It just now came to my attention that the new mayor of Seattle, Katie Wilson, is the daughter of David Sloan Wilson, one of the coauthors of this book:
I’d be very curious what anyone thinks of the work of David Sloan Wilson or of the wider research communities in which he participates. I’d be especially interested if anyone thinks any of it has 2R potential. Meanwhile, I ordered the book - as political homework.
I’m a fan. I went through Prosocial World’s Becoming Prosocial course, and I appreciate what they’re doing. They do not seem to have a lot of traction, however. Their (Prosocial World’s) mission statement is something along the lines of “achieve a world that works for everyone”. Their means are primarily better ways of relating with one another. Of course, I’m also for that, but the ideal organization striving for that mission would need to find a way to do so without elevating one quadrant (the intersubjective) over others.
Here is the current political context. Feels like traction, in a Hegelian sort of way.
Fascinating and great to see.
Definitely think there is movement. The dialectic is moving.
And DS Wilson stuff has definitely been very interesting to me. I really got a lot from Darwin’s Cathedral, though i’m a bit more cultural evolution-ist than pro-social-list.
Gearing up for future action in Seattle, I am now working through the following titles:
Kemp, L. (2025). Goliath’s Curse. Random House.
Fullerton, J. (2025). Regenerative Economics. New Society Publishers.
Atkins, P. W. B., Wilson, D. S., Hayes, S. C., & Ryan, R. M. (2019). Prosocial : using evolutionary science to build productive, equitable, and collaborative groups. Context Press.
That short list is not a bad jumping off point for anyone wishing to have a comprehensive view of current social science, aimed at prosocial action and future-oriented transformations. Kemp adds a healthy dose of historical realism about how power structures came to be the way they are. Fullerton outlines new economic approaches, informed by, but not bound to, classical and neoclassical economics. Atkins et al. show how to undertake social action from micro to larger scales.
In addition to the print works, I’m also devouring YouTube videos on AI, featuring leading lights at Microsoft, AWS, and Google, as well as commentators both pro and contra AI, and power users much in the weeds on all the latest models. Why? Because (nod to Kemp here), whether one plays for team David or team Goliath, the battles for the future of society will transpire largely over digital networks. Likewise (nod to Fullerton), AI is currently the leading driver of the continuation and intensification of the ancient extractive economy. No regenerative economic program can afford to ignore it. Finally - and this is the nub of whatever my “Seattle praxis” may turn out to be - I’m finding that “pro-social” is a good way to organize ground level action on any number of topics, and moreover, there is no reason in the world AI and cloud infrastructure can’t be bent to the purpose of supporting
ground-level, small group, social action. The attached screen is from a prototype app I vibe coded live on Zoom during a small-group class session last week. That’s pretty much the Seattle stack in a nutshell!
Update.
I’m now officially on contract for Q1 for 2026 as a consultant to the NSC college president and her leadership team around themes of futurism, AI integration, the orientation of our technical workforce development programs. Scope and methods of the engagement are largely up to me.
Here is the place we are talking about: https://northseattle.edu/
At the beginning of the school year, our president brought in a speaker from another college on futurism and change management. The two images below were featured in that presentation.
My goal with this consulting engagement is very simply to launch a highly visible prototype of the “new paradigm” curve and shift everyone’s perception of the light cone of the possible. My horizon for the “possible” is defined by discussions occurring frequently in forums such as this one. My sense is the school in general is more wedded to the old paradigm, but feels the acute downward slope of that curve, and is not seeing a clear pathway to an imagined future on the other side. Likewise, the light cone of the “possible” is fairly tight, and maps too closely to the “plausible” and the “probable” as defined by worldviews such as modernism and postmodernism. My proposed approach as been dubbed by me and my graduate student team as “non-linear”, which term I hit upon as a convenient summary of the recursive nature of the metamodern and the aperspectival sensibilities of the Gebserian integral.
I’m sharing all this here because I am inviting anyone who takes an interest in the matter to co-consult on the project. The way that would work is I will share ground-level details about what is happening in the organization. What I am hoping for in return is best practices advice, sourced from all over the world, but on point with building both the new paradigm and the bridge, within the perceptual horizons available to the organization is it currently stands. As far as I am concerned, this is an opportunity to embedded deliberately developmental thinking, at scale, in a significant urban geography. I’m hoping others here will appreciate the potentials in that opportunity.
!! I did not know that - that is fascinating to me.
Here is Second Renaissance thinking taking aim at Seattle public-sector post-secondary education like a comet on the hunt for dinosaurs.
Mayor-elect Katie Wilson’s grandfather:
