The Mindful Revolution — How To Manage Complexity

After a few more months than orig­i­nal­ly planned, I today was able to pub­lish my first book: The Mind­ful Rev­o­lu­tion — How to man­age the com­plex­i­ty of the world we have cre­at­ed. Although used to man­age projects, I com­plete­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed the effort to write a book while grow­ing a com­pa­ny, hav­ing fun, and being faced with a quite new expe­ri­ence called a pan­dem­ic. Now, I’m glad it’s done and I’d be happy to dis­cuss The Mind­ful Rev­o­lu­tion with you!

Mankind has learned to devel­op tech­nol­o­gy that adds con­ve­nience to life by instru­men­tal­iz­ing inher­ent human capa­bil­i­ties, such as lan­guage and sto­ry­telling — dur­ing the phase of the Cog­ni­tive Rev­o­lu­tion, some 70−30,000 years ago. How­ev­er, humankind found itself at the top of the food chain of all liv­ing beings in a blink of his­to­ry; where­as other ani­mals used mil­lions of years to devel­op fur­ther, humans suc­ceed­ed from eat­ing big­ger ani­mals’ left­overs to build AI-powered machines with­in a few thou­sand years. This evo­lu­tion­ary short track is the main rea­son for today’s chal­lenges, such as the destruc­tion of our ecosys­tems and wars. As Yuval Harari puts it: Humans aren’t wolves but rather resem­ble a sheep flock that — thanks to a freak of nature — have learned to build tanks and nuclear weapons. And sheep armed with weapons are far more dan­ger­ous than wolves. Humans have nei­ther learned to cope with these chal­lenges com­ing with their new abil­i­ties nor have we learned to use our brains in an ade­quate evo­lu­tion­ary way.

Now, being con­front­ed with obvi­ous, immi­nent chal­lenges, such as cli­mate cri­sis, migra­tion, and glob­al polit­i­cal ten­sions, we can’t rely on improv­ing tech­nol­o­gy fur­ther in a lin­ear way. We can’t rely on build­ing slight­ly bet­ter tech when giant chal­lenges are loom­ing. We must ini­ti­ate a par­a­digm shift, a change of our own inher­ent sys­tem — we must improve our­selves — since our cur­rent human capa­bil­i­ties prove to be insuf­fi­cient for solv­ing these chal­lenges. We are over­whelmed, and we are only start­ing to real­ize this men­tal over­load. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the typ­i­cal human reac­tion of being over­whelmed is either to ignore the prob­lem, to run away, or to be pan­icked. None of which is help­ful. Think about it and you will find many prac­ti­cal exam­ples for each of these three cop­ing strategies.

The Mind­ful Rev­o­lu­tion — How To Man­age Complexity

The sys­temic change we have to ini­ti­ate now is that we enhance our­selves in a way that enables us to solve these chal­lenges, quick­ly. Obvi­ous­ly, the chal­lenge lies in being unable to solve exist­ing prob­lems with the same level of con­scious­ness that cre­at­ed them. The good news is that there is a way of self-enhancement that can be embarked on by every­body. Each indi­vid­ual can (and should) start work­ing today on her per­son­al improve­ment. By unleash­ing our inher­ent human poten­tial that we have only frac­tion­al­ly mate­ri­al­ized by now, we not only improve our­selves, our per­for­mance, but we con­scious­ly con­tribute to the next evo­lu­tion­ary step of humankind, the Mind­ful Rev­o­lu­tion. The Mind­ful Rev­o­lu­tion will prove to become a sim­i­lar quan­tum leap for human­i­ty as the Cog­ni­tive Rev­o­lu­tion 30,000 years ago. His­to­ri­ans aren’t com­plete­ly sure, why Sapi­ens sur­vived and Homo Flo­ren­sis, Nean­derthals, and oth­ers did not. Pre­sum­ably, Sapi­ens suc­ceed­ed because of their greater capa­bil­i­ties, main­ly derived from their big­ger brains. Now is the time for the next evo­lu­tion­ary step of Sapi­ens: we can choose: com­plete dis­tinc­tion of our species — or The Mind­ful Rev­o­lu­tion.

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GOOD READS

The Mind­ful Rev­o­lu­tion, Michael Reuter

Die Acht­same Rev­o­lu­tion, Michael Reuter

What‘s our prob­lem?, Tim Urban

Rebel Ideas — The Power of Diverse Think­ing, Matthew Syed

Die Macht unser­er Gene, Daniel Wallerstorfer

Jel­ly­fish Age Back­wards, Nick­las Brendborg

The Expec­ta­tion Effect, David Robson

Breathe, James Nestor

The Idea of the Brain, Matthew Cobb

The Great Men­tal Mod­els I, Shane Parrish

Sim­ple Rules, Don­ald Sull, Kath­leen M. Eisenhardt

Mit Igno­ran­ten sprechen, Peter Modler

The Secret Lan­guage of Cells, Jon Lieff

Evo­lu­tion of Desire: A Life of René Girard, Cyn­thia L. Haven

Grasp: The Sci­ence Trans­form­ing How We Learn, San­jay Sara

Rewire Your Brain , John B. Arden

The Wim Hof Method, Wim Hof

The Way of the Ice­man, Koen de Jong

Soft Wired — How The New Sci­ence of Brain Plas­tic­i­ty Can Change Your Life, Michael Merzenich

The Brain That Changes Itself, Nor­man Doidge

Lifes­pan, David Sinclair

Out­live — The Sci­ence and Art of Longevi­ty, Peter Attia

Younger You — Reduce Your Bioage And Live Longer, Kara N. Fitzgerald

What Does­n’t Kill Us, Scott Carney

Suc­cess­ful Aging, Daniel Levithin

Der Ernährungskom­pass, Bas Kast

The Way We Eat Now, Bee Wilson

Dein Gehirn weiss mehr als Du denkst, Niels Birbaumer

Denken: Wie das Gehirn Bewusst­sein schafft, Stanis­las Dehaene

Mind­ful­ness, Ellen J. Langer

100 Plus: How The Com­ing Age of Longevi­ty Will Change Every­thing, Sonia Arrison

Think­ing Like A Plant, Craig Holdredge

Das Geheime Wis­sen unser­er Zellen, Son­dra Barret

The Code of the Extra­or­di­nary Mind, Vishen Lakhiani

Altered Traits, Daniel Cole­man, Richard Davidson

The Brain’s Way Of Heal­ing, Nor­man Doidge

The Last Best Cure, Donna Jack­son Nakazawa

The Inner Game of Ten­nis, W. Tim­o­thy Gallway

Run­ning Lean, Ash Maurya

Sleep — Schlafen wie die Profis, Nick Littlehales

© 2024 MICHAEL REUTER