Sensemakers and Galaxy Brains

The third in a series on Conspirituality

Galaxy Brain

I consider these newsletter pieces as somewhere between essays and journal entries. In order to write a few times a week, I can’t polish everything to the extent that I might like. Hopefully, there are advantages to this: Readers can follow along as I interrogate my ideas and beliefs, sometimes changing my mind. Right now, I find myself uncertain, indecisive, compelled to make awkward pivots.

Today, I want to plunge into the unruly jungle of my current thoughts, even if the result is a bit chaotic and unresolved. Hopefully these thoughts will be more carefully organized in future newsletters. I may be wrong about many things. I am happy to be convinced to change my mind again — respectful criticism encouraged.

I am continuing my exploration of Conspirituality: the book, the podcast, as well as the ideology. I have been listening to past episodes of Matthew Remski, Julian Walker, and Darek Beres’ podcast all week, trying to catch up on several years (hundreds of hours) of erudite gab. Generally, I don’t like audio and much prefer books. I do best with sequential arguments anchored in prose, where I can track back through the author’s reasoning process. There is part of my own thinking that is quite plodding and didactic, as I seek a stable and secure basis of understanding.

I can only evaluate the true value (or lack of value) of a thinker’s ideas when it is expressed in the traditional, formal mode of an extended literary work. I still believe, in other words, that “talk is cheap.” I know, from experience, that it is much easier to speak about a complex topic than to write about in a way that holds up. I find it a huge problem — a mindbogglingly serious problem for our society — that younger people hardly read books anymore. Generally, we seem to be forfeiting the capacity for critical thinking as a byproduct of our ruined attention spans.

I went back to the earliest episodes of ‘Conspirituality’ from the start of the pandemic in 2020. I wanted to get a sense of how the podcasters evolved their critique over time, eventually hitting their stride, becoming increasingly incisive and devastating. Matthew Remski — the intellectual fulcrum of the project — might become our contemporary Voltaire: A dry, disaffected rationalist with a rapier-sharp wit and a deep hatred of any charismatic figure who uses any form of psychological manipulation. I find his takedowns of “manosphere” pundits like Jordan Peterson, Charles Eisenstein, Zach Bush, and Aubrey Marcus to be delectable and helpful.

Conspirituality is compelling me to reevaluate some of my views. I find this exciting, difficult, and necessary. I have also started to explore another, related podcast, ‘Decoding the Gurus,' hosted by Christopher Kavanaugh and Matthew Browne, which is excellent, although focused on a slightly different cast of characters.

I just made my way through a three-and-a-half hour ‘Decoding the Gurus’ episode, “Making Sense about Making Sense of ‘Sense Making,’” dissecting a two-hour-and-forty-minute long conversation, “Making Sense of Sensemaking,'“ between Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jordan Hall, and Jamie Wheal, produced by the now-defunct Rebel Wisdom. These three (particularly Hall and Schmachtenberger) are not exactly conspiritualists. They fall into an adjacent category, which the hosts call “galaxy brains:” A galaxy brain is a type of popular thinker (often neo-spiritual, Neo-Taoist, or psychedelically inspired) willing to speak about almost any topic, far beyond their field of knowledge or expertise, often with tremendous confidence.

I recognize I could be accused of galaxy brain syndrome, as I tend to cover a lot of ground. I do think that society needs what Buckminster Fuller called “comprehensive generalists” able to synthesize ideas from various fields. I try to remain humble and to clearly state when I base my work on various kinds of evidence, when I speculate more wildly, and when I bring together theories from other thinkers. I at least try to admit when I feel I was proven wrong.

I like Schmachtenberger personally, but I have been a bit dismayed to see him become a major influence on many people in my extended community, particularly in the powerful tech world. I just don’t find his philosophical insights particularly incisive, deep, or actionable. I appreciate that he brings more attention to existential risks such as climate change and artificial intelligence. But he doesn’t seem to propose workable solutions (at least I haven’t heard any — if I am wrong, please let me know) to handle the urgency of the crises we confront. Once again, I find the lack of a Schmachtenberger or “Sensemaking” book very problematic and frustrating.

With a small coterie of fellow thinkers including Hall, Schmachtenberger has developed a complex rhetoric and conceptual structure that has its own technical sounding jargon such as “generator functions” and “rivalrous dynamics.” Stepping back, it seems an attempt to construct a new type of “master discourse,” promulgated, as usual, by a small group of (entitled/privileged) white men who exist largely in their own echo chamber. I tend to agree with the ‘Decoding the Gurus’ hosts when they point out similarities between the discourse of the “Sense-makers” and Scientology, which also uses maddeningly abstract critiques and vague rhetoric as part of an overarching technology of manipulation. Such ambitiously ambiguous meta-critiques often work, in an overarching sense, as a means for their originators to gain social influence and power.