4 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2022
    1. Can they reshape the contours and boundaries of their socialsituations instead of being shaped by them?

      !- key insight : can an individual reshape the contours of their social situations instead of being shaped by them? * This realization would open up the door to authentic inner transformation * This is an important way to describe the discovery of personal empowerment and agency via realization of the bare human spirit, the "thought sans image"

  2. Jun 2022
    1. The experts were asked to independently provide a comprehensive list of levers and leverage points for global sustainability, based on the potential for disproportionate effects to address and reverse the deterioration of nature while meeting societal needs. They were asked to consider actions by the full range of possible actors, and both top-down and bottom-up effects across various sectors. The collection of all responses became our initial set of levers and leverage points. Ensuing processes were then informed by five linked conceptualizations of transformative change identified by the experts (Chan et al., 2019): ● Complexity theory and leverage points of transformation (Levin et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2007; Meadows, 2009); ● Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social–ecological systems (Berkes, Colding, & Folke, 2003; Folke et al., 2010); ● A multi-level perspective for transformative change (Geels, 2002); ● System innovations and their dynamics (Smits, Kuhlmann, & Teubal, 2010; OECD, 2015) and ● Learning sustainability through ‘real-world experiments’ (Geels, Berkhout, & van Vuuren, 2016; Gross & Krohn, 2005; Hajer, 2011).

      Set of levers and leverage points identified by the authors.

      Creating an open public network for radical collaboration, which we will call the Indyweb, can facilitate bottom-up engagement to both educate the public on these levers as well as be an application space to crowdsource the public to begin sharing local instantiations of these levers.

      An Indyweb that is in the form of an interpersonal space in which each individual is the center of their data universe, and in which they can see all the data from their diverse digital interactions across the web and in real life all consolidated in one place offers a profound possibility for both individual and collective learning. Such an Indyweb would bring the relational nature of the human being, the so called "human INTERbeing" alive, and would effortlessly emerge the human INTERbeing explicitly as the natural form merely from its daily use. One can immediately see the relational nature of individual learning, how it is so entangled with collective learning, and would be reinforced with each social interaction on the web or in real life. This is what is needed to track both individual inner transformation (IIT) as well as collective outer transformation (COT) towards a rapid whole system change mobilization. Accelerated by a program of open access Deep Humanity (DH) knowledge that plumbs the very depth of what it is to be human, this can accelerate the indirect drivers of change and provide practical tools for granular monitoring of both IIT and COT.

      Could we use AI to search for levers and leverage points?

  3. May 2022
    1. A guiding principle will be to make the hyper-response as not only fun and enjoyable as possible but also meaningful via a vibrant grand narrative approach that connects the mission to conceptions of identity, values, and evolving worldviews.

      Gamification will play a critical role to tap into the human psychology that will encourage proactive action. Bend-the-Curve is the glocal game proposed as a way to mobilize ordinary citizens aggregate community scale response teams.

      As part of this gamification, a private Transform application within the public and open Indyweb can facilitate individual inner transformation, synchronize that to individual outer (behavior) transformation and synchronize that to collective inner and outer transformation at the respective community collective scale and finally aggregating all community impacts, to the global collective transformation scale. Built in data privacy of the Indyweb insures that everyone can contribute data to the aggregator in a completely anonymous way. All of this is designed to operationalize Donella Meadow's insight that inner transformation of worldviews, paradigms and value systems is the most powerful of all leverage points.

    2. It is anticipated that this period will address the harder aspects of global transition, in terms of technology, infrastructure, and social behavior change. As initial enthusiasm may have waned, a stoic approach will be required, refreshing the workforce and dealing with more dangerous hyperthreat actions.

      It is clear that through such a massive and unprecedented transition, a whole being approach must be adopted. This means dealing with the inner transformation of the individual in addition to the outer transformation. The hyperthreat increases the attention to each individual's mortality salience, their awareness of their own death. As cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker noted in his "Denial of Death", our fear of death is normatively suppressed as a compromised coping mechanism. When extreme weather, food shortage, war, pandemic become an unrelenting onslaught, however, we have no escape from mortality as the threat to our lives will be broadcast relentlessly through mass media. Inner transformation must accompany the outer transformation in order for the general population to emotionally cope with the enormous stress. Deep Humanity (DH) is conceived as an open praxis to assist with the inner transformation that will be needed for mental and emotional well being during these trying times to come.