If you had a billion dollars for deep (paradigmatic) social change what would you do?
What would you do at personal and collective level? What cultural and institutional change?
Interesting prompt question I got from @JamesBaker to help explore paths to a Second Renaissance & response to the metacrisis and polycrisis.
Here’s my first level sketch from the original prompt question from @JamesBaker (a while back)
Yesterday in the Collabathon we did not say much about the eastern island (applied, action oriented), but that has been one of my favorite spaces. One of these key locations for me as been Global Bildung. My $1 billion proposal will be to take a new-and-improved bildung model to global scale.
First of all, let’s begin with previous model. https://eaea.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/What-is-Bildung-pdf-English.pdf
There are two key diagrams on the link above: “Bildung Rose” and “Circle of Belonging”. In both cases, I thought there was gap in the center where a theory of psychology, human behavior, and learning needed to be. So that’s when I jumped over to Integral Island and basically did the grand tour to get the learning theory right. My current model is a UTOK-Vervaeke-McGilgrist fusion, that’s my own custom integrated learning theory Ferrari engine. The general program design is to slide that learning theory engine into the bildung chassis and then take the resulting model to market on a mass scale.
My Ikigai workshop model from other threads is built on the “Ferrari engine” without forcing anyone to learn the underlying vocabulary to use the model. But whole business is 4P+3R with loads of right brain activation in a UTOK mind 1, 2, 3 context. Also the model is very student-centered and participatory, and thus the model reflects my views on what Paulo Freire would be doing today, if Paulo Freire were still with us.
To sum up, I’ve been building a better mousetrap. Which is a typical Seattle sort of thing to do. I’m not that great at branding, so let’s just call it Bildung++ for current discussion purposes. If the model gets traction, someone else can brand it. I’l be very fine with that.
So how does the $1 billion need to flow? Everything Joe Brewer and Samantha Power say about bioregional finance needs to be taken into account. Spraying cash at fire hose volumes at base communities around the world is just destruction. There is nothing like a sudden pile of cash to kill community. Instead, the cash needs to trickle-irrigate small-scale localized projects and develop local capacity.
In short, the first tranche of the $1 billion needs to go to trainer of trainers capacity building. Let’s do a workshop in the Cascadia region sometime during the pleasant summer months, in a rustic setting, with lots of bioregional hands-on, and practice Bildung++ till we get really good at it. (@JamesBaker can facilitate quite a few of the sessions). Then fan out all over the world to replicate, with each trainee earning a budget to allocate locally.
OK, you talked me into it. Yes, I will also fly to some consensus European location and replicate the trainer-of-trainers program there. It would only be fair.
The new IAM thinking on this is useful I think: https://evolutionofphilanthropy.com/
This evolution is driven by growing recognition that effective social change requires working across multiple dimensions simultaneously - from individual capacity building to systemic transformation, from local wisdom to academic research, from immediate intervention to long-term cultural evolution. Organizations are developing sophisticated capabilities for integrating multiple forms of knowledge and action, working with both emergence and intention, and identifying key leverage points for transformation. <
Personally I would love to see - among these multiple dimensions - a new research institute dedicated to Second Renaissance ideas, with the funding to attract career researchers.
Interesting you should mention IAM …
At the 1:10 mark of this video, Rob Scott mentioned that change theory is the missing piece. This on a presentation including Josh Leonard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Gregg Henriques and others. So it’s not like there is a lack of high-powered talent on the project.
Then a couple days ago I read the lead post in this thread Cultural work is foundational for addressing the metacrisis and a second renaissance
by @rufuspollock My reaction to that post: “That wants to become a change theory!”
I’ve hung out (it seems like forever) in Integral Life, Brendan Graham Dempsey’s FB spaces, and the recently closed UTOK forum - but a viable change theory never really surfaced. I got to 2R through @JamesBaker and practices. Rufus’s post in that thread above makes me feel like 2R is on the hunt for what these other - very impressive - theoretical models are calling for, but not identifying: how to make it really work.
Now - on the funded institute idea - my $1 billion proposal elsewhere on this forum sounds tongue-in-cheek, but it’s really not. The thing is, it needs nowhere near $1 billion in initial investment. We can bootstrap it off of resources we current have. We can organize an institute for that matter. Just move the whole business to @JamesBaker’s Intentional Ventures (or move James to the Institute project), and we can launch on a hunch and a prayer.
Basic business plan: Provide all the theoretical customers on Integral Island (IAM included) with the actionable change model they are so direly are requiring. 2R can become the little engine that CAN!
Here’s my gloss on the work of @rufuspollock To pitch this to IAM, it would not be hard to rewrite all my comments in Wilberian terms. (I rearranged the bullets from Rufus’s original to improve conceptual and narrative flow. Other suggested improvements would likewise be welcome).
Culture is Foundational
Without cultural transformation—including healing, relationship repair, and inner development—technological or governance-based solutions will reproduce the same dysfunctions. Cultural and inner work is not optional; it is foundational. Comments below in italics.
Trust as Core Currency: In a world of abundant information, trust is scarce and increasingly vital. Community building is, at its heart, trust building. Almost literally. Tie this into multicapital theory. I.e. “relational capital”.
Inner and Relational Work: Personal healing (trauma, insecurities), relational repair, and community trust-building are essential. Unaddressed wounds can fragment relationships and sabotage aligned collaborations. In researching a variety of research and therapeutic psychology sources on “how to build trust”, there are some well-known methods. 2R should consider creating pointers and wrappers to all that – adding bespoke techniques if we have them – but mostly making “trust building” a fairly routine and actionable process.
Culture as Infrastructure: Just as we attend to food or sleep, we must intentionally cultivate practices that support emotional and spiritual health. Culture is not ancillary; it shapes how we act, what we value, and how trust forms. Culture (UTOK Mind 3) influences inner work (UTOK Mind 2) through internal dialog. Culture – as in training, coaching, therapeutic interventions – can improve inner work. Likewise, successful inner work, tapping into primordial creative energies, can lead to innovation and transformative cultural practices.
Neglect of the Inner Domain: Prevailing solutionist paradigms (techno-fixes, governance tweaks) miscategorize the metacrisis. The root causes are often cultural or existential, not merely institutional or technical. Even if the root causes are institutional and technical, innovation requires a deep dive into inner work to source creativity. “Institutional and technical” are basically recyclings on autopilot of cultural innovations of epochs past. Those were probably brilliant innovations in their day, but times and circumstances have changed. Time for new innovations to meet current unprecedented challenges.
Practical Implications for Groups: Even in well-meaning progressive or impact-driven circles, the inner and cultural dimensions are under-recognized. Shifting this requires both direct articulation and demonstration of their systemic importance. See comment above about recyclings on autopilot. In UTOK terms, if groups are just Mind 3 talking to Mind 3, that’s just actors mouthing essentially pre-scripted roles. It’s tragic in the dramaturgical sense of all the players being on a highway to hell, and no one being able to do much about it. By contrast, groups that can source creative energies (Mind 2 filtering Mind 1 and lower in the cosmic stack) can rewrite the script.
Mimetic Learning & Role Models: Much of human learning is mimetic—we imitate trusted others. Cultural change can scale not only through ideas but by modeling transformed behavior and relationships. Once inner work pays off in innovation, mimetic learning and modeling provide for dissemination and replication.
Opportunity for Cultural Leadership: Like the 1960s Bay Area, new cultural epicenters can emerge. We can intentionally cultivate spaces (e.g. neo-monasteries, developmental communities) to develop inner capacities while actively engaging the world. Yes. Let’s do that!
Summary. Circle back to the top bullet – “trust as currency”. How do we capitalize ourselves in that currency? Summarizing a bunch of research from UTOK down to popular psychology, trust-building seems related to 1) a consistent approach, providing 2) consistently desirable results. Basically, say what you are going to do, do it, show that it worked. We need consistent containers for innovation. The challenge is to not constantly be innovating the containers themselves (like inventing a brand new theoretical framework all the time), but accept some boundary layers to focus innovative energies coming from deeper, more personal sources.
