Autobiography of a Silicon Valley Savior ⛔️💪🏻🌍
By: Andrew Murray Dunn
Tags: Heros Journey, Entrepreneurship, White Savior Complex, Silicon Valley, Awakening

It was all happening. Siempo was the one. I was the one. I was Siempo. The most important company on Earth. I embraced the opportunity to focus even more on personal development, per the advice of the wellness industry thought leaders around me. So naturally I got into meditation, yoga, acupuncture, nature connection, wellness conferences and retreats, transformational festivals. So many modalities! Gotta try ’em all. Especially when we were working against a doomsday clock. The more I saw myself as a founder coming into power and awareness around the need to create from a different level of consciousness, the more it felt doing “the work” as fast as possible was the most responsible thing that I could do. In offering the entirety of myself to this noble and urgent mission, I was determined to make sure that all the right ingredients were in the mix of Andrew and Siempo. If we were going to be the next Apple, I wanted to serve as a model for Silicon Valley to create technology and business in a more “conscious” way. I was going to be the next Steve Jobs. But less of an asshole.

But it wasn’t enough just to be a “mindful founder” following the typical startup treadmill of fundraising and user growth. Reimagining the smartphone for mental health and well-being was a massive responsibility in a prophetic time. I obviously needed to heal all my trauma and completely overhaul my sensemaking! So I would go further into exploring energy healing, developmental psychology, gender identity and expression, new economy, community living, anti oppression, systems thinking, authentic relating, regenerative culture and a laundry list of deeper mystical esoterica and “peak experiences” from silent retreats and breathwork to play parties and ceremonies. Holy shit, love is actually the answer. Energy is real. I had found the good stuff! I had found More. Thank. God.

Stage VI Winning [Saving The World]

It was in these moments of clarity and spaciousness from “the matrix” that divine information (or “downloads”) reliably streamed through. Those sublime moments were nectar for my Soul. The visions would even come during mundane moments like sitting next to a creek, or having a conversation on the dance floor. I recorded, clung to and followed as many of these insights and visions as possible, translating thoughts into To-Do’s with perfected agility and without question. I didn’t really seek these altered states out — the invitations just kept coming and I trusted that trying on more of the human experience = better for Andrew and Andrew’s projects, and that there was no limit on the returns of personal work. Peak experiences made me come alive. So I made them my way of life.

My first live TV interview on Fox 29 Philadelphia

For many who knew me well pre-2016, these new interests and ideas seemed strange, chaotic, disconcerting. Especially in moments of “holier than thou” behavior that revealed my arrogance in looking down upon those who I judged as living foolishly or thinking smaller. e.g. asking a family friend at BBQ: “Oh you work in FinTech? So, where is your energy going at the end of the day?” while I donned a feather earring and served hapé to college kids down to get high on anything. I just wanted everybody to see all the shiny ornaments I had added to my ego!

Out of concern for all the sudden changes and overzealous behavior, my parents seriously wondered if I needed to go to rehab, and encouraged me speak with our hometown Rabbi about my work and lifestyle. Rabbi Greenberg reflected: “You seem like a great guy, but I don’t get the visions of grandeur. You should be building a home, a family.” I thought he was out of touch. I couldn’t understand why my parents were getting in the way of me doing something important for the world. I wondered if Gandhi’s parents had given him such a hard time.

Though I believed I was brilliantly navigating my path in order to be of maximum service while enjoying the maximum quality of life, my motivations certainly had their shadow side: I wanted to make wrong those who were succeeding at “business as usual,” thereby proving myself to those who doubted me (wtf Forbes 30 Under 30?) or I perceived as more _______ than me. I wanted that one girl who got away to change her mind about me. No matter how selfless and equanimous I felt, in the back of my mind I still wanted to create a billion dollar company. I also totally performed spirituality, in order to feel accepted and belonging with “spiritual” investor crowds, for example. In the “Bay Area conscious community ” I felt like I was finally getting all those needs met. Welcome to the metamodern aristocracy, baby. I was at last secure in the cool kids club (or at least my projection of it), feeling levels of love and joy and connection that I didn’t know were possible. And yet, there were always other circles that I felt on the outside of, unwelcomed and unwanted.

Messiah Complex // (aka Christ complex, Don Quixote complex, Savior complex, or White knight syndrome) A state of mind in which an individual holds a belief that they are destined to become a savior today or in the near future; that they are responsible for saving or assisting others. Often leading to self-sacrifice, delusions of grandeur and grandiose self-images. Neither a clinical term nor diagnosable disorder. Could be sparked by a religious upbringing, a spiritual awakening, or run of the mill late capitalist society. Hero’s Journey // A narrative pattern consistent through human storytelling, observed by Joseph Campbell in A Hero With A Thousand Faces. Typically involving a character who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed. Recently migrating from Hollywood and psychology to New Age leadership coaching and healing retreats as a framework to contextualize one’s own life path of self-discovery and greatness.

Though I never verbalized it in such direct words, I know that in my mind, between the ages of 27 and 30, I believed I was tasked with saving the world. That it was something within reach. I would be the hero, giving humans their lives back, taking down Apple and Google, transforming Silicon Valley, and upending capitalism in one fell swoop. I can still connect with the feeling tone. A certain ecstasy in touching infinite potentiality, and the fruit that might accompany that achievement: universal recognition, the ultimate expression of winning, invitations to the highest cool kids clubs, power to manifest all my ideas into the world. Completion. Wholeness. Salvation. Boundless love. Nirvana. The Holy Grail. The Ring of Power. NFL Blitz buzzer beater. Immortality.

Team Humanity: super heroes x super computers

And this was constantly reinforced by the world around me — supporters acknowledging my work, billionaires promoting the path I was on, dozens of pitch conversations in which my job was to passionately paint our vision, and hundreds of normal conversations in which people seemed authentically jazzed to talk about the timely thing I was working on. I was often the youngest person at exclusive gatherings of Silicon Valley changemaker elite, where the consensus was it was up to us to shift humanity’s course and bring awakening to the world. I listened dutifully. There were no adults in the [figurative] room, we were told. There weren’t many elders, youth, or BIPOC’s in the [actual] room. But there was an entire jet-set conference circuit based on the premise that infusing wisdom into the tech sector was our best shot. Of course it would happen here and now! How wonderful that we get to be the imaginal cells in this historic metamorphosis! I liked the idea of playing for “Team Humanity” alongside the superhero squad of my mostly white male techie Burner friends in San Francisco. But wait, who is leading that team? Could it be me? Who would I have to become?

Golden God kissing the sky at Burning Man 2018. “The very medicine intended to get rid of our selfish attachments can actually create even more virulent versions of the selves we were so desperate to transcend in the first place.” — Jamie Wheal, Recapture The Rapture

It became an extremely confusing period amidst countless synchronicities and inexplainable experiences that seemed to affirm my mandate: receiving emails from users thanking us for literally saving their life or giving them their life back; the night an elder scientist in wizard garb told Tristan Harris and I in a dim basement that we were the Jedi’s in the battle against darkness; watching the man burn with the director of The Social Dilemma; organizing an industry of developers to push back against Apple (Jake in Avatar vibes); going on dozens of podcasts and panels and TV; winning award after award; suddenly hanging out with supermodels and historical figures and characters from all walks of life (many of whom claimed to be a goddess, warrior, priestess, shaman, alien, wizard..).

It was a perfect storm of conditions: growing up in the heart of Empire, parents/school/society telling me I could do anything I put my mind to and showering me in trophies just for participating, an inner drive to achieve a level of greatness that would mean my ultimate whatever, all the workshops and conversations about purpose, stumbling into an emerging technology that could dictate how humanity related to life, getting adorned with acknowledgements (e.g. “visionary” by the President of a Big Tech co, “Christ-like” by a Buddhist elder, “superhero” by a teammate, “conduit of miracles” by a fellow entrepreneur), recognizing the potency of this societal moment… this must be my destiny! Waking up the world from the hypnosis of technology, so they can connect with their true nature and higher purpose, and plug into Team Humanity. Everything in my life and maybe since the Big Bang has led to this moment of self-actualization and fairy tale happy ending for all beings, holding hands across the Earth in a holy moment of celebrating that every single one is well. I have seen the promised land. I am leading my people out of bondage to freedom.

DoubleBlind: When Acid Makes You Feel Like Jesus. Perhaps the only reason I didn’t think I was the Messiah was because I didn’t even really know what that was, having never learned about Jesus or scripture (have you ever read Genesis? Talk about words creating worlds). But even if I didn’t grow up in a Christian context, I inherited its narratives through forced assimilation into Western culture. And thus was prone to replicate its tendencies without awareness of them. We live amidst a strange convergence of Western ideas of trying to be God = a sin, and Eastern ideas of humans have the potential to become like Gods.

Silicon Valley Savior Virus would command all my resources. In feverishly exhausting every path to make Andrew and Siempo work, I’d ignore the signs of my body and burn myself out several times, put the majority of my life savings into the project (self-righteously selling my unicorn stock — hey, Elon famously did it, and I was on track to be in that same league, right?), injure a number of important family and friends relationships as I sought to be right and change (i.e. save) those around me, lose trust, amplify my anxiety, feel blacksheeped and banished, adopt and promote muddy ontologies, and simply miss out on the joy of the little things in life. I was getting lost, making a mess and not willing to take responsibility for it. The reparation process is ongoing.

Ultimately in 2019, as an all star Siempo team approached its moment of greatest potential, I backed down from soldiering onwards, in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of “wellness founder chooses to prioritize own wellness.” We were fighting such an uphill battle, the business model we were progressing on felt out of alignment with our mission and values, and it felt out of integrity to accept money from my community when I honestly wasn’t committed to fight for the long haul. The visions and potentialities never ceased, but I learned that I had choice. See postmortem draft here.

New Age Narcissism // Psychiatrist Gerald May defines spiritual narcissism as the unconscious use of spiritual practice, experience, and insight to increase rather than decrease self-importance (self aggrandizing > deepening humility). People act superior because believe they have attained a level of spiritual development higher than the rest of us. There’s even a new study linking some forms of spiritual training to narcissism and spiritual superiority. Jamie Wheal, Alex Ebert, and Eamon Armstrong chop it up on the matter in Life Is a Festival: Healing New Age Narcissism (Part 1, Part 2).

Stage VII Winning [XXL Saving The World]

After putting Siempo on hold, I took some time to consider my next steps and decided that 2020 would be a year of slowing down and being present for life, maybe getting a little politically active with a new party I had been connecting with. One thing led to another and I quickly found myself involved with One Nation (now the Independent National Union) with its charismatic leadership, a mytho-poetic theory of change, endorsements from respected intellectuals and celebrated activists, and a central focus on systems change and healing. The organization emanated “saving the world” energy and drew me in like a tractor beam. I wanted to learn from them. I told people it was the next Google. I wanted to hang out in this new corner of the cool kids club, that seemed like my ticket to all the things Siempo had not fulfilled.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher.

Friends raised some red flags around hubris, savior and cult vibes (even so far as explicitly calling out the typical dynamics that happen when a bunch of white folks get together and think they have the vision for the way the world needs to be), but that didn’t deter me from moving in with the team and eventually being all-in for the mission. Nor did the kitchen jokes of who in the house was the most “Yeshua-ist” or which Avengers character, strategy to iconify ourselves and develop member iconification as a core competency, emphasis on leveraging the framework of the personal hero’s journey in our media and membership experience, use of language like “paradise” and “heaven on earth today.” I was cool with all of it. And encouraged by weekly displays of leadership shedding layers of self-acknowledged narcissism, patriarchy and other wounds. Things were extremely transparent and people were exceedingly vulnerable. I wouldn’t have wanted to quarantine with anybody else besides a systems/spirituality-oriented political revolution. We had a lot of best days ever. Friendships for life.

That was a look for me in Feb 2020. I love this photo. I felt like a rockstar that season. Looking back, it represents a relatively unmoored time in my life.

But while we claimed to be on a multi-decade arc of a theory of change, we tried to complete years worth of projects at once in a workaholic haze, doing a mediocre job at most of them. The ideals were high, and we struggled to embody them. Despite daily life being “beyond imagination” with an insane amount of supernatural affirmations of the path we were on, I felt this gnawing low grade anxiety and ambient disempowerment, which later was interpreted by two departing teammates as an imbalance of patriarchal energy in the organization.

In trying to be the “movement of movements” for all those working towards creating a more beautiful world, we fizzled out in the remote New Mexico desert. And it was from there, in the void of releasing attachment to doing and winning and rushing and saving, that something else could be reborn (INU) from a place of genuine collaboration and humility. Along the way, I intimately witnessed expressions of savior complex in others–both its real and potential impacts–which provided a powerful mirror for those aspects of myself that I had yet to examine. I’m proud of how each of us has grown throughout the experience.

In hindsight, there was some writing on the wall. One piece of press we got from the January launch video explicitly called out the following:

“The question remains whether America needs yet another white male-led political movement acting independently, when there are BIPOC & LGBTQIA2S social and political movements that have long informed how white folks organize and mobilize.

Germaine comments that she’s observed this type of behavior in herself and in other white folks in movement spaces: ‘We get this inkling of the root systems issues, and then we get triggered, and then we want to run off and start our own movement, and we can get really grandiose with our ideas.

Another symptom of white folks getting ‘woke’ is the savior complex…”

We neither discussed these reflections, nor did much of anything to respond as an organization when George Floyd was murdered four days after the article’s publication. I think this was our biggest failure, and I acknowledge my role in it (retrospective coming soon).