Daniel Schmachtenberger | Reality, Meaning & Self-Development | Modern Wisdom Podcast 179

Wisdom is not algorithmic and cannot be made algorithmic. You can't have a if this, then that algorithm that actually equals wisdom. And, and if you can, then we're just a intermediate boot loader for the AIs that are better creatures than us, right?

Daniel, I, I'm very impressed that we finally managed to get this recording sorted. Not only b- between time difference challenges or me needing to rearrange or, or a global pandemic, we're finally here. We finally got each other on the line.

Yeah, the global pandemics fuck up our schedule sometimes.

It's very inconvenient.

Yeah.

It's incredibly inconvenient, you know. Um, so as you're aware, we talk a lot on this podcast about self-development, and you help people to make sense of the world, sense-making, preventing global catastrophic risks. So in light of the way that the world is at the moment, what are your thoughts about how people can develop themselves whilst still ensuring that we have a, a functioning world that isn't, uh, isn't risky?

We can go like a million places with that question, and so we'll just start and see w- see what happens. Even the topic of personal development, uh, what that means is pretty ambiguous. The idea of development means that something can progress to some stage of more refinement or more capacity. And so (clears throat) we know what that means in mathematics or in playing classical piano or weightlifting, right? There's some sense of progressive development. But what does it mean for a person to develop beyond early adulthood? We also have a very clear sense that children go through developmental stages of increasing their cognitive and social and linguistic and motor and all these types of capacities, but then when does that stop? Does it have to stop? There's a development of more skills, but what does becoming a more developed human being fundamentally mean is a philosophic, a spiritual, religious, existential question. (clears throat) And so the question of what is a meaningful human life is underneath that. Uh, and then how do I effectively develop myself aligned with what is, uh, most meaningful? And, uh, when I'm asking what is a meaningful human life, there's not just my own experience, but how do I relate to the whole of life? How, how does the meaningfulness of life relate to both what I experience and also what I contribute to the experience of others? And so (sighs) when we think about the current world situation, does the world situation we're in create a context for what kinds of human development are relevant within the general parameters of some u- universal truths? And it certainly does, because what the world needs if we want to really effectively serve to protect against unnecessary harm and to increase the quality of life, it needs different skills than it needed 1,000 years ago. And it needs different... It actually needs totally different kinds of minds and sense-making in many ways. And then some aspects of it are obviously gonna be the same across lots of contexts, like the refinement of our clarity and our own motivation, um, and our own emotional resilience and things like that. I think the motivation is an interesting one to start on, which is as soon as you have a concept of human development and there's some concept of more developed, and you can conceptually understand that to try and orient yourself, then there becomes an inherent comparison with other people of are they c- comprehensively more developed human than I am, and, uh, or am I more than they are? And is my thinking that I'm more than they are some sign of ego, which is actually a sign of low development, um, in some particular way? (clears throat) And i- it's easy to cognitively understand what some higher stage of development would express like and be able to act it without it actually being real. And so as soon as there's, you know, you read David Deida and you have the, uh, an authentic man is such and such or a embodied woman is such and such or whatever, well, you can just start acting that and having it be totally not real and having, uh, a bunch of personal development mimicking for basically status-seeking. And what's underneath that, the status-seeking impulse, which is usually fundamental insecurities, is actually not healing itself, which what the real personal development would be. It's actually doubling down on itself and building up a presentation package. And whether it's, "I'm rich," or, "I'm buff," or, "I'm enlightened," just depends on the subculture you're appealing to.