Gian Segato’s recent piece, “Agency is Eating the World,” perfectly distils the current tech mood: AI lowers the cost of doing, so now it’s all about drive. Agency. The will to act without waiting for permission. The age of the high-agency solo founder is here.
It’s bold, confident, and deeply familiar. The Matrix-as-startup-manifesto version of reality. Or trope.
But it also made me wince. Because I’d written my own piece back in February, also inspired by The Matrix, and it landed somewhere very different.
Where Segato sees a world to hack, I see one to hold.
Through the lens of Ken Wilber’s integral philosophy, The Matrix isn’t just a parable about breaking free from illusion. It’s a gestalt. A layered whole where truth lives in the interplay between immediate needs, systemic patterns, and deeper, often invisible beliefs. Neo doesn’t become powerful by moving faster. He becomes powerful by seeing more, by learning to work across levels without collapsing them into one simple fix.
In the world I work in, social change, systems work, long messy arcs of becoming, the hardest shift isn’t from inaction to action. It’s from certainty to curiosity. From control to relationship. From “I’ll fix it” to “what wants to emerge here?”
I’m sharing both pieces in the first comment. He argues that AI has made willpower the new differentiator. I think we’ve misunderstood the point of waking up altogether.
Originally written for LinkedIn on 22 April 2025. View original →
Gautam John 
Leave a comment