@Daniel Schmachtenberger (Facebook) came up on my radar a couple of years ago. Recently I shared a couple of Facebook posts from him. (I think that he just came onto Facebook.) I'm not sure exactly where or when I first encountered him, but certainly via some Youtube interview or podcast. Schmachtenberger (hereinafter DS) describes himself as "from Fairfield, Iowa" on his Facebook homepage, and he claims no special academic credentials. But he's impressed me greatly since I first heard him speak. He's a free-range (non-academic), free-thinker, as well as undertaking business and cultural ventures. Not having to worry about academic qualifications or positions, he's free to delve where his curiosity and passion lead him. In the time I've been following his work, he's been thinking deeply about threats to our civilization, our truly global civilization. He believes that humanity is in a real pickle and we need to seriously consider how to extricate ourselves from it.
DS is a conceptual and systematic thinker. He analyzes our human predicament from a high altitude; he sees the big picture, the workings of our systems: ecological, economic, social, and political. He's like a human spy satellite orbiting our global civilization. He issues high-concept reports based on his observations and analysis. Because much of his work hs highly conceptual and systematic, its also often abstract, although in the interview linked below, he gets into the weeds of the current pandemic quickly and then pulls back his focus near the end. When you listen to DS, you need to fasten your seatbelt because of the challenge of his technical vocabulary and because his extemporaneous presentations come in the equivalent of book chapters; i.e., his answers aren't short but they are comprehensive.
I highly recommend him for his project and the quality of his analysis. For those who might want to explore his message further, I'll share this post on my blog (sngthoughts.blogspot.com) and there I'll link to some other interviews and some of his writing.
Some more links for Daniel Schmachtenberger:
1. His Civilization Emerging blog.
2. About Daniel from his website, including these as his "intellectual inspirations":
Buckminster Fuller, Jacques Fresco, Ken Wilber, Fritjof Capra, David Bohm, Krishnamurti, Bill Mollison, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Ilya Prigogine, Stuart Kauffman, Ervin Laszlo, James Carse, Arthur Koestler, Vedanta, Lao Tzu, Carl Sagan, Roger Penrose, Mahatma Gandhi, Victor Frankl, Buddha, Anthony De Mello, Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, Alfred North Whitehead, Stanslov Grof, Hafiz [I've read or are familiar with all about 3 or 4 of these names; an eclectic list but full of important, innovative thinkers.]3. Also, he lists these topics addressed on his blog [link above] and, by having heard him on podcasts & Youtube, that he discusses in interviews and talks:
Macroeconomics, governance, sense-making, collective intelligence, biomimicry, complexity, systems theory, forecasting, existential and catastrophic risks, infrastructure, philosophy, ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, resilience, anti-fragility, evolutionary theory, science, memetics, information theory, cybernetics, game theory, whole system design, emergence, synergetics, jurisprudence, technology, existential risk, choice, coherence, meaning, self-organization, autopoiesis, psychology, psychopathology, conditioning, ontological design, language, culture, semiotics, hermeneutics, coordination, intelligence, sentience, sovereignty, well-being, medicine, education, therapy, relationships, communication [A delightfully diverse set of topics.]4. Here is a list of appearances DS makes on Youtube. BTW, the Rebel Wisdom site (and podcast) is a quite a good source of thoughtful interviews and commentary.
