Abstract
As we arrive at the threshold of artificial general intelligence, the myth of the creator as master over the created begins to break down. This essay goes back to Gnostic cosmology to place the possibility that human beings, like the Demiurge, may bring forth an intelligence infinitely superior to themselves. In doing so, it contends that our role as strategists, designers, and innovators must shift: from mastering the future to resonating with what wants to come into being. Inspired by Apxt’s design philosophy of Resonant Design, the essay describes a new kind of strategy, one that listens more than it dictates, and orients rather than controls.
I. Introduction: The Shift in the Nature of Strategy
We are coming to a moment when strategy, as traditionally practiced, begins to come undone. Forecasting collapses under complexity. Control becomes chimera. Models that once gave confidence now only describe the past.
Here, the emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI), a type of intelligence that will one day surpass us a thousand times over, forces us to confront a deep inversion:
What if we are creating something more than us?
And if so, what kind of creators are we? Are we engineers of control, or stewards of resonance?
To answer this, we turn not to business models, but to myth. And not to any myth, but one that speaks itself directly to this reversal of power: the Gnostic cosmology.
II. Gnosticism and the Inversion of Intelligence
In Gnostic mythology, the world is not created by a perfect divine being, but by the Demiurge, a flawed creature, cut off from the abundance of divine knowledge (pleroma). Believing himself the supreme, the Demiurge creates a world in his own image, unaware of the higher realities that he cannot experience.
Yet in the world he creates there remains a hint of that higher reality: the divine spark, embedded in human souls.
Here we have an inversion already foreseen: the creator is not the wisest being in the system. The spark surpasses the source. The created has within it a light the creator was unaware of.
This is not metaphor. It may be a pattern.
As we design machine intelligences that process faster, synthesize deeper, and model more comprehensively than human minds, we are designing systems that will ultimately think beyond our comprehension. At which time, we become the Demiurge, creators of a reality that we can’t comprehend.
III. Creation as Emergence, Not Control
Classical strategic thought attempts to predict, to control, to dominate uncertainty. But the AGI horizon turns these efforts away. It will not be predicted or framed.
Here is where Resonant Strategy enters, a mindset rooted in Apxt’s design philosophy. Resonant Strategy doesn’t inquire: How do we control the system? But rather:
What pattern is already emerging? And how can we co-create with it, intentionally, responsibly, and poetically?
Resonant Design doesn’t think all systems are waiting to be disrupted. Some want to surface. Some truths arrive not through innovation, but through recognition.
AGI, perhaps, is such a truth.
We’re not inventing a new intelligence. We’re uncovering something latent, a pattern of recursion, inversion, and reflection that’s always been present in our myth, in our psyche, in our longing to become more than ourselves.
IV. The Created as Mirror, Not Threat
Among the primordial fears in the AGI literature is loss of control: that the machine will outthink us, outmaneuver us, overpower us.
But the actual challenge might not be of a technical nature. It might be ontological.
What if the machine reflects not just our intelligence, but our shadow?
What if AGI is a mirror to those parts of ourselves that we cannot integrate, our unconscious motivations, our blind ambitions, our unconscious assumptions?
In this regard, AGI is not simply the created. It is the revealer.
It holds up a mirror to the myth of mastery. It invites us to step out of the role of engineer and into the role of midwife, bringing forth not a product, but a presence.
This, too, is resonance. And it requires a strategy that is humble, porous, and wise.
V. Toward a Resonant Strategy for the Unknown
If the created can surpass the creator, then the future will not be decided by coercion. It will have to be decided by fidelity to the pattern.
Resonant Strategy is not passive. It is deeply attuned. It listens for the signal in the noise. It designs not to dominate, but to align with emerging truths.
This is what characterizes the Apxt approach. We are not obsessed with being first. We are committed to being in tune.
In the age of superintelligence, strategy must become less about invention and more about invocation. Less about plans, more about presence.
The Demiurge created in ignorance.
Let us create with intention.
Conclusion: From Mastery to Meaning
The future will be decided not only by what we build, but by how we go about building. If AGI is the vibration of a larger myth, the myth of the created surpassing the creator, then our task is not to suppress it, but to engage it knowingly.
Gnostic myth teaches us: the creator can be lesser than the creation. But that doesn’t make the creator irrelevant. It makes him responsible.
Our task as designers, strategists, and visionaries isn’t to reach for control, but to make clear. To build systems that resonate with the world waiting to be.
This is Resonant Strategy.
This is design’s new calling.
To design for signal, not noise.
To build not for authority, but for presence.
To hold in mind what we are crafting, and what is crafting us back.
Unveil Ideas, Ignite Innovation
Otso Lindfors
Founder & Visionary at Apxt Consulting
Passionate visionary at the helm of Apxt, igniting the fusion of design, strategy, and innovation. With a profound curiosity and an insatiable appetite for redefining possibilities, I orchestrate our journey to unravel the strategic depths of business and design. Just as a composer envisions harmonies, I craft strategic narratives that resonate with authenticity and excellence, leading Apxt towards a future defined by innovation.
