A difference that would make a difference

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In a post I created several months ago, I tried to draw attention to something that seemed to me to be an acute problem in need of solving. This problem plagues groups of intellectuals like this one—or any group where the medium is primarily text-based, technological, and linear (i.e., a discussion is back-and-forth and has a beginning and an end). I thought of a succinct way of phrasing it, so I decided to try again: We are a group of cathedral builders who are, for the most part, working on our own individual cathedrals.

Unless we find a way to contribute to the same cathedral, our efforts will amount to nothing. Of course, it’s not 100% true that we do not contribute to one another’s cathedral-making. Many, if not all, of us here have original ideas that we air and receive feedback on. I highly value the feedback I’ve received from many of you. However, it seems we are still constructing individual thought-palaces rather than real-world-viable structures that have a chance of addressing the real problems facing us as the world around us shifts from a complex environment to a chaotic one.

Suppose this group of people—or, more broadly, the 2R cultural ecosystem—were to make a real difference, such that future humans could look back on it and be grateful that it existed. I think we can all imagine a future in which these discussions, as intellectually stimulating as they are, make no fucking difference. But can we imagine the future in which we do succeed in transforming spirit into matter? In collaborating on the same, beautiful cathedral?

I see the world situation accelerating toward chaos. I see the solutions proffered by the so-called adults in the room as manifestly inadequate—and if this isn’t universally recognized now, it will be soon. To make this more concrete, take a book like Abundance—an example, in my view, of a hopelessly inadequate response to the chaos. When the emperor’s missing clothes become the talk of the town, who has something real to offer?

Perhaps it would be hubristic to suggest that a small group of people you happen to be in contact with could make such a difference in the future. Perhaps there’s a low likelihood that the writer of this post and its readers would have an impact of that magnitude. However, I’d like to hypothesize what some small group could do to have such an impact, even if it isn’t us.

If some small group of change-makers can offer something that can be considered an adequate—or at least helpful—response to the iceberg-impact event we’re living out in slow motion, then that group will have discovered the difference that makes a difference. There are plenty of groups like ours, each with its own preferences for ideologies and methodologies, and most of them will make little—if any—difference in the grand scheme of things.

I’d suggest that the difference we could discover, if it exists, amounts to a way of collective cathedral building—a way for our various talents to be combined into the same endeavor. Like the additive effect of light waves brought into phase—their amplitudes no longer canceling but reinforcing one another—scattered radiance transformed into a coherent beam: energy made directionally potent through alignment.

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My approach is more that of a sub-contractor running around and making specific contributions to everyone else’s cathedrals. The last thing I care about is some monument to a self that actuarial tables suggests has approximately 15 years left (and how many of those years will involve personal functionality and coherence is yet another question). Let’s say that the actuaries are very, very prescient and my Viking funeral (or whatever it turns out to be) can be confidently booked for 2040. What sort of world will that celebration of life take place in? There may be quite a few Viking funerals occurring around that time, many of which not just for the aged, and few of which with any degree of formal planning at all. There may be plenty of other reasons to be consumed by flames. Remembering me is unlikely to be top of mind for a great many, if any. So let’s our build monuments now …. but to what exactly?

One might object that cathedrals are not intended as moments to self but to some transcendent deity or another. Well … read some history on who built what and why, and self-promotion does seems rather typically involved. My vibe is more like imagining Gaia circa 2040 and figuring out what I could possibly do in the 2025 that would leave 2040 Gaia in all-round better condition than might otherwise occur. My best guess is the best sort of world will be mid-wived by globally-scoped social networks. So horizontal connectivity more than conceptual stone stacking seems the order of the day.

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That’s another elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk (even though talking doesn’t help :wink: ) about .

There’s a distinct distaste for anything concrete, as opposed to theoretical, reluctance to follow someone else’s idea even when people don’t have their own.

I personally believe that groups don’t birth ideas and don’t collectively start and do things. It’s individuals who lead and others join them, if the right conditions are met.

If one wants to see a collective cathedral built - they need to start building their own and if it looks good, others will join. I really believe it’s not to do with egotism but with capacities. People with good ideas and capacities that make them wizards at operationally getting things off the ground are rare.

When it comes to scaling up - the model of McDonald’s is a good one. A system for consistently delivering services / goods of a desired quality that can be reliably replicated .

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Yes, point well taken. My use of a cathedral as a metaphor is based on the amount of planning, dedication, and coordination that would have to go into a cathedral’s construction–including multi-generational adherence to transcendent beliefs.

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This is not my first encounter with that metaphor (see Vol IV in this series).

I’ve been engaged with Brendan, his forums, and his publications for a couple of years now. Brendan leans more toward building new cathedrals from scratch. I prefer restoration of ancient historical cathedrals and the recapture of the living spirit that once animated their stones.

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I agree that individual reflecting, digestion, and expression is a vital moment in larger processes of social change and transformation. I do theorize that as an individual “moment”, however. The individual him/herself is rather easily seen as the confluence of any number of global processes whose genealogy traces to the Big Bang or even other more fundamental and mysterious priors. So everything flows through personhood on the way to and from other sources. Education, IMO, involves the cultivation of personhood in students, in hopes something socially and culturally generative will flow from that.

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I see your point. There’s more to cathedral building than creating the blueprint, however. Everything from logistics to clergy relations to manual labor.

But even where blueprints are concerned, some projects are large enough to require a team of architects. What’s essential is that they have compatible visions. 2R seems to be a good enough container for collective architecting of viable future visions.

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If a group of architects are commissioned to do something together - yes it happens. If it’s supposed to organically emerge, very unlikely.

I might be way off the mark here, but I’d compare this view to the Marxist assertion that capitalists need workers more than workers need capitalists or that the value produced in a capitalist economy comes from labour, not from capital itself.

We’re talking about different categories of rarity and differences in the understanding of the logic of context within embedded systems. Someone good at getting things off the ground is a much rarer “commodity” than someone who would be slotted into a space defined by the blueprint that a commissioned architect designed.

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This is all getting me thinking about my current lead project (it was featured on a research call here a few weeks ago). Unpacking, the core organization pretty clearly sprung up around a particular visionary, and has been 6 years in the gestation. I came in from the wings a few months ago. My most original contribution to date has been a mashup of Dave Snowden, Peter Pogany, and Ikigai, none of which of course are my own inventions. The mashup is very “me”, however, with many localized touches. Lately I am playing a very orchestrating role in the overall partnership and it’s all starting to feel a bit super-groupish. But then there is this Laszlo Institute thread emerging, so maybe that’s an attractor pulling on all of us - to who knows where.

Any good orchestra needs its conductor, that’s for sure. Music likewise needs its composer. Orchestration (see Maurice Ravel) is its own art form. Not to mention the many players who need to put their own fingers on the strings, as it were. My fascination is for when the total work transcends the talent involved in the production. But the stronger the talent that flows in, the more transcendent the potential for the project.

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Ikigai is a concept that’s very easily communicated to people and the one that most people find easy to understand and agree with.

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I’m not trying to say that some indistinct feeling of camaraderie could be the difference that makes the difference. Or that the architects of the cathedral are as common as the builders. What I’m saying is that some means of accumulating labor to the same end, evidencing a deeper, sacred geometric goal in the placement of each brick, is required for anything hoping to make a difference. And this isn’t what we typically see in online discussion groups; perhaps, in part, because this goal isn’t explicated.

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Gathering labour without money getting involved? Sure, it’s possible - you need a grand narrative. To avoid the most prosaic examples - Richard Branson would get people to work for free on the promise of future payoff and immediate partying.

If people align with the future defined by grand narratives - they’d invest themselves hoping for a future payoff.

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I love this reflection and call to action.

What I believe is needed is a reason or method by which we are able to discipline our ego, to serve the greater good.

We can gather round either a shared social design, vision, and/or need, purpose, religion or a charismatic individual (problematic and unsustainable)

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Exactly! So many calls for unity … so few practical ways to get people started moving down that pathway! This one seems to just work. Not to exclude other potential such approaches … but it’s not exactly a field currently overcrowded with candidate ideas.

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Actually, I’m all for getting money involved. This is a prerequisite for success in my view. A group of cathedral builders that can’t answer the Ikigai question “how can I get paid” isn’t going to build much of a cathedral.

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The paradox of my Ikigai turn is one day I went up a mountain considering “what is the best grand narrative?” and I came down the mountain convinced that grand narratives must be collectively constructed from personal primitives. (D. Snowden influence acknowledged on that point). Grand narratives of the future must be polyphonic, so to speak.

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This resonates. The “individual cathedral” metaphor captures so well the fragmentation of our intellectual and cultural ecosystems today.

To me, this fragmentation stems from an attention economy that rewards differentiation over integration. To stand out, everyone must differentiate: build their own cathedral, coin their own terms, and brand their own vision.

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Large orchestras do need a conductor. However small ensembles don’t. One of the vocal groups I most highly esteem at present is Voces8 — 8 singers together with (generally) no conductor. And a string quartet never has a conductor.

So there’s a point about scale here, and a point about “source theory” (I put in scare quotes as I am a skeptic).

Yes, initial inspiration comes through individuals — and @RobertBunge could also have quoted Newton (and others … nice Wikipedia article on this).

Then I would say in most cases the idea is honed and developed collectively. Well-functioning collectives always see more of the whole picture than individuals. In traditional Quaker practice, an individual leading to action is tested in the Meeting (and of course traditionally, a Quaker Meeting would have known its members well) and the Meeting will have a good go at discerning whether the leading is true to the Spirit, or is more like a leading of ego. Let’s face it, many supposed “inspirations” are ego-trips — it’s just that you usually don’t hear of them as they fade quickly. Survivorship bias.

On the other hand, I can feel a good insight behind what @Martin says: the way I would put it is that uninspired committee thinking is responsible for the derogatory “designed by committee” trope. (Wikipedia is working well today!)

So, to my mind, an individual is better than a uninspired committee, and a coherent functional collective is better than an individual at developing an idea. Confusing the two sides of collectivity is … well … confusing.

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On the weekend, I had an interesting conversation with a business owner who employs 40+ people here in London. He’s on a mission to find a way of aligning collective goals, so it’s not only him driving the company forward and holding it together, but that he can feel the same support and care from the rest of the people.

The company is split into 5 departments and is “headed” by 5 managers. A lot investment goes towards building a “corporate culture” and timely removal of “toxic” people. At the back of his mind is this ideal that employees will collaborate more and enjoy working together.

He mentioned one of the metrics that he uses to detect when relationships and collaboration start suffering. It’s when the volume of internal emails goes up and the number of CCs. Emails get CC-ed to him unnecessarily and that indicates that someone is building an audit trial expecting future troubles.

Anyway, he’s been running the company for more than 2 decades and he’s none the wiser. Good people leave when a better opportunity comes along and if he lifts the foot off the throttle - the motivation and the business momentum go down. For him, putting together a permanent cohort of people who love each other and enjoy working on projects together has proved illusive.

The company offers vesting equity incentive plan, table tennis (of course), team buildling days, they even have a full time psychologist…

I can think of 2 models opposing models that can lead to successful joint endeavours. Both of those require a VERY inspired individual (a placeholder for that special person embodying different mix of capacities, so not a particular archetype, but cumulatively clearing the threshold).

First option - a capable micro-manager focused on success and pushing his own vision (Musk, Jobs, Meta…), so people bet on them as a risk-taking visionary - they becomes integral part of their lives on the basis that the founder is uniquely capable of bending reality, winning and generating wealth for everyone.

  1. Centralised
  2. Intense execution culture
  3. High-risk, high-reward

Second option - a founder who has a vision and capacities, but also empathy and interest in relating. They’d have meaningful 1-1 relationships with others, who would feel at home belonging in that company. It would fulfil most important needs in their lives to a high standard (including values). The leader would be inspiring and empowering others in the way of more “flow”.

  1. Decentralised, relationship-driven leadership
  2. Focus on personal growth, safety, and coherence
  3. The company fulfills emotional and social needs

Example could be Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, but I’m struggling to find more :frowning:

I think this is where the opportunity is!

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The wider cultural context likely has quite a bit to do with that. Most people go to work for the “get paid” dimension of life, more than that “what do a I love?” dimension. If love matters more than money, trying to transform the business into some sort of intentional co-op might be an option, but the competitive situation you describe makes that seem implausible. It may be that greater social coherence is just not an option in that specific context.