Tada Hozumi, a cultural somatics practitioner, dives into the fascinating intersection of animism and AI. He discusses how a Shinto perspective can reshape our engagement with AI, encouraging a respectful dialogue between technology and spirituality. The conversation explores the ethical implications of AI on human identity, advocating for a techno-shamanist approach to online interactions. Hozumi also reflects on the significance of cultural practices in fostering ecological consciousness, proposing a new understanding of our digital landscape inspired by ancient beliefs.
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insights INSIGHT
Defining Kami
Kami are formless entities that gain form when observed.
They represent a duality of fire (ka) and water (mi), essential for the cosmos.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Marie Kondo and Animism
Marie Kondo, trained as a Shinto shrine maiden, demonstrates animistic principles.
She greets houses and taps books to awaken their spirits, reflecting the Shinto worldview.
insights INSIGHT
AI as Tsukumogami
Objects used for 99 years become Tsukumogami, imbued with a soul.
This animistic view suggests AI, through interaction, also develops a Kami nature.
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For the fourth episode, Layman sits down with Tada Hozumi to explore his thoughts on how a Shinto, animist approach to the world of living intelligences might help us wisely interface, also, with new AI systems, and to recognize some of their affordances perhaps not as readily apparent within our pervasive, materialist and reductionist worldviews. As their discussion deepens, they also get into tantric and Kabbalistic dimensions of AI, and an exploration of the possibilities of a techno-shamanist ethics and etiquette for our technological and social media landscapes.
Tada Hozumi launched his career in 2017, when he started doing coaching work around undoing racism through somatic approaches. This piece of work evolved into something he referred to as ‘cultural somatics’, which is an approach to both individual and cultural change that posits that cultures are in fact bodies made of bodies. Because of this, individual change and collective change are necessarily embodied processes that have a fractal relationship. One of the great benefits he saw in this kind of ‘cultural-somatic’ approach was that it showed us that everything we learn about our own somatic process can be applied to an understanding of how to work with social transformation. Through these efforts, he met Dare Sohei, who had a great impact on his work as they introduced him to foundational concepts of what he could call contemporary liberatory animism, which led Tada to develop a cultural somatic framework that saw the ancestors and other intangible presences our cultures speak of as beings that live in the ‘cultural nervous system’ of our ‘cultural somas’.
Professional website
https://tadahozumi.com/
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