The War on Sensemaking, Daniel Schmachtenberger

There is a war going on in our current information ecosystem. It is a war of propaganda, emotional manipulation, blatant or unconscious lies. It is nothing new, but is reaching a new intensity as our technology evolves. The result is that it has become harder and harder to make sense of the world, with potentially fatal consequences. If we can’t ma... See more

We have been lost for some time now. Many of the guests we’ve had on Rebel Wisdom see this lostness as inextricably linked to our inability to find a meaningful narrative with which to make sense of reality. J ohn Vervaeke has called this ‘the meaning crisis’ — a loss of connection to our own psychological roots and historical trajectory that has s... See more

The online world and its explosion of narratives, data and tribalism presents us with a unique evolutionary problem. The environment we evolved in wasn’t carefully designed to capture our attention, hijack our biases and stoke our outrage. A physical forest doesn’t bombard us with an overwhelming amount of information and narrative warfare every mi... See more

The modern internet overwhelms us, disheartens us, and distracts us from what matters most. But most alarming of all, it erodes our ability to trust—in others, in ourselves, in institutions, in humanity, and in the future. The scary thing about losing trust is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we suspect the worst, it creates a downw... See more

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.

Perhaps more than any other issue, our age is defined by our inability to agree on a shared foundation of what reality is and how to agree on what’s true about it.