Maybe the thing that’s coming to an end is “idea-ism”: the notion that the world can and should be shaped and engineered by ideas dreamed up by clever groups of intellectuals. Maybe we’re entering a time where ideas can’t and won’t determine how things unfold, any more than they can tell us the outcome of tonight’s ball game. Events on the ground will determine the shape of things to come; new orders will develop organically, and intellectuals will discover that their real use is to justify these orders after the fact—to become their ideologues. I suppose such epochs are called “dark ages” by historians, but that’s just the bias of intellectuals and idea-hustlers, who always seem to overestimate their importance in the grand scheme of things.
Insight without grounding leads to more noise. Impact without alignment leads to more harm. From a heliogenetic lens, sensemaking isn’t just a mental exercise—it’s an ecological responsibility. We don’t need better frameworks to process information. We need frameworks that restore relation—to energy, to limits, to life itself.
The real challenge isn’t going from insight to impact. It’s going from extraction to regeneration. That’s when sense becomes meaning, and meaning becomes change.
Don’t they imply one another? I agree that real sensemaking has to be embodied and embedded in our environment - but I’d argue it’s still a process of gaining insight and then enacting it
Yes, I agree—they can imply one another. But I think the subtle danger lies in the sequencing. When insight is framed as the first step and enactment as what follows, we risk staying in the abstract too long—gathering sense about the world, instead of with the world.
From a heliogenetic perspective, the process doesn't start with insight—it starts with relation. With being already embedded, already attuned. Insight, then, is not something we gain and apply later—it emerges from regenerative participation. Less a process, more a pulse.
Maybe the shift we need isn’t from insight → action, but from separation → coherence.
I appreciate your perspective here immensely. The spell of the sensuous. I’ve taken excellent courses through the Liminal Institute and other platforms, listened to dozens of incredible thought leaders, made wonderful online friends, read new materials... yet I’ve truly reached my limit lately - with ALL of it - the expense, time, and overall paradigm of more information. Where I used to feel excitement, I feel deep weariness. Living offline, local, in my body, tending to my right hemisphere, and not working so hard to keep up/understand/consume feels best. [Also, I’m concerned about ICE disappearing my neighbors. How to move my family abroad. When my job will be DOGED/replaced by AI, etc.]
Arne Næss spoke of this as a “unified reality,” where self and environment aren’t distinct categories but expressions of one living system. Sense, in that view, isn’t something we “make”—it’s something we re-enter.
Maybe the thing that’s coming to an end is “idea-ism”: the notion that the world can and should be shaped and engineered by ideas dreamed up by clever groups of intellectuals. Maybe we’re entering a time where ideas can’t and won’t determine how things unfold, any more than they can tell us the outcome of tonight’s ball game. Events on the ground will determine the shape of things to come; new orders will develop organically, and intellectuals will discover that their real use is to justify these orders after the fact—to become their ideologues. I suppose such epochs are called “dark ages” by historians, but that’s just the bias of intellectuals and idea-hustlers, who always seem to overestimate their importance in the grand scheme of things.
Insight without grounding leads to more noise. Impact without alignment leads to more harm. From a heliogenetic lens, sensemaking isn’t just a mental exercise—it’s an ecological responsibility. We don’t need better frameworks to process information. We need frameworks that restore relation—to energy, to limits, to life itself.
The real challenge isn’t going from insight to impact. It’s going from extraction to regeneration. That’s when sense becomes meaning, and meaning becomes change.
Don’t they imply one another? I agree that real sensemaking has to be embodied and embedded in our environment - but I’d argue it’s still a process of gaining insight and then enacting it
Yes, I agree—they can imply one another. But I think the subtle danger lies in the sequencing. When insight is framed as the first step and enactment as what follows, we risk staying in the abstract too long—gathering sense about the world, instead of with the world.
From a heliogenetic perspective, the process doesn't start with insight—it starts with relation. With being already embedded, already attuned. Insight, then, is not something we gain and apply later—it emerges from regenerative participation. Less a process, more a pulse.
Maybe the shift we need isn’t from insight → action, but from separation → coherence.
I appreciate your perspective here immensely. The spell of the sensuous. I’ve taken excellent courses through the Liminal Institute and other platforms, listened to dozens of incredible thought leaders, made wonderful online friends, read new materials... yet I’ve truly reached my limit lately - with ALL of it - the expense, time, and overall paradigm of more information. Where I used to feel excitement, I feel deep weariness. Living offline, local, in my body, tending to my right hemisphere, and not working so hard to keep up/understand/consume feels best. [Also, I’m concerned about ICE disappearing my neighbors. How to move my family abroad. When my job will be DOGED/replaced by AI, etc.]
Thanks. I wrote about these things as well in my letters.
Arne Næss spoke of this as a “unified reality,” where self and environment aren’t distinct categories but expressions of one living system. Sense, in that view, isn’t something we “make”—it’s something we re-enter.
The elevator pitch that’s rarely on the ground floor.
My best connections are always through the back door, not the infotainment lounge.
Walls are built only to be taken down.
Rome wasn’t unbuilt in a day, it was a trickle down of trust to walk away from the oily jobs and their statues.