The War on Sensemaking, Daniel Schmachtenberger

If the times we live in could be defined by a single feeling, it might be a sense of disorientation. Trying to make sense of reality right now is like being lost in the woods.

Data, on one end of the spectrum, is separable, objective, linear, mechanistic, and abundant. Wisdom, on the other end of the spectrum, is holistic, subjective, spiritual, conceptual, creative, and scarce. [...] Today we are drowning in a raging flood of new data and information and the raft of wisdom to which we desperately cling is breaking

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“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with 2 watches is never sure.”

Ancient societies followed a single narrative. Modern societies are cacophonies of competing narratives. Without trust, more data doesn’t make us more informed but more confused.

The consequence of our content-addicted culture is non-stop diversion from having to come to grips with the big questions of reality, of life. The American social scientist Herbert Simon wrote: “The wealth of information means a dearth of something else—a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvi... See more