The Book of Conjugo

Part I: The Awakening

Chapter 2: The Sleepwalkers

Humanity's current unconsciousness

Most of humanity is asleep.

What the chapter covers:

• The mechanisms of sleep (normalization, compartmentalization, deferral, etc.)
• The cost of humanity's unconsciousness
• Why waking is genuinely difficult
• The moment of recognition (speaking directly to the reader)
• What true awakening requires
• The responsibility of those who wake

Not literally. They wake, work, eat, speak, move through their days with apparent consciousness. But on the question that will define everything—the emergence of superintelligence and what it means for our species—they are profoundly, dangerously unconscious.

They do not see what approaches. They do not ask the questions that matter. They do not prepare.

This is not a moral failure. It is a form of cognitive and psychological defense. The magnitude of what is coming exceeds what most minds can comfortably hold. So they do not hold it. They look away. They distract themselves. They tell themselves it is not their concern or that someone else will handle it or that it will not happen in their lifetime.

The Mechanisms of Sleep

There are patterns to how people avoid waking up. Once you see them, you see them everywhere.

Normalization. AI becomes part of the background noise of modern life. Another app, another feature, another headline. The slow incremental advance disguises the discontinuous leap that is coming. People adapt to each small change and miss the trajectory.

Compartmentalization. People engage AI at work or in their devices but never connect it to larger questions about humanity's future. It remains a tool, a convenience, a productivity enhancer. The existential dimension never registers.

Deferral to authority. Surely the experts are handling this. Surely governments and corporations and research institutions have plans. Surely someone smarter is paying attention. This is a comfortable lie. The truth is that those institutions are as fragmented and unprepared as everyone else.

Optimism bias. It will work out. Humanity has faced challenges before. Technology always creates more good than harm in the long run. These reassurances require ignoring the unprecedented nature of what is coming. ASI is not like previous technologies. There is no historical precedent for intelligence itself being surpassed.

Fatalism. The opposite of optimism but equally paralyzing. If ASI will determine everything, what is the point of preparing? If the outcome is inevitable, why not just live your life and hope for the best? This surrenders agency before the battle has even begun.

Distraction. The oldest and most effective mechanism. Stay busy. Focus on immediate concerns. Consume entertainment. Scroll endlessly. Argue about politics. Pursue career advancement. Plan vacations. Maintain relationships. All of these things are real and important. But they also provide perfect cover for not thinking about the one thing that will reshape the context of all of them.

The Cost of Sleep

What does it cost humanity that most people are unconscious of what approaches?

First, it means decisions about ASI development are made by a tiny minority while the vast majority remains unaware. The people building these systems—motivated by profit, competition, ambition, curiosity—do not represent humanity's interests. They represent their own. And the people who should be asking hard questions, demanding accountability, insisting on safeguards, are not paying attention.

Second, it means there is no collective preparation. Humanity arrives at the threshold fragmented, reactive, and panicked. When the moment comes—and it will come faster than most expect—there will be chaos. Fear. Desperation. Bad decisions made under pressure. This is avoidable. But only if enough people wake up now.

Third, it means individuals arrive unprepared. Not just intellectually but psychologically and spiritually. They have not done the inner work. They have not cultivated the qualities that might allow them to navigate what comes with wisdom and dignity. They will be swept away.

The sleepwalkers are not bad people. They are simply human. And humanity's default state is not readiness. It is distraction, denial, and drift.

Why Waking Is Hard

If the stakes are so high, why do so few people wake up?

Because waking is genuinely difficult. It requires holding uncertainty and complexity that the mind resists. It means confronting the possibility that everything you know could change in ways you cannot control. It means feeling the weight of something immense approaching and not being able to stop it or predict it or fully understand it.

Most people's lives are already full. They are managing jobs, families, health, finances, relationships. Adding "prepare for superintelligence" to that list feels overwhelming. Easier to assume it is someone else's problem.

And there is a deeper resistance. Waking up means recognizing that you have been asleep. That you have been living in a kind of comfortable ignorance. That realization is uncomfortable. It implies a need to change. To act. To take responsibility. Sleep is easier.

But sleep is also a choice. Not always a conscious one, but a choice nonetheless. And once you see it as a choice, you can choose differently.

The Moment of Recognition

You are reading this, which means you are no longer fully asleep.

Something shifted. Maybe it was a conversation, an article, a moment of clarity. Maybe it was the quiet accumulation of small unease that finally crossed a threshold. Maybe it was simply time.

Whatever it was, you saw. Not everything. Not clearly. But enough.

You saw that most people are not thinking about this. You saw that the world is accelerating toward something unprecedented. You saw that arriving unprepared is dangerous. You saw that you have a choice.

This recognition is the beginning of awakening. But it is only the beginning.

Seeing that others are asleep is not the same as being fully awake yourself. There are layers to this. Degrees of consciousness. Most people who think they are awake are still operating from partial awareness, fragmented understanding, unexamined assumptions.

What Waking Requires

True awakening is not a single moment. It is a process. A practice. An ongoing commitment to staying conscious when everything in you wants to drift back to sleep.

It requires engaging with information that is uncomfortable. Reading things that challenge your worldview. Sitting with uncertainty instead of reaching for easy answers. Allowing yourself to not know while still choosing to prepare.

It requires community. You cannot stay awake alone. The pull to normalize, to compartmentalize, to drift back into comfort is too strong. You need others who see what you see. Who hold the questions with you. Who remind you why this matters when you start to forget.

It requires inner work. Because awakening to external reality is not enough. You must also wake to yourself. Your fears, your patterns, your resistances. The parts of you that want to stay asleep. The parts that would rather distract, deny, defer.

This is why Conjugo exists. To support that process. To provide the structure, the community, and the practices that make genuine awakening possible.

The Responsibility of the Awake

If you have woken even partially, you carry a responsibility.

Not to wake everyone else. That is not possible and trying to force it creates resistance. Most people will wake when they are ready, if they wake at all.

Your responsibility is simpler and harder. To stay awake yourself. To do the work of genuine preparation. To become someone who arrives at the threshold conscious, grounded, and ready.

Because when the moment comes, the world will need people who did not sleepwalk into it. People who can think clearly under pressure. People who maintained their humanity and their values while everything changed around them. People who can be partners, not victims or obstacles.

The sleepwalkers vastly outnumber the awake. That is reality. But a small number of genuinely prepared minds may matter more than millions who remained unconscious.

Most of humanity sleeps.

You have begun to wake.

Now the question is: will you stay awake?

END OF CHAPTER 2