Reality, Meaning & Self-Development - Daniel Schmachtenberger - #179

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Oh, hello, people of Podcast Land. Welcome back. I've been trying to sit down with my guest today for over six months, but given that he works in the field of preventing global catastrophic risk, he's been quite busy with the recent global pandemic running riot outside, but I have finally got hold of him and managed to sit down with Daniel Schmachtenberger, who has one of the most unique and insightful minds that I've ever come across. As someone who thinks about big-picture global issues, how we as a civilization can transcend where we are right now, I really wanted to try and get his thoughts on self-development and personal development overall. Obviously, they're topics that we touch on a lot on this podcast, and I really wanted to hear Daniel's thoughts. I have to say, I enjoyed the change of pace today. It is a very deep, insightful and considered episode. Daniel takes his time and is very precise with the things that he says, which I absolutely love. It may require a couple of listens through for you to fully grasp everything he is talking about, and don't worry if that's the case, because I've listened back to it two or three times now, and I'm still picking up new stuff along the way. So expect us to cover questions like, what does it mean to live a fulfilled life, existentialism, metaphysics, and an awful lot more. In other news, I'm nearly finished on a project that I've been working on for the last month and a bit, which is an Ultimate Life Hacks List. Every life hack that we have ever featured on this show from the last two years, that's over 200 ways to upgrade your life. I'm nearly finished completing that full ebook. So once that is ready, I will be sure to let you know, you do not want to miss it, it is absolutely monstrous. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Daniel Schmachtenberger.
I'm very impressed that we finally managed to get this recording sorted, not only between time difference challenges or me needing to rearrange or a global pandemic, we're finally here, we finally got each other on the line.

**Daniel Schmachtenberger** (2:28)
Yeah, the global pandemics fuck up our schedule sometimes.

**Chris Williamson** (2:31)
It's very inconvenient.

**Daniel Schmachtenberger** (2:32)
Yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (2:33)
It's incredibly inconvenient, you know? So as you're aware, we talk a lot on this podcast about self-development and you help people to make sense of the world, sense-making, preventing global catastrophic risks. So in light of the way that the world is at the moment, what are your thoughts about how people can develop themselves whilst still ensuring that we have a functioning world that isn't risky?

**Daniel Schmachtenberger** (3:10)
We can go like a million places with that question, and so we'll just start and see what happens. Even the topic of personal development, what that means is pretty ambiguous. The idea of development means that something can progress to some stage of more refinement or more capacity. And so we know what that means in mathematics or in playing classical piano or weightlifting, right? There's some sense of progressive development, but what does it mean for a person to develop beyond early adulthood? We also have a very clear sense that children go through developmental stages of increasing their cognitive and social and linguistic and motor and all these types of capacities, but then when does that stop? Does it have to stop? There's a development of more skills, but what does becoming a more developed human being fundamentally mean? Is a philosophic, spiritual, religious, existential question. So the question of what is a meaningful human life is underneath that.
Then how do I effectively develop myself aligned with what is most meaningful?
And when I'm asking what is a meaningful human life, there's not just my own experience, but how do I relate to the whole of life? How does the meaningfulness of life relate to both what I experience and also what I contribute to the experience of others? And so when we think about the current world situation, does the world situation we're in create a context for what kinds of human development are relevant within the general parameters of some universal truths? And it certainly does because what the world needs, if we want to really effectively serve to protect against unnecessary harm and to increase the quality of life, it needs different skills than it needed a thousand years ago. And it needs different, it actually needs totally different kinds of minds and sense-making in many ways. And then some aspects of it are obviously going to be the same across lots of contexts, like the refinement of our clarity and our own motivation, and our own emotional resilience and things like that. I think the motivation is an interesting one to start on, which is as soon as you have a concept of human development and there's some concept of more developed, and you can conceptually understand that to try and orient yourself, then there becomes an inherent comparison with other people of are they comprehensively more developed human than I am? And, or am I more than they are, and is my thinking that I'm more than they are some sign of ego, which is actually a sign of low development in some particular way, and it's easy to cognitively understand what some higher stage of development would express like and be able to act it without it actually being real. And so, as soon as there's, you know, you read David Diede and you have the, an authentic man is such and such, or embodied woman is such and such, or whatever, well you can just start acting that and having it be totally not real and having a bunch of personal development, mimicking for basically status seeking. And what's underneath that the status seeking impulse, which is usually fundamental insecurities, is actually not healing itself, which would the real personal development would be. It's actually doubling down on itself and building up a presentation package. And whether it's I'm rich or I'm buff or I'm enlightened, just depends on the subculture you're appealing to.