¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 This will be a fun challenge, and I will make every effort to keep it that way. I will try not to mention any view other than what is positive and encouraging in this year 2016 on Planet Earth.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Never before,
in the long history of Gaia and Humankind,
has there been greater
POTENTIAL.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 There are more good persons,
more competent, knowledgeable, and compassionate
than ever before.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 The collected Knowledge of Humankind
is not only greater, but is
increasing, accelerating at
finer and finer fractal detail.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 Human sub-populations comprehend in great detail,
the “workings” in a great many domains of knowledge;
being more and more accessible to all.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Technology is at it highest state of development,
with many new advances in the works.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 The entrepreneurial spirit is awakening,
with innovative creativity flourishing,
many are living fulfilling lives.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 There are more quality services, than ever before,
to maintain a person’s health, and
means to heal, when needed.

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 There is more interest in the future,
and persons organizing to create a quality future.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 Persons are interacting with each other
more than ever before,
using new, technologies for
communication,
collaboration,
cooperation.

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 The records of human creative productivity
are accessible as never before;
and with tools, techniques, and platforms for
collective creating, editing, and distributing
Semiotic Structures
(texts, artforms, graphics, videos).

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 Cross Cultural Knowledge & Appreciation
is spreading rapidly.

¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 Every human has the potential
to dialog with any other human;
even with automatic translation.

¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 Much factual information is quickly searchable,
making the enormous wealth of human knowledge
accessible on need; and this is rapidly improving.

¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 All of the above riches
are potentially available
to the vast majority of humankind,
who are in great need of these riches.

¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 Humankind will itself gain immensely
when these riches are universal for all.

¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 There exists ready potentials to gain requisite
knowledge and strategies
to rapidly uplift the global human population
to a level of competencies
to secure
the multi-millennial survival/thrival
of Gaia & Humanity.

¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 *** ***

¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 I could expand at length on each of the above riches possessed by humankind in 2016.  I will refrain from listing the many barriers we face in moving forward, extending these riches to everyone and securing them for the far distant future. Instead, I will attempt to sketch a future history – from a time when humankind has achieved balance and sustainability, reporting on events and activities from 2016.

SEARCHING FOR THE MISSING

¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 Late in 2016 an insight went viral in the activist communities.
We became aware that we had blindspots;
that there were domains of knowledge and potential action
of which we were blocked from acknowledging and exploring.

¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 For some of us, we discovered that we also lived in silos,
as many others we had previously observed;
all humans live/work in silos.

¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 Individual human persons have limitations;
there are achievements only teams or orgs can do,
which individual humans can’t do;
yet many persons refuse to accept this limitation.
Of course, we all accept this for many collective accomplishments;
yet we assume we can comprehend all that is relevant.
We know we can’t know everything, but we seldom acknowledge
that we must fundamentally change before
we can adequately comprehend our future options.

¶ 23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 0 We need to accept, and act on the knowledge,
that we are as Societal Children.
And as children, we accept our limitations,
and work to overcome them.
PROBLEM: We have no Societal Parents.
SOLUTION: Bootstrapping.

¶ 24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 0 — more to come —

ACCEPTING THE IMPOSSIBLE

¶ 25 Leave a comment on paragraph 25 0 We accept that we can’t live forever (at least now), can’t grow 25 feet tall or be fully mature but only 1 inch tall. We can’t teleport or levitate, without technological assist. We can’t trans-mutate into another animal. We can’t transform a refrigerator into an automobile.

¶ 26 Leave a comment on paragraph 26 0 When your beloved pet dog is dying of old age and cancer, you accept the inevitability of their death; you consider their becoming young and vital as impossible. Maybe, with a massive army of healing robots smaller than a biological cell, repairs could be made and the old physiology transformed into a new physiology, Rusty could be made young again – maybe even turned into another breed or another mammal. We lack that technology today.

¶ 27 Leave a comment on paragraph 27 0 I hypothesize that humankind, in 2016, is analogous to that dying dog. Humankind can’t be transformed into Humanity. We can’t become an army of transforming agents to repair and coordinate all the dysfunctional systems and subsystems in humankind. Yet, from my perspective, that is what the change agent communities have as their vague goal.

¶ 28 Leave a comment on paragraph 28 0 AWESOME  FANTASTIC  UNBELIEVABLE are terms I would use to describe the great many projects underway by change agents, globally, with the far-off goal of eventually transforming humankind. I have yet to observe even a sketchy draft of a strategy through the “endgame”, when we are truly secure that the survival/thrival of humankind is ensured.

¶ 29 Leave a comment on paragraph 29 0 The contemporary “process” for this transition or “endgame”, if only implicit, is primarily ecological (with social systems instead of organisms) and analogies with swarming. The “coming together” is viewed as “organic” and not resulting from “engineering design” – which has the connotation of top down control. This issue is mostly in everyone’s blindspot.

¶ 30 Leave a comment on paragraph 30 0 There are so many exciting projects related to a great many aspects of human systems. I learn of a few new ones each day. There are a few that are decades old, and continue; some have ceased to function. I sense that the new digital technology is augmenting their quality.

¶ 31 Leave a comment on paragraph 31 0 Most of them are “brain children” of  unique, talented persons. Some attract a team of participants. Three that excite me the most at this time are:

¶ 32 Leave a comment on paragraph 32 0 Michel Bauwens
Joe Brewer
Giorgio Bertini

¶ 33 Leave a comment on paragraph 33 0 but, there are hundreds of other I know OF, many who are doing excellent work. I have yet to engage in quality dialog with the three explorers, for reasons I may examine later.

¶ 34 Leave a comment on paragraph 34 0 I venture to claim that there is no significant interaction or sharing between most, if not any, of these projects. By “significant” I mean that their interaction is noticeably improving what each is doing. I am sure than many know OF each other, and some may be in regular dialog, and they do learn from each other, that can be useful.

¶ 35 Leave a comment on paragraph 35 0 Each of these projects is a theme or thread to weave a new humanity. There may be some themes currently missing that are essential – which I will come to later. Each is in an early stage of development, some more along than others. I agree that each theme has value, and am very pleased by the progress being made; as I have neither the competencies or time to do their work. So I trust their ability.

¶ 36 Leave a comment on paragraph 36 0 I may be wrong, but from what I observe, I conclude:

0. ¶ 37 Leave a comment on paragraph 37 0
1. Change agent projects exist in virtual silos. Although each might ideally desire closer interaction, each is too busy with internal issues and deadlines that there is not time to explore better interaction. Probably few have a designated person or team with responsibility for “foreign relations” (with other projects).
2. Most change agent”s projects have a goal of replacing an existing subsystem in our existing society with an alternative they are developing. How they might then engage with the other subsystems of society would yet have to be explored – and whether those other subsystems would be the old ones, or new ones being developed by other change agent projects. Some projects are at a stage where there are a few exemplar experiments in place. The actual transition from old to new is seldom examined.
3. Working on their projects doesn’t give persons sufficient time to explore the deep nature of existing humankind, its resistance and opposition to change and its power and willingness to oppress. Also, many persons can’t emotionally tolerate deep diving into the abyss of humankind’s dysfunction and threats. Nor should they, but some change agents must attend to the transition, the “endgame”; even about what to avoid in challenging establishments prematurely.
4. What trending future of existing humankind (e.g., with forecast increasing disruption due to climate change disasters, economic collapses, violence and war, etc.) are taken into account for planning the transition. Are plans underway if cyberspace access becomes limited?
5. Have the change agent projects explored the receptivity of their proposals by the persons of different cultures, independent of their leaders? Given the polarization of populations, what “educational” processes are considered to prepare persons for the changes proposed?

EXPLORING ALTERNATIVE CONTEXTS

¶ 38 Leave a comment on paragraph 38 0 to be continued …  06/27/2016