George Pór with Peter Kaminski, 2024-07-02
Author: Peter Kaminski Issue: 2024-07-03
George Pór with Peter Kaminski, 2024-07-02
A Plex Conversation
Pete: You’ve said that our median consciousness is lagging way behind our technological development. We seem to be a little stuck. How do we move past that? How do you see that happening? Or maybe a different question is: are you optimistic that we will move past it?
George: Yeah, that’s a beautiful question. What makes it beautiful for me is that it calls for some no-kidding serious introspection. Because from the top of my head, what I say is that I’m not optimistic, I’m not pessimistic, I accept what it is. And by accepting, I don’t mean resigning to it. But being realist, for me, is a kind of utopian realism. And the utopian realism is the pessimism of the mind combined with the optimism of the heart.
Now, that may sound a little bit abstract, but how does that manifest in the life of a person like myself? When I’m thinking about the world situation, I feel there is no way that we can fix that mess before everything collapses and something new may grow out on the ruins of the current world order, of the current civilization. So that’s what I see when I look at the world from my mind.
But I am not only my mind, I am also my heart and my hands that, just because of who I have been in all my life, engaged in bettering the world, doing something that I believe wholeheartedly that in a small way it can make something better. And when I am seeing the world from my heart, what makes this heart connection very alive, not an abstraction, not a metaphor, is my grandchildren.
You know, I’m an old guy, although I feel there is still a good deal of life energy in me, but clearly I may not be around when the sh*t hits the fan. And who will be around is the next generation that I feel we owe something, I owe something. And what I owe is to me to do whatever I can to prepare them.
Well, how can anybody be prepared for the unthinkable, for something that cannot be prepared for? Well, I know only two things, and then I stop after this. I know only that how we are going to come out on the other end of the metacrisis, it depends on really two things. One is how much we are able to host the world inside us, which is the deepest of compassion that we are capable of. And the corollary quality is knowing where my tribe is. Where is my tribe? Where is the relationship with people of mutual trust and caring for each other?
These are the two things that I would like to contribute to creating the conditions for: individual vertical development, and building communities of resilience and co-creation. That’s what I believe that well-crafted and wisdom-guided AI can contribute to. And by that contribution, I mean to help make the outcome of the intention that I described, to help it scale. Because scaling, and scaling it in a timely manner, is obviously pretty important. What I can do by myself is infinitesimally little. So that’s my short answer.
Pete: It’s a very good answer. Thank you. I like how you said you’re not optimistic and you’re not pessimistic. You’re accepting of how the future may unfold, will unfold. That makes a lot of sense.
A way that I think of the future is that collapse may be likely, but that we can do work now and continue to do work that will shorten it and lessen the depth of it. So we can have a great big dip, or a smaller dip and better recovery.
I wonder, for our sixth or seventh generation, when they look back on us and think, well, they tried hard or they didn’t try hard enough at all, or they succeeded, they made a better world for us–what do you think?
George: Well, what I think, what I believe, is less important than what I do. And what I do is strongly influenced by my contemplation of what is mine to do. What is mine to do? Because the world situation and trying to fix it is not mine to do. That’s the context in which I operate. That’s the arena in which I may have a chance to do something very little in whatever is within my capabilities and chance to have an impact, which is, as I said, it’s very little compared to the humongous world challenge.
And I don’t believe that if each of us is doing just this little thing that will add up and everything will be okay. No, it’s not like that. That would be kind of naive, magical thinking. Instead, how I try to shape my own activity is always within what is mine to do, always asking myself which action may have the greatest evolutionary payoff. And of course, I cannot objectively assess that. There is no way to measure in advance the outcome. But with a little systems thinking combined with receiving, tuning my antennas for evolutionary epiphanies, which are the most likely scenarios that will unfold within those scenarios, which are the one that the closest to my heart.
And then that bigger picture informs me how I choose to act according to my capabilities, my resources, my history, my network. So, yeah, I’m not thinking of fixing the world, but definitely looking for the greatest possible evolutionary output to which I have a little chance to contribute. That’s why I am working now with AI, because there is so much hype, mostly spread by the AI doomers, that it will destroy our world. Even [Daniel] Schmachtenberger, a guy who I have high respect for, even he is talking mostly about AI as an existential threat. And I don’t deny that it can be an existential threat, but it can be also an existential hope. Whatever I bring my attention to will grow. And so, I bring my attention to the emancipatory potential of AI.
Pete: I like that. I like how you said that you don’t worry about working on the things that aren’t yours to work on. How do you avoid getting distracted by the things that you wish you could do, but maybe aren’t the highest evolutionary output?
George: That’s a continuous struggle every day. Every day. Because living on the edge comes with the blessing and curse of continually being presented to lots of opportunities to act, to engage with, to act on, and opportunities that are very dear to my heart. And also, opportunities for which I trained myself throughout my life, developed some talents for. Yet, I am very clear that I can do only as much as I can also because of my age. I have less energy for action, for projects than I had 10, 20, 30 years ago.
So how do I handle that? There are two things that help me to choose the right action day after day, not to get distracted. One is a kind of self-oriented listening to what brings me the greatest joy. What kind of action enlivens me? And that’s very important because if it’s not enlivening, then it’s a sign that I’m choosing the wrong thing. That’s one aspect that informs me about what is the right action for me to stick with, to stay focused on.
The other is a trust that there’s a growing number of people who are attuned with what they need to do. And as I said earlier, I wouldn’t settle on the good feeling that everybody does his or her own bit and then it will be all fine. No. So how does this ecosystem of initiatives, movements for civilization renewal, how does that inform my action? Besides the first criteria that I mentioned, what is enlivening for me, actually it’s not besides, within that part of that bundle, it’s also what is enlivening for me is what creates more connections with others. That deepens and widens and multiplies the flow of energy, insights, information, experiences flowing through us, through this informal, loose network of people who are working for change.
So that’s another litmus test for my action that decides that it should be fun. Will it contribute to the flow, the enlivening flow in the world, in my world, in the ecosystem of transformation? Because that’s also part of current reality, that there are millions of people who are working on this or that aspect of planetary transformation. So I just look around and see who are in the adjacent niches, who are the people who are in the neighborhood of this ecosystem, and how my action can connect and amplify theirs. Does that make sense for you?
Pete: It makes a lot of sense, yeah.Also, one of the things I think about is the word “human.” And often people think of that as an individual. Kind of like, “I see a tree, I see a deer, I see a human.” It’s one human. But I think another way to think of “human” is that humanity, being human, is collective action. So the people we were a million years ago or something like that, it wasn’t until we figured out how to work collectively together, and to remember over time, that is when humanity was really born. So you’re saying the things that are most “human” are the things you want to work on, which makes a lot of sense.
George: Beautiful. Yeah. Totally agree.
Pete: It’s always a pleasure, George.
George: Thank you. Have a good day!
Related:
- Peter Kaminski (author)
- 2024 (year)
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