The Conscious 1%: Leading a new renaissance in the era of AI

The battle for the inner world will be a silent one. When social media algorithms become 10x more powerful, entertainment becomes 10x more immersive and personalized, and delayed gratification is not even considered anymore, the battle for a spot in the new 1% is not so much a competition but solely a battle with oneself.

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The fall of our north star

Every economic era had its defining metric. Agriculture measured survival by yield per acre. The industrial age measured worth by output per hour. The knowledge economy measured effectiveness through goal achievement and the deployment of expertise. Today, we're entering a new era: the augmentation era, where AI and robotics drive the marginal cost of output toward zero.

This goes far beyond just an economic shift and, to a large extent, will mark the end of productivity as our primary metric. Here is why that is a good thing. Decades of productivity-obsessed operations have crushed many souls among us. While productivity has increased in the last century, it has simultaneously been a massive resistance to true creation, creation that comes from beyond oneself.

Just do a quick check around you. How many people do you know who are doing precisely that one thing they are meant to do? I know a few online, but I can only count one person in my real life who lives up to that (my wife). People capable of creating beauty, meaning, and genuine value found themselves funneled into measurable outputs that often left little room for originality.

This reveals productivity's hidden cost: it often worked as resistance against pure creation rather than an enabler of it. Instead of clearing space for ideas, it crowded them out. The very system designed to free us from drudgery trapped us in new forms of it.

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When abundance becomes the enemy

Everyone and their mother is talking about a world of abundance. We will have everything we want at our fingertips. This is just not as great as it sounds. We’re about to witness society splitting into two camps: the consumed and the conscious. And the division will be more profound than anything we’ve seen before. The real disruption isn’t going to be technological but psychological.

The consumed will outnumber the conscious by orders of magnitude. Drowned in AI-powered, hyper-personalized, full-immersive entertainment. Today’s binge-watching and doomscrolling are just sneak peeks of what’s ahead of us. Netflix reports that over 70% of the binge-watchers feel good about doing it.

While binge-watching may feel relaxing, it does not give your mind any real downtime. It’s neither rest nor active thought, but some kind of cognitive limbo that raises stress, disrupts sleep patterns, and may even worsen mental health. But how many people are truly binge-watching? Well, over 63% of US adults binge-watch at some frequency, with 38% doing this pretty much every week.

Then there is the widely established 90-9-1 rule on social media platforms. This stands for 90% solely consuming content, 9% interacting with content, and only 1 percent creating original content. Studies have clearly distinguished a difference between active use and passive use of social platforms. Passive use, meaning the 90% solely consuming, is linked to higher rates of loneliness, envy, depression, and lower life satisfaction. Brain scans show that passive scrolling gives minor dopamine hits, but never enough to satisfy. It’s the same “neither rest nor real engagement” zone as binge-watching.

If these patterns hold as AI makes content infinitely abundant and personally tailored, the group of consumers will only grow larger. It’s kinda dystopian. As much as I would love these numbers pointing to a brighter future, I am not going to bet against it.

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The new 1%: The conscious creators

On the other side are the conscious. They will reject the flood of distraction and instead work on their inner selves. They will choose creation over consumption, understanding over entertainment, signal over noise. The numbers suggest they will be few, probably even fewer than today, but their value will be immense.

As AI will flood the world with an endless amount of creations across sectors like art, books, film, music, etc. I am confident that true human creation will stand out. The work people are meant to create, the work that is yours alone, will hit different.

In the book “The War of Art”, Steven Pressfield is precise about this concept of creation. He says that in order to create the work we are meant to create, we need to be in a particular state. His main message is to achieve stillness so that the “Muse” can find you. This refers to the fact that the best ideas don’t come from your ego. They come from a higher plane, what he calls the Muse, or creative forces beyond the self. To access this, you need to be still, receptive, and humble, doing the work without any expectation. He says, “When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen… we become aligned with a mysterious, unseen force.”

Being glued to our phones, addicted to scrolling, and having our brains on standby while watching Netflix in the evening won’t help people create better things. Abundance will become an enemy that will be hard to beat.

In 2009, Paul Graham published an essat called “Taste for Makers”. He writes about the difference between being a cook, who follows recipes and imitates what others have done, and a chef, who invents new recipes and pushes originality. The era of AI will make it easier than ever to become a cook. But the abundance of distractions and the quality of these will make it harder than ever to become a chef.

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Your inner world is the final frontier

Today, it has already become clear that an abundance of money, goods, comfort, and convenience does not equal fulfillment. Emotional well-being and inner peace do not scale automatically with material wealth. There is even a growing disconnection between what people attain and what genuinely brings them satisfaction. The rise of hyper-immersive and fully personalized entertainment, the costs of goods and services trending to near zero, and all desired info and knowledge at our fingertips, is making it easier and harder than ever to reach the state of mind needed to become part of the new 1%.

To reach that state, you cannot only rely on tools or productivity hacks. It requires becoming conscious in the most profound sense of the word. Steven Pressfield describes this as sitting long enough to process your own thoughts until the Muse arrives. Paul Graham explains it through the difference between cooks and chefs. Cooks remix what already exists; chefs bring something original into the world. Both ideas point to the same truth: the new 1% are those who know how to step aside, silence their ego, and let something greater flow through them.

Carl Jung takes this concept further and argues that growth occurs through individuation, the process of integrating one’s shadow. Most people tend to avoid aspects of themselves that they find uncomfortable. They bury them under consumption and distraction. But creation at the highest level requires looking straight at those parts and owning them. Only then do you become whole enough to produce something that carries weight.

This makes sense when you observe how people generally are attracted to those that don’t hide their dark sides. It is the flaws, the contradictions, and the scars that make someone magnetic. Anthony Bourdain was admired not because he was flawless, but because his work embodied the honesty of someone who wrestled with darkness and still created beauty from it. Kurt Cobain’s music continues to resonate because it was steeped in pain and vulnerability, not despite those qualities but because of them. Steve Jobs built Apple not as a model of balance or perfection, but as someone obsessive, abrasive, and flawed, yet relentless in pursuing his vision. And even Carl Jung himself went through his own collapse, a “confrontation with the unconscious” where he felt close to madness. Out of that experience came his most profound work, The Red Book. His imperfections didn’t diminish his insights but were the very soil that made them possible.

Vadim Zeland, in his work on Reality Transurfing, adds great insights on how to get into the new 1%. He makes the case that thoughts are not just thoughts. He believes that our thoughts directly shape the reality we live in. I’d like to extend that thought. If algorithms and constant stimulation hijack your thoughts, then you are no longer in control of creating your own life. You are living in a script designed by others. The new 1% will be those who deliberately choose their thoughts and direct their attention. By mastering the inner dialogue, they shape a different reality altogether.

The simplest but hardest practice of all: presence. In a world where every app, platform, and streaming service is competing for your attention, the ability to sit still and maintain focus on your inner world becomes an act of rebellion. To think deeply without checking your phone. To walk without headphones. To let silence do its work. These small acts of presence are what create space for originality to enter.

This is the frontier. Not a new technology or a new platform, but the inner world. The ones who learn to master it will not only resist being consumed, they will define what it means to create in the era of infinite abundance.

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The new metrics

Decision quality, taste, and resonance. These will be the new markers of value in the age of infinite productivity. All three come from being in tune with oneself.

Decision quality does not come from overthinking or analyzing every possible scenario. Thinking and analysis play their role, but the best decisions are rarely the product of spreadsheets alone. They come from clarity and conviction. Every experienced founder or executive knows this by heart. The more abundant the options, the more valuable decisiveness becomes. Intuition is not guesswork. It is pattern recognition built over years of experience, combined with being in tune with oneself and being able to listen to your gut.

Taste comes from exploring consciously. You can see a thousand examples of good design, good music, or good writing, but you will not develop a taste for it by watching alone. You need to remix, to create, to observe how it feels for yourself and how it moves others. True taste is built through a continuous feedback loop and a willingness to understand what makes people feel alive. Cooks copy what they see is working; chefs understand what moves people.

Resonance is when what you create aligns with who you are. The Japanese call this Ikigai, one’s reason for being. If you are not speaking from your core identity, your work will lack resonance. We all know the image: someone on stage, well dressed, speaking smoothly, everything looks perfect, and yet they leave you cold. This is because that person is doing exactly what he believes the outer world wants, without knowing what his inner world wants. Someone vulnerable, imperfect, yet speaking with such honesty that their words stay with you for days. That is resonance. It cannot be faked, only cultivated.

Decision quality, taste, and resonance do not exist in isolation. They are connected threads of the same fabric. The more in tune you are with your inner world, the sharper your decisions become, the more refined your taste grows, and the deeper your resonance reaches. Together, they form a compass for conscious creation. And when even a small group of people live and create from that place, history shows what happens next: a renaissance.

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A new renaissance

The Renaissance, roughly spanning the 14th to the 17th century, was one of the most transformative periods in history. It marked Europe’s rebirth after centuries of stagnation. Figures like Leonardo da Vinci embodied the spirit of the time, blending art, science, and invention in ways that still inspire us today. But the Renaissance didn’t appear out of thin air. It was sparked by crisis, by rediscovery, by wealth finding new channels, by new technology, and by a shift in worldview. We are standing at a similar threshold today.

Collapse of the old order
Back then, the Black Death wiped out a third of Europe’s population. It shattered social structures, broke the Church’s monopoly on authority, and allowed people to rethink life, death, and meaning. The scarcity of labor increased wages and gave more people autonomy. Now, we see cracks forming again. In the West, populism is on the rise, monetary systems are straining, and trust in governments is collapsing. People are beginning to question the systems they were born into. What held authority for decades no longer feels stable.

Rediscovery of knowledge
The Renaissance was fueled by the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman texts, preserved for centuries by Islamic scholars. These works flowed back into Europe through trade, war, and translation, giving thinkers fresh fuel for art, science, and philosophy. Today, we are in our own rediscovery phase. Esoteric and primordial knowledge is resurfacing. Ancient texts and forgotten traditions are finding new audiences. Even Christianity, long thought to be fading, is rising among younger generations. We are digging into the roots again, searching for meaning in places we once ignored.

Wealth and patronage
In Florence, Venice, and Milan, new wealth from trade and banking financed art, architecture, and science. Families like the Medicis created a culture of experimentation and prestige. Now, patronage looks different. It is both online and offline. Balaji calls it the network state: communities that self-organize and fund what they value. We see it in El Salvador, which has surpassed many Western nations in safety and quality of life, and in Dubai, which has become a hub for entrepreneurs and finance. Physical places that remove friction will attract the new 1%. Those who make creation easiest will draw the talent and the energy.

Technological shifts
The printing press changed everything. It lowered the cost of spreading ideas, turning knowledge from an elite privilege into something accessible. Literacy and debate exploded.
Now we have AI, layered on top of internet infrastructure. The cost of creation has collapsed to near zero. Technologies are emerging that can replace not just old industries but even parts of governments and monetary systems. The printing press democratized books. AI is democratizing creation itself.

Humanism
The Renaissance was marked by humanism. It was a philosophical shift that placed human potential, creativity, and reason at the center, instead of divine authority. It gave artists permission to paint the body, to explore worldly beauty, to focus on lived experience. Now, with technology lifting the burden that has weighed on us since the industrial revolution, we are about to see another shift. When survival is no longer the dominant game, energy will be released. That energy will look for an outlet, and the natural outlet is creation. Just like before, when constraints lifted, a wave of art, ideas, and inventions reshaped culture.

This is why we are not just talking about a new technology cycle. We are on the eve of a renaissance. A cultural rebirth where the conscious few, those working on their inner world, will lead the way.

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The choice

The question of our time is not how productive we can be, that metric is fading out. Output trends to infinite, abundance is everywhere, and machines have made execution the easy part. The only scarcity left is consciousness.

We are standing at a fork. Most will be consumed. They will hand their attention to algorithms, let their inner world drift into standby, and live inside loops of distraction that feel good but leave nothing behind. A smaller group will resist. They will choose to work on their inner world, to cultivate decision quality, taste, and resonance. They will face their flaws instead of hiding them, turn struggle into originality, and let the Muse find them in stillness.

History shows what happens when even a few choose the harder path. The Renaissance was not led by the masses. It was sparked by a handful of people and patrons who dared to think and create differently. The same will happen now. The new 1% will not be defined by wealth or influence, but by depth.

So the real question is simple. When abundance floods every corner of your life, will you be consumed, or will you be conscious? The future will be built by those who can hold stillness, who can create from within, and who can give resonance to a world drowning in noise.