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How do we help our students become meta-crisis relevant?

Last week, we hosted an interactive seminar with Daniel Schmachtenberger on what capacities our students need for the future and how to train them.

Published onSep 18, 2023
How do we help our students become meta-crisis relevant?

Last Monday, we hosted an interactive seminar with Daniel Schmachtenberger (The Concilience Project) on what capacities our students need for the future and how to train them. The event was hosted in collaboration with KTH Climate Action Center and moderated by SF Lab’s Elina Eriksson.

The conversation was interesting and thought-provoking, first takings us through the mechanics of the metacrisis and human relations to technology, arriving on the conclusion that the metacrisis would not be without engineering. Following that line of thought, a key challenge for engineering (and engineering education) was brought up in the conversation, namely that engineering needs to radically transform in order to be compatible with the biosphere and in service of life. After the break, Daniel Schmachtenberger and Elina moved on to the capacities needed to respond to the metacrisis. Some of the skills mentioned included things such as being able to both think through but also deeply connect (feel) to an issue, and being able to stay with uncertainty at the same time as working with certainty.

Below you can find a video of this second and arguably most interesting part of the conversation focused on the capacities.

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Video of seminar with Daniel Schmachtenberger (left) on what capacities our students need for the future and how to train them. Moderated by Elina Eriksson (right).

For an introduction to the meta-crisis, please watch this dialogue between Daniel Schmachtenberger and Niklas Adalberth at Norrsken’s Stockholm Impact Week 2023. We can also highly recommend all episodes with Daniel on Nate Hagens’ podcast The Great Simplification.