The Consilience Project

[Knarf]

 The Consilience Project publishes novel research at the leading edges of global risk mitigation, governance design and culture. Our content explores the key challenges and existential threats facing humanity, and the underlying problems with current approaches for addressing them. We outline how our social systems and institutions need to be redesigned if free, open, non-authoritarian societies are to survive.

[K-Dog]

I've been a fan of Daniel Schmachtenberger for quite a while.  I was more of a fan until I realized Daniel has a problem.

Daniel is too smart.  Perhaps it is my engineering background or simply my WASP demographic background, but when Daniel starts waxing poetic about systems theory. I can understand what he says and follow him very well.

Then I realize at least half of all English speakers will look at Daniel and say to themselves:



What is this dude talking about

I can relate to Daniel, but how many people can?  Other nerds besides me for sure, who else?

Here Daniel talks about his father:

Another time he was standing in a parking lot smoking a cigarette when gunshots were fired in one of the stores. Everyone ducked or ran the other way. My dad ran straight towards the sound of the gunshots. After breaking the door down he found that the man wielding the gun had just shot himself in the head. The woman (his ex wife) he had attacked first was badly bleeding but not dead. My dad bandaged her and held the blood in while the ambulance arrived. She lived. He talked to her during that time about her ex husband finally being out of pain and that she could forgive him. He visited with her afterwards and helped her process the emotions further. When he told me about running towards the gunshots, he assumed the shooter was still alive but said he knew he could keep his body moving through enough bullets to take the shooter out and prevent anyone else from getting hurt. He did this for strangers.

Daniel's dad was a total bad-ass.  A hard guy to live up to, but better than the alternatives hands down.

Just to add cool factor to the list...we were driving on the highway pulling a trailer...he was driving with his knee while rolling a joint when an axle broke and we lost a wheel. He grabbed the wheel with one hand and navigated the car to the side of the road, put it in park, then kept rolling the joint he had maintained in the other hand, before going to check on the wheel.

Nice.

Perhaps I have a touch of the green-eyed monster.  Not so much since I would finish a joint before I checked my wheel too, but Daniel seems to have had, and continues to have a very good life.

A life which almost nobody can relate to.

So, the problem is.  Daniel is too perfect and people en masse can't relate to him.

The Consilience Project can't have mass appeal.

So: 

novel research at the leading edges of global risk mitigation, governance design and culture.

Who will benefit from the info?  The haves or the have nots?  The Consilience Project may have the best of intentions now, but which money pile will end up funding it.  Which money pile will put the thumb on the scale.

The trouble with intellectuals is, all they do is talk.  Daniel, with a father like his likely does not suffer from a talk today do tomorrow posture much, but he is doing the TED talk white privilege podcast circuit and my question is this.

How much traction can the TED talk, I have time for three hour podcasts circuit ever have? 

People with comfortable lives are exposed to Daniel, and people with comfortable lives with crocodile tears can all agree that the global south has been fucked, and we wish things were different.

Then it is time to turn off the video and get back to the work of exploiting the global south.

So it goes.

Our culture is built on the exploitation of others.  How does Daniel propose to change that?  We make no progress solving anything if the prevailing attitude remains.

[Knarf]

LOL...I feel the same way. I was a little high and he just kept talking. I mean he is a poet with words, and his dialogue drifts in and out. THAT is what is interesting. You could put his stuff on and learn while you sleep. I don't expect any action coming from the project. It is a round table of talkers. Roger Hallam has completely gone ape shit over DRASTIC ACTION NOW. I follow him on "X". I love to see how he is soooo radical feeling, and punches out at the BS. Maybe somewhere in-between will catch on somewhere.?

[K-Dog]

Maybe somewhere in-between will catch on somewhere.?

'They' have names and addresses.  They can't spend all their time in space.