The future will be wonderful!
About
Martin Schmalzried - Futurist, free thinker, inspiring story teller
Existential crisis
Hi! I'm Martin Schmalzried, father of two beautiful children who will one day, inherit our Planet. As a concerned father, I have wondered what kind of Planet, what kind of world we will leave to our children. I have always taken an interest in these questions, first by studying political science and reflecting on the role of the various actors, governments, private companies, individuals, in making the world a better place. Then, by joining a European social NGO and developing expertise in the fields of finance, economics, digitalisation, blockchain, internet and more. After going into a deep depression, terrified by the ever looming apocalypse taking on so many forms from a nuclear winter, to a financial crisis meltdown, or cataclysmic natural disasters due to climate change, I have managed to crawl my way back out of despair and find a positive narrative for humanity's future. In the process, I have undergone a profound transformation of myself, and my world vision, amounting to a genuine paradigm shift.
Existential questioning
The Universe is often described as a mechanical machine, ticking away like clockwork. There is no meaning, no purpose, there is just happenstance existence. We are here due to pure chance, luck, a big cosmic hazard. Such a vision lays the foundations for humanity's loss of meaning, depression and apathy. Why bother? After all, we're just meaningless insignificant beings inhabiting a speck of dust in a gargantuous Universe. "After I'm gone, let come what may." And yet, there always was something resisting the idea that we are but highly sophisticated biological machines, made up of tiny individual mechanical parts we call cells, all pre-programmed and unintelligent. There had to be something more. To cram my experience of life, of being alive, conscious, aware, feeling, tasting, touching, living, into the tiny materialist science box felt like a deep insult to the very core of my being, to my soul.
Existential revelation
No. We are not just some meaningless random creatures, roaming the Earth by chance. We are here for a reason, for a purpose. The Universe tends to constantly increase in complexity. It's strategy has been starring us in the face for decades and yet we were blind to it : assembling parts to form a whole, which itself becomes but a part in a larger whole. Sub-particles forming atoms, atoms forming molecules, molecules forming cells, cells forming complex multicellular organisms such as ourselves, and humans coming together to form... What exactly?
Why would we assume that this logic of structures nested one inside the other stops at the level of human beings? That we are not part of some larger "whole" which we are far from imagining? These are some of the considerations I have begun exploring, leading me down the rabbit hole. Are you ready for the upcoming paradigm shift? Buckle up, because you're in for the ride of your life.