This second helping of Schmachtenberger’s grand vision offers the same thin gruel. "Emergence" and "aligned incentives" are pretty words for a world run by creatures who only understand the incentive of the sharpened stake or the loaded gun.
This "perceptual shift" towards "interconnectedness" is a noble sentiment for a philosophy seminar.
Out in the blood-soaked arena where power is truly brokered, it is laughable. He speaks of "closed-loop systems" and a "mimetic shift" as if the vampire squid of global finance will suddenly develop a conscience and begin recycling. The architects of our ruin will not be swayed by appeals to their better nature, because they possess none. His dismissal of revolution or strong centralized action in favor of some nebulous, bottom-up awakening of "consciousness" is naive when the jackboot is already on the throat.
The man speaks of humanity becoming "crew" on "spaceship Earth," a quaint notion. He fails to see that the ship is already holed beneath the waterline by cosmic forces, by the inexorable ~12,000-year cycle of planetary upheaval that makes his economic and social tinkering look like a child rearranging pebbles before a tsunami. The real "crisis" and subsequent "emergence" will be far less gentle than his theories suggest.
Tough guy! It’s easier to tear down than to build up, it’s easier to criticize than to propose. It’s useful to keep on pointing out the bottomless greed and bloodlust of the people pulling us into this cataclysm, but we need people thinking about what emerges from the other side of it.
It’s obvious that we won’t make it through, but our ideas will. And while you may have given up on the future because you think the world ends with you, others are working on building in the ruins to pass on something of worth to pass on to the generations that follow.
Save your anger for people who deserve it, Daniel is not one of them.
When a writer like Kasanoff chooses to amplify such grand theories, he invites response. And Schmachtenberger himself, by offering these ideas to the world, surely understands that intellectual grappling, sometimes fierce, is part of the process. He is, one presumes, equipped to handle critique. My digital barbs are hardly fatal.
My purpose in replying to Kasanoff's presentation was specific. You speak of "what emerges" and "building in the ruins." Kasanoff, channeling Schmachtenberger, lays out a vision for this emergence. My intervention aims to inject a dose of profound, and perhaps unsettling, reality into that discussion. The "ruins" we face will not merely be the detritus of human folly or systemic collapse, as dire as those are. There is a colossal, non-negotiable force at play: the Earth's ~12,000-year cycle of cataclysmic upheaval and violent renewal. This is not some esoteric fancy. It is a brutal rhythm etched into the planet’s deep history.
If Kasanoff’s summary of Schmachtenberger’s framework—or indeed, any framework proposed for our future—fails to integrate this fundamental, geophysically-driven planetary reset into its core assumptions, then it is, with all due respect to the intellectual effort involved, a blueprint for a sandcastle sketched just below the high-tide line. My compulsion is to drag this inconvenient, planetary-scale truth into the conversation Kasanoff has brought to the fore, lest we comfort ourselves with elegantly constructed illusions while the very ground shifts beneath our feet.
Robert Wright put forth many similar ideas in “Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny.” In short, properties such as emergence, positive sum outcomes eventually “outcompete” zero-sum outcomes, seem to be baked in to the evolution of life. It’s been a long time since I’ve read the book but I believe he also argues that it sometimes doesn’t appear to is this way because of the fits and starts, and setbacks that occur during the zero sum and negative sum
outcomes occur (e.g., world war). Even still, the ever increasing “emergence” of cooperation in human society seems to be a phenomenon that happens on autopilot. If we as a species recognized that sooner, we could act in more positive sum, interconnected ways now (in alignment with the gist of these articles), thereby reducing suffering, and improving life on the planet sooner.
Andrew, I read the book years ago and it heightened my awareness of the degree to which we are trained (by every sporting event and action movie) to embrace zero sum thinking.
Probably the cynic in me, but I doubt this is possible. There are far too many who would actively resist and more than a few of them have both power and influence.
It's already happening. Community wealth. Wellbeing Economies. Regenerative Economic. Heck, a celebrity influencer has developed a whole 15million follower platform around it. He just doesn't discuss the theory or cascading effects of what he's doing. On the outside, it looks like he's just inspiring people to follow their dreams.
Anyway, it's happening everywhere. Over 300 movements. This is my wheelhouse and it's difficult to keep up with the terms and approaches.
It's already happening. Largely it's just missing an accessible marketing campaign to inspire more ordinary people to take action. They don't have to understand it, just be inspired by it.
On an individual level, 300 sounds like a real start. But on a global level it's pitifully small. And this would need to be global. Yes, it is a start and, who knows maybe it will take off and expand at exponential rates, quickly encompassing a large enough part of the world to make it reality. Recall though, I'm a cynic and I don't think 8 billion people can do anything together that they aren't forced to do by either their leadership or circumstance.
I highly recommend reading Pieter de Beers work on Power and Coordination! Non-forced coordination is emergent :)
Also, the 300 movements each contain thousands of organisations untold numbers of individuals (though one influencers platform in this movement has 15 million followers), no one has even mapped them all, though they're working on that during Fito's Network conference that's ongoing. Organisations and intiatives from local to global, from individual scale to communal to governmental and regional
The solutions and the people doing this are there -- they're just not visible! :)
and those in power are actively degrading people's minds with social networks, continuous influx of dopamine doses, reducing attention span, just to say a few buzzwords. oh, did I mention the so-called "AI" technology? it is extremely efficient in creating distractions in huge quantities at a click of a button. this raises serious doubts of whether people in the "developed" countries were capable of such a radical change of mindset.
These comments are such a fucking bummer. Nihilism seems to be the new drug du jour. Yes it's a difficult proposition, of course it is. But I challenge you to look at how a mindset of inevitable collapse benefits you right now. If it's all going to hell, might as well keep pretending there's nothing you can do. How about trying to increase coordination in your community? There are projects out there that at scale could start to look like a sustainable world, they just need your attention and bandwidth. No wonder Daniel has been off the grid for a year. His genius is met with such blatant pessimism, it must be exhausting.
A lot of this really resonates with me. I love the stuff about internalizing externalities and closed-loop systems. I read “The Tragedy of the Commons” in the 70s, and we’ve done precious little about it in the last 50 years. Aligning incentives instead of making everything a zero-sum equation is a game-changer. We’ve done some of that and seen positive results, the Marshall Plan being an example that comes to mind. The mindset of “never enough” leads to war, poverty for some and insane wealth for others, and ruinous, gluttonous exploitation of resources, including human beings.
It’s hard to criticize the ideas discussed, but it seems like both Schmachtenberger and Kasanoff are squeamish about the actual stakes here. Systems and all that, yes, but we are talking about overthrowing global slave empires. I don’t think either is ready for that.
Wow, time for some education, where there’s no reflection of what Teilhard do Chardin introduced, carried forward by Thomas Berry, and then on to Brian Thomas Swimme as the best storyteller of the Universe Story. Thirty-five years ago Hubble gave us science that changed our perception of what’s going on, where we went from a fixed universe and Earth here for us to use, to a living, expanding universe where we are scientifically defined as one humanity and a new creation story would have us as the privileged species that takes care of our home. Tune us into that and everything changes. Changed peope make a changed world. Swimme says it’s a bigger change than when Copernicus took Earth out of the center of the universe and we went from kings to democracy. See more in my playlist of Substack posts with Brian Swimme, and join me in delivering this game-changer to the world: https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/s/brian-thomas-swimme
30 years ago, those decade, as ecologists and biologists all warning of infinite growth on finite planet. Sustainable development cos INSUSTAINANLE is just STUPID.
Big ideas like zero population growth, not keeping up with the Joneses. Extensive tree planeting, conservation areas, hemp, and a big one, fly less and eat less meat. Walk more. All of it.
And the planet said..no.
And the experts said.
"If you don't your Gunna regret it".
And suddenly the giant meteor is crashing through the atmosphere, the planet had it's experts stolen over the last five years by Darkforces.
And NOW... Everyone's like.
"Oh, I've got a good idea!!".
It's like "Don't look up", except the ecologists are mostly all sitting at the duning room table waiting sadly for the explosion.
We are doing collapse.
Get used to it.
Hopefully future generations will actually listen to GOOD experts, not liars.
For those interested in the systems evolution side of this, really suggest you give Michael Haupt a follow.
Also, I can't believe Daniel Schmachtenberger doesn't know about community wealth and wellbeing economies? There are already over 300 movements creating this in the areas of Ecology, Commons, Wellness, Systems, Tech, Economy, and Culture/Media.
How do I get on a podcast with him? Do you know him? It would be important to enlighten his audience that this already exists, it just largely lacks the marketing campaign, which Connection Engine is the crowdsourced version of.
It’s so hard to see how we change this cyclical process…
“I have too much to lose, my kids will lose out if we give away what we have to those who have less. Even if there is enough for everyone, why should I not use my power and take more so that mine will be better? Better able to defend what they have from those who would take it?”
The inevitable deterioration of society and availability of resources will not foster global only local unity and I can’t see how we get from here to there without fighting…
It’s so hard to see that I went outside for a look. I cast my mind out in a 100 mile radius and encountered 2,000,000 people (I know!?). It’s 9pm and most were resting, and my world view says mostly content. This is a lovely place!
Legend has it that 10% of these own 80% of the wealth here and 1% own 80% of that. These 20,000 people have never had to work a day in their lives, nor will their kids. They also have 20 generations of experience in mobilising others to protect what they have. I’ve heard they loan money to the banks for our mortgages and money to the government for our welfare…
It seems to me that the system that needs to evolve is essentially feudal. In the same way that Mr Schmachtenberger says adopting personal change is futile, it’s the Lords and Ladies, both new money and old, that need to be convinced there is a better way.
Given the many complexities of life in concert with the frenetic pace of life, I also believe that we are at a crossroads, one that if we don't soon take the right path we're all in trouble. Something I've learned over the years as a fish biologist trying to protect the environment is that the fast pace of life is possibly the biggest impediment we, as a species, face in getting a handle on all of this. Dr. Richard Swenson writes about profusion in his book Hurtling Toward Oblivion, in which he states: "Never before have we seen such complexity, and never before has the complexity been this tightly coupled…Everything grows: everything is on the increase, and every year the speed of that increase is greater….always having more is such an accepted part of life that not having more would be regarded as abnormal….Humans will always remain behind the curve in our understanding of profusion." Hopefully Daniel and the late Terry Patten, among others, can help get us on the right track. I recommend this book by Mr. Patten titled A New Republic of the Heart: An Ethos for Revolutionaries.
Bruce H. Lipton, PhD in developmental biology, wrote a book called Spontaneous Evolution. He makes the exact same statement. Humanity must begin to function like a living organism with each cell dependent on the proper functioning of every other cell. We must become humanity, not human beings.
This second helping of Schmachtenberger’s grand vision offers the same thin gruel. "Emergence" and "aligned incentives" are pretty words for a world run by creatures who only understand the incentive of the sharpened stake or the loaded gun.
This "perceptual shift" towards "interconnectedness" is a noble sentiment for a philosophy seminar.
Out in the blood-soaked arena where power is truly brokered, it is laughable. He speaks of "closed-loop systems" and a "mimetic shift" as if the vampire squid of global finance will suddenly develop a conscience and begin recycling. The architects of our ruin will not be swayed by appeals to their better nature, because they possess none. His dismissal of revolution or strong centralized action in favor of some nebulous, bottom-up awakening of "consciousness" is naive when the jackboot is already on the throat.
The man speaks of humanity becoming "crew" on "spaceship Earth," a quaint notion. He fails to see that the ship is already holed beneath the waterline by cosmic forces, by the inexorable ~12,000-year cycle of planetary upheaval that makes his economic and social tinkering look like a child rearranging pebbles before a tsunami. The real "crisis" and subsequent "emergence" will be far less gentle than his theories suggest.
Tough guy! It’s easier to tear down than to build up, it’s easier to criticize than to propose. It’s useful to keep on pointing out the bottomless greed and bloodlust of the people pulling us into this cataclysm, but we need people thinking about what emerges from the other side of it.
It’s obvious that we won’t make it through, but our ideas will. And while you may have given up on the future because you think the world ends with you, others are working on building in the ruins to pass on something of worth to pass on to the generations that follow.
Save your anger for people who deserve it, Daniel is not one of them.
When a writer like Kasanoff chooses to amplify such grand theories, he invites response. And Schmachtenberger himself, by offering these ideas to the world, surely understands that intellectual grappling, sometimes fierce, is part of the process. He is, one presumes, equipped to handle critique. My digital barbs are hardly fatal.
My purpose in replying to Kasanoff's presentation was specific. You speak of "what emerges" and "building in the ruins." Kasanoff, channeling Schmachtenberger, lays out a vision for this emergence. My intervention aims to inject a dose of profound, and perhaps unsettling, reality into that discussion. The "ruins" we face will not merely be the detritus of human folly or systemic collapse, as dire as those are. There is a colossal, non-negotiable force at play: the Earth's ~12,000-year cycle of cataclysmic upheaval and violent renewal. This is not some esoteric fancy. It is a brutal rhythm etched into the planet’s deep history.
If Kasanoff’s summary of Schmachtenberger’s framework—or indeed, any framework proposed for our future—fails to integrate this fundamental, geophysically-driven planetary reset into its core assumptions, then it is, with all due respect to the intellectual effort involved, a blueprint for a sandcastle sketched just below the high-tide line. My compulsion is to drag this inconvenient, planetary-scale truth into the conversation Kasanoff has brought to the fore, lest we comfort ourselves with elegantly constructed illusions while the very ground shifts beneath our feet.
Robert Wright put forth many similar ideas in “Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny.” In short, properties such as emergence, positive sum outcomes eventually “outcompete” zero-sum outcomes, seem to be baked in to the evolution of life. It’s been a long time since I’ve read the book but I believe he also argues that it sometimes doesn’t appear to is this way because of the fits and starts, and setbacks that occur during the zero sum and negative sum
outcomes occur (e.g., world war). Even still, the ever increasing “emergence” of cooperation in human society seems to be a phenomenon that happens on autopilot. If we as a species recognized that sooner, we could act in more positive sum, interconnected ways now (in alignment with the gist of these articles), thereby reducing suffering, and improving life on the planet sooner.
Andrew, I read the book years ago and it heightened my awareness of the degree to which we are trained (by every sporting event and action movie) to embrace zero sum thinking.
Probably the cynic in me, but I doubt this is possible. There are far too many who would actively resist and more than a few of them have both power and influence.
It's already happening. Community wealth. Wellbeing Economies. Regenerative Economic. Heck, a celebrity influencer has developed a whole 15million follower platform around it. He just doesn't discuss the theory or cascading effects of what he's doing. On the outside, it looks like he's just inspiring people to follow their dreams.
Anyway, it's happening everywhere. Over 300 movements. This is my wheelhouse and it's difficult to keep up with the terms and approaches.
It's already happening. Largely it's just missing an accessible marketing campaign to inspire more ordinary people to take action. They don't have to understand it, just be inspired by it.
On an individual level, 300 sounds like a real start. But on a global level it's pitifully small. And this would need to be global. Yes, it is a start and, who knows maybe it will take off and expand at exponential rates, quickly encompassing a large enough part of the world to make it reality. Recall though, I'm a cynic and I don't think 8 billion people can do anything together that they aren't forced to do by either their leadership or circumstance.
I highly recommend reading Pieter de Beers work on Power and Coordination! Non-forced coordination is emergent :)
Also, the 300 movements each contain thousands of organisations untold numbers of individuals (though one influencers platform in this movement has 15 million followers), no one has even mapped them all, though they're working on that during Fito's Network conference that's ongoing. Organisations and intiatives from local to global, from individual scale to communal to governmental and regional
The solutions and the people doing this are there -- they're just not visible! :)
and those in power are actively degrading people's minds with social networks, continuous influx of dopamine doses, reducing attention span, just to say a few buzzwords. oh, did I mention the so-called "AI" technology? it is extremely efficient in creating distractions in huge quantities at a click of a button. this raises serious doubts of whether people in the "developed" countries were capable of such a radical change of mindset.
These comments are such a fucking bummer. Nihilism seems to be the new drug du jour. Yes it's a difficult proposition, of course it is. But I challenge you to look at how a mindset of inevitable collapse benefits you right now. If it's all going to hell, might as well keep pretending there's nothing you can do. How about trying to increase coordination in your community? There are projects out there that at scale could start to look like a sustainable world, they just need your attention and bandwidth. No wonder Daniel has been off the grid for a year. His genius is met with such blatant pessimism, it must be exhausting.
A lot of this really resonates with me. I love the stuff about internalizing externalities and closed-loop systems. I read “The Tragedy of the Commons” in the 70s, and we’ve done precious little about it in the last 50 years. Aligning incentives instead of making everything a zero-sum equation is a game-changer. We’ve done some of that and seen positive results, the Marshall Plan being an example that comes to mind. The mindset of “never enough” leads to war, poverty for some and insane wealth for others, and ruinous, gluttonous exploitation of resources, including human beings.
It’s hard to criticize the ideas discussed, but it seems like both Schmachtenberger and Kasanoff are squeamish about the actual stakes here. Systems and all that, yes, but we are talking about overthrowing global slave empires. I don’t think either is ready for that.
Wow, time for some education, where there’s no reflection of what Teilhard do Chardin introduced, carried forward by Thomas Berry, and then on to Brian Thomas Swimme as the best storyteller of the Universe Story. Thirty-five years ago Hubble gave us science that changed our perception of what’s going on, where we went from a fixed universe and Earth here for us to use, to a living, expanding universe where we are scientifically defined as one humanity and a new creation story would have us as the privileged species that takes care of our home. Tune us into that and everything changes. Changed peope make a changed world. Swimme says it’s a bigger change than when Copernicus took Earth out of the center of the universe and we went from kings to democracy. See more in my playlist of Substack posts with Brian Swimme, and join me in delivering this game-changer to the world: https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/s/brian-thomas-swimme
I need the infinity facepalm glove for this.
30 years ago, those decade, as ecologists and biologists all warning of infinite growth on finite planet. Sustainable development cos INSUSTAINANLE is just STUPID.
Big ideas like zero population growth, not keeping up with the Joneses. Extensive tree planeting, conservation areas, hemp, and a big one, fly less and eat less meat. Walk more. All of it.
And the planet said..no.
And the experts said.
"If you don't your Gunna regret it".
And suddenly the giant meteor is crashing through the atmosphere, the planet had it's experts stolen over the last five years by Darkforces.
And NOW... Everyone's like.
"Oh, I've got a good idea!!".
It's like "Don't look up", except the ecologists are mostly all sitting at the duning room table waiting sadly for the explosion.
We are doing collapse.
Get used to it.
Hopefully future generations will actually listen to GOOD experts, not liars.
On after earth.
Matrix, Revolutions.
It's all in there.
For those interested in the systems evolution side of this, really suggest you give Michael Haupt a follow.
Also, I can't believe Daniel Schmachtenberger doesn't know about community wealth and wellbeing economies? There are already over 300 movements creating this in the areas of Ecology, Commons, Wellness, Systems, Tech, Economy, and Culture/Media.
How do I get on a podcast with him? Do you know him? It would be important to enlighten his audience that this already exists, it just largely lacks the marketing campaign, which Connection Engine is the crowdsourced version of.
It’s so hard to see how we change this cyclical process…
“I have too much to lose, my kids will lose out if we give away what we have to those who have less. Even if there is enough for everyone, why should I not use my power and take more so that mine will be better? Better able to defend what they have from those who would take it?”
The inevitable deterioration of society and availability of resources will not foster global only local unity and I can’t see how we get from here to there without fighting…
The conditioning runs deep!
It’s so hard to see that I went outside for a look. I cast my mind out in a 100 mile radius and encountered 2,000,000 people (I know!?). It’s 9pm and most were resting, and my world view says mostly content. This is a lovely place!
Legend has it that 10% of these own 80% of the wealth here and 1% own 80% of that. These 20,000 people have never had to work a day in their lives, nor will their kids. They also have 20 generations of experience in mobilising others to protect what they have. I’ve heard they loan money to the banks for our mortgages and money to the government for our welfare…
It seems to me that the system that needs to evolve is essentially feudal. In the same way that Mr Schmachtenberger says adopting personal change is futile, it’s the Lords and Ladies, both new money and old, that need to be convinced there is a better way.
Given the many complexities of life in concert with the frenetic pace of life, I also believe that we are at a crossroads, one that if we don't soon take the right path we're all in trouble. Something I've learned over the years as a fish biologist trying to protect the environment is that the fast pace of life is possibly the biggest impediment we, as a species, face in getting a handle on all of this. Dr. Richard Swenson writes about profusion in his book Hurtling Toward Oblivion, in which he states: "Never before have we seen such complexity, and never before has the complexity been this tightly coupled…Everything grows: everything is on the increase, and every year the speed of that increase is greater….always having more is such an accepted part of life that not having more would be regarded as abnormal….Humans will always remain behind the curve in our understanding of profusion." Hopefully Daniel and the late Terry Patten, among others, can help get us on the right track. I recommend this book by Mr. Patten titled A New Republic of the Heart: An Ethos for Revolutionaries.
What is it exactly that we are all striving for Equilibrium in thought in feelings in relationships and in relation to our surroundings
Truly expansive thinking; to say it's challenging is an understatement, but oh so necessary.
Bruce H. Lipton, PhD in developmental biology, wrote a book called Spontaneous Evolution. He makes the exact same statement. Humanity must begin to function like a living organism with each cell dependent on the proper functioning of every other cell. We must become humanity, not human beings.