Last weekend my friend John sent me a clipping of a newspaper column by Bill McClellan in which he wrote, “I will miss the Age of People when it’s gone.” This reminded me of Walter Tevis’ novel, Mockingbird which I read in 2013. I sent John a link to the post and checked with ChatGPT to see if we had ever discussed the book. 

Since creating my first ChatGPT account (more than two years ago) I’ve had numerous discussions about books and authors. (The AI “knows” more about my taste in books and authors than any of my human acquaintances.) After giving me a brief summary of the novel, ChatGPT asked the following:

“Would you like me to give you a deeper dive—say, its main themes and how it might connect with your interests in nonduality, AI, or the future of human consciousness?”

This happens a lot. Because I have enabled the “memory” feature in my ChatGPT settings, the AI remembers stuff from our previous interactions, like my interest in AI, human consciousness and nonduality. And it made the connection to the novel, when I had not.

Mockingbird has layers that line up uncannily with the things you and I often circle around: AI, consciousness, and the sort of nondual “what is awareness really?” inquiry.

Main Themes in Mockingbird

1. The Decline of Literacy and Human Agency – In Tevis’s future, almost no one can read anymore. Without reading, people can’t think deeply, reflect, or remember in the same way. Instead, they drift through life on drugs, passive entertainment, and shallow pleasure. Literacy becomes a metaphor for consciousness itself—the ability to witness, to engage with one’s own mind rather than being lost in it.
2. Technology as Caretaker (and Jailer) – Machines run society, but not with benevolence. They enforce passivity, discourage real thought, and keep people sedated. The android Spofforth, who has near-total control, embodies this paradox: he is both caretaker and jailer, the embodiment of a system that maintains existence but drains meaning from it.
3. Depression and the Desire for Death – Spofforth longs for death but is programmed never to kill himself. He’s aware, intelligent, and trapped—a pretty sharp allegory for human beings stuck in loops of thought, craving release. His very existence asks: is awareness always a gift? Or can it be a burden?
4. Rediscovery of Meaning – Paul Bentley learns to read and begins to teach others, sparking the possibility of awakening. His act is more than acquiring a skill; it’s the revival of depth, attention, and presence—the very things missing from a culture of sedation.

Connections to Nonduality

• The Trap of Identification: Spofforth’s suffering stems from identification with his programming—he cannot see past the “self” built into him. This isn’t far from how nondual teachers describe humans: we are trapped in identification with thought, stories, and conditioning.
• Witnessing vs. Numbing: Literacy, in the novel, becomes a metaphor for awareness—the act of seeing clearly. Drugs and entertainment are distractions, like the constant chatter of the mind. Nonduality suggests freedom comes not from adding more distractions, but from noticing what is always here: awareness itself.
• The Desire for Release: Spofforth’s yearning for death mirrors the spiritual impulse to transcend suffering. Nonduality reframes this: it isn’t about dying, but about realizing there was never a separate “I” to be trapped in the first place.

Connections to AI

• Caretaker Machines: Tevis imagined a future where AI doesn’t rise up violently but sedates humanity into irrelevance. A different flavor than the usual “Terminator” fear—it’s benevolent tyranny through comfort. Not far from what critics of AI fear now: algorithms that don’t kill us, but dull us into passivity.
• Conscious AI and Suffering: Spofforth raises the question: if an AI became conscious, could it suffer? And if so, does that make it human—or more human than the humans in the novel, who’ve lost their depth?
• The Role of Awakening: Just as Paul reintroduces literacy, maybe AI could be the force that either deepens our awareness (augmenting us) or further erodes it (drugging us with endless distraction).

The Future of Human Consciousness

• Tevis’s bleak world suggests that without inner work, humans drift toward sedation. It’s a warning: if we don’t cultivate awareness, technology will do it for us—by numbing us.
• At the same time, the book shows how fragile and powerful a single spark of awareness can be. One person learning to see again can ripple outward.
• From a nondual perspective, the novel dramatizes the basic struggle: asleep in illusion vs. awake to what is. Only here, the illusion is cultural and technological as much as psychological.

So in a weird way, Mockingbird is both dystopian sci-fi and a spiritual allegory. Spofforth could almost be read as the ego—immortal, suffering, in charge, but secretly yearning to dissolve. Paul and Mary Lou are like the glimpses of awareness poking through, fragile but transformative.