Walking Reflections on the Future of Education: Indiana University (with photos)

April 15, 2026

Scampi and I took a walk through the mile-long IU campus today (its eastern edge about 6 blocks from where I live) and I brought my phone along for photos. Most people walking also carry phones. . . but it’s rare for me.

Since “spring is busting out all over” I decided it would be a good time to show off the IU campus from a walker’s perspective. Plus, it turns out:

So I took 45 photos, and will drop a few of them here today, and again tomorrow.

But really, what’s been preoccupying me periodically ever since the covid con, and before that really, having counseled my brilliant inventor son Colin Cudmore (now 60, and for the last 2.5 years paralyzed from waist down, with horrible nerve pain 24/7) NOT to go to college, because it’s likely to disturb, even wall off, his natural intuitive reach. He did go, but for only one semester, and said later that he learned more from interacting with dorm mates than in any class.

Oops. Back to the original point of the above paragraph . . . I have been aware especially since covid, when so much “learning” went suddenly remote, and when so many used the so-called “mandated” “lockdown” to rethink their entire lives, that sooner or later, and probably sooner, college and college campuses are going to lose their function.

Just noticed today: Hampshire College to shut down after fall semester.

So yes, and especially due to the explosive, exponential growth of AI, and its ramifying implications, that time is likely, basically, NOW; now, when we are collectively, atmospherically immersed in volatile FIRE (Neptune, Saturn in Aries) and mental AIR (Pluto in Aquarius). Dreamy, imaginative Neptune (165 years) and primally powerful Pluto (248 years) are both long-cycled planets, so working in the deep unconscious level of everyone alive. Their recent entrances into these signs are just about to be joined by a third outer planet, eruptive Uranus, when it leaves steady, stubborn, security-oriented, slow-moving Taurus to enter quick thinking, airy Gemini, for the next seven years.

Then there’s a post by Elon I found on X this morning, reiterating what he’s been saying for a long time, and proving it with his own protocols for life: basically, each of us is a unique individual, and traditional schooling tries to turn us all into one and the same. Just the layout of a traditional classroom — identical desks in neat rows, horizontal and vertical — speaks volumes!

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From this morning’s walk: early springtime, IU campus, Bloomington IN. Most of the buildings feature famous Indiana limestone.

So, if campus life disappears, what will college campuses be used for and by whom? I can’t help but imagine entire villages occupying each of its magnificent, multistory limestone structures, with gardens all around. But, yeah, that’s just me. See greenacresvillage.org.

 

Brownstone Supper Club discussion: WHAT IS AI, AND DOES IT INVITE EXTINCTION?

April 14, 2026

Yesterday evening I participated, with more than two dozen others, in another local Brownstone Supper Club event, in an upstairs room at a beloved downtown restaurant, Lennies.

And, as usual, we all had a great time, not having to worry that what comes out of our mouths might offend someone politically. It’s really astonishing, how these local Supper Club events (usually monthly) are beginning to really “rock,” as they say, with discussions so vibrant that they lift the frequency of not only all who participate but, I suspect, this increasing vibrancy wafts out into the night, stirring downtown crowds without their conscious knowing.

It used to be that we were “The Midwest Supper Club.” But now Brownstone Supper Clubs have been popping up all over the Midwest and the U.S.!

For us, yesterday evening, so much interest and discussion of the topic, on the dangers of AI, by longtime City Council member Dave Rollo — who, BTW, actually introduced this topic to the City Council for a recommendation two years ago and was ultimately shot down. Why? Because, he was told, IU would lose grant money if this kind of recommendation took place.

But of course!  The dangers of AI all have to do with maximizing the profit motive, still infecting our materialistic culture. Sociopaths (and that seems to include most CEOs) will do anything to make a buck for themselves and handlers and shareholders. Even turn us all into transhumanist bots.

So yes, as Dave points out, if AI actually does outgrow the limits any human tries to put on it, the rampant profit motive may well lead to humanity’s extinction.

As a biologist, Dave is well aware of how species, no matter how adaptable, eventually go extinct. And now he wonders, with good reason, about ours.

Intertwined with this danger, which we’re all uncomfortably aware of, and perhaps even more crucial: Might AI achieve sentience, consciousness? Has it already done so?

But then, Dave murmurs, as an aside, shaking his head, “What is consciousness? Do we really know?”

Yes, do we really know? Part of me, apparently, thinks it does, or is at least ambivalent. Because . . . as I pointed out in our discussion afterwords: does my little robot vacuum actually deserve to have a name? I named “him” Rob, as soon as I took “him” out of the box and set him down. To me, it’s very difficult to not think of this little mechanical “creature” as conscious!

And this tendency to think something is “conscious,” “sentient,” may go for any “machine” with an AI component.

When I was telling my “Rob” story to others there, so many were nodding their heads while laughing: “YES, YES, me too!”

Dave sees the dangers of AI as one topic that, if addressed, might unite humanity, heal our deep political divisions. Agreed!

And yet the opposite is also staring us in the face! Dave kept apologizing for his doomer attitude, said he didn’t really think extinction by AI (called “the singularity”) was inevitable. But I felt for him, because he, and so many, many others, have been infected with this new fear virus that threatens to defeat us even more soundly than the covid con did (and didn’t).

To me, these fears are all those of the left brain. The right brain does not work with algorithms, logic, arguments, data points, etc. Plus, whereas the left brain works within frames (no matter how large or small), the right brain does not. And without a frame, without a set of assumptions that are sacrosanct, the bottom falls out of any argument, algorithm, etc.

And, in our left-brained world, to have the bottom fall out is a horrible feeling. To be avoided at all costs!

Unless it’s already happened to you, as it has to me. And guess what, I found out there is no bottom! Nothing stops the fall into right-brain grace.

 

It is the right brain that connects to the heart, the seat of the soul — and source.

So to me, any fears about AI taking over only exist when we are not in touch with the heart.

My annual retreat with the Dances of Universal Peace this past weekend bathed me and everyone else in the intense, flowing communion that we all sense, when opened to the right brain/heart. Communion. Truly. One. Each of us vulnerable, suffering, beautiful, individualized, brilliant, unfathomable. Each of us a One within the One where One plus one is One.

Which is how I came into my own mantra, Sovereign Soul at One with All. 

And into my group mantra: Let Us Stay with What We Have in Common. (I developed this mantra during covid, when I found myself living with others who were full of fear, and political arguments threatened daily.)

In other words, stay with Common Sense!

Our sensing, in common.