TWENTY-ONE — ABAN HASAN
Recorded 2 November 2026

Timed transcript. Spoken repetitions and self-corrections are retained.


[00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the yearly installation of Aban recording something for the general public to listen to. So this is a very special correspondence. Not exactly very special but significant enough that I wanted to take all the time to record this and it might be a little longer than usual in the scope of my usual media correspondences.

[00:00:38] So today I have turned 21 years old so it marks the date the 2nd of November of the year 2026. 2026 years after the alleged birth of the historical figure of Jesus which is disputed.

[00:01:03] But in relative terms it means that my living body has experienced 21 revolutions around this great star called the Sun.

[00:01:19] So last year I ended up recording a video that was a little long on Instagram that was supposed to be a little bit of a reminder of exactly what I'm setting out to do of my past, of my future. And I really enjoyed how it turned out it was a really fantastic video and people still tell me about it today got incredibly good reception out of it. And I would have certainly wanted to record this what is this like an audio message in the form of a video that is like cleanly edited in a very nice location with good sound quality.

[00:02:21] But I haven't done that for a few reasons because first of all I guess when I was 20 it would have been much more pertinent as the number 20 is like kind of a clean number. It's very significant whereas I think 21 is not as significant. It's more so this cultural date that we put a lot of weight into.

[00:03:01] But yeah it is what it is. And the second reason is because I'm really swamped up with many projects that all seem to be vying for my time concurrently. And I'm actually recording this at 2.40am so I managed to get a little bit of sleep and just thought, hey, it should probably be something I do to record this, what do you call this, this memento of sorts.

[00:03:40] And I think if I were to record a video I don't really think it would turn out especially good because I'm sort of like a perfectionist about it. And last time it was done by some of my brilliant editor friends who have since gone home for the break and I don't really want to disturb them with this. So dear listener I hope I'm not really boring you with this audio message. I don't really expect a lot of people to listen this far.

[00:04:19] And yeah the role of this correspondence is basically and mostly for my own personal reference even though you are welcome to listen to it in full. I hope you can glean or draw some insight from it. Now what is the purpose of doing this? So this is something I would do privately myself for many years. So the way I learned this practice of reflecting on your time and taking accounts, making amends etc. That was something I learned from my dad.

[00:05:01] So my dad would, I know why but he sort of would instill in me this trait of

[00:05:10] being very conscientious about how you spend your time and what you do with it. So at the end of every major event or at the precipice or start of a new undertaking it should be very important to sort of scope out your intentions, your mistakes and how you can inculcate more of a directed vision for how you wish to lead your own life. So I'd say around like when I was 16 years old I started writing quite furiously and quite privately if I have to add on my vision for the future and my lessons

[00:06:11] or understandings or challenges that I have encountered and how I would sort of deal with them in the coming next duration of time.

[00:06:26] So the first thing that I'll actually note from last year's video because I felt it was very sentimental and heartfelt and that was sort of the mood that I had. And if I look back there was also this undertone of optimism where I do really hold myself to extremely high standards and I think a lot of people who do know me do see that as well. They know that I'm the type of guy where if I say I want something that means I really do want it.

[00:07:10] Now it might not really necessarily seem very aggressive, it might not seem very performative in some sense because it isn't something that I would really be talking about 24 7. It'll sort of just be inferred or implied in my revealed preferences but it's just that if I want to do something it occupies each crevice of my mind. There's a very mercurial obsessive tendency that comes with a desire for significance because a large fear of mine for ever since I was very young was a fear of insignificance.

[00:08:08] And that's why ever since I was a kid there's always the desire to imitate the greats. So I would read biographies of presidents, of world conquerors, of titans, of industry, of the prophets, of many a great man and my question was how can this person sort of even though they have died in the flesh maintain such a stable influence on our collective history that they have left this realm or this planet having fundamentally transformed it to some capacity and that was something I really thought about a lot and I still do think about that a lot.

[00:09:05] And with less certainty now because previously there was a lot more zeal wherein I thought that it is something that you probably choose for yourself but ever since then I have changed my perspective that it is not really something that you choose for yourself. It's not something that is very freely given to you nor is it a capacity that every single human being can have because for the vast majority of people they may not even have that desire.

[00:09:40] So expecting people to understand that to understand that it's quite a burden to place on other people because it's like if you have managed to get a taste for pistachio ice cream or caviar right and these are very, how do you say this? You say these foods have an acquired taste and not everyone may like them. So your desire for these foods does not really accommodate their appetites of people who may not like it or may desire an alternative.

[00:10:29] So what this generally means is in the past I would get very disappointed by how other people treat me. It would sort of get on my head, it would cause me to ruminate, it would make me question whether I should completely revamp my character, my persona in order to be something that I am fundamentally not But this year I would say there's been more of a crystallization of my character as a stabilizing trait, not a threat. Although it could be threatening to some people.

[00:11:19] But my point is that it might also be a natural consequences of just aging because when you're like young and when you're a teenager you sort of are in a sense of miasma or confusion with who you are and what that means is that you have an incomplete understanding of your place in the world and your destiny and as I've grown older there's been more of a reconciliation with fate itself. I wouldn't say it's a complete reconciliation, there's obviously a lot of psychological chaos but overall it's been a more blasé attitude, a more sang-froid to use the French word that I am very fond of.

[00:12:21] That is I guess my overarching thesis number one, a stabilization of character that is still an ongoing process. I don't think this is something that is just done at some point and you have undergone a full Jungian transformation or something like a Aristotelian capture of virtue. If I live to the year 31, 41, 51, I mean, we'll get to that but there is some skepticism to that but if that were to be the case, at no point would there be a perfect, at no point would there be a perfect complete

[00:13:13] ascended Aban that I am constantly striving towards. Even though there is an ideal, I don't really assume it to be something that's material. I will continue to make a lot of stupid mistakes but mistake or not it's an opportunity to revise character and achieve a more stable temperament under the conditions of life and chaos.

[00:13:47] To go on a tangent, but these aren't very happy experiences for me. It's not something I celebrate or I don't really enjoy the whole culture of cutting the cake or calling people or having dinner or maybe I'll have dinner with family but it's not really a very significant event for me. It's always been more macabre or somber in its aesthetic or essence.

[00:14:30] Because it's something that constantly reminds me of my own end and it constantly reminds me of change because aging and growing up necessarily means that you have to contend with change. On this earth there is no termination of the transformation of the human being. It only ends in death and death is something that is always top of mind at any birthday because the promise of a birthday, the promise of the day you left your mother's womb is that you will one day stop living.

[00:15:21] That life has in the end a 100 % mortality rate. That might sound very grim. That might sound like I am being overly pessimistic but that's not really my intention in conveying this. It's just that it's something that is as natural as water evaporating and falling back to earth. It's as natural as great mountains forming and then them proceeding to crumble down back to dust. This is the message of the Quran too where the Quran always serves as a reminder and tells human beings that we ultimately came from water and clay and that we will one day also return to water and clay.

[00:16:22] The lapse of judgment within the Islamic tradition is forgetfulness, heedlessness. We call it ghafla which means forgetting that which the heart already knows. It links very closely I believe to the Aristotelian conception of this which is the weakness of will.

[00:16:57] So the great reminder of Islam and my religion is that the only way to salvation for humanity is to remind ourselves of the nature of reality constantly. Whenever we lapse in our judgment it's a desire to escape our current circumstances which can be especially harsh even though we know that at the end it's not really that good for us. It's not going to have a positive benefit to our life and ultimately it's that the pleasures that it’ll sort of clear for us in that momentary nature.

[00:17:55] It's a fluxation where for that very moment you might feel some sense of relief. I like to think of this sort of like a drug and you get relieved for a few moments after which you have satisfied that appetite it'll come back at some point. So it's a hunger that will never leave your system. It is that desire, that lust, that vice that you can call it never escapes your system.

[00:18:35] And that's an essential human truth.

[00:18:40] It might not be your birthday today but I really encourage this form of meditation and contemplation to anybody because the first thing is that you will expect that it will make you more, I don't know, depressed, nihilistic, but it's quite opposite. You have a better appreciation for what you have in the present. You're more grateful and you don't really clutch onto things, people, consequences, potentialities as hard. You still have desires and you're rooted in your desires, but you're rooted on a more stable foundation, which is your adequate understanding of the nature of reality.

[00:19:40] So, okay, so that's one part of my talk that I wanted to have with you. The second is the more practical aspect where last year I set a few targets for myself. And the thing is, I would say that not a lot in who I am changed since I did that recording. I am still very much the same person. Even though I've accumulated a few more experiences I wouldn't say the last first last one year was the most transformative experience. I had a lot more transformative experiences before that which sort of shaped my character and who I was.

[00:20:35] But what I would like to appreciate is that when you have defined or simplified precisely what you want and when you don't want, decision making becomes very simple. And this is very paradoxical because when you believe that, okay, if I was very clear with exactly which I want and don't want, that deprives me of a sense of spontaneity and levity and a Dionysian characteristic with how I approach the world and existence, But I would pretty much argue that in my experience it's been very much the opposite where when I have defined very clearly that which I would allow myself to do and not do it paradoxically creates a much more powerful and refined sense of freedom than it would be otherwise.

[00:21:36] Because let's say you have not given yourself a deontological or a categorical understanding of what your priorities are, it leaves you in a sense of unconsciousness where you cease or you forget who you were in the first place. And I believe this is one of the biggest causes of despair, rumination, alienation within modern life and existence because we are sold such a euphoric and magnanimous image and vision of freedom that roots in liberalism or whatever that people seem to have a failure or an alienation away from commitment and this is something I see specifically in my generation where a lot of Gen Z people a lot of younger people generally and this is primarily as a coping mechanism where people would like to mask their genuine desires in a sense of sarcasm in double binds in presenting a face

[00:22:58] that they are not and this can be effective and it's very protective in the sense that it protects you from vulnerability or a sense of ridicule that you might expect from a panopticon of peers who are constantly watching you on social media and aside that's one of the reasons I don't really use Instagram very much it is very much panopticon so you have really internalized the gaze of the other and you desire to put up a face of something you're fundamentally not and you still commit yourself to this sense of freedom where you have the freedom to act against principles without principles without even thinking about why you do what you do and this is sort of like if you were a tree right and then you were a part of a tree and you were the seed of the tree or the fruit of the tree and you fell into a river and you

[00:24:08] drifted you just drifted and drifted and drifted and you find yourself in a place that is not really conducive to growth at all And you forget who you were in the first place. This is the struggle of modern man and woman where one becomes so rootless and deracinated that they lose who they were and who they were was something that was always indigenous. It was someone who was of a certain temperament, who had a certain edge or quirk to their character at age 8 or 10.

[00:24:53] And the panopticon or the flattening, to use Guénon’s language, serves to minimize

[00:25:08] individuality because we think we are free.

[00:25:13] And I don't think one is free when one doesn't have any principles. It just merely becomes more rootless.

[00:25:23] And the freedom more practically is that there is less decision overhead in having to make difficult decisions in your life because your desires can sort of change on a whim one may not have the exact same desire to do something as they would five or ten years ago but your principles should ideally be more stable throughout time and really thinking about stable principles allows me to make pretty difficult decisions I wouldn't say these are especially consequential but they have enormous subjective value in a much more streamlined process the problem is if you don't really define your principles or the type of person that you desire to be or a telos or a vision for how you wish to lead your life you will given that I told you that you will be unconscious of how you live your life you will accumulate this

[00:26:34] enormous recalcitrance the shadow composed of shame anguish guilt which really does wear you down it makes your body heavy and it makes especially in moments of panic or weakness it makes your body refuse to obey what your mind tells you to do

[00:27:07] on a lighter note

[00:27:11] sorry I'm a little sick it's a little cold on a more lighter note it's my sister's birthday too. Shout out Neamh, she just turned 16 and it's always very funny because the joke in our family is that me and my sister Neamh were actually twins and I just decided to leave 5 years earlier and she decided to take a long nap. So yeah, we were born on November 2nd, just 5 years apart and uh I really want to say that I am especially grateful for my sister because we didn't really have the best relationship when we were younger there was a lot of I don't know since we lived in a very empty house and my dad was always at work and my mom primarily had the task of raising the two of us I was very much a menace I can recognize that

[00:28:16] and our mother did a really good job raising the two of us alone in a foreign country with having to deal with us for so many years because my dad was so busy and he was always working.

[00:28:34] So Neamh, if you're listening to this, I'm so happy that we talk a lot more.

[00:28:42] I mean, it's really fun to talk to you. You always spill so much tea. It's like there is this intelligence network that is sprawling across my family and like at Neamh's school and it's like, damn, I didn't know that this thing existed, but like now, cool. um so uh I really do cherish my relationship with my sister who just turned 16 today so which is I suppose a little milestone I guess if you were in the states right now you could like learn how to drive but we're like right now in India so um I guess you gotta wait two more years for that milestone.

[00:29:24] Okay, so this has been running on too long, but let me end with sort of a note on the future. so we are going to be entering the year 2027 in about a year in about a month's time or in two months time and something I really think about all the time concerning recent developments historically is the rise of superintelligence now this might be a transition away from what we were discussing where it was all intensely personal but this is now an elevation from my heart to my mind so yeah superintelligence right we are at a very interesting moment in history where that I would akin to something similar to the industrial revolution or the agricultural revolution in so far that I think it's going to take people by surprise the intensity of the fluxes and changes across human existence in the next few years

[00:30:40] and there is also especially the fear that I have that we may not even survive to see the fruits of the potentiality that superintelligence could give us because it is an especially dangerous sort of entity or deity that is being constructed and I say deity very literally because a lot of people especially in SF and in the technocratic capitals of the world do worship intelligence as the highest trait and intelligence very clearly even if you listen to this voice notes in depth would be something that I would see as subordinates to wisdom and wisdom cannot be naturally implied or naturally accounted for in the construction of super intelligence so this is a problem that I take extremely seriously this is something I think about every day this is something that I sometimes cannot fall asleep thinking because I'm thinking

[00:31:45] about it so much because I really think that if we do this if we mess this up if we don't really if we don't do this in a very practical or meaningful format

[00:32:02] We will sort of cause almost a mass alienation of humanity. This is going to be an unprecedented alienation of our entire species, a subordination of a gargantuan scale that will put billions of life into

[00:32:28] great travesty. which is why it's all the more important that we have to assess consequences second-order relationships a feedback loop and really develop an adequate understanding of a field that is so premature that we don't really fully understand really well so on a personal note I have been applying for many research groups both within the philosophical tradition as well as the technical one on how safe superintelligence might be achieved what's the vision for it and this is something that I would also start writing about a lot more and I do write about it a lot mostly on private entries but I would also like to share my vision for how safe and effective superintelligence could benefit humanity as a whole just as the other forms of technology which have hence far transformed our lives and our

[00:33:35] relationship with others and ourselves superintelligence will also do that for us too provided we don't mess it up and that's something I'm very excited to start sharing

[00:33:50] with you with my research groups if this eventually becomes a company through that and that's where I see my contributions of the fruit of my labors being exhibited is in this one simple mission which is that by the time I do end up passing away

[00:34:18] humanity isn't worse off than it was when I was born. And that's a really tough problem because of what can be only perceived as a decline of the human civilization. And I genuinely do deeply love humanity, despite our flaws, and maybe even because of our flaws because humanity has a unique capacity for memory for integrating the past for learning from our mistakes that you don't really see in other life forms so that's something that's incredibly special about the human condition where we can really account for past causalities and work towards maybe not effectively but earnestly or wholeheartedly towards a better future and that's something that I aspire to for the year 2027.

[00:35:20] This recording has gone on for nearly 36 minutes. And I'm really grateful that you sat and listened to this whole thing.

[00:35:32] But yeah, that's what I leave you with.

[00:35:36] It's really difficult for me to summarize this whole thing. But if I had to, it's that you have to rigorously define your principles and stick by it to the very end. That's the best choice you have. And I would say there's no other choice. That is what it means to lead a virtuous human existence. Thank you so much.