What is this transition we're in? 2026 edition

What to expect in 2026 and beyond

If you haven't noticed, TEDNET has been a living document of my own healing and journey into uncharted (for me) psychological waters while keeping an eye on the collective energy that seems to be moving in the same direction.

And, collectively, it does seem many are moving in the same direction of exploring (individually) uncharted psychological waters.

I can't quantify this. But it definitely feels like there's a shift, just as there was when I first started TEDNET. So, what is it? What is this transition? What is this collective movement or shift?

Simply that many of us are healing our nervous systems. So many of us have reached our limit of the constant doing of hustle culture and the never-ending need for material growth.

People are done with learning new skills and constantly trying to "level-up", people are done giving all of their energy to corporations, especially when those corporations just turn around and replace them with AI.

People are done with academic experts and "educated" authority. You gotta live it if you expect anyone to listen to you. You can't just read about it, you can't just take courses. You have to live it. Experience, and the knowledge that comes with it, is what we'll be trading in going forward.

Which is only exacerbated by ChatGPT. These AI bots have literally no experience. They have no humanity. They are just Bayesian distributions of human knowledge. Only, it's knowledge disconnected from experience.

Many, many of us have been in survival mode for much of our adult lives, which has led to disregulated nervous systems and likely the suppression of emotions.

I imagine we'll see more and more people taking time alone to give space to allow their nervous system to heal and self-regulate. Which will also require space for all of those suppressed emotions to rise and finally find a way to healthfully express.

We're also reaching a peak, or pinnacle, or perhaps terminus of many of our social forms. Our institutions and social groups and community structures are not, and have not, been serving us in the way we need. We have shifted. Our circumstances have shifted. And, our social forms have yet to catch up.

This is exacerbated by Social Media and to some degree AI. Social Media came in early on as we already lacked coherent social forms with church attendance and community engagement at all time lows. It sky-rocketed as a replacement thanks to the Pandemic.

As AI content bleeds into our "social" feeds we will, even if unconsciously, seek new social forms. At the very least, the fakeness or "hollowness" of AI content will push us to be more vulnerable and honest and authentic on Social Media rather than manicured.

All this (and probably more I'm forgetting) culminates in "realness" or perhaps better put, humanness. Being human is messy. It is largely, if not entirely, an emotional experience!

No matter how much we try to intellectualize and reduce the human experience to fit within reason and logic and "facts" we are, at the end of the day, emotional. Our culture has relegated our humanity to mere "production." As if the economy is the only real facet of being human.

Our culture tells us (intentionally or not) that we only matter based on what we produce, we only matter based on our economic output. Being human is so much larger than economics, or money, or capitalism! Those are just details! But, we've positioned them as the thing.

There is a joy to being human that is so much bigger than economic output or productivity. The joy one can feel with simply the sensation of a soft wind on your cheek. Or waking up in a warm bed. Or watching a sunset with someone you love.¹

These experiences are expansive. They can fill you up and even transcend the direct emotional experience into something larger — a transcendence of your own individualness, bringing you to an expansive awareness of the human condition as a whole and the simple realization that we're all in the same boat, floating, aimlessly, without any fucking idea what we're actually doing.

Interestingly, many esoteric tools (Astrology, Numerology, Ba Zi, etc.), which are essentially all attempts at identifying patterns and cycles in our experience, are all pointing to a similar pattern going forward: speed and change.

If you thought the last few years have been a whirlwind then, well, buckle up. Whatever stability you derive from the "world order" will continue to be rocked. Technology, politics, and whatever we've deemed "normal" or even reliable is likely to experience quakes.

To weather such change, all we can do is cultivate inner stability, which inevitably pushes us towards our humanity.

So, what is this transition we're in? Simply the movement back to our own humanity. Recentering the emotional reality of being human and thus decentering the overly intellectualized view of being human. Which, in turn, also decenters concepts such as the economy, productivity, capitalism, hustle culture which makes room for redefining self-worth and our collective worth.²

Less doing. More being.

Happy 2026!