The Only Problem Worth Solving (part 2 of 2)
In part one of this series, I shared Daniel Schmachtenberger’s provocative argument that our current economic and social systems are incompatible with human societies continuing to exist on Earth.
Today I’ll do my best to share some sense of what he thinks we should be doing. I adapted much of this piece from a 25-minute talk he gave at least eight years ago.
Emergence is at the heart of Daniel’s thinking. He describes it as the phenomenon by which something fundamentally new arises from the interaction of parts: new properties, capabilities, and systems that didn’t exist before.
Water emerges from hydrogen and oxygen. Life emerges from a collection of non-living molecules. Consciousness emerges from billions of neurons. These aren’t just combinations; they’re transformations.
In Daniel’s view, the same potential for emergence applies to human civilization.
Right now, we’re more like a scattered pile of parts than an integrated organism; we think of ourselves as separate from each other, and we act that way. We don’t try to keep humanity safe; we try to keep ourselves and our family safe.
He compares our current global society to cells that haven’t yet become a functioning body. We are humans, but we haven’t yet formed humanity in the truest sense.
He sees this as the great opportunity of our time: to intentionally bring about the emergence of a higher-order civilization: one capable of stewarding life, consciousness, and creativity into the future.
That, he says, is the arc evolution wants to take. But it won’t happen automatically. We have to choose it.
Daniel is not advocating for a return to the past or a slight modification of either capitalism or socialism. He believes we need to invent something new, something that wasn’t possible before now.
At the highest level, this new system would be defined by aligned incentives, closed-loop material flows, and a shift in identity from individualistic to interdependent.
Let’s look at those one at a time.
Aligned Incentives
Our current system rewards people and institutions for behaviors that harm our common interest, whether that’s burning fossil fuels, hoarding data or manipulating attention. Daniel proposes a new kind of economic structure in which the incentive of every individual agent is aligned with the well-being of all other agents and the biosphere itself.
In other words, the system would be designed so that doing what’s good for you is also good for everyone else, and for the planet.
This is not naive idealism. It mirrors how healthy biological systems already work. Your liver doesn’t try to outcompete your lungs. Each cell in your body functions in a way that supports the whole. That’s what health is.
Daniel calls this systemic advantage, in contrast to the differential advantage model we live in today.
He’s careful to say this isn’t communism or capitalism. It’s something new… enabled by technology, intelligence, and awareness we didn’t have before.
Closed-Loop Systems
The next major shift involves how we relate to matter. Right now we extract, consume, and discard. Daniel calls this a linear materials economy: one that turns finite resources into infinite waste.
The new system would be a closed-loop economy. Nothing is wasted. Everything is reused, regenerated, and reintegrated.
This is possible. Modern materials science, logistics, and manufacturing make it achievable in a way that was unimaginable even fifty years ago. But it requires a radical redesign of infrastructure, and a willingness to measure success in terms of sustainability and resilience, not just throughput and profit.
Again, biology offers the model. Forests don’t create landfills. Everything becomes food for something else. Circularity is not a luxury—it’s a prerequisite for life.
A Perceptual Shift: From Separated to Interconnected
Perhaps the most fundamental change Daniel calls for is not economic or technological. It’s cultural and spiritual. It’s a shift in how we define ourselves.
He argues that many of our problems stem from a misperception that we are separate from one another and from the living systems that support us.
This is an illusion, he says. Your body is made of the same atoms as the soil and stars. You breathe what the trees exhale. You depend on fungi, bacteria, and insects more than you realize. There is no meaningful version of your success that can be separated from the health of the whole.
This awareness leads to a new kind of ethics, where collaboration becomes natural, and harming the system that gives you life begins to feel insane.
Daniel calls this the mimetic shift: a cultural movement that helps people see themselves as facets of one evolving whole. In his words, we stop seeing ourselves as passengers on spaceship Earth, and start seeing ourselves as crew.
How Might This Happen?
Daniel doesn’t pretend this transition will be easy. He also doesn’t think it will come about through incremental reform.
Instead, he suggests that the collapse of our current system will create the conditions for something new to emerge. That emergence, however, must be designed not by central planners, but by conscious, committed individuals willing to align with the evolutionary impulse itself.
My own translation of this thought is: we need entrepreneurs and innovators to spark this change.
He sees three major forces already in play:
Technology is giving us the ability to track resources, coordinate globally, and solve complex problems… but it also accelerates the risks to our continued survival.
Crisis is breaking the legitimacy and functionality of existing institutions, creating openings for new ones to be born.
Consciousness—our capacity for reflection and abstraction—is allowing us to glimpse our role as stewards of planetary evolution.
He is explicit: the emergence of a better system is not inevitable. It depends on our ability to consciously coordinate, understand the dynamics of complex systems, and design new structures in which the well-being of each part is aligned with the well-being of the whole.
Daniel argues that this cannot happen through:
Revolution
Top-down mandates
Local-only action
Incremental reform
Instead, it must emerge through:
Shared understanding of the whole system
Internalization of externalities (aligning incentives so that harm to the commons is no longer rewarded)
Redesign of economic and governance systems from first principles, using distributed intelligence, technological capacity, and moral commitment
A shift in how individuals see themselves: not as separate actors, but as facets of one evolutionary process
Daniel likens this to cells forming a new organism. The parts don’t lose their identity. But they gain coordination, synergy, and shared function.
In Summary
Daniel believes we are standing at a crossroads. Our current systems cannot continue. We will either descend into collapse… or consciously bring forth a new civilization.
That new civilization would be rooted in emergence, synergy, and cooperation. It would reward life-giving behavior, close the loops we’ve left open, and allow every person to contribute their unique genius in service of the whole.
Daniel is asking us to stop thinking of ourselves as consumers and start thinking of ourselves as creators of the next phase of evolution.
That’s his invitation. There is a vast amount of work to do.
This is a LOT to take in, and much to debate. I don’t know whether he is wrong or right; I only know he made me think in a broader and deeper manner about what exactly is happening in the world around us.
When you’re ready, I hope you will share your thoughts and feelings with the rest of us.
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.
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.