Membership | Donations | Spotify | YouTube | Apple Podcasts

This week I speak with Rufus Pollock (Website | Twitter | Wikipedia), former Mead Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge, entrepreneur, activist, author of Open Revolution and Wiser Societies, RSA Fellow, and co-founder of Life Itself, Open Knowledge Foundation, Datopian, and Second Renaissance. Rufus is a key player in the so-called “Liminal Web” and active mapper of the ecosystem of emerging changemaking organizations who, along with his wife Sylvie Barbier and an extensive network of brilliant allies, strives to promote the shifts in consciousness and culture that we need to safely navigate our age of accelerating technology with wiser, weller ways of living together.

Together we get into the good, bad, and ugly of our nascent planetary culture — the tension between ecological consciousness and economic force, the demands placed on us to reclaim time-tested strategies for community and meaning in a brave new world, the intertwingling of religion and science, and why technological solutions alone are woefully inadequate (however necessary) as we face our crises of collective action. It’s an earnest, soul-searching, thoughtful, and far-reaching extra-long conversation and I hope that you find as much value in it as we did.

If you enjoy this conversation, join the Wisdom x Technology Discord server and consider becoming a member for access to our study groups, community calls, and complete archives.

Founding members also get access to the entire twenty hours of lecture and discussion from my recent course, How to Live in the Future at Weirdosphere.

Show Links

• Explore the interactive knowledge garden grown from over 250 episodes• Dig into nine years of mind-expanding podcasts• Explore the Humans On The Loop archives• Browse the books we discuss on the show at Bookshop.org• Hire me for speaking or consulting

Discussed

Four Types of Problem

Second Renaissance Whitepaper & Theory of Change

Technology as God

Getting over our Allergy to Religion

The Primacy of Being

David Sloan Wilson - Darwin’s Cathedral

William Irwin Thompson - Imaginary Landscape, The Digital Economy of W. Brian Arthur

Federico Campagna - Prophetic Culture

Alex Shakar - Luminarium

Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter - The Light of Other Days

Joe Henrich - The WEIRDest People in the World

Jessica Flack - Coarse-Graining as a Downward Causation Mechanism

Mentioned

Bayo AkomolafeSylvie BarbierLiam KavanaughBret Easton EllisJohn StewartCarl JungDoug RushloffKarl MarxGoetheJamie WhealSteven KotlerKen WilberRobert KeganSuzanne Cook-GreuterPaul LevyGeorge W. BushUrsula K. LeGuinIain McGilchristJim O’ShaughnessyNaval RavikantThich Nhat HanhW. Brian ArthurHazel HendersonJim RuttChristopher AlexanderJamie CurcioJordan PetersonW. B. Yeats

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Wiser Societies

Mentioned by

Mentioned in 1 episodes

The AI-powered Podcast Player