When the Gods Went Missing

The provided text is an excerpt from a 2025 Medium article by Greg Twemlow titled "When the Gods Went Missing," which argues that modern civilisation is unsustainable because it has lost the practice of "counsel." Twemlow defines counsel as the ethical exchange between wisdom and power that ensures decisions are guided by conscience, not merely profit or procedure. The author uses the 2018–2019 Menindee fish kill in Australia as a central parable, illustrating how "gross negligence" and administrative indifference resulted from replacing moral care with technical management. The piece further examines how ego, narcissism, and arrogance fuel a culture of acceleration, where systems are built to perform without reflection. Ultimately, Twemlow advocates for a reconstruction based on slowing down, restoring memory, and prioritising listening and empathy over frictionless efficiency to achieve true, lasting progress. Read the article.About the Author - Greg Twemlow writes and teaches at the intersection of technology, education, and human judgment. He works with educators and businesses to make AI explainable and assessable in classrooms and boardrooms — to ensure AI users show their process and own their decisions. His cognition protocol, the Context & Critique Rule™, is built on a three-step process: Evidence → Cognition → Discernment — a bridge from what’s scattered to what’s chosen. Context & Critique → Accountable AI™. © 2025 Greg Twemlow. “Context & Critique → Accountable AI” and “Context & Critique Rule” are unregistered trademarks (™).