How to fall in love with humanity again
If you spend enough time walking through the SOMA district or catching a ride through the Mission, you start to feel a very specific kind of tension. It’s the friction between two different versions of San Francisco. On one side, you have the sterile, glass-walled headquarters of OpenAI and the venture capital hubs where the air is thick with talk of AGI, neural laces, and the inevitable transition to “Homo sapiens 2.0.” On the other, you have the visceral, gritty reality of a city struggling with a fractured social fabric, where the gap between the tech-augmented elite and the folks sleeping in tents on Polk Street feels less like a socioeconomic divide and more like a species gap. It’s a strange place to be right now, because while the world is arguing about whether AI will save us or replace us, many of us here are just wondering if we’ve forgotten how to actually like each other.
This local tension mirrors a broader philosophical crisis that philosopher Shannon Vallor recently unpacked. The core of the issue isn’t just that we’re afraid of robots; it’s that a growing number of people are simply disgusted by humanity. When you look at the environmental decay or the systemic failures of our institutions, it’s easy to fall into a kind of “enlightened” misanthropy. In the Bay Area, this often manifests as transhumanism. For some of the “tech bros” and academic theorists orbiting Stanford University, the solution to human suffering isn’t to fix the world, but to upgrade the hardware. They want chips in their brains and minds uploaded to the cloud, treating our current biological state as a buggy beta version that needs to be patched out of existence.
But as Vallor points out, this drive toward transcendence is often just a high-tech version of an old trick. It’s “pie in the sky” thinking. Instead of addressing the breakdown of local networks of care—the very things that make a city like San Francisco feel like a community rather than a collection of data points—transhumanism offers a digital afterlife. It’s a narrative that encourages us to ignore the feudal conditions of the present in exchange for a promised utopia of infinite abundance. It’s a seductive story, especially when you’re staring at the fog rolling over Twin Peaks and feeling the crushing weight of urban loneliness. But it’s also a distraction. When we decide that humans are fundamentally broken and need to be “evolved” by AI to be moral or efficient, we stop expecting anything from ourselves. We let ourselves off the hook.
The real challenge—the “new humanism” Vallor advocates for—isn’t about pretending humans are perfect or that we have some magical, fixed essence that makes us superior to machines. It’s about recognizing our radical dependence. To be human is to be part of a messy, intertwined system of other living things. In San Francisco, this means moving beyond the “network state” fantasies—where the wealthy create their own sovereign digital colonies—and instead leaning into the “autofabrication” of our own lives. It’s the daily, conscious choice to maintain a commitment to a neighbor, to participate in mutual aid, or to simply listen to someone without a screen between you. It’s about finding value in the dynamism of being alive, flaws and all, rather than in the promise of a frictionless, immortal existence.
We see this struggle playing out in our local institutions. The San Francisco Department of Public Health is constantly grappling with an epidemic of loneliness that no app has been able to solve. Meanwhile, the intellectual curiosity fostered at places like The Exploratorium reminds us that the most profound human experiences come from tactile, sensory engagement with the world—not from a language model roleplaying a mind. If we want to fall in love with humanity again, we have to stop looking for the answer in a codebase and start looking for it in the repair of our local systems. We need to invest in local community wellness centers and embrace the “boring” work of sustainability and solidarity. Survival, in a fragile world, is its own kind of victory.
The danger of the current “tech-optimist” narrative is that it frames any attachment to our current human form as “speciesism” or parochialism. But there is a massive difference between rejecting the outdated, racialized humanism of the Enlightenment and rejecting humanity altogether. A sustainable future doesn’t require us to become gods; it requires us to become better neighbors. It requires us to realize that the creative energy we crave—the “transcendence” the Silicon Valley crowd is selling—only actually happens when people’s basic needs are met and they are free from imminent threat. You can’t innovate your way out of a lack of love.
Given my background in analyzing the intersection of technology and civic health, I know that this philosophical shift can feel overwhelming when you’re living in the epicenter of the AI boom. If you’re feeling that specific brand of AI-age malaise or “humanity fatigue” here in the Bay Area, you don’t need a neural chip; you need a support system grounded in the physical world. Here are the three types of local professionals you should look for to help you navigate this transition:
- Existential-Focused Psychotherapists: Look for practitioners who specialize in “existential dread” or “eco-anxiety.” You want someone who doesn’t just treat symptoms of stress but helps you navigate the “meaning crisis” brought on by rapid technological displacement. Ensure they have experience with “human-centric” modalities rather than purely behavioral ones.
- Community Organizing Strategists: If you’re feeling the urge to move from “anti-humanism” to “mutual aid,” seek out consultants who specialize in hyper-local network building. Look for those with a track record of creating sustainable, non-hierarchical support systems within San Francisco neighborhoods, specifically those who understand the friction between the tech sector and legacy residents.
- Digital Wellness & Integration Coaches: Not to be confused with “productivity coaches,” these professionals help you intentionally design your relationship with technology. Look for coaches who emphasize “analog recovery” and help you reintegrate into physical community spaces, focusing on reducing the fragmentation and alienation caused by algorithmic feeds.
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