Sensemaking 102: From Insight to Impact

With John Vervaeke, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Josh Schrei, Douglas Rushkoff, Minna Salami, Berry Liberman and more

We’re in unknown territory. The decade ahead of us is a chaotic landscape where weird is the new normal. AI Superintelligence pushing against radical political upheaval, while resurgent nationalism and environmental tipping points merge with strange new religions and flights to Mars.

It’s a wild time to be alive. The certainties we’ve relied on to find collective solutions are dying at a rapid rate. Stable democracies, globalisation, multiculturalism, belief in the social contract and geopolitical stability all feel increasingly distant. Trust in our institutions is at a historic low, and at a deeper level, many of us are losing trust that our myth of progress is taking us into a future we want to live in.

When things fall apart, space opens for something new. This is also a time in which powerful ideas can take hold fast. A time to redefine what makes a good society, and what it means to be human. The first step is to come together and start asking the right questions. The next is to imagine new futures.

This is the idea behind my new online course, Sensemaking 102. We’ve gathered an incredible faculty to deliver live sessions on the topics most relevant to what’s happening in the world today, from economics and technology to myth and power.

Professor John Vervaeke will draw on the latest cognitive science to help us find new paths through the meaning crisis. Leading media theorist Douglas Rushkoff will reveal the inner workings of Big Tech and explore how to create a fairer technological future. Bestselling author and localisation pioneer Helena-Norberg Hodge will provide a heterodox lens on the benefits of a less globalised world. Josh Schrei, mythologist and host of The Emerald, will reveal how we can reconnect to the oldest myths that bind us together.

Theorist Minna Salami will explore how power functions in society and how to direct its course in new ways. With Berry Liberman, impact investor and co-founder of Small Giants Academy, we’ll explore how we can use existing systems to create the conditions for new systems to emerge. I’ll be facilitating the course, running our opening and closing sessions, and acting as your guide throughout.

What to Expect

As well as analysing the explicit aspects of what’s happening in politics, culture and economics, you’ll learn techniques that help us make sense of implicit patterns and meaning. We’ll study the mechanisms that drive the global economy, while also examining the implicit philosophical assumptions they’re based on. We’ll look at the social and political implications of social media, as well as considering the internet as a shamanic otherworld with its own trance-inducing qualities.

We are also offering pre-recorded sessions to give some accessible fundamentals in a variety of topics. Brett Scott will take us through the fundamentals of economics, including promises and perils of digital currencies and crypto. Naia Trust founder Alexa Firmenich will illuminate the landscape of environmental action and systems-change beyond the NGO world and what we see in the news.

The course begins on June 11th, and the early bird offer ends on Monday 23 May at 8pm UK time.

Who This is For

This course is for anyone looking to improve their ability to make sense of the times we live in, and apply those insights into meaningful action. Maybe you want to get better at parsing the signal from the noise as you navigate between legacy media and its alternatives.

You might be looking for practical skills and insights to help you in your work or projects. Or, it may be that what matters most is connecting with potential collaborators and future friends. You could be looking to deepen your self-awareness and your capacity to move through life with confidence and sovereignty.

I’ve been running courses like this for five years, starting at the beginning of the pandemic, when I launched Sensemaking 101. Thousands of people from more than 50 countries attended over multiple cohorts. It sparked lasting relationships and collaborations, and some of the small groups (we call them Pods) from those cohorts are still running today.

Sensemaking 102 is a new course for a new era. It’s also distantly related to my most recent course New Ways of Knowing, but you don’t need to have attended any of those courses to benefit from this one. Times have changed, and the skills and approaches we need are changing too. I believe our opportunity right now is to move from sensemaking into impact; to come together and bring our imaginations into the world.

As a bonus, everyone will receive the workbooks and films from those courses after you sign up. If you participated in Sensemaking 101 or New Ways of Knowing, you can get 10% off Sensemaking 102 with the code Kainos at checkout. Founding Members will also receive 50% off the course.

Testimonials from past courses

"The overall structure of Sensemaking 101 was near perfect. Every topic flowed, and built, upon the other in a way that encouraged growth.”

"Sensemaking 101 has changed my life in a lot of ways. It has given me a sense of clarity that the way I am and how I am engaging in the world is OK."

“I found New Ways of Knowing to be very helpful in this moment of the meta-crisis…The weekly calls and practices offered that time to slow down and explore what is below the surface.”

"New Ways of Knowing was an exceptional overview of where we are in the world today and managed to have both depth and intensity as well as being a good intro to many new concepts."

Crossroads

In June, we’re launching our first feature-length documentary, Crossroads. The documentary explores our growing loss of trust in our institutions and one another, the tension between embodied connection and abstraction that exists in our technology, economy and social fabric, and how we reconcile this duality to move toward a better world.

Most of the faculty on this course are guests in Crossroads, and as a participant you’ll get to watch the film before anyone else. The idea is to give a narrative framing that acts as a starting point to the course, and contextualises everything we’re going to learn. You’ll also have early access to the full interviews we recorded with each guest, giving hours of bonus content.

How The Course Works

Each week, we’ll gather for a 90 minute session with one of our faculty. Between sessions, small groups (we call them Pods) of four people will engage in practices together and apply what we’re learning into impact, whatever that means in your context. All of these sessions are recorded and made available soon after.

Live sessions take place on Wednesdays at 8pm London / 3pm New York / 12pm Los Angeles time, and run for 90 minutes. Our opening session will be on June 11, and our closing on July 30. Along with the faculty sessions, live attendees meet in a Pod of three others for weekly meetings (self-organised) where you’ll have discussions, try out practices and support one another in bringing your insights into your life in practical ways.

You will also receive a Course Guide full of theories, further reading, pre-recorded sessions with some of our faculty and optional practices. You can also choose to do a ‘content-only’ version of the course if you’d prefer not to be in a pod or attend the live sessions.

If you haven’t participated in one of my online courses before, a good way to think of them is as a combination of educational and personal transformation. It’s our intention to create a powerful and lasting field that supports you to gain what you need, and to create an environment that combines connection and challenge. It’s about diving deep into the Zeitgeist with curious people from around the world and emerging with something new together.