How Eshu Helps Me See What’s Broken
Being able to see both sides like the Orisha Eshu—is the only way to stay sane in this business.
Let me break it down.
Folks like to write Eshu off as a trickster. Don’t let that lazy narrative fool you. It’s a lesson in perspective.
Picture Eshu walking the crossroads of a village. He’s wearing a robe—red on one side, black on the other. The sun is beating down like hellfire, so he takes a sip from his gourd and listens.
Two farmers are working on opposite sides of the road. Best friends since the sandbox.
The farmer on the right looks up and yells, “Look at the guy in the red robe standing in the heat.”
The farmer on the left squints from under his hat. “Nah, you’re tripping. He’s wearing all black.”
Eshu just smirks and keeps walking.
The friends start yapping.
“You’re crazy.”
“You’re drunk.”
Suddenly, it’s not about the robe anymore. It’s personal. Tools get dropped, fists go up, and they’re rolling around in the dirt, trying to knock the sense into each other.
Eshu steps in before they kill each other. “Enough. You’re both right, and you’re both blind.”
He turns slowly.
The men finally see the other side of the robe. The silence is loud. They realize they were ready to bleed over half a truth.
I look at AI the exact same way.
There’s the view from the inside and the view from the outside. Until you’ve walked down the middle of the road, you don’t know how the machine actually works.
I’ve seen the same mess in Media and Insurance.
Here is the reality: These systems aren’t gods. They’re tools. They are fragile, they are flawed, and they will continue to break.
Stop picking a side and open your eyes to the whole fractured picture.