In the first episode of Originals, Bonnitta Roy and Bayo Akomolafe explore Eshu, the Yoruba trickster deity of the crossroads, and what this fugitive force can teach us in an age of dissolving contexts and undiscovered new meaning.
Bayo traces how, growing up in Christianized Nigeria, he was taught to fear Eshu as a kind of devil. But through years of decolonial study and spiritual inquiry, he encountered Eshu not as a force of evil, but as a figure who unsettles certainty, twists causality, defies identity, and reveals the violent assumptions hidden within our normative “good.” Eshu, he says, is not the destroyer but the one who shows us the destruction already at work in our systems of morality, language, and order.
Here are a few interesting points of discussion;
Why binaries—human/machine, West/rest, freedom/security—trap us in moral hallucinations
How morality and activism can become another form of incarceration
Why language is ecological, not individual
Why monsters aren’t the bringers of violence—they are its revelation
The conversation is intellectually rigorous and emotionally raw, with moments of laughter, poetic pause, and real-world prophetic insight.
If you feel that the dominant moral faultlines that no longer make sense, but are unsure what comes next, this episode is your invitation to meet Eshu at the threshold.
You can watch the episode and join the conversation here:
Join the Conversation
Participate in the Practice
Bonnitta Roy is gathering a community to discuss futures that only a few people are talking about. We facilitate a few types of calls: 1. Watch-Parties, where Bonnie curates clips that deserve more explanatory power from her interviews for a private community premier of Originals Episodes, 2. Originals Backstage, where Bonnie invites us into the edges of her models, and we get to work with her to see how it influences our own work, projects, and thought. 3. Study Groups where Originals members host conversations to expand on the Insights being integrated from the community in their own light
You can join our next Backstage this Sunday, the 25th!
Simulating Societies: Understanding the Balance of Trust, Power & Action Thresholds
We'll explore how large-scale governance opportunities are shaped by three interconnected societal variables that influence collective behavior and decision-making processes:
Trust – The sense of collective safety enabled by social welfare and public services. Power asymmetry – Wealth, talent, and other types of influence centralization naturally increased by markets of all kinds.
Action thresholds – How easy or hard it is to build anything or start anything new, often impacted by regulation.
All three drive the movements of the others.
Join the conversation about Bonnie’s model for how societies operate at the highest level and how AI might allow us to create and maintain an optimal equilibrium between these social variables, potentially offering new insights into governance and collective decision-making.
We are only just getting started! This vibrant community has a few live calls on consequential topics every month. We hope to see you in there!
~ Originals Team