Emerge: Making Sense of What's Next

In this conversation, John, Bonnie, and Thomas discuss various frameworks on what wisdom is, how it functions, and the different types and scales of complexity in which wisdom may arise. The conversation explores themes of wisdom and complexity with both depth and breadth, navigating the topic philosophically and pragmatically, and ultimately arriving at wisdom's relationship with the "It" beyond all relationship.

In this conversation I speak with Jill Nephew. Jill, a former AI black box algorithm engineer with extensive experience in developing software architectures, holds a highly heterodox perspective on the risks associated with LLM AIs. In this conversation we explore Jill's argument that using LLMs like ChatGPT or Bard are like eating plastic for your cognitive agency and natural intelligence, how it is that AIs could cause the rise of new 'supercults', and how another world is possible, if only we learn to ask the right questions.

John Vervaeke, Zak Stein, and Nora Bateson discuss transformation and its complex, cross-domain dimensionality. This episode addresses topics such as how does transformation take place and in what contexts? How does western culture misunderstand transformation? How is transformation naturally interwoven within the larger narrative of our lives?

Zak Stein and Daniel Thorson discuss the myriad risks of emerging AI tutoring technologies. AI tutoring is being developed now and will be deployed over the course of the next two to five years, bringing radical changes to our educational systems. This conversation explores the risks of this emerging technology while simultaneously proposing how, if designed correctly, this technology could solve the meta-crisis.

Timestamp

0:00 - Intro

5:20 - Shift in Awareness of AI

10:08 - GAI Risk

15:51 - AI Alignment & Human Alignment

17:18 - Risks of Generalized Nature of AI

19:08 - Accelerating Misaligned Institutions

20:26 - AI Assistance & Anthropomorphism

25:35 - Instantaneous Media Interfacing

29:48 - AI Tutoring Risk

38:44 - Obsoleting Human Relationship

41:52 - AI Perfecting Propaganda

43:22 - Humanity's Educational Relationship

46:21 - Breaking the Human Nervous System

50:14 - AI Tutoring Risk Continued

55:17 - Building Aligned AI Tutoring Technology

59:56 - Importance of Non-Anthropomorphizable AI

1:02:10 - Irreducibility of Human Goodness

1:04:42 - The Limits of Computationalism

1:07:10 - AI Tutoring Guardrails

1:11:44 - Implementation of AI Tutoring Technology

1:17:36 - AI Planetary Tutoring System

1:21:59 - Solving the Meta-Crisis with AI Planetary Tutoring

1:25:06 - The Emergence of the New Human

1:29:18 - Right Relationship with Emerging AI Technology

1:35:18 - Conclusion

A conversation about how emergence can be the foundation a new society. We talk about how societies can create containers for healthy decision making. And how sacred containers can allow for the emergence of the planetary movement we’re longing for.

David Sauvage asks, how do we create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible? In my first episode after returning from the Emerge gathering in Austin, we discuss the future of collective decision-making, reflect on our shared past with Occupy Wallstreet, and consider the role of participatory democracy in what is emerging. David puts preliminary words to a vision originating from the gathering this summer.

Gary Sheng is a US-based technologist and civic entrepreneur dedicated to building tools, systems, and movements that accelerate human and planetary flourishing. He was recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 for his work building Civics Unplugged.

In this conversation we offer some friendly critiques of the emerging network and discuss how we can empower the next generation to actualize Game B.

Steve March is the creator of an integrated ecology of practice and founder of Aletheia Coaching. In this episode we get into the history of coaching, depth and the fourth generation of coaching, going from self-improvement to self-unfoldment, Heidegger’s view on technology and attunement, depth ontology, eclecticism to integration, parts conflict in ecologies of practice, four depths of self-contact, internal family systems.

Circling Europe co-founder Sean Wilkinson and I explore what it's like to practice across paradigms, the limits and transformational potential of circling, and the interplay between mediation, circling, and trauma work. Sean shares from his experience about the problems with static orientations to practice, subtle grasping to personal growth, and the orientation of trust.

Sean Wilkinson is a Circling Europe co-founder with an enduring passion for self-awareness, human potential, wisdom traditions and an ongoing inquiry into life. His focus includes extensive academic research, spiritual and psychological practice, coaching, and therapeutic training.

[0:02:53] Introducing Sean

[0:06:00] What is at the edge of meditation, circling, and trauma work?

[0:10:00] Discovering the limits of circling

[0:16:55] Exhausting an Orientation to Practice

[0:33:50] Scale Invariance

[0:39:10] Eclecticism to Integration

[0:49:10] The Orientation of Trust

[1:05:10] The Feeling Process

[1:25:20] A short guided meditation

[1:41:20] Metamodernism and the Meta-Crisis (mesa crisis?)

[1:42:42] The Paradigm of Leadership

Layman Pascal is an author, speaker, and body-mind-soul at large in the Integral and Metamodern scenes. 

Is it still possible to create a more beautiful future for life on earth, or are we now merely stewards for the dying process of our world? How do we live with the weight of this uncertainty? Soryu Forall responds to these questions during a recent lecture at the Monastic Academy.

Rob McNamara is an author, leadership coach, advisor and consultant with expertise in adult development and human performance. He is a co-founder of the leading consulting firm Delta Developmental, a faculty member for the Ivey School of Business' LIFT Advanced Coaching Program, and is a Senior Monk and Integral Zen Dharma Holder training with Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi. McNamara’s coaching focuses leaders on clarifying life purpose, growing critical leadership skills to advance value creation and fostering organizational development to enhance learning and innovation.

In this first conversation after a year sabbatical from the Emerge project I'm speaking with Zak Stein. This is a far ranging conversation about ethics, education, trauma, the erotics of moral understanding, and more. 

Emerge is back! This is a solo episode where I share a few life updates and thoughts about the evolution of the Emerge podcast.

In the first episode after my 75 day silent retreat I sit down with Zak Stein to speak about the the current cultural moment and how we can respond to the chaos and uncertainty of the world with love and integrity. 

This is part one of a two part episode.

We discuss:

- My experience coming out of retreat into a 'post-covid' world

- How strange and problematic it is that people speak with confidence about the world right now

- How our media ecology forces us to take on perspectives even when uncertainty and ambiguity is more trustworthy

- That sense-making has everything to do with acting from embodied love, and NOT about having the correct meta-narrative

- How ideology acts on our lives to make it difficult to love and see each other

- How we get captured by the simulation of reality being played out on social media and how that debases our lived relationships

- How to respond to the psychotic break our culture is going through

- Why we need to pull out of mainstream culture, reorient, and pull together a critical mass of coherence and sanity

Robert Kegan is a psychologist who teaches, researches, writes, and consults about adult development, adult learning, and professional development. His work explores the possibility and necessity of ongoing psychological transformation in adulthood. He is perhaps most well known as the author of The Evolving Self, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life, and An Everyone Culture. 

In this conversation we talk about:

What is a good definition of an 'adult'?

The phasic vision of adult development

The variety of developmental logics in the human mind

A tour of the 5 stages of adult development

What people get wrong about his 5 Stage model of human development

Why you are almost certainly not ‘Stage 5’ if you're under the age of 40

The gap between philosophical understanding and developmental attainments

Why you might take on a Stage 5 philosophical orientation from the Stage 4 developmental level (and what that might look like)

The most important developmental stage transition for the majority of humans

What transcending the limits of the socialized mind means for our planetary culture

In this episode, I'm speaking with Mark Feenstra. Mark is co-founding a consulting and training ecosystem and incubator, called New Mainstream, which focuses on large scale change that starts with ourselves and the possibility of a new mainstream. Mark is also in the process of founding a land-based community to ground the possibility of actualizing a new mainstream, initially in Golden Bay, New Zealand. 

Over the last year or so I’ve been lucky enough to have a number of conversations with Mark. He, as much as anyone I’ve encountered, really lives the sort of inquiry that I’ve been attempting to embody on this show. Every time I speak with Mark I feel like I’m falling into some wormhole of understanding and coherence. Mark has an amazing ability to bring these topics down to earth without sacrificing the ambiguity and playfulness that is the lifeblood of beautiful conversation.  

We talk about: 

Shifting from a Game A to Game B mental operating system 

The fractal nature of the meta-crisis and how it lives within each of us 

What integrity really means (and whether a crisis of integrity at the heart of the meta-crisis) 

Whether the split between individual transformation and systems transformation is an artifact of Game A consciousness 

Why attempting to fix or heal the crisis is a red herring Integrity as an emergent property of coming into relationship with wholeness 

How noticing the lack of integrity is a proximal cause of integrity 

The relationship between integrity and omni-win decision making 

And the beautiful impossibility of true omni-win decision making  

Jamie Bristow joins the show to respond to critiques against the mindfulness revolution and to make the case for mindfulness as a key metamodern cultural technology.

This week I'm speaking with Ronan Harrington about Extinction Rebellion. We talk about the strategic dilemmas of Extinction Rebellion, and how it functions as a practical exploration of metamodern theory. 

In this episode I'm speaking with Guy Sengstock. Guy is the creator/discoverer of Circling, a relational meditation practice that is quickly spreading across the world. 

In this conversation, we cover such topics as:

- Guy’s take on what Circling is

- How Circling has revealed itself over the years to Guy

- What it means to obey what we discover in our practice(s)

- How we know to get interested in something

- The mystery at the heart of the practice of Circling

- Where the sacred and the divine live in Circling

- Why other people are terrifying

- Circling and Collective Intelligence

- How conversations make the world

- How making fine distinctions brings the world into being

In this episode, I'm speaking with writer, educator and futurist Zak Stein. We discuss 'Metapsychology', Zak's attempt to answer the question 'what is the human?' brought up in our previous conversation about a vision for metamodern education. This is part two of a two part conversation.

In this episode I'm speaking once again with writer, educator and futurist Zak Stein. We discuss 'Metapsychology', Zak's attempt to answer the question 'what is the human?' brought up in our previous conversation about a vision for metamodern education. This is part one of a two part conversation.

This week I'm speaking with Mette Böll (Boell). Mette is a biologist by training, specializing in the evolution of complex social systems, mammalian play behavior and philosophy of nature. Mette has a Ph.D. in organizational ethology from the Center for Semiotics, Aarhus University, and holds additional degrees in contemplative leadership and the philosophy and history of science. She uses her training in these diverse areas to research how moods and feelings are transmitted in social relations and how the resulting relational fields in turn shape the larger systems human beings are parts of, with a particular focus on education.

We talk about the study of social fields, generative vs. degenerative fields, the relationship between fields and systems, how generative fields create ‘magical classrooms’, the characteristics of a generative field, how the combination of systems science and systems sensing can help educate people to respond to the complex challenges of our world, and what generative fields in the K-12 education setting looks like, and the need to empower young people and get out of their way. Mette also shares inspiring stories from the early prototypes of this work in the American education system.

This week I am joined by Danilo Vaz, Stratis Karad, Jocelyn, and Felipe Duarte to explore all things Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).

We talk about  what DAOs are and why they are significant, where the space is at (and what it’s evolving into), how DAOs might allow for teal/horizontal/distributed organizations to scale, what are some of the most exciting DAOs currently active, the need for wacky proposals, and more.

Participants

In this conversation Tom Murray and I explore Tom’s model of ‘Wisdom Skills’. In this model Wisdom Skills are made up of both the movement of complexification and development (ascending), and the movement of simplicity and subtraction (descending). 

We explore the relationship between simplicity and complexity in the development of wisdom, sort out some confusions about the relationship between spirituality and human development, why spiritual teachers ‘do bad things’, why development without deconstruction is problematic, why spirituality is more ‘down and in’ rather than ‘up and out’, how deconstruction releases complexity and opens possibility, why development is dangerous without spiritual clarity, and how this model allows us to talk bout spiritual realization without unnecessary metaphysical claims.

Today on the show I'm speaking with Bonnitta Roy about her presentation 'Six Ways to Go Meta'.

We cover such topics as what  it mean to ‘go meta’, why the anthropocene is driving humans to discover new ways of ‘going meta’, how deconstructing our experience through meditation creates a clean palette to experiment with new ways of going meta, how previous guests like Adam Robbert, Jordan Greenhall, Nora Bateson, and Rob Burbea fit into Bonnitta’s meta-meta-model, and why it’s vital that we create new educational forms that help create and discover new human minds.

Today's conversation is with Zak Stein. Zak is a writer, educator and futurist working to bring a greater sense of sanity and justice to education. This recording was made in person at Zak's house in Northern Vermont.

We chat about why the meta-crisis is fundamentally an educational crisis, a metamodern vision for the future of education, the difference between education and schooling, how to build an education system that can prepare humans for an unknowable and rapidly changing future, the postmodern erosion of ‘teacherly authority’, the relationship between education, passion, curiosity, and eros, and the possibility of education becoming a collective movement of soul-making. 

An inside baseball podcast about podcasting with Jason Snyder and Jared Janes of the Both/And podcast.

We chat about what we are seeing in the emerging [metamodern/metasystematic/metarational] subculture, skillful disagreement, and how podcasting can be a practice of personal growth and transformation.

Jared and Jason's Favorite Episodes so far:

This week I'm speaking with Dr. Douglas Tataryn. Doug has created an elegant and effective system for emotional healing and understanding.  This work makes insights from years of study and practice as a clinical psychologist accessible to the everyone. In this conversation we will explore a simple technique for emotional clearing that you can begin practicing immediately, and look at how emotions play a role in meditation, human development, and cultural transformation.

Doug and I discuss how emotions obstruct concentration in meditation practice, the 9 core feelings, the difference between feelings and emotions, how crying is part of the natural healing sequence of the emotional brain, the role of language in accessing our feelings, the role of emotions in moving from traditional to modern to postmodern developmental stages, a developmental assessment of the social justice warrior phenomenon, the difference between functional and dysfunctional postmodernism, and how to deal with the deep gunk of our psyche.

My guest today is Catherine McGee. Catherine has been teaching Insight Meditation retreats internationally since 1999, and since 2014 has been collaborating with Rob Burbea in shaping and teaching the Soulmaking Dharma. In this conversation we explore how the Soulmaking Dharma can open up our relationship to the topic of collapse and possible human extinction.

We talk about Catherine's experience participating in the Extinction Rebellion through the lens of the Soulmaking Dharma, the weaving together of justice and soul and beauty in a time of crisis, the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, the difference between suffering (dukkha) in the classical Buddhist context and in the Soulmaking Dharma, and the possibility of enchanting catastrophe.

Todays guest is Jeremy Johnson. Jeremy is the author of the new book 'Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness'. Jeremy is also the host of the wonderful Mutations podcast, and the editor of the anthology Mutations: Art, Consciousness, and the Anthropocene.

Together we explore Gebser’s idea of ‘origin’, the move from the non-perspectival to perspectival to aperspectival consciousness (aka integral), the way creative innovations emerge out of presence, Gebser’s relationship with metamodernism, the difficulty of trying to articulate anything beyond the mental structure of consciousness, how to experience the past and the future in the present, and feeling our way into the diaphanous nature of the anthropocene.

 Today's guest is David Fuller, founder of Rebel Wisdom. 

We talk about Jordan Peterson, the inspiration (and synchronicities) behind the founding of Rebel Wisdom, David’s most recent thinking on what the teleology of the Intellectual Dark Web, the emerging worldview coming into being through distributed heterodox conversations, the significance of the James Damore Google Memo, the evolution of media towards non-ideological generative conversation, and how embodied practice support intersubjective sense-making.

In this episode I’m speaking with Miki Kashtan. Through her work with Nonviolent Communication, movement building, and organization design, Miki speaks into the intersection of social and psychological transformation with a rare blend of pragmatic heartfulness.

We talk about how economic and cultural systems inform our psychology, why none of us can know what ‘human nature’ is, the necessity of communities of practice for those who seek to transform their consciousness, how to practice full spectrum nonviolence, the unsettling power of moral authority, and the central significance of connecting with and expressing our biological needs.

My conversation today is with naturalist and author Paul Krafel.

We talk about why you shouldn't go with the flow, how to discover opportunities for generative service in all domains of life, how to use multiple perspectives to see in '3D', the game of creating upward spirals, and how to observe the natural world in a way that discovers patterns & fit. Enjoy!

In this episode I'm speaking with Jeremy Lent. Jeremy is the author of 'The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning' and the found of the Liology Institute, which has the aim of fostering a worldview that will enable humanity to thrive sustainably on this planet.

Jeremy and I chat about how our world is the product of the success of certain cognitive patterns, how we can change reality by changing our metaphors, what it means to become conscious of the meaning we make out of the world, and how we can adapt our own meaning-making structures to accord with the existential nature of the Anthropocene.

James Surwillo joins me in conversation this week to talk about his book 'Metamodern Leadership: A History of the Seven Values That Will Change the World'.

We discuss the unique role of the millennial generation, evolving cultural value sets, the possibility of millennials being a ‘hero’ generation, Torbert’s seven stage model of leadership development, the need to master the game before you change the game (h/t Jordan Peterson), and conventional and post-conventional leadership.

Miles Bukiet joins Emerge this week to talk about his paper ‘Monasteries of the Future’.  

We talk about the role of monasteries in the emerging future, the cultural significance of monasteries as an institution that demonstrates alternative ways of being human, the radical difference deep practice can make to our experience of being alive, and the 'crisis of standards' affecting the contemplative field. 

In this episode of Emerge I'm speaking with Ria Baeck. Ria is a visionary practitioner in the domain of group process, facilitation, and collaboration, having spent many decades discovering how to manifest collective potential in order to meet the complex challenges of our era.

Ria and I talk about why you cannot go straight for the answer, the re-localization of sense-making, moving beyond mental consciousness, the limitlessness of Applied Presence, the nature of collective intelligence, the sacred responsibility of contributing our piece to the whole, reclaiming and integrating our animal nature, and conceptual shadow.