Thanks for this Bert. The jump-out thing for me is the time-travel thought experiment. If we're picking those shifting the paradigm out for examination, then another trickstery impulse of mine is to pull out Elon Musk. I heard Charles Eisenstein talk about him as someone who can wield 'prophetic speech'. Which is very similar to the time-travel thing you've come up with... if you ask Elon Musk what the future will look like, he will 'tell you' rather than speculate. There will be 'it will be..' rather than 'it could be...' statements. He'll tell you that humans will have colonised Mars. This strikes me as about belief. A sort of spiritual belief. If it's ungrounded like Musk or Trump, then it's demonic. It worships one individual (themselves), with rhetoric about humanity. If it's grounded in something bigger -- like the sanctity of the living Earth, or a spiritual tradition, then it seems to be more likely to be healing. I'm sure you'll touch on some of this stuff in upcoming posts -- but it seems like no coincidence that the most commonly-referenced social movement successes are Gandhi and MLK. Both were explicitly spiritual and rooted in a religion. And both achieved what was unthinkable at the time. OK -- nice work!
Thanks Jon -- I think less about the way things 'will be' because I don't know. Elon isn't known for his humility. But I think humility in the face of an uncertain future is important. So I focus more on what 'might be': what is possible, and how we do maximise the chance of the possibilities we want. And I think one of the ways we maximise those possibilities is to act in coherence with them now, not with certainty that they will come to pass, but with conviction that the world would be better if they did.
John and Margo, our friends who forwarded this to me, know what gets me hopping. Same direction as you, for where our paradigm is going, but I see a different route. Simpler than yours. To get massively uplifted behavior, I think the way is to scare people. Understand it’s life-or-death to address overshoot, and the idea of barreling ahead economically becomes ridiculous. To where? Oblivion!
How to wake everyone up to a truth no one wants to hear is the immediate challenge. How about a billionaire to get an ad agency to do it? Or what?
I don’t know what system we can move to; it seems it's not possible to sustain the comforts in the one we have. But first, stop the wars and start cooperating, so everyone can move us into the best things to do.
Hi Sue -- firstly I'm grateful to John and Margo for sharing this with you. Please say thanks to them for me! I think you are right that massive shift in awareness is needed, and I am less sure that scaring people will work. Speaking personally, I am not at my best when I am scared. And I think we need as many of us as possible to bring their best to this moment. There's lot of interesting research into how fear affects us, especially when it comes to changing world views and you've given me an idea to write something about this soon. Thank you!
Thanks for this Bert. The jump-out thing for me is the time-travel thought experiment. If we're picking those shifting the paradigm out for examination, then another trickstery impulse of mine is to pull out Elon Musk. I heard Charles Eisenstein talk about him as someone who can wield 'prophetic speech'. Which is very similar to the time-travel thing you've come up with... if you ask Elon Musk what the future will look like, he will 'tell you' rather than speculate. There will be 'it will be..' rather than 'it could be...' statements. He'll tell you that humans will have colonised Mars. This strikes me as about belief. A sort of spiritual belief. If it's ungrounded like Musk or Trump, then it's demonic. It worships one individual (themselves), with rhetoric about humanity. If it's grounded in something bigger -- like the sanctity of the living Earth, or a spiritual tradition, then it seems to be more likely to be healing. I'm sure you'll touch on some of this stuff in upcoming posts -- but it seems like no coincidence that the most commonly-referenced social movement successes are Gandhi and MLK. Both were explicitly spiritual and rooted in a religion. And both achieved what was unthinkable at the time. OK -- nice work!
Thanks Jon -- I think less about the way things 'will be' because I don't know. Elon isn't known for his humility. But I think humility in the face of an uncertain future is important. So I focus more on what 'might be': what is possible, and how we do maximise the chance of the possibilities we want. And I think one of the ways we maximise those possibilities is to act in coherence with them now, not with certainty that they will come to pass, but with conviction that the world would be better if they did.
Thanks Bert...
John and Margo, our friends who forwarded this to me, know what gets me hopping. Same direction as you, for where our paradigm is going, but I see a different route. Simpler than yours. To get massively uplifted behavior, I think the way is to scare people. Understand it’s life-or-death to address overshoot, and the idea of barreling ahead economically becomes ridiculous. To where? Oblivion!
How to wake everyone up to a truth no one wants to hear is the immediate challenge. How about a billionaire to get an ad agency to do it? Or what?
I don’t know what system we can move to; it seems it's not possible to sustain the comforts in the one we have. But first, stop the wars and start cooperating, so everyone can move us into the best things to do.
Hi Sue -- firstly I'm grateful to John and Margo for sharing this with you. Please say thanks to them for me! I think you are right that massive shift in awareness is needed, and I am less sure that scaring people will work. Speaking personally, I am not at my best when I am scared. And I think we need as many of us as possible to bring their best to this moment. There's lot of interesting research into how fear affects us, especially when it comes to changing world views and you've given me an idea to write something about this soon. Thank you!
Thanks for this! You reminded me of this wonderful, heartbreaking book, Everything For Everyone:
https://www.commonnotions.org/everything-for-everyone
Thanks Joanna, love the premise of this. One for the Christmas list maybe :-)
Hi Bert! Lovely to come across your work. I've been exploring along somewhat similar lines... https://www.co-intelligence.institute/blog-parts-wholes/ixh6it46wbs7hbksb4dobmlijgjq3k