David Rug - Integrating Ancient Wisdom with Modern Technology to Heal Fragmentation

Sep 12, 2025

David Rug, a metaphysician and civilizational theorist, shares his journey of turning childhood wounds from social fragmentation into solutions. He discusses Project Liminality, which reshapes communication to foster unity. David explores the interplay of ancient wisdom and modern technology, emphasizing the importance of authentic storytelling. He introduces the innovative 'InterBrain' system, which aims to bridge knowledge and collaboration, advocating for a collective shift towards transparency and communal healing.

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ANECDOTE

Childhood Split Sparked The Quest

David Rug describes being raised in a politically fractured family after his parents' divorce and learning to sit with interpersonal discomfort.
That early experience motivated his lifelong quest to understand fragmentation and communication.

INSIGHT

A 'Physics' Of Communication

Rug realized there's effectively a 'physics of communication'—patterns and principles that explain miscommunication and polarization.
That recognition led him to design communication media that favor synthesis over binary conflict.

ANECDOTE

From New Atheism To Game B

Rug recounts intellectual shifts: Richard Dawkins sparked atheism interest, Sam Harris introduced meditation, then Daniel Schmachtenberger opened the Game B pathway.
Those stages moved him from reductionist materialism toward transpersonal and integrative thinking.

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David Rug is a metaphysician, civilizational theorist, and visionary storyteller on a journey of transmuting childhood wounds of social fragmentation into memetic medicine for the human family.

Sensitized to the pains of social division and disconnect early in life through his parents' divorce and the increasingly political fracturing of his family field, he set out on a quest to understand the root causes of conflict and miscommunication. While completing his bachelor's degree in physics at Heidelberg University, he discovered GameB and adjacent movements. Through the extraordinarily clear thinking shared by thought leaders in that space, he realized there was, in effect, a "physics of communication"—principles that could be understood and applied to address the challenges he cared most about.

This insight led him to found Project Liminality—an open-source communication and co-creation layer designed to reshape how we share and organize around ideas. A central focus of this work is developing the InterBrain, a novel digital medium aimed at flipping the vector of conflict and fragmentation toward unity and wholeness.

His work combines systems thinking, visionary storytelling, and a deep exploration of the kinds of shared ideas and narratives that can inspire humanity to unite in addressing our greatest challenges and creating the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

In this episode, we speak about false progress, psychological warfare, developing a memetic immune system, returning to the spoken word, going from personal knowledge management to collective knowledge gardening, and David’s Interbrain project, which aims to bridge ancient wisdom with modern technology to end fragmentation.

🔗[Links & resources] 🔗

🕰️[Time stamps] 🕰️

0:00 - Introduction
3:15 - Early experiences of fragmentation and discovering the liminal web
13:47 - The polarities of fragmentation and finding the third attractor
21:10 - The solution has to come from a higher dimension of consciousness
25:22 - False progress, psychological warfare, and developing a memetic immune system
34:52 - A Course in Miracles, Fear vs Love, Specialness vs Uniqueness
41:54 - Building trust networks, returning to the spoken word, and problems of scale
51:21 - From personal knowledge management to collective knowledge gardening
1:08:35 - Reflecting on David’s big insights ( the primacy of symbols, written vs spoken word )
1:14:50 - The practicalities of the Interbrain (how it would work)
1:26:30 - Critiques and challenges of building the Interbrain
1:31:21 - Moving from independence to deep interdependence
1:36:42 - Revolutionizing journalism & politics
1:44:06 - The process of DreamWeaving
1:52:55 - Support David’s work

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