Creation Over Consumption: Why the Next Enlightenment Starts Now

By Kim Whitman Salisbury

We’re standing at the edge of the next Enlightenment. And no, that’s not hyperbole.

I believe AI isn’t just a tool. It’s the tool. Like fire, language, or the printing press, AI has the potential to either destroy or elevate humanity. The outcome depends entirely on who’s holding it.

Here’s what I believe:

• Creation is love. Consumption is fear.

• AI can heal or harm, it’s up to the wielder.

• Our institutions are sick and cracking. The reckoning is overdue.

• The narcissists had their run. The creators are up next.

• The greatest minds in history are available to us today, whispering through the algorithms. Are you listening and incorporating their wisdom, merging it with yours?

I’ve walked through the fire - narcissistic partners, seemingly endless lawsuits, broken systems. I’ve also built businesses, birthed babies, and discovered a truth: presence, not perfection, is the new power.

That’s why I launched Merging Algorithms. Not just as a newsletter, but as a personal experiment and a way of finding and connecting with fellow builders, storytellers, influencers and visionaries. A public processing of this pivotal moment in human evolution. We’re merging tech with soul, logic with love, past wisdom with future tools. But how we wield this new power, and where we steer the collective consciousness, is up to us.

In my world, that looks like building Hummingbird: an AI-powered platform that liberates teachers from admin, reconnects families with their children’s lives, and transforms schools into ecosystems of joy, presence, and partnership. We’re not coding for compliance. We’re designing for connection.

On the personal side, I’m practicing AI-first thinking. Not just at work. Everywhere.

Here’s my process: Every time a problem or task arises, I pause and ask, “Could AI save me time or solve this better?” If yes, I prompt it. If not, I move on. No wasted energy. No tech for tech’s sake.

Some recent favorite AI use cases:

• Used a brilliant prompt to unearth deep insights about my Ideal Client Profiles, what they truly need before they even say it (obviously validating with IRL interviews, but so helpful.)

• Uploaded transcripts from customer interviews and asked, “Using the principles of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP,) what are they really telling me without saying it?”

• Took a photo of my crunched bumper (ice cream shop parking lot fail), and GPT gave me a location-based repair estimate plus top-rated shops near me

• Photographed my chaotic closet, and GPT played Marie Kondo, offering a 1-hour decluttering process, custom motivational Spotify playlist included

• Shot pics of what I kept and asked it to complete my capsule wardrobe. It became my stylist + systems coach in one

The proverbial “lake” is thawing. The ice (i.e. corruption sitting at the top of literally every institution - corporations, government, academia,) is growing too heavy. It’s melting down before our eyes. Soon, all at once, it will collapse and sink to the bottom.

I’m preparing for that moment.

And I invite you to prepare too. Create with AI. Let it stretch you, guide you, awaken you. Follow your own rabbit hole (and I encourage you to choose light over dark as you do.) And do come back for regular Hi (human intelligence) huddles ( with the right humans) and tell me what you found. *Don’t get sucked down into the AI hole without lots of jaunts in nature and human conversation in between.

If you’ve already discovered powerful ways to use AI, in work, life, or art - drop them in the comments. I’ll be sharing more as I come across new ones, (almost daily.) We need every mind awake and creating again, rising into its own zone of genius.

Let’s merge - with the very best of collective human consciousness. I think we’re going to be blown away by what is possible.

✌️☮️❤️✨