I imagine very fertile discussion could be had at designing a minimal viable frame of belief/affordances that could scaffold collaboration between diverse belief groups without collapsing or compromising their individuality. Something that could hold both atheists and believers. Could we form an ikigai type diagram for community building that specifically held a set of axioms ( or a simple statements of structure) ? If we could make headway on that, an interfaith dialogue on practical community building rather than abstract values.
This seems equivalent to, or should be derived from, First Principles and First Values. Either the exact ones identified by Stein and Gafni (David J. Temple), or another set of axioms. I find theirs sufficient.
I will look those up. I’m curious to see if the shortcomings of Gafni and the Integral communities inability to deal with Gafni’s abuse is apparent as a lack in the framework.
There are unacknowledged, and unseen power and domination issues everywhere in the developmental metacrisis community, and I’m very interested in getting to the root.
I suspect the current under the domination paradigm, colonialism, sexism and patriarchy there is the psychology of the male brain, an evolutionary glitch, a disorder or aggression towards women and their own species, that spills out into creating language, culture, institutions etc thereby patterning a dysfunction on whole societies over vast periods of time to the scale we can hardly perceive it anymore.
I grok it as a “new normal” on the timescale of the beginning of agriculture, about 12,000 years ago.
There does seem to be a tendency for patriarchal dominance to be associated with highly organized, agricultural societies.
Graeber and Wengrow’s book the Dawn of Everything includes some interesting counterexamples to this trend too. Societies that were able to develop complex organizing patterns that respected the feminine. Gives me hope that we can find real integral solutions, in the real transcend and include sense. I.e. respecting the divine feminine and masculine. I’d thoroughly agree that feminine wisdom and intelligence is wholly lacking in our global civilization’s makeup, and a better way forward must come to terms with this.
Here are the ground rules for my local group. These are on printed handouts, followed by the selected quotes for the week. The only thing about it that is specific to any given religion is the part about “We start our exploration using short selections from the Bahá’à Teachings.” Bahá’à Teachings tend to skew in a fairly universalist direction, so in practice the group is effectively inter-faith.
Meaningful Conversations Tacoma
Each week we will choose a different topic or theme to discuss. We start our exploration using short selections from the Bahá’à Teachings. The conversations aim to uplift, inspire and give expression to the human spirit; the conversations benefit from participants’ viewpoints. Community members of all ages, backgrounds, and beliefs are invited to contribute to elevated conversations, inquiry, consultation and learning. As we grow together and learn from one another we hope to build bridges of unity and respect for all humanity.
Our Conversation Guidelines:
- Encourage everyone to participate
- Listen to understand
- Value everyone’s contribution
- Respect each person
- Express views but keep an open heart & mind
- Avoid discussion of partisan politics
- Maintain a humble posture of learning
Discussions are hosted weekly at various Tacoma libraries
Horse warriors were also a thing.
Good goal. Now … as to process …
As a first cut, one might posit that systems replicate themselves - until they don’t. Evolution is the story of systems that replicated long enough to leave traces for us to notice, but then gave way to something else. (Primal matter and energy don’t have history in that sense - history is about emerging arrangements of the primal elements). The Pleistocene lasted over 2 million years. Most of human evolution was during that epoch. All of it involved hunter-gather lifestyles - which various authors attest as generally egalitarian. That’s a lot systemic replication. What changed? Climate. The agrarian revolution of the Holocene needed sunny, ice free, relatively stable land and weather.
Primal hunter-gather cultures got destabilized by their own population increase in the ever more fertile world they now inhabited. Stones and skeletons don’t give us precise details about how the systemic feedback loops got started to begin with, but its pretty clear at a macro level that systems like agriculture, cities, organized warfare, and hierarchical states had selection advantages over prior systems. All of those hierarchical systems basically just expanded - with an increasing tempo of technical improvements - through 2025, impacting the vast majority of the globe. All those systems are bound to just keep replicating - until they don’t. Why might any of those systems change?
Hard limits do kick in. On regional levels, environmental overshoot and decomplexification are well documented for numerous historical cases. Centers of population, economic, and technical growth have migrated around the world as empires fell in some places, giving rise to new empires in other places. Our current situation lacks true precedent, because the only way for remaining imperial-inspired systems to keep colonizing the current world is for these systems to colonize each other. (A currently observable process). What happens when imperial systems start cannibalizing each other on global scales? Guess we about to find out …
The Götterdämmerung of the historical civilizations is not likely to play out quietly. Anything resembling global calm will likely follow an equally globalized series of storms. Localized sheltering may be viable here or there. “Integral solutions” might be a feasible target on a prototype level for specific local communities buffered in one way of another from the global macro. The macro itself will more likely drive pedal to the metal straight into whatever dead ends Gaia will be throwing in its path. By my best estimate, culture and psychology generally take their cues from what works. At mass scales, seismic shifts in psychology and culture can only follow from many, many prior systems no longer working at all. (And being retried … and failing again … and being retried … and failing again …)
Well … that’s all pretty gloomy! There is another side to our new and novel globalized situation, however. Communication, cooperation, and collaboration are now supported at unprecedented ease and scale. Those who master those emergent systems (AI included) have degrees of freedom none of our ancestors could have possibly imagined. So how about if we all take advantage of the resources we’ve got to do the best we can? My general recommendation is to start small, start local, and get some promising results. Maybe that way we can hatch some innovative systems out that will eventually find their way to planetary replication.
I’d say that’s what we’re doing here. We’ve made it through one quarter of the 21st century, and the start small, start local, while obviously good advice, takes on another layer of meaning: local might refer to local on a concept map (e.g. the Archipelago referred to in this thread) rather than a geographical area. (I know you agree I’m just riffing on this 
).
I think starting small and local is necessary, but not sufficient, however. We must find a way to be results-oriented. In Robert Owen’s time, talk wasn’t so cheap, so strategizing about starting small and local apart from a discussion of the results to be obtained would have been unthinkable. But in our alienated and abstracted world, we can talk endlessly about starting small and local without even mentioning the concrete deliverables/fruits of our labor we expect to see if we are acting effectively.
This Life Itself Podcast with Jim Rutt is worth interjecting here. Jim Rutt: From Dotcom Boom to Game A Collapse
Jim specifically addressed the problem of future unpredictability and the need to start with multiple small initiatives now, seeking scale later. Jim’s views are well grounded in systems and complexity science, which are core disciplines beneath the swarm of thinkers around the Game B movement.
What Jim calls the “fifth attractor” is the sort of Owenesque end goal you are calling for. It’s just that n-dimensional, chaotic, non-linear systems (like our planet), tend not to be predictable in any straightforward way. The reason the preferred goal is the “fifth” attractor is because there are also other attractors drawing systems toward themselves, despite the fact that outcomes of these other four are not what any of us here might wish for.
In my 56-page cognitive fever dream last summer, I thematized the sum total of forces, causes, energies, and impulses as material “push” and spiritual “pull”. We might say that spiritual “pull” is subtle energy drawing human agency toward Rutt’s Fifth Attractor. Theistic religions have no trouble specifying the origins of this spiritual “pull”. For example, a snippet of a Copilot session I ran yesterday:
What papal encyclicals are most consistent with the ideas in the Baháʼà conception of a “new world order”?
Copilot said:
Copilot
The Baháʼà conception of a “new world order” emphasizes global unity, justice, collective security, and the creation of international institutions such as a world legislature, tribunal, and executive authority to ensure peace and prosperity for all humanity. It envisions a system that safeguards cultural diversity, eliminates extremes of wealth and poverty, and promotes universal education and human rights.
Several papal encyclicals resonate strongly with these ideals: (List edited here for brevity):
- Pacem in Terris (1963) – Pope John XXIII
- Populorum Progressio (1967) – Pope Paul VI
- Fratelli Tutti (2020) – Pope Francis
- Laudato Si’ (2015) – Pope Francis
Common Ground
Both traditions:
Advocate global governance mechanisms to ensure peace and justice.
Stress the unity of the human family and the dignity of every person.
Call for international cooperation to address global challenges (poverty, inequality, environment, security).
So revealed religion just spits it all out. The only problem with that is - revealed religion. A lot of my recent work (running parallel to Habermas, Vervaeke, McGilchrist, Brendan Graham Dempsey, and many others), is the recovery of insights from such religious traditions while staying true to more recent scientific cognitive theory and evolutionary thinking.
Partly because my own spiritual sensibilities give strong weight to non-thesitic (or at least apophatic) views, and partly because a lot of my work is in secular settings, I’m continuing to gather non-religious philosophical sources on telos that do not adhere to any given religion. Just now I decided to widen the field of sourcing for such philosophers, so here is Copilot giving me a few hints. (I’m there already on Kant and Habermas - the others will require some looking into).
What secular philosophers have views best aligned with the ideas in the Baháʼà conception of a “new world order”?
Copilot said:
Copilot
The Baháʼà conception of a “new world order” emphasizes global unity, justice, collective security, and international institutions (world legislature, tribunal, and executive authority) to ensure peace and prosperity for all humanity. Several secular philosophers and schools of thought align closely with these principles:
1. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
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Key Work: Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch
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Advocated for a federation of free states under international law to prevent war.
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Emphasized cosmopolitan rights and global citizenship, anticipating ideas of collective security and international governance.numberanalytics
2. Martha Nussbaum (b. 1947)
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Cosmopolitan Ethics: Argues that all humans belong to a single moral community.
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Promotes global justice, universal human rights, and international cooperation beyond national borders.
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Her work on capabilities approach resonates with Baháʼà ideals of human dignity and equality.numberanalytics
3. JĂĽrgen Habermas (b. 1929)
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Advocates for deliberative democracy and global constitutionalism.
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Sees international institutions as necessary for addressing global challenges.
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Emphasizes dialogue and consensus, similar to Baháʼà principles of consultation.oxfordre
4. Kwame Anthony Appiah (b. 1954)
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Cosmopolitanism: Promotes cultural pluralism and shared moral responsibility.
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Argues for global citizenship and ethical obligations that transcend borders.
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Aligns with Baháʼà emphasis on unity in diversity.oxford-review
5. Peter Singer (b. 1946)
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Advocates for global ethics and moral responsibility to alleviate poverty and suffering worldwide.
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His utilitarian approach supports international cooperation and redistribution of resources, echoing Baháʼà calls to eliminate extremes of wealth and poverty.numberanalytics
6. Thomas Pogge (b. 1953)
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Focuses on global justice and reforming international institutions to reduce inequality.
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Critiques structural injustices in global systems, aligning with Baháʼà principles of fairness and collective security.numberanalytics
Common Themes Across These Philosophers
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Cosmopolitanism: Humanity as one moral community.
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Global Governance: Need for international institutions to ensure peace and justice.
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Human Rights & Equality: Universal dignity and rights for all.
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Collective Action: Cooperation to address global challenges like poverty, climate change, and conflict.
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We kicked the ball around the park, it was good.
But we need more, actionable, and action, and not likely to start with us ( although possible)
What devotional drive could be more clear than what we already have in plain sight, Life Itself? What common bond more deep than our home, planet Earth?
Let’s say for the sake of argument “life” and “planet Earth” are the most powerful spiritual attractors. Then at what point should we expect devotional cults in the billions about those? Will existing religions have faded away? Or will existing religions redirect their considerable energies in new directions?
I believe (
) that the trick lies in guaranteeing safe conditions (trust) for people to subscribe to collective ideals and ditch personal interest as a fall-back state.
Society needs to evolve into a system of re-assurances with explicit intentions and promises and effective enforcement. At the moment, honesty and trust are penalised, manipulation rewarded.
Therefore, threat exists within the current categorisation and people are seeking safety in identity politics.
So what do we do? Remove the threat or scale down our “being” (co-exist with the threat in a bubble) .
BTW - China has removed short stay visa requirements for quite a few EU countries, wonder what kind of trend/thinking doeas that represent.
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My preferred formulation would be the alignment of collective ideals with personal interests.
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May be true at macro levels. However, in more community-centric fora (like in Deliberately Developmental Spaces) it seems trust is both cultivated and rewarded. This is not new. Commons-based relationships date back to the paleolithic. The question now is, is there a pathway to a commons-based global macro system as well?
Well, that’s my usual line too
But I meant the type of personal interests that we resort to because of fear that we’ll be betrayed. Collective ideals always fall back to personal interest on the basis that at certain times, you’re the only one you can trust.
I reckon that’s a huge opportunity - targetting that justified fear by remove the threat of betrayal
There are other personal interests which are healthy - self-actualisation outside of zero sum game scenario
Cultivated and rewarded are 2 faces of the same medal. You can’t have one without the other. We have systems that manage to get to a certain state of equilibrium - then we don’t have the awareness to detect the threat until it’s too late. Alternatively, we see what’s happening but don’t have the capacity to do anything about it.
The problem is systemic.
Regardless what we do to our conscioussness - the incoherence in the system will eventually break the magic and with it - we’ll slide down the stage ladder.
There are at least a couple dimensions to this. On small group levels, it seems pretty clear that team building or community formation have been and can be effective. (Not everyone is adept at it, but for the most part this strikes me as addressable through training and practice.)
The more challenging question is if macro-reality itself has set up humanity for some sort of “winner take all” death match? A cursory look at world history so far may well suggest that is the case. For that matter, a detailed and theoretical look at world history (from the likes of Turchin, Diamond, Morris, Kemp) paints a pretty clear picture of why macro-conflict has been baked into civilization even prior to the advent of civilization itself. A happier macro for the world will require radical and unprecedented choices at massive scales!
I believe it can happen, simply because the GameA endgame implies species extinction for humans and quite a few others, given the destructive power of our technology. But the amount and profundity of culture change required to pivot the mass of humanity to a more collaborative GameB posture should not be underestimated. The key to even make the attempt, IMO, lines in demonstration projects at the local level (Dedicated Developmental Spaces) coupled with sophisticated strategizing and technical deployments at the global macro level.
This video reflects a space that is intentional, deliberately developmental, and practicing religious traditions. Are spaces such as this worth including in the 2R archipelago?
New Monasteries and Intentional Communities (Interview with Catherine Pawasarat Sensei)