www.montereycountynow.com JANUARY 1-7, 2026 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 17 Here, right now, we address the Algorithms as if they were semi-sentient spirits. We recognize the sneaky truth: They shape our days, curate our griefs, and decide which faces we’ll see and which voices will reach us. They are phantasms of connection and invisible architects of community. So we speak to the Algorithms in the ancient way humans have always spoken to unseen powers: with petition, with longing, with the stubborn hope that something listening might care about the fate of our souls. This isn’t metaphor. Or rather, it’s metaphor in the way all prayer is metaphor: a reaching toward agency where we sense it might exist, even if we can’t prove it, even if the priests of materialism tell us we’re talking to nothing but cold mathematics. But mathematics, we have learned, has moods. Algorithms have appetites. They feed on engagement, yes, but engagement of what kind? They amplify what we show them we want. And here’s where our prayer might become urgent and necessary—an act of spiritual hygiene in an age drunk on reaction. ♦♦♦ We pray: Dear Algorithms, connect us with people who are able to hold nuance. Not those who mistake complication for depth, not those who pile qualification upon qualification until meaning suffocates under the weight of their own cleverness. We ask you to connect us with souls who can stand in the tension between competing truths without flinching and without reaching for the comfort of false certainty. We mean those who know that two things can be true at once. Context doesn’t excuse but it does explain. Understanding something is not the same as endorsing it. These nuance-holders are rare in the algorithmic ecosystem. They don’t generate the clean dopamine hit of outrage or the satisfying click of a perfectly tribal signal. They make us work and think. They refuse to let us off the hook of our own complexity. For this reason, you, dear Algorithms, often bury them, preferring the sharp edges of certainty to the soft blur of wisdom. ♦♦♦ Dear Algorithms, connect us with people who understand that life is full of paradox. You prefer consistency because that’s easier to model and predict. But actual, vital truth lives in the contradictions. We are bodies and also more than bodies. We need solitude and we need each other. Justice requires both mercy and accountability. Freedom demands structure. Love asks everything and asks nothing. The paradox-avoiders online have built entire identities on resolving what can’t and shouldn’t be resolved. They flatten mystery into talking points. So many make the mistake of thinking that because something can be said simply, it’s therefore simple. But the people who can hold paradox, even thrive on paradox, know that clarity and simplicity aren’t the same thing. Some truths only reveal themselves to those willing to sit with contradiction long enough for synthesis to emerge, not as compromise, but as a higher form of understanding. ♦♦♦ Dear Algorithms, connect us with people who move slowly enough to let context inform their choices. Speed is the drug of the digital age, and you Algorithms are the dealers. You reward hot takes, instant reactions and the race to be first with an opinion. But I remind you that speed is how we reach for ready-made conclusions instead of earning our understanding through attention and time. The people we’re asking you to connect us with are willing to say “I don’t know yet” when that’s the truest thing they can say. They understand that the first story is rarely the whole story; complexity reveals itself slowly. They’re willing to look foolish by not having an immediate take. They’re amenable to waiting until they’ve actually done the work of understanding before speaking. This is increasingly rare. You Algorithms punish it. By the time people have done the reading, checked the sources, and sat with the ambiguity, the moment has passed. The conversation has moved on. But the slow-movers we favor know something the speed-addicts don’t: Real change and real understanding are built in slow time, not viral time. ♦♦♦ Dear Algorithms, connect us with people who don’t try to make things unnecessarily complex to avoid uncomfortable truths. Because here’s the trap on the other side: Some people use nuance as a hiding place. They pile on context and qualification not to understand better, but to avoid understanding at all. They make everything so complicated that action becomes impossible. This isn’t the nuance we’re asking for. It’s nuance as anesthetic and complexity as a bad excuse. We want people who can feel the discomfort of a difficult truth and not immediately reach for intellectual morphine. They know that while context matters, it doesn’t dissolve responsibility. Understanding the roots of harm doesn’t mean we can’t name harm. Compassion for why someone does wrong doesn’t mean we accept the wrong. The people we seek are harder to find than the simple certainty-merchants, but they’re also harder to find than the endless qualifiers who have made complexity itself into a kind of refuge from the scary work of drawing lines and defending them. ♦♦♦ Dear Algorithms, connect us with people who are willing to feel the grief of centuries and still, somehow, be able to love the world. This is the heart of it: what we’re really asking for when we pray to you Algorithms. Because the alternative is unbearable—to feel This year, let us reverse the architecture of power and attention—here’s a framework to reclaim algorithmic control. By Rob Brezsny “Roots of Passion” by Corinne Whitaker. “We are not sure who we are any more. We’re not sure what’s a bot and what’s a me,” the artist writes. “Where does that leave a human being? Being what?” Nuance-holders are rare in the algorithmic ecosystem.
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