00 - viable pathways book-zine
⚠ coming soon!
what you'll find below are some drafts of this publication. check back in a few weeks for a polished version!
hey, welcome! this is the skeleton of a living, under-construction book-zine - an experimental hyper-linked multimedia medium that acts as a theoretical research / practical toolkit in-between. it's still very messy, as you'll be able to see if you choose to keep reading now (or you can wait for it to be released and access the polished version later).
this book-zine is comprised of: an introduction, 5 [core essays], [α] illustrations, [x] maps, [y] excerpts, [z] core references, [Φ] deepening/clarification notes, a summary/recap and a list of [Θ] further resources...
to receive ongoing updates and/or collaborate on following publications, please [fill up this form].
introduction
for the past 5 years i've been devoting my life to researching what is human flourishing, how to enable it at both an individual and at a societal scale", and "what's my role in it".
despite the boldness of the task and my humbleness to state that i don't have definitive answers, i’m happy to share what i discovered from it. since then, i've gained hints of profound clarity on some partial, yet useful answers, as well as on the challenges and missions i decided to work towards. (might we collaborate on some of them? 🙃)
this is my compilation of the findings, resources and references i found most valuable on this journey. it's also part of my effort of designing and living my life as an open-source human - this content intends to establish the foundational knowledge commons for the reality disruption labs - a public life intelligence collaboratory and metamodern guild for L1F3 players i've been co-creating.
you can explore this research on [different levels], based on your [background] experience as well.
if you're well-familiarized with most themes below, jump in to your desired layer.
let's dive in!
disclaimer - what’s my intention with these articles?
my goal in this series of articles isn’t to pose complete arguments and conclusions. it’s to share my incomplete yet reasonably well-developed research and thoughts on these topics.
a big challenge/opportunity latent in the space of sensemaking and collective intelligence is to (graphically) visualize our own perspectives, our sources of information and who we proxy our sensemaking to.
a few good examples are:
the society library / ideamarket / manifold / metaculus / open knowledge maps / mapsmap hackathon / the consilience project / kialo / goodly labs
this is very close to what i refer to as the “what” of a “life intelligence agency”.
yet, there is still a lot more friction to doing that than to the (apparent) benefit it provides. most people have a lot of certainty over their belief system, even though statistically, it makes no sense for them to be.
my goal is to get to this stage of building “wise knowledge commons” (somewhat similar to what the stoa aims to do) but for now let’s work with what we have and trace viable paths to get there.
foundational concepts
the two major concepts that underpin this research and can help us orient ourselves on this path are: the metacrisis and the "well-lived life".
these terms are basically introducing perspectives to the questions, respectively: where are we now, in the history of civilization? and what should/can we do with it?
if you're new to these concepts or simply not very familiar with them, i strongly suggest taking the time to explore the links and references throughout the research. if you take the time with it, it will give you much more depth, nuance and recognition of the territory moving forward, so i highly encourage you to do so.
i will introduce and present a few perspectives and investigation trails on both concepts, as a way to contextualize the contents that will come afterwards and give you a few directions for further exploration.
1) the metacrisis.
or also - the systemically challenging state of our world, systems and selves.
we're living an age of the metacrisis.
i.e. our civilization is currently on a path of increasingly exponential catastrophic and existential risks, heading into ever-accelerating collapse, as it's built upon an economic system that predates on its own ecological substrate, based on large-scale game-theoretical win-lose/self-terminating dynamics and extractivist paradigms, accelerated by mainstream culture/philosophies devoid of spirit and exponential technologies further promoting these dynamics.
some folks see this as a "too dark" or gloomy perspective, prefer to talk about the "green transition", "regenerative transition", "second renaissance", many others - and i also use these terms at times, but while only talking about them may be comforting, what the data shows is that our efforts are currently not even close to steer our civilization towards these brighter futures.
our institutions and systems are failing in recognizing and addressing this - governments, organizations, academia, religions, and whether local, decentralized or online communities. this research aims to a) map the challenges we're facing, b) identify the approaches being tested, and c) under-the-radar approaches and the initiatives working to address them - as way to give us a deeper and wider understanding of our context.
there are many resources and perspectives to help you dive into this field of research, and although 'the metacrisis' is not a sexy/enticing term (people might feel a lot more moved by terms such as flourishing, love, beauty, regeneration, thriving), it's in deeply understanding the complexity and challenges that we're in that we can gain awareness over it and further empower ourselves to build the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
if you're not familiar with the concept of the metacrisis, it's a term coined by a certain corner of the internet, sometimes called the "sensemaking web", "liminal web" or "game b", heavily informed by the studies of wisdom traditions, transpersonal psychology, integral theory, metamodernism, game theory, cognitive science, systems/complexity science and a few other fields.
other adjacent terms and communities you might be familiar with are: the polycrisis, the regenerative movement, the human potential movement, effective altruism, mindfulness, the humane tech movement, the alternative education movement, effective accelerationism, web3...
for a deeper recognition of these adjacent groups, check out the memetic tribes of the metacrisis video.
it's through this study that i found the most profoundly meaningful and cohesive analyses of our current situation, both as individuals and as a society at our time and age.
daniel schmachtenberger has been a primary spokesperson about it, and i highly, highly, highly recommend his videos - check out my curated playlist here.
besides daniel's work, the simplest, yet most clarifying perspectives i found came from zak stein and the transformative education alliance on their essay "education is the metacrisis".
for further breakdowns, jonathan rowson did an amazing deep dive into multiple perspectives an essay called tasting the pickle: ten flavours of meta-crisis and the appetite for a new civilisation, john vervaeke also has a great 50-lecture series on awakening from the meaning crisis, josh field shares very unique perspectives on the flow crisis, and there's a lot more you can discover by browsing the metacrisis.org website or looking at very disruptive metacrisis-informed projects such as SEEDS (ecosystem) and holochain (both are deep in the web3 space, i don't recommend if you're a beginner - understanding each of them may take dozens to hundreds of hours).
the major value i found in attempting to assess and conceptualize our current state - both as individuals and a society - is to recognize and develop vocabulary over the complex systems dynamics that are constantly affecting us, so we can be more aware of them, make better sense of what's going on and coordinate towards more desirable presents and futures.
after all, there's wisdom in the saying:
(a disclaimer on the framing as a problem)
one peculiarity about my research is that since ["unhealthy individuals create unhealthy systems and institutions"], i aim to highlight solutions and initiatives at both the individual and systems level - which isn't common. most people/institutions are concerned with either "personal" or "societal" challenges.
this awareness can give us both a sense of overwhelm and a golden possibility to redesign the foundational systems of our lives and civilizations to be more conscious, collaborative, regenerative, compassionate [insert another value you care about here] by design. perhaps even at the same time!
and it's our calling to take up radical responsibility and become alchemists, architects, artists, builders and players of our own realities.
2) "the well-lived life".
or also - how to design our selves, systems and lives.
the age-old question of how to live. what is a good life, a moral life or a life well-lived? these are all ethical, metaphysical and epistemological questions.
a few proposed terms:
self-actualization / self-realization / human potential / human flourishing / bem viver / eudaimonia / self-transcendence.
there are many fields of study, religions, wisdom traditions that hold diverse perspectives:
- western philosophy, neuroscience
very popular: stoicism, eslan delaganore, andrew huberman.
rationalists, effective altruism, etc...
- psychotherapy modalities
freudian psychoanalysis, jungian psychology, CBT, IFS
- "self-development" / coaching / "energetic" modalities
NLP, NVC, breathwork, hypnosis, bioenergetics, tantra, tony robbins, thetahealing, access consciousness, etc...
proposes enlightenment (spirituality) / the cessation of suffering.
several traditions of zen buddhism, vipassana...
in integral, they talk about the fourth turning of buddhism.
the next buddha will be a sangha:
monastic academy - daniel thorson, intimacy crisis, relational practices.
human potential / self-realization
a spectrum of rigorous scientific research on non-ordinary states of consciousness such as MAPS, the flow genome project and qualia research institute.
to some spiritual teachers like eckhart tolle, mooji, sadhguru, osho, krishnamurti, michael singer, etc...
ranging up to some niche/occult knowledge like possibility management, several lines of shamanism, hermeticism, several energetic practices, gnosticism, law of time, anthroposophy, wicca, theosophy, etc...
and some folks like stanislav grof, leo gura, wim hof, terence mckenna, and mindvalley lying somewhere around the middle.
john vervaeke and his work on awakening from the meaning crisis.
robert kegan adult development theory
ego development, moral development, etc
proposes human flourishing especially through biomimicry and self-healing.
charles eisenstein, gabor maté, thomas hübl.
a few amazonian tribes propose bem viver, which is an indigenous term that directly translates "to live well". to many latin american tribes, it's an essential part of their worldview.
brazilian lineages: léo artese (xamanismo universal), max mello & suzan flores,
latin american: law of time
native american: bill plotkin.
a state of gift (eisenstein), a state of abundance.
in right relationship with self, nature and the world (gaia education). the tao.
- vedic philosophy
sri aurobindo, sadhguru, krishnamurti, tantra, vedanta
how can they be complementary? that was the genius of sri aurobindo and ken wilber's work. building on that.
- integral / metamodern
circling, presencing, aletheia...
hardly find consensus, but great memetic mapping:
life itself did really well in mapping an emergent second renaissance.
a few other great references:
peter limberg/the stoa's 2018: https://medium.com/s/world-wide-wtf/memetic-tribes-and-culture-war-2-0-14705c43f6bb?s=09 and its accompanying sheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11Ov1Y1xM-LCeYSSBYZ7yPXJah2ldgFX4oIlDtdd7-Qw/edit
nadia asparouhova on https://nadia.xyz/climate-tribes and
brandon noorgard on https://medium.com/@brandon_29259/comparing-approaches-to-addressing-the-meta-crisis-9393e6ee17d7.
this is a non-exhaustive list, as i know there are many other paths i haven't delved into, with different degrees of scientific/philosophical foundation, but it's not my intention to provide a full map/picture here and now. that'd ideally be something many people are engaged in building, as part of a modular, open-source l1f3 operating system, built precisely to test and coordinate propositions such as that every perspective is partial at scale.
by creating a decentralized aggregator of worldviews and practices, we can democratize access to and support even more the practice of science, design philosophies, spirituality and ultimately, wisdom.
popularity isn't necessarily a good filter.
"truth" (or scientific rigor) might also not help much. (limits/challenges of science -> not neutral observer [lifestyles, unmeasured cultural/behavioral aspects that influence results], bias for average [study what happen/may happen under most circumstances, not extraordinary/aspirational ones], etc...)
a mix of these can start to build a reasonable algorithm --> mapping claims, divergences vs. convergences of perspectives/practices, scientific findings but also subjective experience (reports from friends/network/people you trust)...
i.e. the "flavor" of this research is:
a metamodern inquiry into the concept of human flourishing and its implications for the practice of ontological design - i.e. life, self & civilization design.
other qualitative words descriptive of this research:
-> a metacognitive, anthropological, integral, ancestro-futuristic approach.
a few of the main related themes are:
regenerative systems design, personal sovereignty, food sovereignty, energetic sovereignty, attentional sovereignty, personal agency
open-source, disruptive technologies, regenerative technologies, humane tech, distributed systems, operating systems, agent-centric design
ontological design, metadesign, social systems, civilization cycles, societal collapse, game theory, existential risk, civilization design
self design, self-transformation, consciousness expansion, non-ordinary states of consciousness, trauma healing, psychological development, transpersonal psychology, psychospiritual tools & practices
embodied cognition, extended cognition, orientation, sensemaking, decision-making, cognitive offloading, self-directed learning processes
futurism, futures studies, future narratives, information ecology, reality models, worldviews, cosmovisions, decolonization, ancestral futures
21st-century, anthropology, lifestyles, life design, life intelligence, cultural artifacts, urban flourishing, serious games, serious play
infinite games, zero-sum games, evolutionary games (check a jogada + game theory wiki)
digital anthropology, transhumanism, non-human agents, exponential technologies, decentralized systems
flow state, environment design, digital environments, online communities, personal knowledge management, tools for thought, new media formats
data ownership, data sharing, new economic models, web3, currency design
where do we head now?
ok, so there's a wealth of perspectives on both the metacrisis we're undergoing as a species/civilization, as well as the concept of a well-lived life, considering our capacity for human flourishing and different perspectives on how to live.
if we can agree on a few assumptions, such as that every perspective is partial, we can start to build a set of heuristics to inform our sensemaking and decision-making going forward.
there is a route of recognizing/honoring the herculean effort that some synthesizers/expert generalists were able to do on a "theory of everything", such as an immanent metaphysics, unified theory of knowledge, integral theory, and first principles and first values - that even though truly amazing and necessary, are very inaccessible for the vast majority of people right now.
also, acknowledging my lack of knowledge/expertise in multiple areas and my personal position as a young person trying to make sense of the world, i'll opt for taking the bits of wisdom i found from here and there and ask - is there a minimum and easiest set of agreements that many people, holding different values and worldviews, can agree on? and if so, how might we work from there?
this is my attempt to answer the question: what is the minimum set of agreements that we need in order to enable intelligent coordination?
and with that, we will dive deeper into the questions/inquiries below:
- what is human flourishing / thriving / unfoldment and how do we enable it?
- how can we, in spite of our relative ignorance/impotence, still be regenerative actors in the world?
(i.e. given our different progress across values, consciousness, and other lines of intelligence, how can we still coordinate towards resilience & regeneration?)
- how can we design and implement omni-win, antifragile, agent-centric systems & tools for self-development, sensemaking, connection, coordination, collaboration and play at the basis of our civilizations?
- how can we enable minimally viable vocational / regenerative / sacred economies & lifestyles?
- how can art, story, community, play & metagames support our integral development and help us address the metacrisis?
- how should and how can technology support our integral development and help us address the metacrisis?
why choose this "minimum viable" route?
below, under "go deeper", you can find all of the metaphysical, ontological and epistemological basis that i found through this research, and that currently compose my set of "minimum viable heuristics" for operating in life.
but it's not about that. this is an ongoing effort we all do in life, questioning, making sense of reality and clashing our perspectives against others. i'm not presenting this to be "right" or to seem "wise".
a long-term mission of this work is to create an interoperability protocol for sensemaking and coordination at different levels.
benefits & challenges of taking this route
accessibility. more people, more awareness, more action, faster transformation.
different from being stranded at the sea, it's like swimming in a shallow pool. you can swim as much as you want, but if you need, you can just pause, place your feet on the ground and have some rest!
so if anything feels dissonant/unclear, i encourage you to pause and [dive deeper].
challenges: it's not enough. yet, compared to our baseline levels of happiness, health, wealth, it's a significant improvement.
other big challenges with working with loosely defined philosophical foundations are succumbing to relativism / urgency bias as seen in many post-modern, left-leaning initiatives, or widespread utilitarianism / superiority bias as seen in many effective altruism / effective accelerationism communities.
low hanging-fruit agreements
i believe these are easy to agree on and they can lead to a powerful level of clarity and collaboration.