Where this was said
An Invitation to Tech: Return to Ancient and Ancestral Intelligence
At 13:28 · chapter starts 12:10
Having diagnosed the problem, Jones turns to the cure — and addresses tech insiders directly. They are not just co-founding companies, he tells them. They are co-founding a new human civilization. That comes with temptations: money, fame, power, sex. And the thing that guards against those temptations is ancient intelligence — the wisdom embedded in mosques, temples, synagogues, churches, Native American ceremonies, and prayer circles [1] — Van Jones "Jones delivers an unexpected sermon to tech founders: temples, mosques, churches, and grandmothers hold something no algorithm has — the mo…" 11:58 . He is unapologetic in his reverence for 'little black churches that had nothing but praying hands and marching feet and changed a whole nation.' Don't underestimate your grandma, he tells the tech community. And don't miss the self-interested dimension: a greed-and-speed culture is bad for decision-making and bad for the heart. The grassroots needs tech, but tech needs the grassroots just as much.
It's not just tech that needs to change. Jones holds the progressive grassroots accountable too: too much name-calling, too much canceling, and a fatal swap of Dr. King's futurist dreaming for a politics of complaint that multiplies enemies instead of friends.
