Today, I launched the Wisdom Federation.
It is a project that is dear to my heart and about that I have pondered for nearly 20 years.
At its core, it is about a rather simple set of ideas:
More specifically, I found out that progress can be achieved through a specific process that I call the engineering cycle. It is an iterative process in that we envision a more desirable world; imagine a path that transforms our current reality into this target reality; build and deploy the key components of this path; learn from our failures and successes; and repeat this process until we succeed.
It’s pretty simple. And I call the people who apply this process the pioneers. They are the inventors, entrepreneurs, leaders and financiers that have engineered our current world, and who will engineer the future.
These pioneers have all something in common: they are imaginative and ambitious. They combine the energy, skill and wisdom to succeed. But most importantly, they are fresh-minded and never “experts”. Because experts are always experts of the status quo, and the least likely to re-engineer our world.
These are the reasons why progress should be easy: all we need is to become
pioneers, imagine new futures in that everyone is better off and engineer them.
Obviously, that’s not what is happening right now.
The most frequent explanation for this paradox I hear is that too many people are driven by greed, or are evil; they don’t want to create progress for all, but only for themselves. But this explanation is flawed, because most people don’t even create progress for themselves; and universal progress, in many cases, is the fastest path to maximum personal progress and wealth.
Instead, when I investigated why the obvious isn’t happening, I didn’t find greed or evil. I found a lack of imagination, combined with detrimental power structure: Right now, our society puts experts of the status quo in charge of innovation, and tries to keep the fresh minded ambitious people as far away as possible.
If we want to cure cancer today, we put in charge the oldest, most established cancer researchers. If we want to create a nuclear fusion reactor, we use the oldest, most established nuclear physicists. If we want to create peace in the Middle East, we use the oldest, most established middle East envoy or professor. If we want to turn around a struggling company, we look for the most experienced expert CEO. If we decide on how to invest in innovation, we look for the oldest, most established expert in Venture Capital.
In short, whenever we want to create a new unknown future, we put the experts of the status quo in charge: the people who have accumulated the largest amount of knowledge and experience in HOW TO NOT get there.
At the same time, we keep the people who are most likely to succeed as far away as possible: the fresh minded, imaginative pioneers who have access to all the knowledge in the world, but have no constraints in applying their imagination to the challenge.
The more I observed this paradox structure, the more nervous I became.
It felt like our society is not only unsupportive of the pioneers; it actually has erected very powerful and comprehensive infrastructures to prevent them from succeeding.
Take Venture Capital, for example. If you are a young, disruptive founders, investors tell you that you need more experienced people on board. As a biotech entrepreneur who has a degree in economics, I hear this all the time: I need biotech experts at my side who “know the industry”. In other words: I need people at my side who have proven they DON’T KNOW how to create progress.
I also started observing what happens if a pioneer slips through the cracks of this progress-prevention-program. Pretty big things happen: Bill Gates and Microsoft; Steve Jobs and Apple; Jeff Bezos and amazon; Mark Zuckerberg and facebook; Elon Musk and (fill in all kinds of massive industries that are getting disrupted); Brian Chesky + team and Airbnb; and so on.
In every single instance, a fresh minded non-expert moves in and re-engineers the universe, while society tries to stop them. And the most unbelievable thing is that the same people who told Steve Jobs he isn’t Thomas Edison now tell new pioneers they are not Steve Jobs.
It made me nervous because a big idea was forming in my head. And it was the mother of all big ideas:
What if progress – real, hard, universal progress – is actually incredibly easy, and we just invented a society that makes it very hard?
What if we removed all these progress-prevention-programs, and suddenly we could create everything we wanted in short order?
What if we could have a nuclear fusion reactor in 12 months? And a cure for cancer? What if Peace in the Middle East is only 2 years away after we tap into the minds of a few pioneers? What if we could have self-sufficient space stations and expand into the universe by 2020?
What if Elon Musk is not a 1 in a billion outlier, but simply a regular pioneering mind the progress-prevention-program just failed to intercept in time?
What if a large share of humanity would be able to create massive progress, if we only stopped stopping them?
And what if we went one step further and actually connected everyone with the little pieces of wisdom, like the engineering cycle, that can accelerate these pioneers?
I felt I am up to something and wondered what the next steps are.
And I realized that once we remove our own inner progress-prevention-programs, things become very clear and simple:
If my thoughts and observations above were true, all we needed to unlock extreme progress is a safe space for pioneers:
a in that all progress-prevention-programs are deactivated.
In this space, the pioneers quickly create their own culture. Let’s call it the pioneer culture. It allows all of us to focus on the one universal purpose that we all share: to create progress for all.
It allows us to remove all other beliefs and programs that are detrimental to this purpose. It is a space that is radically fresh, and allows each of us to imagine, build, learn and succeed at the fastest possible pace.
This space is the Wisdom Federation.
A place where everyone who wants to create disruptive progress will find a home to strive and prosper. A place where we can imagine, build and learn until we succeed in engineering the future.
A place where progress becomes easy.
How it works
As you might have realized by now, I don’t like to make things complicated – because they are simple. You can join the Wisdom Federation on WisdomFederation.us by simply telling us your name, email, your mission and your approach. We will register you in the central Pioneer repository.
From there, you can join our weekly meetings online or in-person to get feedback on your endeavors and discuss your next moves in an atmosphere that makes you feel great.
The Federation will also provide all pioneers with additional powers: on Pioneerradio, we will make you famous and spread the word about you (when you are ready). With i2X, we will build a new capital infrastructure to finance progress much more effectively. In the Pioneer Academy, we will aggregate and refine the wisdom that makes you as effective as possible in transforming the world.
Most importantly, the Federation will unite the pioneers and ultimately remove the progress-prevention-programs that haunt humanity.
Why is it called the Wisdom Federation?
For me, wisdom is the escape of the human mind from its self-imposed limitations. Once engineered correctly, wisdom makes us realize how we can progress in the most effective way. Wisdom is the magic ingredient to maximize human progress.
Since that’s the ultimate objective of this alliance, I believe Wisdom Federation is a wonderful name.
It is a project that is dear to my heart and about that I have pondered for nearly 20 years.
At its core, it is about a rather simple set of ideas:
- that progress is the most important thing in your and my life, because it creates better futures for us;
- that progress can only be created by re-engineering the world;
- that our current society does (nearly) nothing to help us do so; and in fact tries to prevent us from creating progress
- and that therefore, universal human progress could become incredibly easy to achieve if we just change a few things.
More specifically, I found out that progress can be achieved through a specific process that I call the engineering cycle. It is an iterative process in that we envision a more desirable world; imagine a path that transforms our current reality into this target reality; build and deploy the key components of this path; learn from our failures and successes; and repeat this process until we succeed.
It’s pretty simple. And I call the people who apply this process the pioneers. They are the inventors, entrepreneurs, leaders and financiers that have engineered our current world, and who will engineer the future.
These pioneers have all something in common: they are imaginative and ambitious. They combine the energy, skill and wisdom to succeed. But most importantly, they are fresh-minded and never “experts”. Because experts are always experts of the status quo, and the least likely to re-engineer our world.
These are the reasons why progress should be easy: all we need is to become
pioneers, imagine new futures in that everyone is better off and engineer them.
Obviously, that’s not what is happening right now.
The most frequent explanation for this paradox I hear is that too many people are driven by greed, or are evil; they don’t want to create progress for all, but only for themselves. But this explanation is flawed, because most people don’t even create progress for themselves; and universal progress, in many cases, is the fastest path to maximum personal progress and wealth.
Instead, when I investigated why the obvious isn’t happening, I didn’t find greed or evil. I found a lack of imagination, combined with detrimental power structure: Right now, our society puts experts of the status quo in charge of innovation, and tries to keep the fresh minded ambitious people as far away as possible.
If we want to cure cancer today, we put in charge the oldest, most established cancer researchers. If we want to create a nuclear fusion reactor, we use the oldest, most established nuclear physicists. If we want to create peace in the Middle East, we use the oldest, most established middle East envoy or professor. If we want to turn around a struggling company, we look for the most experienced expert CEO. If we decide on how to invest in innovation, we look for the oldest, most established expert in Venture Capital.
In short, whenever we want to create a new unknown future, we put the experts of the status quo in charge: the people who have accumulated the largest amount of knowledge and experience in HOW TO NOT get there.
At the same time, we keep the people who are most likely to succeed as far away as possible: the fresh minded, imaginative pioneers who have access to all the knowledge in the world, but have no constraints in applying their imagination to the challenge.
The more I observed this paradox structure, the more nervous I became.
It felt like our society is not only unsupportive of the pioneers; it actually has erected very powerful and comprehensive infrastructures to prevent them from succeeding.
Take Venture Capital, for example. If you are a young, disruptive founders, investors tell you that you need more experienced people on board. As a biotech entrepreneur who has a degree in economics, I hear this all the time: I need biotech experts at my side who “know the industry”. In other words: I need people at my side who have proven they DON’T KNOW how to create progress.
I also started observing what happens if a pioneer slips through the cracks of this progress-prevention-program. Pretty big things happen: Bill Gates and Microsoft; Steve Jobs and Apple; Jeff Bezos and amazon; Mark Zuckerberg and facebook; Elon Musk and (fill in all kinds of massive industries that are getting disrupted); Brian Chesky + team and Airbnb; and so on.
In every single instance, a fresh minded non-expert moves in and re-engineers the universe, while society tries to stop them. And the most unbelievable thing is that the same people who told Steve Jobs he isn’t Thomas Edison now tell new pioneers they are not Steve Jobs.
It made me nervous because a big idea was forming in my head. And it was the mother of all big ideas:
What if progress – real, hard, universal progress – is actually incredibly easy, and we just invented a society that makes it very hard?
What if we removed all these progress-prevention-programs, and suddenly we could create everything we wanted in short order?
What if we could have a nuclear fusion reactor in 12 months? And a cure for cancer? What if Peace in the Middle East is only 2 years away after we tap into the minds of a few pioneers? What if we could have self-sufficient space stations and expand into the universe by 2020?
What if Elon Musk is not a 1 in a billion outlier, but simply a regular pioneering mind the progress-prevention-program just failed to intercept in time?
What if a large share of humanity would be able to create massive progress, if we only stopped stopping them?
And what if we went one step further and actually connected everyone with the little pieces of wisdom, like the engineering cycle, that can accelerate these pioneers?
I felt I am up to something and wondered what the next steps are.
And I realized that once we remove our own inner progress-prevention-programs, things become very clear and simple:
If my thoughts and observations above were true, all we needed to unlock extreme progress is a safe space for pioneers:
a in that all progress-prevention-programs are deactivated.
In this space, the pioneers quickly create their own culture. Let’s call it the pioneer culture. It allows all of us to focus on the one universal purpose that we all share: to create progress for all.
It allows us to remove all other beliefs and programs that are detrimental to this purpose. It is a space that is radically fresh, and allows each of us to imagine, build, learn and succeed at the fastest possible pace.
This space is the Wisdom Federation.
A place where everyone who wants to create disruptive progress will find a home to strive and prosper. A place where we can imagine, build and learn until we succeed in engineering the future.
A place where progress becomes easy.
How it works
As you might have realized by now, I don’t like to make things complicated – because they are simple. You can join the Wisdom Federation on WisdomFederation.us by simply telling us your name, email, your mission and your approach. We will register you in the central Pioneer repository.
From there, you can join our weekly meetings online or in-person to get feedback on your endeavors and discuss your next moves in an atmosphere that makes you feel great.
The Federation will also provide all pioneers with additional powers: on Pioneerradio, we will make you famous and spread the word about you (when you are ready). With i2X, we will build a new capital infrastructure to finance progress much more effectively. In the Pioneer Academy, we will aggregate and refine the wisdom that makes you as effective as possible in transforming the world.
Most importantly, the Federation will unite the pioneers and ultimately remove the progress-prevention-programs that haunt humanity.
Why is it called the Wisdom Federation?
For me, wisdom is the escape of the human mind from its self-imposed limitations. Once engineered correctly, wisdom makes us realize how we can progress in the most effective way. Wisdom is the magic ingredient to maximize human progress.
Since that’s the ultimate objective of this alliance, I believe Wisdom Federation is a wonderful name.
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