Why Am I Here?

I am here because about six months ago I was introduced to an idea that changed my life.

For all of my adult years up until that point I had believed, or felt, that our species was eventually going to wipe itself out. I didn’t want this to be the case, and I reveled in stories and worlds where it wasn’t. But the more I learned about the world, and the farther our civilization progressed, the more reasonable that conclusion seemed. My initial reaction was one of defiance which manifested itself as naïve and heroic posturing. The world then proceeded to demonstrate exactly how ineffective that approach was. Eventually, I just started to tune out. I couldn’t see a way to fix the problem… so I just thought about it as little as I could.

Luckily for us all, not everyone who came to that conclusion gave up as easily as I did. Many people throughout history decided instead to actually work on the problem, trying to figure out how to build a bright and lasting future for everyone. Building off of each other’s progress, slowly filling in the gaps, learning from humanity’s less than fatal errors; they painted a progressively richer and more detailed picture of what such a future could look like and how to get there.

Of course, I was unaware of this effort until I stumbled onto an extremely recent point in the journey in the form of Daniel Schmachtenberger’s appearance on Eric Weinstein’s podcast: The Portal.

Daniel did not shy away from the existential threats that we’ve created for ourselves (the same ones that left me playing video games and pretending they don’t exist), and more importantly he was able to lay out the first plausible explanation I had ever heard for how we could overcome them all. It wasn’t a step by step plan that we could follow tomorrow, but it was a plan that didn’t have a black box in the middle that says “magic happens here”.

Needless to say, this idea had my attention. I watched the episode a few more times trying to find where the black box was hidden. I couldn’t find it. I started exploring the rest of Daniel’s work to understand this idea better… and then the work of the countless people who are working alongside him… and all the great minds of the past that they have drawn from.

Fast forward six months and here I am. I’m still learning more about it every day. I’ve joined communities of people all trying to figure out different parts of this puzzle. This is a big puzzle. In fact, I have trouble imagining a bigger one. Helping to solve it is what I need to be doing.

I am writing these posts because in trying to explain this idea to myself and others I believe I’ve come to a perspective that will make this idea more accessible to more people. Not a definitive or complete telling of the story, but an authentic and, I hope, novel one. Please note that basically none of these ideas are my own creation; I’m just doing my best to repackage them in a useful form. If something seems wrong about them, it’s safe to suspect the packaging. Along the way I’ll point you to the resources and community where you can learn more.

I’m going to write what I wish I could have read a decade ago. Something that would have kept me from tuning the world out, and instead started me down the path that I now find myself on.

I am here to tell you about Game B — the hopeful way forward.