Seeking Wisdom in an Intertidal Moment
Why intelligence isn’t the challenge of our time.
Everything is changing, everywhere, all at once.
We are living through an Intertidal Moment: a period of extreme turbulence, the space between what was and what is becoming. Familiar structures are dissolving. Old scripts no longer bind.
This is not the first Intertidal Moment humankind has experienced. Others have occurred throughout history, most notably the Second Industrial Revolution. But as futurist Ari Wallach points out in his book Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs, the speed and scale of the change we are experiencing make this the first Intertidal Moment we are conscious of as it happens. In the past, Intertidal Moments moved so slowly that we noticed them only when we looked over our shoulder.
How should we respond?
An old refrain goes, “We need to change with the times.” Today, change feels perpetual. So how do we keep up? What habits and beliefs should we question or unlearn? More importantly, if the world feels new and unfamiliar, what mindset should we embrace?
The scale of change we are experiencing demands that we be deliberate about how we see and face change. It is a choice. One of my favorite quotes is “When nothing is certain, anything is possible.” Change is indifferent. It simply reflects our choices: the best of us, or the worst. Acknowledging this reality is critical, because how we respond to change has the greatest impact on the life we will experience, especially over the long term.
Intertidal Moments require a seeker’s mindset, one that shifts from expectation to exploration. A popular definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” It is often credited to Einstein, though there’s no evidence he said it. Whoever said it first, I would flip it today: the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result.”
Emotions of Change
People often say fear is the most powerful human emotion. That may be true in the short term, but over the long haul, I would argue disappointment is the most corrosive. Unmet expectations lead to disappointment. The world has changed and increasingly fails to deliver what we were taught to expect. Without a mindset shift, the result is the frustration, burnout, and anger so prevalent today. By contrast, a seeker’s mindset looks for what could be. Guided by curiosity, it sees possibility and even opportunity in a dynamic environment. Curiosity is what turns a boring, uncertain, or even scary environment into an interesting one.
We don’t tend to think of it this way, but there’s a downside to certainty: when everything is certain, nothing new is possible. A seeker’s mindset begins with a simple question: “What if?”
Like fear, curiosity is contagious. The question is which one our words and actions model. Curiosity doesn’t anesthetize fear or uncertainty; it energizes the will to step over, around, and sometimes through them. I get it. What I’m proposing isn’t easy. I spent my career as an entrepreneur, mostly in technology, surrounded by disruption. Many times I was uncertain, even afraid. Curiosity and the pull of what I might accomplish are what kept me moving forward.
Curiosity powers the “What if?” It is essential, but insufficient on its own. Life in the intertidal zone demands more. It takes what I call the Formula: patience, persistence, and consistency (PPC), plus resilience, all reinforced by a life philosophy grounded in pragmatic idealism, or pragdealism. None of this can be downloaded. It must be chosen and practiced.
Intelligence Applied
I like the saying “Wisdom is intelligence applied.” The information age is quickly becoming the “intelligence” age. Answers to both mundane and complex questions are delivered with a speed and convenience that were, until recently, unimaginable. Answers may be delivered, but wisdom remains our responsibility. And as intelligence becomes abundant, the risk is that our ability to apply it will grow scarce. Intelligence is not the challenge of our time. Wisdom is.
To be clear, a seeker’s mindset does not mean we must have all the answers. How could we? Seeking is less about what we know than about what we might discover. In a changing environment, certainty isn’t just unhelpful. It can be dangerous. What matters is wide-angle awareness, critical thinking, and good judgment—intelligence, applied. That’s the shift.
In all this churn, it’s easy to believe this time is about technology. It’s not. Like change itself, technology and even its “intelligence” are indifferent. How we respond simply reflects the best of us, or the worst. The Intertidal Moment is about us, you and me. It’s about the choices we make, who we decide to become, and the future we build. I invite you to choose a seeker’s mindset.
The ideas in Pragdealism are adapted from my book, Seeker's Mindset.
To learn more, visit: www.seekersmindset.com.
