I had a cursory look at the website and it looks interesting. Sure, let’s talk in a side channel.
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A letter from 2027
A New Civilization Peeks into the World
In retrospect, the polycrises of 2025 signaled the birth pangs of the new global civilization. That civilization is now only visible to a discerning few. To many, the world still appears in deadly downward spiral with war, recession, famine, plague, and climate chaos fueling the resurgence of new and ancient apocalypticisms. We in the growing Second Renaissance movement by contrast, grounded in heart, hands, head, and hara, are holding still-spaces in the churning tumult – spaces for what philosopher Albert Borgmann called “focal things and practices” . Around us, chaotic forces whirl at gale force. But within our deepest selves, and nestled and embedded in our resilient pods and communities of practice, the seedlings of tomorrow take root in quiet places sheltered from the storm.
The new civilization bursts forth on continent after continent, rooted in regional soils and molded by local cultures. Although our distributed net of islands of coherence communicates fluidly over the few discreet channels that remain unfettered and unshitified, the tranformations local to my area are those I understand the most. Beneath the shadow of authoritarian darkness, a new Underground Seattle persists and even sets an example globally for human synergy, aided, but not beholden to, the techno data lords. We are the Fremen. AI is our Worm.
It started with the fluorescence of Ikiguidance in the alternative education scene. Student after student mastered the four-fold art of heart, hands, head, and hara. Our apps and APIs went viral around the world. They tried to commodify us, as inevitably they would. But they failed to understand. Our “full stack” lay not in the cloud, but in ourselves. Ikiguidance showed the way to new human protocols for life both on and off the grid. We compute freely, untriggered by output. We earn our dopamine the good old way – through dates and dances and wanders in the woods. Shitified knock-offs failed to win mindshare. It was never about the tech. It was always about the person.
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Love it, Robert. Now that I think about it, I think the reason I chose the 2027 date is because of this widely-circulated alternative vision of the future:
I wanted to offer a reasonable alternative where human agency has a more important role to play.
Experimenting with a retrograde analysis of your vision could be instructive for making it more specific and actionable. I used the following prompt, followed by my Letter from the Future:
**Use retrograde analysis to reconstruct the events leading up to the future described in the following (assuming the reader is presently in the beginning of Q3, 2025, and the writer is writing from 2 years later):
**
If anyone wants to AI-unpack my letter, go for it! My four-fold discipline dictates against it. Key elements of that letter came into my head on the train to Seattle yesterday. At the time, I was rocking gently in my seat and vibing to auditory memories of the “Morning” movement of the Peer Gynt suite as well as Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love”. It’s gettin’ near dawn … it’s the morning and just we two … I’ll be with you darling soon … I’ll be with you till our seas dried up …
After that I ran around campus as if in a trance and challenged some strange mix of Steve Jobs and Kurt Cobain, which is a hit-making process if there ever was one. I showed up in office after office, pitched my pitch face-to-face, and essentially batting 1.000 on the day. Last summer we won free tickets to the Mariners Hall of Fame ceremony for Ichiro. All former team greats we on the field to honor one of the most disciplined and diligent athletes ever in any sport. It was a gathering of Olympians. On that day, I felt the bar was being set for me, for my own field of action. Yesterday, I sensed that bar was cleared, with inches to spare. I feel I have earned my ticket to the city.
Part of Ichiro’s hyper-discipline is, after every game, he performed a ritual to put the last game behind him. Win or lose, it’s time to focus on the next game. Many other rituals must occur in sequence before that next game. Ichiro told the story of how early in his US career his manager asked him “why do you always pull the ball to left-field”? On his next at bat, he launched a home run over the right field wall and then asked the manager, “Happy now?” The manager was happy. No more batting questions for Ichiro!
I got home last night and exchanged some emails with the international team I am collaborating with. My branding ideas from the morning train to Seattle had already been rendered into professional-level graphics assets. Eat that, AI! Then in the middle of night, I responded to your writing prompt and my morning-train reverie burst into the “four-fold process”. I’m sorry, AI. You just can’t freaking do that. It takes a brain attached to blood and bone.
After rereading this, I have some thoughts that I think may help move it along.
I find the ideas you expressed beautiful and full of spirit, but also frustratingly vague. The scenario you described could arguably be interpreted as a description of the present. Is there anything in this vision that could be turned into a SMART goal by someone inspired by your vision?
Another question I would have is, what does it look like for the underground movement to be unifying hand, heart, head, and hara? This can be experienced internally, of course, but isn’t the inclusion of the hand in this tetrad indication that there’s an outward expression? I guess you are saying that something called Ikidguidance will show the way to new human protocols. Not meaning to be critical here, but this seems to be begging the question a bit – what are these protocols, and shouldn’t they be what is described here? If Ikiguidance shows the way to them, is this what leads humans to develop better protocols, and if so, why hasn’t it done so yet? Or has it?
I think it’s important to be able to formulate critical success factors for our future vision. What goes into this is very complex, and we’ve both discussed various philosophies and frameworks that have value things to contribute. For example, the 7 rules for media adoption I listed can help us define what are likely hard requirements for a new medium to be adopted. If there’s something called Ikiguidance and it will be used by many as a tool for navigating the treacherous landscape of the future, what makes it salient for people? Neither the amount of sense it makes, nor its aesthetic qualities, nor its utility for the individuals who use it, will do this alone. I believe our task, if we’d like to contribute something like a ‘lifeboat’, is to make the case that it actually does float and save lives.
I don’t think my vision fully answers these questions, mind you. I’m just trying to articulate how we can progress in this work. In summary, I think we need acceptance tests, and everything else is vibes. Vibes are important, but I think people like you and I (familiar with IT and software engineering) have something important to contribute to this movement, if it is to make a positive difference in the future.
Could you explain this? Your letter from the future includes an undeground movement of Fremen riding AI as the worm.
The “Letter” is vague on purpose because I was going for maximum poetry/metaphor/right-brain. (Among other things, I’ve been using McGilchrist in all my cooking lately). But the the left-brain gets a turn too. So this response will be that.
The 4H model is just me turning Ikigai into poetic marketing. But of course, symbols say more than them seem to on the surface, so the 4H phrase opened up new unconscious associations I had not realized. I copy/pasted the Letter to Team WSS because it’s really about their project, but I also sent them a prose commentary at the same time. That’s below.
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* the heart-hands-head-hara idea was my reach of a poetic way to symbolize the four main Ikigai questions (love, good at, world needs, get paid for)
* a couple years ago I heard a Nepalese start-up consultant discuss a head-heart-hara model of business start-up. His take was too many VC start-ups are all head and not enough heart and hara. “Hara” for him was grounded practicality. Real know-how. I simply added “hands” to this list to map the question “what am I good at” and to shine a clear light on skills development (Says the guy who teaches in the Workforce Development division).
* just now I ran a Copilot session on how hara relates to the root chakra. Below is the summary conclusion:
Integration in Practice
In modern integrative practices (e.g., somatic therapy, energy healing), the hara and root chakra are often seen as complementary:
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Hara offers a centered presence—a calm, embodied awareness.
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Root chakra offers energetic grounding—a connection to Earth and safety.
Together, they support a stable, embodied, and conscious life.
* Remember, all of this just user interface and packaging pointing to the Phoenix Platform. I’m not proposing altering anything behind the scenes. I’m just looking for katana-sharp rhetorical penetration into any conversation in any situation. The four-fold practice of Ikiguidance points to everything the Phoenix Platform stands for.
* It may not be obvious why “hara” maps to “what can I get paid for?” Pretty simple, really. Why do people care so much about getting paid? Security - root chakra - gut level issues. I came to hara by way of Aikido training quite a few years ago. Here is Copilot on how all this correlates:
How does Aikido handle fear?
Copilot said:
Aikido offers a unique and profound approach to handling fear, rooted in its philosophy of harmony, presence, and non-resistance. Here’s how it addresses fear both practically and spiritually:
1. Centering and Grounding
Aikido emphasizes moving from your center (often associated with the hara). Training helps practitioners:
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Stay physically and emotionally centered.
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Maintain balance under pressure.
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Cultivate a calm presence even in chaotic situations.
This embodied awareness reduces fear by reinforcing a sense of internal stability.
====
Nothing really says “under pressure” like job search, job interview, or wondering where the rent money is going to come from. So “what can I get paid for?” is all about moving from hara.
Pretty simple. For me, human is the Master. AI is the Emissary. (See McGilchrist).
Here is an example of what happens when Fremen fail to master the worm:
The Worm, of course, is vastly more powerful than any of us personally. So Worm-riding involves deep human-centric practices and bioregional grounding and intuitive feel. The 4H model is essentially a portal into that full array of practices needed to prepare humans to successfully ride the Worm.
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No, this makes perfect sense to me. I have an esoteric side as well 
head = air = swords = ideas, logic, intellect
hand = fire = wands = action, drive, energy
heart = water = cups = emotions, feelings, relationships
hara = earth = pentacles = health, nature, finances
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Looking at the WSS documentation against the 7 rules I outlined earlier, I see several fundamental problems:
Phoenix appears to be a classic violation of Rule 3 - “technological supply does not produce technological demand.” WSS has built (or is building) an elaborate technical solution and is hoping demand will materialize, but there’s little evidence that climate organizations are actually clamoring for a new global coordination platform. Most already have their own systems, partnerships, and workflows. Does Phoenix have an unfair advantage that makes it the obvious choice? If they do, I couldn’t tell after looking through as much online documentation as I could find. Good will, embodying the ethos of the world we’d like to inhabit? Yes. Outcompete the current system on its own terms? No.
Rule 5 requires “organized interests” to pull technology into use, but which specific organized interests would abandon their existing collaboration tools for Phoenix? The UN has its own coordination mechanisms. Major NGOs have established relationships and platforms. Governments work through existing diplomatic channels. I don’t see evidence that any of these groups are experiencing enough pain with current systems to justify switching to something entirely new.
The platform seems to assume that “better coordination technology” is the primary bottleneck for climate action, but is that actually true? From what I can see, the barriers are more often political, jurisdictional, and economic rather than technological. Organizations already know how to collaborate - the question is whether they have the incentive and authority to do so.
What’s the specific pain point that would make, say, Greenpeace or the World Bank decide to route their climate work through Phoenix instead of their current systems? What would force them to overcome the switching costs and coordination challenges of moving to a new platform?
Without clear answers to those adoption questions, this feels like building a beautiful cathedral in a field and hoping people will come worship there. The vision is compelling, but the path to actual use remains unclear to me.
In summary, I’ve been diving into everything Phoenix Platform I could get a hold of. I started with their introductory video, in which the example of Bengladesh is used. It contained a statement like, “If Bengladesh had been using the Phoenix Platform…”. As I heard this I was thinking, that’s a big IF. I’ve heard it many times before. For example, “IF we all stopped using fiat currency and switched over to Bitcoin, THEN … “ (to be clear, I’m not saying these are similar solutions - I’m just pointing out that the size of the IF matters more than anything else.)
Let’s go with the Bitcoin analogy a bit further. One can see Bitcoin’s rise to prominence (if we can call it that) as the result of superior technological innovation. This would be the push understanding of media adoption - equating technological supply with success. However, we shouldn’t forget when and how this happened; the economy had just collapsed, and there had never been a stronger pull for something like BTC. Not to mention the mysterious circumstances of its introduction, indicating it may have been introduced by a group of academics, or at least well-connected individuals. In summary, had BTC not been in line with the pull principles, we probably wouldn’t know of it today.
Adding Tarot is an awesome touch!
Good points. Glad you cared enough to pay that much attention!
On the 4H model, it’s pretty clear the Phoenix Platform brings lots of heart and lots of head. I’m balancing that by being mostly hara. As for “hands”, that’s where my students come in …
Having sniffed around the edges of bioregional finance for the past couple years. I completely agree “the barriers are more often political, jurisdictional, and economic rather than technological.”
My long-term play (really long term - 2027 barely scratches the surface) is global collaboration in general. My historical analysis is that pragmatic factors will “push” the world that way in time. (My 56-page extended analysis, linked in other threads in this forum, literally has a whole section called ‘The Material “Push”’). Theorists like Pogany, Karatani, and Brendan Graham Dempsey that I rely upon are working within Darwinian evolutionary paradigms. So I’m not expecting geopolitics to give the NGO sector a free lunch or for everyone to be singing Kumbaya anytime soon. If we do get anything like the Baha’i New World Order, it will be because Bismarckian calculations by great powers will point that way, largely since national interests will be best optimized in a world not burned to a cinder. But portions of the world will likely indeed burn to a cinder before that understanding really lands on a global basis.
The best way to reduce the scale of impending global martyrdoms would come from sources in my other section “The Spiritual ‘Pull’”. That’s where spirit and idealism get a vote. To give one example, I’m reading a survey text about pre-modern Asian civilizations and the chapter on Islam points out that the Islamic expansion of the 7th century CE is an outstanding example of the impact of ideation on history. Whatever happened in the Cave of Hira had a material impact far out of proportion to what might have been expected by any purely pragmatic prior forecast of the power potential of the till-then disorganized tribes of Arabia.
For Baháʼís, Baháʼu’lláh is in effect a new Muhammad. There is no logical reason for this religion to even exist, springing out the not-so-obvious milieu of 19th century Persia, dominated then as now by Shi’ite Islam. Yet, exist it does, and it’s growing. As a purely pragmatic matter, the local Baháʼís run the best and most solid interfaith group in my town. Being a hara kind of guy, if the Unitarians, Buddhists, Theosophists or anyone else got better results in that arena, I’d be going with the group that gets the results. I have, however, two boxes of Baha’i theology in my office, because they are the ones making it happen and I’m trying to reverse engineer their secret sauce.
As best as I can tell, Baháʼu’lláh tapped into spiritual and cultural elements that have been bubbling up on the Iranian plateau as far back as Zoroaster. The original New World Order guy was Cyrus the Great (who got rave reviews both from Greek philosophers and in the Hebrew Bible). So although the current The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the least ecumenical places on the planet, there is another strand in Persian culture (see, for example, Sufism) that really sets the bar for human universalism. One of history’s delicious ironies is that Persian universalism can only find current pragmatic expression in global diaspora. Says the guy who spent the last two spring equinoxes celebrating at Naw Ruz potlucks - in Tacoma, WA.
Anyway, I’ve got a Sufi-adjacent streak that just won’t quit, and all my '“pull” is coming from that source. On the other hand, the upcoming MAGA military occupation of Portland, Oregon for example is the sort of thing that is “pushing” the progressive left to actually consider climbing out of all their little safe spaces and hitting the streets as an actual movement. The whole “join or die” insight may arrive in progressive spaces one of these days. In fact, I’m counting on it.
To sum up, ostensibly I’m going to teach computer science in a public community college next week. But the sum total of what I will be up to owes more to the likes of Gurdjieff.
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I would say we are reading from the same book, even on the same page, but perhaps translated into different symbol systems. I’m less familiar with Islamic theology, I’ve read a bit of Gurdjieff and appreciated that it contains depth I hope to explore at some point. I’m unfamiliar with the Bahai tradition, but it seems beautiful and fully compatible with my own 4H’s. I’m more familiar with Chinese and Western (e.g. Gnostic) esotericism. It’s all the same to me; coherence is what’s needed.
But returning to your assessment of the situation and what you, your students, and the communities you are connected to have to contribute…
You mentioned that your long-term play is global collaboration, driven by both material push (geopolitical pressures) and spiritual pull (idealistic movements). That framework makes sense to me. But I’m still trying to understand the practical bridge between those macro forces and the specific tools we build today.
If we accept that “portions of the world will likely burn to a cinder” before cooperation becomes geopolitically rational, what exactly should we be building in the interim?
Getting the 4H’s right requires getting the head right – is largely a matter of providing an adequate answer to this question about what to build. What are the dimensions of the arc? It’s a matter of planning, logic, ideas - akin to having an exit plan prepared for when the titanic strikes the iceberg. This is what the Phoenix Platform and other well-meaning actors are professing to offer. The problem is, they’re not the only ones - the current bad actors have inertia on their side, and will offer their own exit plans.
What is needed is an unequivocally superior prospect for those coming to the realization that they’re fucked. I’d frame it in these terms: for millenia, we’ve been playing repeated stag hunt games, where we have the choice to cooperate or defect, and we (rationally) choose defection because we can’t imagine a reliable way to cooperate. Cooperation entails a higher payout, though. If we solve this problem, we will be showing the world a reliable way to cooperate.
Folk Theorems in game theory indicate that this is possible; systems can be engineered to make cooperation the winning strategy. Players of this game have been conditioned, over the centuries, to believe that screwing others to benefit oneself delivers the biggest payout. We know this isn’t actually true – it’s just an illusion that has to be cut through through better a system design and framing.
That’s what Agency Protocol is meant to be - a system engineered to make prosocial choices – getting the stag – inevitable and obvious. The idea that you can benefit yourself by screwing over others should seem as manifestly illogical to future generations as it is to those with a full view of the game we’re playing and its consequences. If there’s a clear choice between a high payout through cooperation (the stag) and much lower one through defection (the hare), this will be the case. I believe I’ve collected sufficient evidence that Agency Protocol can form the basis of such as system. In other words, somehow, this system can offer real economic advantages when it is implemented in real world systems such that switching over to it can be a rational, strategic choice. For example, if you are a healthcare provider and the market is crowded with lemons, and you adopt Agency Protocol to signal your quality, self-interested patients will be incentivized to choose you over others. Here’s a quick sketch of what this could look like. Of course, this is only a head contribution; thus far, I’ve lacked the other 3H’s necessary to get the ball rolling.
For more context on my theory-centric framing of “what the world needs” check out this thread. It includes a link to my 56-pager, juxtaposed to the work of Danial Schmachtenberger.
Metacrisis and AI governance - talk
Yeah, in the final section of the 56-pager, on Action, I add my own metaphors of “mass” and “momentum” to Donella Meadows’s classic analysis of systemic leverage points. People debate getting rid of capitalism all the time, for example, as if billions of people around the world are going to suddenly stop wanting more cash, just become of some insightful TEDTalk or something. There is the not-inconsiderable problem that billions around the world for centuries at a time have been trained in stimulus-response style that stimulus (cash) → response (food). Altering that conditioning is no small matter!
The best theorist, IMO, for connecting the thermodynamic material “push” to the consciousness transforming spiritual “pull” is Peter Pogany. This summary by my fellow Cascadian Dave McLeod is a good point of entry for Pogany: Peter Pogany « integral permaculture
TL:DR version in response to your proposed Agency Protocol. There have been a series of geopolitical systems (GS0, GS1, GS2) in which mass and momentum were regulated through commonsensical expectations of political-economic cause and effect in which typical actions achieve generally predictable results. The transitions from GS0 → GS1 and GS1 → GS2 were chaotic. In chaotic transitions, the prior common sense goes out the window and previous cause and effect mappings fail to deliver expected results. Although Pogany passed in 2014, it seems starkly clear to me that GS2 definitively collapsed in early 2025 (it had been trending that way for awhile) and we have entered a new chaotic transition.
Your proposed Agency Protocol belongs to the world of GS3 - a world-system yet to fully emerge. As you correctly point out, the old dinosaurs are not dead yet! We mammals need to scurry quickly and have a burrow or two handy. But the asteroid is on the way - just wait for it. Less metaphorically, we can start prototyping communities involving Agency Protocol and similar ideas anytime we like. Now would be a good time, for example. For mass adoption of the new protocols, the prior system must first collapse, however. As an historical analogy, no one flocked to Benedictine monasteries while Roman legions still ruled the countryside. Only after the legions faded away and the countryside became chaotic did the monasteries become the backbone of a new civilization and a new social structure.
In our current chaotic transition, the old system is clearly broken, but the old system components (corporations, nation-states, etc) are still trashing around and in many cases doubling down on retrograde and deprecated notions. (The prior example of a chaotic transition was the WWI - WWII period - look at all the backward-looking notions that were tried then). Trump and MAGA have no prospect whatsoever of erecting a new world order GS3 based on their ideas because the very logic of Trump’s unconditional embrace of nation-state sovereignty is world disorder. As they sow, so shall they reap. The seeds of GS3 are sprouting elsewhere. In GS2, the US was the center of everything. GS3 will involve a more distributed global power grid. Your proposed Agency Protocol is a design contribution to that forthcoming distributed grid.
Yes, this lines up with my intuitions perfectly. Also lines up with Turchin’s models and Strauss/Howe’s Fourth Turning theory. (And of course, we could also get more esoteric here, but this probably isn’t the place for that.)
Luke Kemp recently appeared on Nate Hagens’s podcast. By the time I was 30 minutes in, I had ordered Kemp’s book (coming later today). Kemp is very much in the Turchin tradition, and also uses the Seshat database. Should be a useful addition to this line of analysis.
To me, Pogany and Turchin complement each other. Pogany looks at global systemic effects. Turchin analyzes change on a per society basis. What they share are general sensibilities of thermodynamic and population biology constraints on social growth models. These constraints fuel conflict and collapse. Then something new emerges and the process starts again.