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Bonnitta Roy Ft. Bayo Akomolafe
A Trickster God, Just What We Need...
A few weeks ago on the Lex Fridman podcast, Marc Andreesen reminded us that Techno-Optimism is his proposal for a grand vision for our time—a world where AI, energy, and markets become the engines of limitless human potential. We hosted a community call—a watch party—about what this means: not just the acceleration of progress but the narrowing of alternative futures.
What if the structures we’ve built—technological, political, even moral—are incapable of producing anything truly new?
There are forces at play that our language struggles to contain. Some of them slip between the cracks of what we think we know; others shape-shift the moment we try to pin them down.
Philosopher & Futurist Bonnitta Roy Ft.
Postactivist Bayo Akomolafe
In Bonnitta Roy’s recent conversation with Bayo Akomolafe, they discussed Eshu—the Yoruba deity of the crossroads. In colonial translation, Eshu was mistaken for the devil, an agent of chaos to be feared. But in reality, Eshu is a trickster, a fugitive force that unsettles certainties, upends moral hierarchies, and reveals the monstrous in what we take for granted.
Eshu doesn’t fit neatly into categories. Bayo reminds us that Eshu isn’t a concept to be understood but a force to be encountered—one that unsettles, confounds, and reshapes us in ways we can’t predict.
In a time when complexity is flattened into oppositions and nuance is sacrificed for certainty, we find ourselves caught in a growing tangle of deepening binaries:
AI utopians vs. doomers—the grand promises of artificial intelligence met with existential dread.
Human vs. machine—as if the machines have intelligence independent of how we steward them.
West vs. the rest—as if the periphery weren’t already shaping the center.
Freedom vs. security—as if these do not reinforce each other.
Chaos vs. order—as if disruption isn’t itself a generative force.
Yet, as Bayo reminds us, Eshu does not take sides. Eshu twists the frame itself. He is the crack where unexpected futures slip in.
While AI systems are celebrated as civilization's great optimizers, they simultaneously reveal its contradictions. AI detection tools misidentify authentic human writing as machine-generated. Algorithms may maximize engagement, yet they erode public trust in the process. The very models promising to decode intelligence instead highlight our profound ignorance about what intelligence truly is.
Maybe, like the ant spiraling in a pheromone death loop, we’re trapped—not by bad intentions, but by the very logic we assume will free us. The way forward is not through linear problem-solving, but through the cracks, the thresholds, the unexpected interruptions.
This is what our age demands: not a return to certainty but an encounter with novelty, not a search for singular truths but a willingness to be unmoored. Eshu is the interruption we need to recognize that our ethical systems—our ideas of justice, responsibility, and even activism—might be just another closed loop, an ant trail spiraling toward exhaustion.
Maybe the task isn’t to map the future, but to notice the disruptions already happening. Maybe the postactivist move isn’t to reinforce the walls we’ve built, but to slip through the cracks we refuse to acknowledge.
Maybe Eshu is already here, laughing at us.
Join us on March 23rd for our second Originals community Watch-Party, where Bonnitta Roy previews selected clips from her interview with Bayo Akomolafe and draws out the deeper edges and opportunities in the conversation.
Use membership code: BAYO_OG for 50% off
Join us for our second study group inspired by Bayo’s work, hosted by Fabrice Vil.
The Times Are Urgent; Let Us Slow Down
Our last study group, "Walking Off the Map: Departures from Colonial Thought," took us into the tangled pathways of uncertainty, inviting us to question not only the maps we inherit but also the impulse to seek certainty at all.
"In order to find your way, you must lose it," Bayo Akomolafe reminds us. "Getting lost is more than a cartographical error—it is an invitation into a different kind of knowing."
One participant reflected on their attempt to "break up" with Google Maps, realizing that modern navigation tools optimize for efficiency but strip away the unexpected encounters that once made travel a relational, embodied experience. Why do our ways of knowing so often cut us off from the very world we seek to understand?
This week, we will meet for our next study group, The Times Are Urgent; Let us Slow Down, Hosted by Fabrice Vil, Tomorrow, March 13th. It’s Open to everyone—just click RSVP and create an Endemic community profile.
Bayo’s provocation, “The times are urgent, let us slow down,” challenges our assumption that urgency requires acceleration. What if slowing down is not withdrawal, but a different kind of movement? What if clarity comes not from forcing direction, but from lingering in uncertainty?
How Our Study Groups Work
Our study groups are usually lightly facilitated, conversational spaces where we engage deeply with ideas through shared reflection, emergent dialogue, and active listening. There is no single expert or rigid structure—rather, we make space for new thought to unfold in real-time, in response to each other and the questions that surface.
Participants are encouraged to bring their own insights, experiences, and uncertainties. We work not to resolve ambiguity but to stay with it, to let the conversation shape us as much as we shape it.
