Thank you for this article and your work. Your article Absolutely makes sense and it resonates deeply. On my side, I believe we work on the same lines of thought. Instead of trying to "solve" current problems within the same paradigm, the aim is to "dissolve" them. And as you know, this is only possible with a third Horizon transformative Vision. This is the core of what call Shapership, this vital capacity to "shift" perspectives and “craft” Reality: The Art of Shaping the Futures. A creative way to look at what is AND what could be , perfectly aware that "The Eye only sees what the Mind is ready to understand". As a way of being, Shapership invites to adopt the “Altitude Attitude” and to open the “Soul Compass” (an integrity of being). As a way of doing, Shapership derives its power from the articulation of three very simple elements 1) creative resistance: The Big No (see and resist the status quo of H1, escape Plato's cave) 2) The Transformative Vison: The Big Yes. This is the "I have a Dream" (H3); we call it the Fostbury Flop of the Mind 3) Anticipative Experimentation: the creative "How". which is about Co-shaping new realities or "jamming together on desire"
Here is a short extract of our book that might resonate with you
Thinking “radical” and creating the “Erotica of the Future”
Shapership is a “Utopia in Action”.
The Shapership Attitude is radical - A “Big No”, a “Big Yes” - in the sense of “back to roots”, going to the essence. It is about thinking Big and Radical.
It implies more than just “creating Future possibilities”.
It is about taking a stand for “radically different future possibilities”, based on completely different worldviews and values.
For Shapership, the story of the Future is not an “improved” or corrected version of the Present.
The Transformative Vision creates a “perturbation of the Present” because it is a thought of radical difference.
It is a BIG YES to a radically new version of what could be. “A new model that makes the existing model obsolete”. Instead of trying to “solve the problem”, the Shapership attitude leads to invent ways to “dissolve it”.
Shapership implies to “open new paths towards the Future”, to “pioneer something”, “to dream an impossible dream”, to “open new trails in the jungle of representations”. In short, to shift what people believe is possible in a field that resonates with their Hopes and Aspirations.
The Essence of Shapership is the kind of Hope and Desire it generates.
The kind of Future Shapers bring to see because they saw it!
A Shaper actually is what we might call an “I Opener”, an “Eye Opener’”, an “Eye Hopener” and even a “High Hopener”.
Because of its radicality, the Transformative Vision has the power of a Utopia.
How?
One of Edgard Morin's thoughts that we (Aline and Jean-Louis) carry in our heart since a long time is the following:
“Utopia is at the same time what can change reality
and what is incapable of changing it.
Realism is at the same time lucid and blind.”
It implies that Utopia, as a thought of the “impossible” and of radical difference - other place, other time, other space - can have an effect on Reality - although we have to agree on the meaning of this word.
What best describes the strength of the utopian experience is an expression that comes from Habermas: The Future as a disturbance of the Present. It creates a crack in the “imaginary”.
Utopia can be seen as the possibility of a radical break with a predicted and colonised Future, as opposed to the belief in an impossible change.
Utopian Imagination opens up new possibilities - or more precisely, it opens up the possibility of new possibilities, - radically different - and therefore, because it takes us out of this inability to imagine a different Future, it also takes us out of the possible “confinement” in a Present assigned to a fixed identity.
A Transformative Vision has the same power to change Reality.
Because it arouses desire.
(...)
It is an operative Utopia: it produces effect. It opens Time, Space and Matter to “infinite possibilities.” It allows to move our head to the other side of the starry vault and see “another Reality”. It opens the bubble of the material world and allows to recover our capacity for wonder.
A Transformative Vision, a radical Big Yes” consists in making holes in Time, Space and Matter to let the light of Hope enter.
A tremendously important topic. Because neglect of our inner development has entrained us toward dystopia and/or collapse. Bravo for the Inner Development Goals initiative that has tackled this problem with bold measures and moral imagination!
May I suggest that you consider the Sekem intentional community in Egypt as a laboratory or prototype for how attention to the inner life can manifest in community and commerce? I will have an article on it in the next issue of Orion Magazine, but in a nutshell the initiative started about 45 years ago when Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish, a real visionary, stood at a spot in the desert northeast of Cairo and was moved to establish a farm on this land that consisted at that time of nothing but sand and rocks. He was a scientist, not a farmer, and everyone told him he was crazy. He persisted, put down a well, and began renewing the soil with the creative use of compost. Soon they were organically growing medicinal and culinary herbs for export to Europe.
Not only did the decision to establish a farm and later a community come from a realm that defied utility, the first two major purchases for the operation revealed values that affirmed the need to feed both body and soul. They were a tractor and a grand piano.
If you visit Sekem today, 45 years after its founding, you experience a community founded on Islamic principles, where a cordial spirit prevails between Muslim and the minority of Coptic Christians, and a remarkable level of caring, dedication, and intentionality prevails. Workers are given paid time off to develop their creative potential. There are fields of vegetables and specialty crops, 30-foot palm trees loaded with dates, herds of cows and sheep, schools, and six thriving businesses. This in the country where the Muslim Brotherhood was born and where reportedly the majority of the population favor Sharia law.
While I don’t favor the term “the third attractor,” I believe these folks are visioning and reifying it. Much more could be added, for example about their Economy of Love, which could be described as “Fair Trade on steroids,” their efforts to transform Egyptian farming away from chemicals, and their creative us of carbon credits. I just wanted to bring this to your attention.
I love it. thank you for sharing so many enlightening (in the Bildung sense) words with us across these articles. This one in particular - along with the Visionary - got me excited. I felt I had to go and read the work of all the people you reference NOW!
You really help me make sense of this space of the internet and give perspective to the more immediate society. And you give me hope. Concrete hope as a feeling to hold on to of "there is a way". I believe that already; you help me feel it
Fabulously comprehensive yet precise. I’m interested in why you think the IDGs might turn out to be H2-, not because I have a particular cleaving to them other than an appreciation of the importance of inner development and as a vast improvement on SDGs.
Setting this in a 3 Horizons context mirrors a conversation we’ve been having recently in the Doughnut Design for Business Community about how the framework can enable us to go beyond business transformation into systemic change.
> But are we really condemned to submit to Moloch and watch as the human superorganism destroys its only home?
Not necessarily. Particularly not if we replace the doomerist framing of the superorganism with something like this:
"at least the superorganism that seems to be emerging, though in some ways demanding, isn’t the totalitarian monster that Orwell feared; it’s more diffuse, more decentralized, more reconcilable — in principle, at least — with liberty."
@rossdawson
see also:
Human superorganisms (and their "political systems") are not sui generis but are variations on a major evolutionary theme... Indeed, it is likely that social organization played a key part in human evolution, and in the rise of civilization... A modern human society represents an elaboration upon an ancient hominid survival strategy. It is, quintessentially, a "collective survival enterprise." This perspective casts a different light on the ongoing process of cultural evolution and the much-debated prospects for global governance...
It is the synergies (the economic payoffs), broadly speaking, that are the drivers for evolutionary complexification...
In that perspective, we can see the emergence of the planetary superorganism as an evolutionary response to the challenge presented by the humanity's meta- and poly-crisis.
The superorganisms may also constitute a distinct unit of selection (and adaptive change) in the evolutionary process."
"Accordingly, a global superorganism may well be emerging even as traditional nation-states are devolving."
Source: Superorganism, in International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2nd edition, (2004)
But no AI-enabled superorganism can help humanity's collective self-actualization
without the collective wisdom of sovereign people & communities
replacing the collective ego of narrow profit interest in the driver’s seat of symbiotic intelligence.
FYI: I'm in the midst of writing an essay on The Superorganism — a New Chapter in Macrohistory. If anybody wants to read it when I will have completed it, drop me a line.
Wow! Great synthesis of what's going on. This very much resonates with me and expands my own thinking. Thanks for that! ;)
What comes to mind are these quotes:
Maybe for H2 plus / Big V Vision: "The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.” Erwin Schrödinger
Maybe for the concept of the third reality: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." Einstein
You may in fact be getting high on conceptual structures, but as highs go, it's a pretty exciting one. And it points to my question yesterday in your Alchemy of Crisis talk regarding Bayo Akomolafe's notion of "making sanctuary." I read him as saying that if how we respond to the problem is part of the problem, then the first thing we should do is stop. And the next thing we should do is make space (sanctuary) for other, not-human consciousnesses- animal, plant, stone, Yeshua, Coyote, Atman, all of those other consciousnesses with which we share the world- to emerge. In that space, where humans are no longer at the center, is where your Alchemy can take place. It seems to me the Third Attractor might arise from that. Also, I know your colleague Jeremy Johnson is familiar with the Christian mystic, Cynthia Bourgeault, who has written extensively on Gebser, but she's also greatly influenced by Gurdjieff and his Law of Three, which I do not pretend to understand, but might apply well here.
I don’t think we should ever stop reaching for the stars with theory like you and Perspectiva are doing as we need all the ideas possible to figure out this grand delusion. I also think we should not over rely on them, which funny enough, your theorizing and others at Perspectiva seems to acknowledge and include.
To me, it seems, we do need to focus on this third attractor more, while holding it still, like everything else, in the proper tonos. The 19th and 20th century’s record of the implementation of grand theories frightens me, those who think they comprehend all of the complexity and hyperobjects well enough to propose utopias and protopias also give me pause, but worst of all, Moloch does. But Moloch does seem to leave some clues as to possibilities for change.
As Scott Alexander pointed out in his famous essay “Meditations on Moloch,” Moloch is at its core, structures of incentives that have built up over time. Thus, it would seem, if that is the case, where the most freedom and potential in addressing our large problems are is with flipping the levers on small incentives we can actually touch, because built up, they create our fundamental frameworks, determine what seems possible and not, and once our reality is defined by them, they affect how we treat ourselves, our communities, which then flows into how we operate our businesses and governments.
As you point out, it would seem, that our structures and our perspectives within ourselves, our self and spirit and psyche, are the best starting point, and one we can engage in spiritual practice and relational practices to alter our own internal frames, and thus ultimately how we engage when we move from inside ourselves to out in our interactions with others and the world.
For example, on the personal and interpersonal level, it seems we could do the spiritual work necessary to create new perspectives on ourself (e.g., internalizing that you are a dividual, rather than individual). Once a new perspective is in place (hard work), our fundamental view can more easily shift (still hard work) such that, for instance, our ways of communicating can change and we can learn to truly attend to ourselves and one another in communication. As we do so, I suspect those ways of communicating with one another can change gradually from the typical top-down propositional manner of engagement to a more bottom-up relational and discovery based manner of engagement, that encourages mutual co-shaping and understanding of one another in a more flowing manner. And I suspect it all begins with ourselves and our willingness to tell the Moloch of society in our imaginations, that we have the power to change its shape with the incentives we can actually grasp ahold of and do something about.
I suspect that if we can imagine new possibilities rather than the limitations Moloch imposes on us, find what incentives are graspable, and pull on them, we can change our world, iteration by iteration.
For instance, where there seems to be the most freedom to world build is inside businesses, the churches of our market. We can examine and imagine running a business in a way that intentionally does not maximize profit and intentionally does not maximize returns to the CEO, founder, and investors, but instead orients towards maximizing quality of life for all the people involved in the business, while at the same time optimizes running a business that changes the conditions of people’s life in the world, in a way that is good for everyone. We can build businesses that generate human flourishing and which can sidestep many of the baked-in incentives that currently stop this from happening when people limit themselves to the standard way of doing things and limited by the Moloch of their imagination. Essentially by doing this, people can build a parallel system, incentive by incentive. I even suspect some people are already doing it. For instance, there is an interesting developer, Kevin Cavanaugh, founder of Guerrilla Development, who is making the built environment and his business an exemplar of incentive-flicking inside and outside his business. Check out his Tedx talk called How much is enough?
It seems to me that small scale change, lever pulling, and iteration, are the way forward, instead of any grand solutions or theories of salvation. We do need the big ideas though, that’s how we expand our thinking of what is possible, but we just still need a foot in the real world, and we need to be careful not to fall prey to the trap of a beautiful grand system.
I suspect we are all just playing some small role and fulfill a small function of a bigger system, like a pinky finger on a person, and we need to figure out how best to be a pinky finger, knowing that the bigger system we are a part of, really relies on us being the best pinky finger possible.
But, I’m just some guy on the internet who doesn’t know much about anything, so take this all with a grain of salt.
I continue to appreciate your work and Perspectiva’s, it stimulates my thinking and gives me hope.
I have been thinking that whatever shifts our obvious trajectory away from imminent oblivion might be invisible and incomprehensible, and already well along on the massive scale this seems to require; that anything we can perceive and comprehend will not be that; and that it arises in the ephemeral, non-persistent dimension between us, where life is really lived, moment by moment. There's something about the way a flock of birds turns all at once: the first bird to know a turn is in order doesn't have to mobilize all the others. Maybe I'm thinking of a change in our collective correlated perception/behavior. Not something that could be planned and executed, much less led; more like something we won't see until it arrives. Not that we shouldn't strive for this...
Feels right to me. Something that stands out about the current cultural crisis is a kind of foreclosure of uncertainty and agency.
Necessary antidotes would seem to be a keeping open of possibility, of creative responses to conditions rather than a passive acceptance/resignation towards the predominant attractors, and as you point to, the inner place we orient from in meeting reality as it is in each new moment.
Thank you for your curiosity and care in this post, Jonathan.
Reading your words made it clear for me that I am already living by a commitment to a third attractor, that of a Global Awakening (and harmonious Global civilisation) - as outlined in Chris Bache’s “LSD and the Mind of the Universe” and Duane Elgin’s “Awakening Earth”. I highly recommend these books!
Dear Jonathan, I love your searching writing leading us from confusion. Your force seems to be essentially a strategist of sense-making. A necessary attribute of a joyously struggling Grandmaster. I wonder if you have ever considered the strategy of making sure the opposition doesn't win as opposed to trying to win. Is this the nature of winning elections in politics?
When we grasp Right Perception, our inner life coincides with our outer life. My realisation this morning. The opposite is Wrong Perception which is the cause of the metacrisis which relates to most likely taking the wrong turn. So, RP, the spiritual directs our lives of right turns always, this corresponds to optimal consciousness. RP is true vision, the goal for the 21st century visionary.
What is a twenty-first century Visionary
A call from Perspectiva
Without vision the people perish, Pro 29.18, St James Bible.
Dear Jonathan, et Perspectiva.
Vision has been the domain of Prophets for millennia; it relates to divine revelation which is beyond human vision through the eyes. More like a sight (mentally), that is, a dream, revelation, or oracle: i.e. a message from God.
My personal experience has been one of revelations from the Helper, the Holy Spirit. The mediator between God and man. It has been a means of right inspiration or direction at the right time of need. And has led to some incredible insights of simplicity.
Considering the Dystopic and very complex world we live in there is a strong need to understand complexity as an epistemic metaphysical solution which debunks complexity, i.e. a complex mind. The dystopic world has become more complex than ever for mankind with the storming progress of technology and computers without real meaning and understanding. Are there any ways of reconciliation. Schmachtenberger’s idea of the third attractor and Consilience seems to suggest a direction, The third attractor!
What is true vision, perception?
Christ’s vision is the Holy Spirit’s gift, God’s alternative to the illusion of separation and to the belief in the reality of sin, guilt and death. It is the one correction for all errors of perception; the reconciliation of the seeming opposites on which this world is based. Its kindly light shows all things from another point of view, reflecting the thought system that arises from knowledge and making return to God not only possible but inevitable. What was regarded as injustice done to one by someone else now becomes a call for help and for union. Sin, sickness and attack are seen as misperceptions calling for remedy through gentleness and love. Défenses are laid down because where there is no attack there is no need for them. Our brothers’ needs become our own, because they are taking the journey with us as we go to God. Without us they would lose their way. Without them we could never find our own. “Schucman, Dr Helen. A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition.”
The miracle minimizes the need for time. In horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary. There is no relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers. The miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does so by the underlying recognition of perfect equality of giver and receiver on which the miracle rests. The miracle shortens time by collapsing it, thus eliminating certain intervals within it. It does this, however, within the larger temporal sequence. “Schucman, Dr. Helen. A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition.”)
The process mechanism of the miracle in ACIM seems to be a description of a systemic routing process in a general agent based intelligent micro simulation system of transportation, developed in the very beginning of the nineties, a purely mechanical system based on a what if question of changing direction in an existing process for finding a single shortest route from an Origin to each of a number of destinations aka All or nothing assignment potential.
Now, the opposite of this is clearly, in the spirit of Niels Bohr’s recognition of opposites and complementarity (Note: This is McGilchrist rhetoric), All Shortest routes from anywhere in the universe to one or more destination(s)/goal(s), the Right Hemisphere mechanics but how?
Both thought systems use the same algorithm of sorting all branches in order of distance from the Origin (LH), the self-referential domain of the ego, or the order of distance to the destination (RH), the all-referential intelligent mind process, the cause of consciousness (spirit), the attractor field of a deterministic nondeterministic science which through the simulation becomes a nonlinear system through the right use of time. In the process of moving the past into the present and the mind creating the attractor fields, the differentiated capacity potential for leading all at once from the present into the future in no time and optimally in time into the future of the becoming next present. Etc.
The world of spirituality is coincident with the world of nondeterministic science and nonlinear systems. Hawkins, David R.. Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behaviour (p. 238). Hay House. Kindle Edition.
This stuff is on the borderline of Ivo’s and Bonita’s goal of opposites. Yes, Ivo you are right it needs to be unlearned before we can learn how to perform, yes Bonita, miracles.
I recall how hard it was to unlearn my habitual LH way of thinking, akin to unlearning bad habits, especially when coding the system and its extensions. I had to pull myself together in order to think and getting used to working mentally in the opposite direction. This became a joyous struggle for taming the power of deterministic non-complex complexity with only 640kb of memory at the time from the perspective of a deterministic efficient stochastic process. The result became the beginning of a joyous nonstruggle for leading out of confusion.
Makes sense, feels right. I think the focus is right- on the spirit as upstream from other changes (As Macy said, on the values). I like splitting Wilber's 2x2 into a triad, that serves to simplify.
"Innovations in eco-social-spiritual praxis that work to make consciousness relevant, grounded in an understanding of power in our historical and cultural milieu, and informed by cutting-edge theory." Now say it in less words!
The question I am asking is, how do we do that so that it speaks to believers in a traditional faith tradition (the diplomats), those remixing spiritual concepts in the middle (the spiritual swingers), and the atheists (intellectual assassins)? I think you've been down this road already, but I can't get the link for the 2014 RSA talk you gave on those three to work.
Thank you for this article and your work. Your article Absolutely makes sense and it resonates deeply. On my side, I believe we work on the same lines of thought. Instead of trying to "solve" current problems within the same paradigm, the aim is to "dissolve" them. And as you know, this is only possible with a third Horizon transformative Vision. This is the core of what call Shapership, this vital capacity to "shift" perspectives and “craft” Reality: The Art of Shaping the Futures. A creative way to look at what is AND what could be , perfectly aware that "The Eye only sees what the Mind is ready to understand". As a way of being, Shapership invites to adopt the “Altitude Attitude” and to open the “Soul Compass” (an integrity of being). As a way of doing, Shapership derives its power from the articulation of three very simple elements 1) creative resistance: The Big No (see and resist the status quo of H1, escape Plato's cave) 2) The Transformative Vison: The Big Yes. This is the "I have a Dream" (H3); we call it the Fostbury Flop of the Mind 3) Anticipative Experimentation: the creative "How". which is about Co-shaping new realities or "jamming together on desire"
Here is a short extract of our book that might resonate with you
Thinking “radical” and creating the “Erotica of the Future”
Shapership is a “Utopia in Action”.
The Shapership Attitude is radical - A “Big No”, a “Big Yes” - in the sense of “back to roots”, going to the essence. It is about thinking Big and Radical.
It implies more than just “creating Future possibilities”.
It is about taking a stand for “radically different future possibilities”, based on completely different worldviews and values.
For Shapership, the story of the Future is not an “improved” or corrected version of the Present.
The Transformative Vision creates a “perturbation of the Present” because it is a thought of radical difference.
It is a BIG YES to a radically new version of what could be. “A new model that makes the existing model obsolete”. Instead of trying to “solve the problem”, the Shapership attitude leads to invent ways to “dissolve it”.
Shapership implies to “open new paths towards the Future”, to “pioneer something”, “to dream an impossible dream”, to “open new trails in the jungle of representations”. In short, to shift what people believe is possible in a field that resonates with their Hopes and Aspirations.
The Essence of Shapership is the kind of Hope and Desire it generates.
The kind of Future Shapers bring to see because they saw it!
A Shaper actually is what we might call an “I Opener”, an “Eye Opener’”, an “Eye Hopener” and even a “High Hopener”.
Because of its radicality, the Transformative Vision has the power of a Utopia.
How?
One of Edgard Morin's thoughts that we (Aline and Jean-Louis) carry in our heart since a long time is the following:
“Utopia is at the same time what can change reality
and what is incapable of changing it.
Realism is at the same time lucid and blind.”
It implies that Utopia, as a thought of the “impossible” and of radical difference - other place, other time, other space - can have an effect on Reality - although we have to agree on the meaning of this word.
What best describes the strength of the utopian experience is an expression that comes from Habermas: The Future as a disturbance of the Present. It creates a crack in the “imaginary”.
Utopia can be seen as the possibility of a radical break with a predicted and colonised Future, as opposed to the belief in an impossible change.
Utopian Imagination opens up new possibilities - or more precisely, it opens up the possibility of new possibilities, - radically different - and therefore, because it takes us out of this inability to imagine a different Future, it also takes us out of the possible “confinement” in a Present assigned to a fixed identity.
A Transformative Vision has the same power to change Reality.
Because it arouses desire.
(...)
It is an operative Utopia: it produces effect. It opens Time, Space and Matter to “infinite possibilities.” It allows to move our head to the other side of the starry vault and see “another Reality”. It opens the bubble of the material world and allows to recover our capacity for wonder.
A Transformative Vision, a radical Big Yes” consists in making holes in Time, Space and Matter to let the light of Hope enter.
how does this resonate with you ?
Kind regards
aline
https://nyweekly.com/book/building-the-future-with-imagination-aline-frankfort-and-jean-louis-baudoins-shapership-provides-inspiration-to-shape-the-future/
Christopher Nye
A tremendously important topic. Because neglect of our inner development has entrained us toward dystopia and/or collapse. Bravo for the Inner Development Goals initiative that has tackled this problem with bold measures and moral imagination!
May I suggest that you consider the Sekem intentional community in Egypt as a laboratory or prototype for how attention to the inner life can manifest in community and commerce? I will have an article on it in the next issue of Orion Magazine, but in a nutshell the initiative started about 45 years ago when Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish, a real visionary, stood at a spot in the desert northeast of Cairo and was moved to establish a farm on this land that consisted at that time of nothing but sand and rocks. He was a scientist, not a farmer, and everyone told him he was crazy. He persisted, put down a well, and began renewing the soil with the creative use of compost. Soon they were organically growing medicinal and culinary herbs for export to Europe.
Not only did the decision to establish a farm and later a community come from a realm that defied utility, the first two major purchases for the operation revealed values that affirmed the need to feed both body and soul. They were a tractor and a grand piano.
If you visit Sekem today, 45 years after its founding, you experience a community founded on Islamic principles, where a cordial spirit prevails between Muslim and the minority of Coptic Christians, and a remarkable level of caring, dedication, and intentionality prevails. Workers are given paid time off to develop their creative potential. There are fields of vegetables and specialty crops, 30-foot palm trees loaded with dates, herds of cows and sheep, schools, and six thriving businesses. This in the country where the Muslim Brotherhood was born and where reportedly the majority of the population favor Sharia law.
While I don’t favor the term “the third attractor,” I believe these folks are visioning and reifying it. Much more could be added, for example about their Economy of Love, which could be described as “Fair Trade on steroids,” their efforts to transform Egyptian farming away from chemicals, and their creative us of carbon credits. I just wanted to bring this to your attention.
I love it. thank you for sharing so many enlightening (in the Bildung sense) words with us across these articles. This one in particular - along with the Visionary - got me excited. I felt I had to go and read the work of all the people you reference NOW!
You really help me make sense of this space of the internet and give perspective to the more immediate society. And you give me hope. Concrete hope as a feeling to hold on to of "there is a way". I believe that already; you help me feel it
Fabulously comprehensive yet precise. I’m interested in why you think the IDGs might turn out to be H2-, not because I have a particular cleaving to them other than an appreciation of the importance of inner development and as a vast improvement on SDGs.
Setting this in a 3 Horizons context mirrors a conversation we’ve been having recently in the Doughnut Design for Business Community about how the framework can enable us to go beyond business transformation into systemic change.
> But are we really condemned to submit to Moloch and watch as the human superorganism destroys its only home?
Not necessarily. Particularly not if we replace the doomerist framing of the superorganism with something like this:
"at least the superorganism that seems to be emerging, though in some ways demanding, isn’t the totalitarian monster that Orwell feared; it’s more diffuse, more decentralized, more reconcilable — in principle, at least — with liberty."
@rossdawson
see also:
Human superorganisms (and their "political systems") are not sui generis but are variations on a major evolutionary theme... Indeed, it is likely that social organization played a key part in human evolution, and in the rise of civilization... A modern human society represents an elaboration upon an ancient hominid survival strategy. It is, quintessentially, a "collective survival enterprise." This perspective casts a different light on the ongoing process of cultural evolution and the much-debated prospects for global governance...
It is the synergies (the economic payoffs), broadly speaking, that are the drivers for evolutionary complexification...
In that perspective, we can see the emergence of the planetary superorganism as an evolutionary response to the challenge presented by the humanity's meta- and poly-crisis.
The superorganisms may also constitute a distinct unit of selection (and adaptive change) in the evolutionary process."
"Accordingly, a global superorganism may well be emerging even as traditional nation-states are devolving."
Source: Superorganism, in International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2nd edition, (2004)
But no AI-enabled superorganism can help humanity's collective self-actualization
without the collective wisdom of sovereign people & communities
replacing the collective ego of narrow profit interest in the driver’s seat of symbiotic intelligence.
FYI: I'm in the midst of writing an essay on The Superorganism — a New Chapter in Macrohistory. If anybody wants to read it when I will have completed it, drop me a line.
Wow! Great synthesis of what's going on. This very much resonates with me and expands my own thinking. Thanks for that! ;)
What comes to mind are these quotes:
Maybe for H2 plus / Big V Vision: "The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.” Erwin Schrödinger
Maybe for the concept of the third reality: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." Einstein
Makes sense, feels right.
You may in fact be getting high on conceptual structures, but as highs go, it's a pretty exciting one. And it points to my question yesterday in your Alchemy of Crisis talk regarding Bayo Akomolafe's notion of "making sanctuary." I read him as saying that if how we respond to the problem is part of the problem, then the first thing we should do is stop. And the next thing we should do is make space (sanctuary) for other, not-human consciousnesses- animal, plant, stone, Yeshua, Coyote, Atman, all of those other consciousnesses with which we share the world- to emerge. In that space, where humans are no longer at the center, is where your Alchemy can take place. It seems to me the Third Attractor might arise from that. Also, I know your colleague Jeremy Johnson is familiar with the Christian mystic, Cynthia Bourgeault, who has written extensively on Gebser, but she's also greatly influenced by Gurdjieff and his Law of Three, which I do not pretend to understand, but might apply well here.
I don’t think we should ever stop reaching for the stars with theory like you and Perspectiva are doing as we need all the ideas possible to figure out this grand delusion. I also think we should not over rely on them, which funny enough, your theorizing and others at Perspectiva seems to acknowledge and include.
To me, it seems, we do need to focus on this third attractor more, while holding it still, like everything else, in the proper tonos. The 19th and 20th century’s record of the implementation of grand theories frightens me, those who think they comprehend all of the complexity and hyperobjects well enough to propose utopias and protopias also give me pause, but worst of all, Moloch does. But Moloch does seem to leave some clues as to possibilities for change.
As Scott Alexander pointed out in his famous essay “Meditations on Moloch,” Moloch is at its core, structures of incentives that have built up over time. Thus, it would seem, if that is the case, where the most freedom and potential in addressing our large problems are is with flipping the levers on small incentives we can actually touch, because built up, they create our fundamental frameworks, determine what seems possible and not, and once our reality is defined by them, they affect how we treat ourselves, our communities, which then flows into how we operate our businesses and governments.
As you point out, it would seem, that our structures and our perspectives within ourselves, our self and spirit and psyche, are the best starting point, and one we can engage in spiritual practice and relational practices to alter our own internal frames, and thus ultimately how we engage when we move from inside ourselves to out in our interactions with others and the world.
For example, on the personal and interpersonal level, it seems we could do the spiritual work necessary to create new perspectives on ourself (e.g., internalizing that you are a dividual, rather than individual). Once a new perspective is in place (hard work), our fundamental view can more easily shift (still hard work) such that, for instance, our ways of communicating can change and we can learn to truly attend to ourselves and one another in communication. As we do so, I suspect those ways of communicating with one another can change gradually from the typical top-down propositional manner of engagement to a more bottom-up relational and discovery based manner of engagement, that encourages mutual co-shaping and understanding of one another in a more flowing manner. And I suspect it all begins with ourselves and our willingness to tell the Moloch of society in our imaginations, that we have the power to change its shape with the incentives we can actually grasp ahold of and do something about.
I suspect that if we can imagine new possibilities rather than the limitations Moloch imposes on us, find what incentives are graspable, and pull on them, we can change our world, iteration by iteration.
For instance, where there seems to be the most freedom to world build is inside businesses, the churches of our market. We can examine and imagine running a business in a way that intentionally does not maximize profit and intentionally does not maximize returns to the CEO, founder, and investors, but instead orients towards maximizing quality of life for all the people involved in the business, while at the same time optimizes running a business that changes the conditions of people’s life in the world, in a way that is good for everyone. We can build businesses that generate human flourishing and which can sidestep many of the baked-in incentives that currently stop this from happening when people limit themselves to the standard way of doing things and limited by the Moloch of their imagination. Essentially by doing this, people can build a parallel system, incentive by incentive. I even suspect some people are already doing it. For instance, there is an interesting developer, Kevin Cavanaugh, founder of Guerrilla Development, who is making the built environment and his business an exemplar of incentive-flicking inside and outside his business. Check out his Tedx talk called How much is enough?
It seems to me that small scale change, lever pulling, and iteration, are the way forward, instead of any grand solutions or theories of salvation. We do need the big ideas though, that’s how we expand our thinking of what is possible, but we just still need a foot in the real world, and we need to be careful not to fall prey to the trap of a beautiful grand system.
I suspect we are all just playing some small role and fulfill a small function of a bigger system, like a pinky finger on a person, and we need to figure out how best to be a pinky finger, knowing that the bigger system we are a part of, really relies on us being the best pinky finger possible.
But, I’m just some guy on the internet who doesn’t know much about anything, so take this all with a grain of salt.
I continue to appreciate your work and Perspectiva’s, it stimulates my thinking and gives me hope.
I have been thinking that whatever shifts our obvious trajectory away from imminent oblivion might be invisible and incomprehensible, and already well along on the massive scale this seems to require; that anything we can perceive and comprehend will not be that; and that it arises in the ephemeral, non-persistent dimension between us, where life is really lived, moment by moment. There's something about the way a flock of birds turns all at once: the first bird to know a turn is in order doesn't have to mobilize all the others. Maybe I'm thinking of a change in our collective correlated perception/behavior. Not something that could be planned and executed, much less led; more like something we won't see until it arrives. Not that we shouldn't strive for this...
Feels right to me. Something that stands out about the current cultural crisis is a kind of foreclosure of uncertainty and agency.
Necessary antidotes would seem to be a keeping open of possibility, of creative responses to conditions rather than a passive acceptance/resignation towards the predominant attractors, and as you point to, the inner place we orient from in meeting reality as it is in each new moment.
Thank you for your curiosity and care in this post, Jonathan.
Reading your words made it clear for me that I am already living by a commitment to a third attractor, that of a Global Awakening (and harmonious Global civilisation) - as outlined in Chris Bache’s “LSD and the Mind of the Universe” and Duane Elgin’s “Awakening Earth”. I highly recommend these books!
If you don’t want to read, I have summarised them here: https://medium.com/predict/the-age-of-global-awakening-949db4b005d8
Best, Will
Dear Jonathan, I love your searching writing leading us from confusion. Your force seems to be essentially a strategist of sense-making. A necessary attribute of a joyously struggling Grandmaster. I wonder if you have ever considered the strategy of making sure the opposition doesn't win as opposed to trying to win. Is this the nature of winning elections in politics?
When we grasp Right Perception, our inner life coincides with our outer life. My realisation this morning. The opposite is Wrong Perception which is the cause of the metacrisis which relates to most likely taking the wrong turn. So, RP, the spiritual directs our lives of right turns always, this corresponds to optimal consciousness. RP is true vision, the goal for the 21st century visionary.
What is a twenty-first century Visionary
A call from Perspectiva
Without vision the people perish, Pro 29.18, St James Bible.
Dear Jonathan, et Perspectiva.
Vision has been the domain of Prophets for millennia; it relates to divine revelation which is beyond human vision through the eyes. More like a sight (mentally), that is, a dream, revelation, or oracle: i.e. a message from God.
My personal experience has been one of revelations from the Helper, the Holy Spirit. The mediator between God and man. It has been a means of right inspiration or direction at the right time of need. And has led to some incredible insights of simplicity.
Considering the Dystopic and very complex world we live in there is a strong need to understand complexity as an epistemic metaphysical solution which debunks complexity, i.e. a complex mind. The dystopic world has become more complex than ever for mankind with the storming progress of technology and computers without real meaning and understanding. Are there any ways of reconciliation. Schmachtenberger’s idea of the third attractor and Consilience seems to suggest a direction, The third attractor!
What is true vision, perception?
Christ’s vision is the Holy Spirit’s gift, God’s alternative to the illusion of separation and to the belief in the reality of sin, guilt and death. It is the one correction for all errors of perception; the reconciliation of the seeming opposites on which this world is based. Its kindly light shows all things from another point of view, reflecting the thought system that arises from knowledge and making return to God not only possible but inevitable. What was regarded as injustice done to one by someone else now becomes a call for help and for union. Sin, sickness and attack are seen as misperceptions calling for remedy through gentleness and love. Défenses are laid down because where there is no attack there is no need for them. Our brothers’ needs become our own, because they are taking the journey with us as we go to God. Without us they would lose their way. Without them we could never find our own. “Schucman, Dr Helen. A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition.”
The miracle minimizes the need for time. In horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary. There is no relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers. The miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does so by the underlying recognition of perfect equality of giver and receiver on which the miracle rests. The miracle shortens time by collapsing it, thus eliminating certain intervals within it. It does this, however, within the larger temporal sequence. “Schucman, Dr. Helen. A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition.”)
The process mechanism of the miracle in ACIM seems to be a description of a systemic routing process in a general agent based intelligent micro simulation system of transportation, developed in the very beginning of the nineties, a purely mechanical system based on a what if question of changing direction in an existing process for finding a single shortest route from an Origin to each of a number of destinations aka All or nothing assignment potential.
Now, the opposite of this is clearly, in the spirit of Niels Bohr’s recognition of opposites and complementarity (Note: This is McGilchrist rhetoric), All Shortest routes from anywhere in the universe to one or more destination(s)/goal(s), the Right Hemisphere mechanics but how?
Both thought systems use the same algorithm of sorting all branches in order of distance from the Origin (LH), the self-referential domain of the ego, or the order of distance to the destination (RH), the all-referential intelligent mind process, the cause of consciousness (spirit), the attractor field of a deterministic nondeterministic science which through the simulation becomes a nonlinear system through the right use of time. In the process of moving the past into the present and the mind creating the attractor fields, the differentiated capacity potential for leading all at once from the present into the future in no time and optimally in time into the future of the becoming next present. Etc.
The world of spirituality is coincident with the world of nondeterministic science and nonlinear systems. Hawkins, David R.. Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behaviour (p. 238). Hay House. Kindle Edition.
This stuff is on the borderline of Ivo’s and Bonita’s goal of opposites. Yes, Ivo you are right it needs to be unlearned before we can learn how to perform, yes Bonita, miracles.
I recall how hard it was to unlearn my habitual LH way of thinking, akin to unlearning bad habits, especially when coding the system and its extensions. I had to pull myself together in order to think and getting used to working mentally in the opposite direction. This became a joyous struggle for taming the power of deterministic non-complex complexity with only 640kb of memory at the time from the perspective of a deterministic efficient stochastic process. The result became the beginning of a joyous nonstruggle for leading out of confusion.
//To be continued//
Recently I launched Metamodern Wannabes on Substack. I have added The Joyous Struggle and Perspectiva's Substack to my Recommendations. My comments on this article are posted at https://open.substack.com/pub/johnstokdijk538/p/new-horizans?r=9im79&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web.
Makes sense, feels right. I think the focus is right- on the spirit as upstream from other changes (As Macy said, on the values). I like splitting Wilber's 2x2 into a triad, that serves to simplify.
"Innovations in eco-social-spiritual praxis that work to make consciousness relevant, grounded in an understanding of power in our historical and cultural milieu, and informed by cutting-edge theory." Now say it in less words!
The question I am asking is, how do we do that so that it speaks to believers in a traditional faith tradition (the diplomats), those remixing spiritual concepts in the middle (the spiritual swingers), and the atheists (intellectual assassins)? I think you've been down this road already, but I can't get the link for the 2014 RSA talk you gave on those three to work.