Daniel Schmachtenberger — yup, he’s a lot. In a brilliant and accessible way. As my friend shared, who is rather brilliant herself, “I feel smarter when I listen to him.”
It’s his systemic cogentness that is so compelling. With data. With anecdote. With story. With simplification.
This recent video of a conversation with Schmachtenberger and Thomas Ermacora, on meta crisis — it’s not for the faint of heart. But I think this is the point — to go beyond what pleases, to invitation of truth-telling of what is real.
This was the message of my friend Amaha Sellassie in our recent podcast conversation — “being real in a real life” as we talked justice, love, power.
This is one of the great calls of our times, to live with more systemic cogency. That means we lean on each other and sort through the surface patterns to participate with bigger awareness.
The poet’s heart in me celebrates the grand complexity, but also needs an essence simplicity. For me, this remains the Zen phrase, “Everything is connected. Everything changes. Pay attention.”
Systemic cogentness — it comes from the brain, the heart, the belly, the self, the community, some plans, some luck, some emergence, and from the slightest of desires to get smarter in more holistic ways.
Systemic cogentness — It’s the evolution of human species in which we get to participate with our realness.
