At a recent Research call, there was a call from proposals for research proposal for dedicated subgroups. The proposal below is in response to this call. Please review the draft on the link in this post and comment on the thread below!
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I asked Gemini to suggest potential discussion questions for the subgroup. Gemini extracted these ideas from the 5 white papers linked above. (If you are wondering if it is worth time to dive into the white papers, this should give a general idea of what is found there. )
Based on the White Papers provided by Second Renaissance, here are 10 discussion prompts summarizing the core themes of their research:
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The Root of the Crisis: How do the “views and values of modernity” act as the foundational cause for our current global crises, rather than just technical or political failures?
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Defining a Second Renaissance: In what ways would a “cultural paradigm shift” differ from previous historical movements, and why is it considered necessary now?
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The Dynamics of Change: What specific conditions or drivers are most effective at triggering deep cultural transformation at scale?
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Polycrisis vs. Metacrisis: Why is it critical to distinguish between the interconnected symptoms of the “polycrisis” and the underlying “metacrisis” that generates them?
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The Role of Collective Consciousness: How can a shift in collective consciousness provide solutions that technical or policy-based interventions cannot?
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Developmental Spaces: What would a dedicated “cultural incubator” look like in practice, and how can communities engage in sustained inner development?
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Inner Development Domains: Which domain of inner growth—spiritual, cognitive, psychological, or ethical—do you believe is most vital for driving cultural change?
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The Authority of Technology: To what extent has modern humanity replaced traditional values with a “god-like authority” invested in technology?
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Choosing Our Future Wisely: How can society develop the inner capacity and wiser worldview needed to responsibly manage the powerful technologies we unleash?
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Moving Toward a Regenerative Future: What practical steps can individuals or organizations take today to transition from the current paradigm toward a wiser, regenerative culture?
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This is great, and I would just suggest distinguishing in this doc (and other similar docs going forward) between method/structure and outcomes/goals
As per the recent discussion with @dvdjsph let’s try and be really clear about outcomes/goals which in this seem to me to be points (3) and (6) in your list - and I’d suggest amending point (3) to be clearer that the goal is actually to agree on which subcircles we would like to progress at the end of this group, and how they contribute to the problem space.
To summarize how we got here so far -
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@rufus and other coauthors wrote a series of whitepapers. Papers - Second Renaissance
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you made the subcircle proposal.
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Because I’m an institution-building PM type, I got the idea to ground subcircle action in 2R founding documents (like the white papers) to create layers of collective sense making that would pay off in 2R organizational structure enhancements.
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The bullets above are just Gemini summarizing the white papers, because like any PM nowadays, of course I’m trying to 10x productivity by leveraging AI.
OK, so against that background, I completely agree with you and @dvdjsph that we need processes. We also need products/outcomes/deliverables to flow from those processes. Given my genealogical summary of the process to date (the summary in this current post), note that your preferred process ideas (points 3 and 6) are already embedded in the 2R white papers hanging already on the 2R website. Perfect. So let’s say that 10+ years of prior 2R/Life Itself process have now hatched out into a subcircle research model, a model itself grounded in prior group history and values (i. e. deliberately developmental) and a model that points to the next future layer of content to go alongside the white papers.
My goal here is to do absolutely nothing beyond finding 2R treasure that was already buried long ago!
This is a repost from WhatsApp:
I am just now putting the finishing touches on an open source academic textbook (word count about 400,000, 20 chapters, 500-1000 draft pages), with me as lead author, about a dozen coauthors, and at least a half dozen fact and format checkers, (All grant funded - on a grant I pitched in the first place). So when it comes to “specific outputs”, anything up to that scale would not be an excessive lift.
In this current case, I really think “what the world needs” is to get off of the YouTube+discussion model where the metacrisis is concerned and get onto “yes, we can analyze/thematize this” and “yes, there are feasible action plans available to address it”. And no, we don’t have to be stiff and academic about the whole business. It’s entirely possible to write in a popularizing mode about these topics, and indeed, I believe we should.
What I learned about the textbook is even though I pulled a ton of weight as lead author, without the dozen coauthors and the substantial production team on the project, the project would not have happened. Collective intelligence. It’s a real thing.
To me, the topic @~Eric has structured for us, absolutely needs to aim at book length treatment, at least at some point. The talent already contributing to this thread suggests many potential coauthors who could contribute a chapter, either personally or jointly. So my vote goes to a research subcircle that would effectively be prewriting for what will eventually appear to the world as collected essays in print (digital and/or physical).
Some relevant links from the WhatsApp discussion:
Refactoring the paper above with Logical Thinking Process:
Refactoring the paper again, this time incorporating the views of Jean Gebser on linear vs nonlinear thinking:
Because some people like WhatsApp more than the Forum, one idea that occurred to me is to fork off a new WhatsApp channel for any given subcircle. The current Research Channel has some knowledge management limitations. But unless we can all get consensus around the Forum (of Slack, Discord, Telegram, Hylo, etc.), the conversational energy remains in WhatsApp. So forking subcircle channels might be a low cost/low energy way to address the issue.
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Here is a Substack article by Jonathan Rowson that strikes me as running parallel to the 2R white papers.
I don’t see the Rowson article linked anywhere. Can you share it again? Thanks!
Sorry, must have lost it in cross-posting!