¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 This started as a brief reply email to the announcement of H.G. Wells birthday, but – as usual – expanded into another sketch of alternative contexts for our troubled times.  That I devoted hours composing this is evidence for my own inability to change my behavior – even if what is said below is quite relevant.  Larry/nuet

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 I always wanted to go back and read more of Wells, more than his novels (which I read).  His bio would be interesting, but not my priority now. I “remember” that he turned very negative about humankind’s future in his last years, changing from his earlier optimism.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 I took this as a lesson for myself.  Starting in 1970, I adopted the FACTOR/DISTRACTOR distinction. No “so-called” negative information should be a distractor from positive strategizing. Apparent negativity motivates me to push to enlarge my context until  it resolves the troublesome factor.  This enables me to push deep into the ugly underbelly of humankind (our growing/evolving pains) and treat all “negatives” as potentially useful information – knowledge over innocence – analogous to Gavin de Becker’s THE GIFT OF FEAR.   I am assisted in this by my lack of visual imagery, which – for others – blocks their ability to think truly ugly.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 I am sure being put to the test in 2016.  Just read SCIENCE on the funding of science in the USA and elsewhere. Not only shrinking drastically, but being directed to politically ideological directions.  Just one example that humankind has reached a deep level of dysfunction that there are no more relevant decision-making systems – for critical issues. All major decision-making gatherings have no significant impact, while their existence gives false hope.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 The American Psyche is in pathological collapse – the strange and dangerous resonance between Trump and his supporters, and the paralysis of liberals and progressives – all highly dependent on the current “state” of information distribution.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Within UPLIFT, all these are but factors to be resolved. BUT,  what concerns me the most, and what threatens my optimism, are the blocks nuet detects in the thinking/acting of the “best of the best” working for a positive transition, and a sustainable, resilient, better future.  Within nuet, the trending sums of their current activity is necessary, but far from sufficient. Two recently viewed videos from P2P elevated my concern, even though they were intended to be positive.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 Re-Imagining The Future  6 minutes

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 System Crisis, System Change  40 minutes, with Gar Alperovitz (scroll down for video)

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 NUET’S ANALYSIS:  Unable to sustain conceptualization of a full transition (including interaction with the trending negatives) humans resort to an exclusive bottom-up fantasy with hope in an imagined coming-together/commons-emergent process – that will emerge “naturally” without the need of human creativity applied to planetary and inclusive issues. Much which “we” need to be doing is missing, in our collective blindspots. Part of “our” difficulty is the lack of eeree (efficient, effective, relevant, enjoyable, elegant) TECH6 (tools, techniques, tasks, training, teams, time) to do WHAT HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 Because of the overwhelming MSC (Magnitude/Scope/Complexity) of our challenge:

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 Lesson One:  NO SINGLE DOCUMENT can ever be sufficient in highlighting ALL ESSENTIAL variables, related to our challenge. Or any reasonably finite set of documents (sems).

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 Lesson Two:  NO INDIVIDUAL HUMAN PERSON can attend to THE WHOLE in their working mind/brains.

¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 Lesson Three: Applying what “we” already know is insufficient. LEADERSHIP is most in need of UPLIFTING.

¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 This means that what I intend to be the consequences of this email will not occur.

¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 What must “we” do, beyond dialog and conversation, to initiate new processes?

I have three critical and vitally important expanding set of documents collected and made accessible by:

¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 1) Michel Bauwens: P2P Foundation
2) Joe Brewer: multiple sites Culture2,  Cognitive Policy Works,  Evonomics  , etc.
3) Giorgio Bertini:  Learning Change

¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 There are hundreds of such sites for submitting and accessing ideas relevant to our better future. These three are part of larry/nuet’s POSITIVE IGNORANCE: Knowing OF what I don’t yet know or comprehend, and OF what I can’t yet do or appreciate. There are also curators of relevant posts in Cyberspace, some of which I access – many I remain innocent of (not even part of my +Ignorance).

¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 There is a virtual infinity (relative to individual human knowledge) of information and ideas relevant to a transition to a positive future.  It is being assimilated into siloed archives, essentially buried. Each new doc/sem may cite and attempt to relate a few other docs/sems from the archives.  Each doc/sem, no matter how excellent, assumes a context that may be limiting, or ignores contexts that may be useful.

¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 Larry/nuet claims to identify ONE limiting context assumption that he believes essential and critical for “success”. That is the assumption of TRANSFORMATION. The emergent NU will somehow interact with the established societal subsystems to morph the latter to be consistent with the former.  This assumption puts undue constraints on how the different nu ventures might collaborate and synergize. For example, it forces maximum attention to economics and governance to the virtual exclusion of significant learning/organizing (“education”). The emergence of NU is highly constrained in having to “merge” with the old, even if only during the transition. An alternative, UPLIFT to Cultural/Societal Metamorphosis, frees these alt ventures/enterprises/projects to explore more freely their integration.

¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 UPLIFT would also permit Alternative Movements/Orgs to face the “true”, ugly reality of the establishments and the “states” of personal human dysfunction. Within the constraint of transformation, the ready potentials of persons is grossly overestimated (and “real” potentials underestimated) and the potential “evil” of the power elites grossly underestimated – both essential to permit hope for transformation.

¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 Larry/nuet

¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 Today is the birthday of H.G. Wells (books by this author), born Herbert George Wells in Bromley, England (1866). He failed at a series of apprenticeships, but then he won a scholarship to a science college, where he learned about biology and Darwinism from Thomas Henry Huxley, grandfather of the writer Aldous Huxley. But he failed his geology exam and had to leave school. Wells had a series of medical problems and he often thought he was dying, but this only prompted him to write more and faster. Over a period of three years, he produced his three most famous books: The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). He lived until he was 79-much longer than he expected to-and he continued to produce books at a rate of two or three a year for the rest of his life; in the end, he’d published more than a hundred books.

¶ 23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 0 H.G. Wells said, “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”