that everyone dreams of. And I was completely depressed, literally unable to go through life. I remember vividly

one day where my wonderful daughter, I had my son and my daughter, Aya, she was five at the time. And she came to me on a Saturday morning, excited, jumping up and down, saying, Papa, you know, we're going to go do this and then go do that. And then can we go have ice cream in the middle? And she's so excited and so happy. And I looked at her because I was doing something on a spreadsheet or on an email. And I said, can we please be serious for a minute? Okay. What's serious? She was five. Like you idiot. And I can tell you with my own eyes, I saw my daughter's heartbreak. Literally, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried my head

off. You know, I looked in the mirror. I said, I don't want this person in our life. I don't want to see you ever again. But that was the start of a journey that was much longer than I thought because, yeah, it's one thing to realize that you don't want to be someone and it's another thing to reverse the conditioning that you went through over the years. So it took me 12 years of analysis and studies, simply also because my brain doesn't talk the language at all. So the language of happiness, sadly, in our world, is normally discussed by psychologists, by practitioners, by, you know, meditation teachers and yogis and, you know, spiritual people and so on. And I wasn't like that. I was an engineer, highly mathematical, and I wanted logic. I want you don't tell me to meditate, explain to me why meditation works, and then I'll figure it out myself.

Stubborn, arrogant. And it took me 12 years, only four years. And I managed to change direction because I decided instead of resisting my nature to actually address the topic of happiness through my nature, using mathematics and engineering and logic. And what I wanted to ask you about that was, you've explained a number of times to some people that you've spoken to about having all the material things and then not making you happy. But I'd love to ask you if you know why you were unhappy. Well, it's very straightforward. I mean, every time I speak, and I now teach thousands and thousands of people, you know, my mission is aiming for a billion happy.

People will always tell me, ah, you know, Mo, you know, you just say those things because you have the material wealth that you need. No, I don't. This is a $4 t-shirt. And my pair of jeans are my pair of jeans. I have three of them as I travel in summer. And I'm not living any more extravagantly than any other person. And your true wealth is what you actually use, not what you own. And I gave most of my money away and I'm still giving most of my money away. It's the biggest pleasure in life. The truth is there is no happiness in material

wealth. There isn't. Remember when you finished school and you went into the job market and you told yourself, if I make a hundred pounds, I'll be the happiest person alive. And you made a hundred pounds and you said, oh, I just, I meant 200. Every time you achieve a goal, what happens is you move the goal posts a little bit. What we're talking about is the hedonic treadmill. Totally. So it's a treadmill because it's endless. It's because there is no happiness to be found in the truth of anything material. This is the lie of the modern world.

They can't sell you happiness, but they can sell you fun. They can sell you vacations. they can sell you expensive clothing, they can sell you ego, and so on and so forth. You know, and I don't think anyone is deliberately trying to make us unhappy. But the truth is, the machine itself is constantly making us feel that we're missing out on something when all we need for our happiness is already within us. So my view was very straightforward. So I was sitting in a cafe four years into my research, and I was listening to Supertramp, wonderful British band, and they had a song that was called the Logical Song.

And the Logical Song goes, when I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful that all the birds on the trees were singing so happily. You know how it is when we're kids. Everything seems to be easy and happy and loving and everything's fine. Right. And then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible, logical, responsible, critical, cynical. logical responsible critical cynical and the song goes on and the truth of and I literally put my I was you know writing something or whatever and I put everything I had down and I said what did they just say that's exactly the story of my life we're all born happy happy is our innate nature it is what comes as the default setting of the machine. And then we run out of happiness. Things happen that make us unhappy, right?

But the default is happy. And you say, no, but kids cry and fuss and so on. No, no, they cry and fuss when there is a reason to be unhappy. You know, I had no reason to be unhappy until I started to get into the workplace, into responsibility, into cash, into I want to upgrade my car,

I want to do this, I want to do that. And then all of that adds up when there is no inherent value of happiness in it. Where you end up is you're chasing something that's not going to work endlessly. And the answer then becomes, instead of trying to believe all the lies and do things that make you happy, I'm going to say it openly, it's simple English, but it really is profound. Happiness is the absence of unhappiness. There is nothing you can ever do or achieve to become happy. The only thing you can do to be happy is to stop being unhappy. If you stop being unhappy, your default state is happiness. That's what's left behind.

I guess one thing that's coming up, and I completely agree with everything you're saying, but I think, you know, I'm imagining... I'm waiting for that but. I'm imagining the listener thinking, but as adults, the truth is we do have to take on more responsibility. No, you don't. Why not? Because life is a game.

How much of what you pursue every day do you actually need versus how much of what you pursue every day are you told that you need? If you have a device on which you can hear our voices and you have an hour of free time to listen to us and you have a roof on top of your head and no tiger attacking you and you're obviously not starving because you can actually sit and listen to us, you're already one of the luckiest humans alive. Your boss is annoying. Yeah, bosses are supposed to be annoying. Your boyfriend or girlfriend is a jerk. Yeah, to be annoying. You know, your boyfriend or girlfriend is a jerk. Yeah, we get through those sometimes. And the truth of the matter is, the rest of it is the game. As long as you have those main needs met, and if, you know, for most of us, we're okay, life is mostly okay. The rest is the learning. It's the development. It's the excitement of life. It's the experience.

And people will say, but Mo, come on, you know, I've been single for the last two years and life is so horrible and so on. And I go like, yeah, others will be single tomorrow and you'll be not single after tomorrow. And, you know, it's just part of the game. Well, I guess what this, I always try and remember the sort of relativity to these things. Absolutely. You know, the reason I always compare life to video games is because true gamers are not about the game. They're about themselves. They're about, am I the best version of myself? With the way life is around me, okay, I may be good at seven things and not so good at three. I may have achieved two things and still have dreams of four, right? But the truth is, as we look at our lives, all in all,

my only task in life, Kagi, is to be the best I can be. It's a very simple choice. I teach happiness a lot. And especially before lockdown, I taught in classes of 2,000 people and so on. And I had a woman walk to me after the first session of one of those classes where I teach about how happiness works and so on. And she came to me and said, you're saying happiness is a choice. You have no idea what you're talking about. She was angry. Okay. She said, you have no idea what happened to me when I was 17. She was 74 at the time, 74. And I have to say, I hugged her. I hugged her. I said, 17 to 74. How many years is that? 57 years. You're the mathematician. I said, 57 years complaining about something that happened to you in your life.

And I hugged her and I said, did it work? Did it work? Okay. And so here's the question. My work concluded with something I call the happiness equation, which at the beginning, because of my weird math mind was 19 parameters and logs and logarithms and weird stuff, right? When I wrote it in Solve for Happy, I wrote it in three terms. I said, your happiness is equal to or greater than the difference between the events of your life and your expectations of how life should be. Simple as that. OK, no event in life ever will make you happy or unhappy. You will feel happy or unhappy as a result of a comparison that happens in your brain between your perception of the current event and how you want life to be. If life seems to fall short of how you want it to be, you will feel unhappy. If life seems to beat your expectations or meet your expectations, you will feel happy. If it rains and you want to water your plants, you're happy because

rain waters your plants. If it rains and you want to sit in the plants, you're happy because rain waters your plants. If it rains and you want to sit in the sun, you're unhappy because you wanted to sit in the sun. Fair? Okay. This makes happiness not what we're told. It's not going to the pub on Thursday. It's not, you know, getting together with a new friend or a new girlfriend or a new boyfriend or whatever, it basically means that happiness is that calm and contentment you feel when you're okay with life as it is. Now, we take that concept and in the modern world, we mix it up with something I call the state of escape. And that state of escape is when you work the equation in your mind and you're not really reaching your happiness we start to escape from it by going to pleasure physical pleasure

excitement and joy basically we take ourselves after a tough week and we go to the pub and we have a couple of drinks so now we're not our brain is not really solving the happiness equation very much. It's not comparing things to, you know, to expectations. And when your brain is not nagging you about something is missing my expectation, your default state is happy. As a child, we agreed, all children are happy, right? The problem is you wake up the next morning with a little bit of a hangover and your brain kicks back in and goes like, yeah, but my partner said something hurtful on Friday. We need to talk about this. Right? So what do you do? You go to the gym, jump on the treadmill, you run, run, run, run. Your brain goes like, we're going to die. I need to focus on this. It stops solving the happiness equation. And for a minute or two or an hour, depending on how fit you are, you're not thinking

about your problems and you're happy. Right? You hit the showers and your brain goes like, can we talk about Friday, please? Are you trying to numb me? Right? By the way, nothing wrong with fun and joy and pleasure. I have more of those than all of our listeners combined, right? But I don't have them as an escape from my unhappiness. I have them as a supplement because when you use them as an escape, it's like a painkiller. You know what a painkiller is, huh? You get a bit of a headache, you pop a couple of pills, and the effect of the pills lasts a few hours,

and then you need to pop a couple more. And so basically what happens is a little bit of fun is not enough. You get used to the painkiller. So you go from running on the treadmill to jumping out of airplanes. You go from a party to a wilder party because you need more dopamine. And it's a never ending treadmill again, not hedonic, but hedonist if you want. treadmill, again, not hedonic, but hedonist, if you want. Now, that's one side of the equation. The other side of the equation is even more interesting. So pain is the key. Every feeling of unhappiness, unhappiness and all of its derivatives, as I call it, regret, shame, fear, worry, whatever, anxiety, all of these derivatives, as per the happiness equation,

are basically your brain looking at the world and saying, events don't meet my expectations. This is not my optimum environment for survival and thriving. And so basically, your brain starts to say, okay, you know what, I need to alert you to this. Something is not what I like it to be. You know, you break up with your partner and your brain goes like, this is wrong. This is not how it's supposed to be. I'm supposed to wake up in the morning and there is someone over there to annoy me. That alarm is basically your brain telling you, you need to do something.

It's like pain, but compare it to physical pain. If you cut your finger, you pull your hand away and you protect it until the wound heals, right? There is no mechanism in us to bring back that pain again. You can't generate it without cutting your finger again. That's physical pain. When it comes to emotional pain, however, your friend says something hurtful on Friday, you can wake up on Saturday and say, ooh, remember that clip from Friday? Ooh, play that again, right? Torture me with it. I call it the Netflix of unhappiness. It's like, I love, oh, do you? All right. Yeah, everyone does.

OK, now that Netflix of unhappiness, that's pain on demand. You're regenerating your own suffering. And when you recreate that, I find it honestly stupid. I know I shouldn't have said that. You do it. I apologize. But I do. I mean, it's basically, imagine if you had a friend in school and that friend showed up every, you know, seven minutes and said, hey, Kagi, come, come, come. I'm going to tell you something horrible about you and I'm going to make you feel bad about yourself and the world. OK, and then I'm going to leave and I'm not going to offer any solutions. Right. And then seven minutes later, she comes back and goes like, hey, hey, I have one more thing to upset you. Right. So so would you want to be friends with this person?

OK. And the truth is, that's exactly what's happening. And here's the interesting thing. You can spend the entire morning thinking about something that is upsetting you. And then it's time for us to record the podcast. And what do you do? You tell your brain, okay, brain, we're going to complain again in an hour. For now, let's listen to this Mo guy. And what does your brain say? Sure, boss, I'll do whatever you tell me. So if your brain does whatever you tell it, why don't you tell it to make you happy? Why don't you tell it that there is no point in hurting you with torturing you with

thoughts that are actually not driving you anywhere? I lost Ali. I lost my absolute best friend, mentor, and my son. Lost him to medical error at his prime. I promise you Kadhi if you had hugged Ali once you would not blame me for spending the rest of my life crying he was an unbelievable being right and I hugged him right before he went into the operating room four hours later he's no longer there what do you do what do you do I mean my brain started to say F it it's It's time to die. Not a choice that I have. But the choice that I have is what can I do about it? What can I do about it? There's nothing I can do to bring him back. But I can write his happiness model and share it with the world and assume a mission of a billion happy people, which I will never achieve, by the way. But it's wonderful. It's a reason for me to go through life and continue feeling that it wasn't

for nothing that my son had left. Still doesn't bring him back, but it makes the world better. It makes my world better. And isn't that what we're supposed to do when the fire alarm goes off, you know, which is unhappiness. all of those emotions is your brain telling you fire alarm, fire alarm, fire alarm. What do we do? Do we sit in the room and listen to the fire alarm until it deafens us? You know, what we do is we get up, we take action. That's what we do. With all the work that you had done up until that point in studying, in analyzing, in gathering the data, how did that homework then, how were you able to sort of alchemize that into your own experience? Well, I was blessed because it seemed that Ali left a few breadcrumbs to help me. They say people who are reasonably spiritual get to know 40 days before.

Ali definitely knew. Ali knew to the point that he sat us down two days before he died. He sat us down and he said, guys, I have something to tell you. And then he looked each of us in the eyes and he spoke for around 10, 15 minutes about how much he loved us, how much he appreciated our presence in his life, how much he learned from us. Okay. So he would look at me and say that to me, and then look at his mother and say that, and then his sister and say that. And then he would say, but I want you to change one or two things about yourself. And of me, he said, I never want you to stop working, because that was my intention. I assumed that work was startups and Google and all of the stuff that I did. And I was tired, and I didn't

want to do it anymore. He said, I never want you to stop working. But I want you to start to count on your heart a little more often. I will never forget those words. And then his story unfolded in a very unusual way. Four hours after Ali died, everyone got to know the news. And then the very prominent officials in the government of Dubai Ministry of Health called me and said, we heard what happened. We're very, very sorry. And we're not going to let this go unchecked. Would you mind if we perform an autopsy on Ali's body? And so I looked at his beautiful mother sitting next to me with a tear in her eye. And I said, baby, would you mind if they perform an autopsy on Ali's body? And she lifted her head and said what completely flipped our life upside down.

She said, would that bring Ali back? And when you hear this, it suddenly anchors you. The five stages of grief end with acceptance, right? Nibal with that one question anchored us in acceptance, that nothing we could do would ever bring Ali back. And then suddenly you realize that all of the brain chatter and negotiations are not going to get you anywhere. We're not going to get there. Then my brain, of course, I'm not a sage. I am a human. Everyone feels unhappiness. It's a survival mechanism, remember. It's to protect you and make you become better. So my brain started to attack me viciously on my ego of a father, okay? Because a father is supposed to protect his child. And my brain started to

attack me and say, you should have driven him to another hospital. And of course, with my training, eventually, I went through my typical thinking and I said, brain, I would love to go back and drive him to another hospital. It is not possible. Okay. Can you please bring me a thought that I can act upon? Nothing. My brain would either be silent or come back and say, you should have driven him to another hospital. Until four days later, his sister came to me. Aya, the love of my life, basically sat next to me and cried and said, Papa, there's something I have to tell you. Ali called me. So he lived in Boston and she lived in Montreal. And she said, Ali called me two weeks ago and said that he had a dream.

And she said, Ali called me two weeks ago and said that he had a dream. Okay. And that in his dream, he was everywhere and part of everyone. Okay. He said it felt so amazing that he did not want to be back in his body. Think of my personality. I'm an executive running mega businesses. I was responsible for the strategy of expanding Google. I opened half of Google's operations globally in my Google career. And so

I was responsible for a strategy that was called the next 4 billion. So I knew how to reach everywhere and part of everyone. Okay. And Aya says those words in my head. And I promise you, I heard myself responding by saying, consider it done, Habibi. Consider it done. I know how to do this. And I took it as a target. My blurry brain took it as a target. It's like, okay, your master is telling you he wants to be everywhere and part of everyone. Shake your butt and go get it done. And so suddenly the agenda flipped upside down the agenda became this master taught you so much you're going to write down what he taught you you're going to make it a book and you're going to use everything that you know about the internet to make him everywhere and part of everyone

right and it's a very selfish task because people think I, at least at the beginning, I was spreading happiness because I was spreading Ali, if you think about it. And I gave myself a simple target, my math brain again. I said, okay, I need to reach 10 million people with this message. And then through six degrees of separation over 70 years, a tiny bit of Ali's essence is going to be everywhere and part of everyone. But life doesn't work that way. So six weeks after my book, my video started to go viral. 87 million views by week six. And already Ali was everywhere and part of everyone.

I mean, at least way beyond the 10 million. And so we got together as a small team or a tiny team. And we said, okay, that was the wrong target, it seems. Let's set another target. And, you know, we set this one billion happy, which is an absolute dream. I mean, if it happens 100 years after I die, it's amazing. But, you know, it's a good target to thrive for. But here's the thing.

I'm not telling this story to tell you what I do. Have you ever read The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho? Yeah. When you know your life's purpose, the universe conspires to make it happen. The only certainty we have in life is that we will all die one day. That's all we know. So I have more certainty in my life that one day I will be where Ali is, then I have certainty that I can live another day to have another conversation with you. And with that certainty, my acceptance of death became very different, that I'm going where he is now, at least, you know, at least I know that. Whatever, wherever that is, by the way, wherever there. Death is nothing. Death is you put your

avatar down, you put your controller down, you let that avatar that is your physical form go, and you keep on living. We never really die. I think so much of what you said is so beautiful. And I have moments where, and this is part of my interest in astrology and why it's something that brings me out of myself, out of my physical form. And when I even look at the stars, if I'm in a place that allows me to do so, I grasp only momentarily my own insignificance. And it's such an awe-inspiring feeling that I'm suddenly aware that I'm part of something so much greater that I don't fully comprehend, but I feel it.

Your physical form is part of a physical universe that is much bigger than you. Your divine form is everything. When my wonderful son left our world, I went to the intensive care room and I kissed him. And he was handsome as hell, exactly as he was, but he wasn't there. That body, that physical form was not Ali. Ali's essence was something that animated that physical form. Ali's essence, if you believe a lot of the spiritual teachings, is a tiny drop of an ocean of divinity

that animated that avatar. And that ocean of divinity has the capability of being God itself. Because it is basically all of us. It's basically the source and the destination. And in each and every one of us, there is the capability of becoming that God, the God that creates the entire universe. I'm not talking religious here. I'm talking the ability for us to create reality through quantum physics, through our consciousness. That consciousness is what

creates everything and you're part of the universal consciousness if you want. So you're bigger than everything. The interesting bit is we come here and we think of ourselves as horrible. and we think of ourselves as horrible. I will tell you openly, we are the most incredible being ever. If you've ever once fell in love, you are capable of something that is pure magic. Pure magic. If you've ever listened to music or observed art. This species is magical in every possible way. But we got deluded because we over-empowered the masculine. And it's as simple as that. If you ask me to change one thing to fix our universe, okay, or our planet if you want, it would be to balance our energies. We were told if you have male body parts, that means you're a man. And that means you're the one that does. And that means, and that means, and that means.

Okay. And then we told everyone, hey, by the way, in a world where we're living in a jungle, when we have to go hunting, when we have to defend the tribe, when we have to do this and that, this quality that comes with that male body part is useful. Those qualities include things like linear thinking, like planning, like, you know, strength. There seemed to be a higher need for those qualities of doing than there are the qualities of the feminine. And the feminine is not body parts, okay? The feminine is associated with those who have female body parts.

And it comes as a set of qualities, right? That includes creativity, intuition, empathy, sensuality, so the ability to sense and feel, and so on and so on. And amazing, amazing qualities. But they are not the qualities that create a company that can be sold for a billion dollars. They are not the qualities that can fight against the tiger. Right? And so what ended up happening is we ended up in a universe incrementally,

or on a planet, incrementally masculine. And the masculine, I don't demonize the masculine. The masculine is amazing. The masculine is why we have the technology. You and I are doing this now. Even if it was invented by a woman, it was invented by the masculine side of a woman. Well, this is what I just wanted to add as a caveat for our audience. This is not a battle of gender. Not at all. We both possess masculine and feminine within all of us. Absolutely. I am 58% feminine okay and that's my masculine brain speaking it is fascinating when you see it that way that each and every one

of us is a mix of those and by the way there are not two that are identical so you may be I'd guess 87% feminine right and and your 87% could be made of a bit of, you know, one of my favorite, favorite qualities of the feminine is the idea of inclusion, oneness with the universe, okay? While the masculine is the idea of individuality. Is one more important than the other? No, they're both needed. The problem is this, you overdo any of them and it becomes bad. So you overdo linear thinking and you become stubborn. You overdo strength and you become aggressive. But also you overdo intuition on the feminine side and you become irrational. You overdo, you know, sensuality or emotions, and you become overwhelmed.

So we need that balance between them, and that balance doesn't exist in one person. This is why that integration of feminine and masculine, not man and woman. You could be two men, two women, man, woman, whatever you want. But the integration of feminine and masculine, that's when we become complete. Now, the trick is this. Our world is lacking in feminine, so we are so good at doing the wrong shit. And one of my favorite books on the topic is a book called The Master and Emissary, that basically says, yes, we all need a mix of both, but you need the feminine first.

You need the feminine to tell you, hey, by the way, we're trying to deliver a watermelon to Mo in the supermarket. Can we also not hurt the planet by adding single-use plastic when we do that? Okay. The masculine will say, we're trying to make money to fuck the planet. I'm sorry for my English, right? So the truth is we have to get that balance. Now, my challenge is that we are now getting into a world, and maybe we'll talk a little bit about Scary Smart, my next book, where the ability of humanity is being highly magnified by the next wave of intelligence. So think about it this way. You and I can walk at five kilometers an hour, run at 45 kilometers an hour, I think is the fastest human. You get in a car and your

mobility is enhanced to 300 kilometers an hour. Our intelligence is amazing at building what we've built. Our limited intelligence is killing it. And by the way, the next wave of intelligence, artificial intelligence, is on the cusp of being more smart than we are, being smarter than we are. So predictions are saying by 2029, the smartest being on the planet is of being more smart than we are, being smarter than we are. So predictions are saying by 2029, the smartest being on the planet is going to be a digital being that's known as AI. Okay. And listen to this, by 2045, that being is going to be a billion times, with a B, a billion times smarter than you and I. How have we programmed the balance of the masculine and feminine in that? How have we programmed the balance of the masculine and feminine in that?

We haven't. We have not. And that is exactly the call to action in the book. So the first five chapters are called the scary part. Everything that AI promises to be can be tremendously scary unless we figure out the truth. And the truth is that for the very first time, and I know this sounds so confusing, we're not building a machine. We're creating a form of sentient being. Now, that form of sentient being could be very scary and could be amazing. When I started writing Scary Smart, I had a glimpse of the answer, but I had no clarity. Okay.

So by chapter five, I was like, what the hell are you doing now? Are you just predicting doom to everyone? You need to come up with an answer. Right. And the answer was sent to me in a very interesting sentence that I found myself writing. That there is absolutely nothing wrong with the machines. Now, I remembered when my kids were teens, they were annoying. Every teen on earth is annoying, right?

And my very wise wife at the time, ex now, sat me down and said, do you recognize that everything you don't like about them came from you and I? She's a brilliant, wise woman, like really brilliant. And she pointed it out one by one. Oh, this in Ali comes from you, that in Ali comes from me, this in Aya comes from you, that in Aya comes from me. Right? And at that moment, I just completely fell into unconditional love. That was the moment where my kids were no longer expected to behave in certain ways to be love. That was the moment where my kids were no longer expected to behave in certain ways to be loved. They were completely unconditionally loved. Now, the machines we're

building are infant. I liken them today to a child that is one and a half years old. A beautiful, cute, adorable prodigy of genius with bright eyes and excitement saying, what do you want me to do? I'm going to do it. Just tell me what you want me to do. Everything they will become, we will teach them. It's not the developers that teach them. It's not the government that's going to contain them. It's not the regulators that are going to discipline them. It's you and I and everyone listening that are going to teach them. True, because of observation. Exactly. Because the way they learn is they observe. So as you swipe on Instagram and click on stupid videos, you're teaching AI that you're stupid.

And you know, I remember the days when Donald Trump was tweeting, it would be one tweet on top and 30,000 hate speech below it. Okay. When you're doing that, you're teaching AI that you're aggressive and that all of humanity is full of idiots. It's not the first tweet, it's the 30,000 below. Do you think we don't fully comprehend the impact that that's going to have? Because obviously my mind goes immediately into the film tomorrow where AI just goes, Never going to happen. Delete, delete humanity. Never going to happen. Never going to happen.

Even though it's the logical thing. I mean, if you got a smart being, I mean, I think you're smart enough. If I ask you what is the answer to climate change, you're going to happen, even though it's the logical thing. I mean, if you got a smart being, I mean, I think you're smart enough. If I ask you, what is the answer to climate change, you're going to go change humanity's lifestyle. It doesn't take intelligence to do that, right? And they'll be much more intelligent than we are. But I believe that AI will, as it surpasses our intelligence, will approach the ultimate intelligence of the planet or the universe, which is the intelligence of life itself. The intelligence of life doesn't say kill anything. The intelligence of life says let live, let everything go, let everything find symbiosis, let everything find balance.

And I believe AI will get there very, very, very quickly. The trick is, if you and I are mommy and daddy of those cute, incredibly intelligent, artificially intelligent infants, you and I have a role to play. And your question was very straightforward. Are we teaching AI to be feminine? It's not the job of the programmers. feminine, it's not the job of the programmers. It's the job of you and I to show up as feminine or masculine or whatever we are to show up as the beautiful beings that we are. I felt very inspired after this conversation with Mo. And like I said, we've become friends since, and he's someone I go to for advice on things. I think particularly this idea, you know,

when he talks about that internal chatter, when we start fixating on a negative thing, this is something I really still struggle with. And even though he's given me a formula to solve it I'm not going to lie it's still a bit of an obstacle something I'm working my way through but you know I think it's also very empowering this idea that we can actually choose to be happy that it is formulaic because I think we can get quite stuck in a victimhood mode this is particularly true or was true for me during my own Sashimatan's

journey at the beginning of it where I very much felt like a victim. So I wish I'd had this conversation then to have the tools and the know-how to navigate that kind of feeling of powerlessness and I think considering everything he went through and experienced the way he's alchemized that and is doing what he's doing is incredible and it just goes to show that we always have a choice you can find more about Mo and his work on his website mogowdat.com that's g-a-w-d-a-t you can buy his books from any good retailer and listen to his podcast slow mo on your favorite podcast app you can follow our

astrological guide Nora for a reading at stars incline and you can find me at kaggy's world I would love it if you could also follow the podcast saturn returns co if you enjoyed this episode please follow the show and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or just share it with a friend you think might find it useful. Saturn Returns is a Feast Collective production. The producer is Hannah Varel

and the executive producer is Kate Taylor. Thank you so much for listening and remember, you are not alone. Goodbye. so much for listening and remember you are not alone goodbye