The Big Picture - A New Science for Humanity

Human Existence: Model Beings and the Planes of Existence

2014-01-17T12:39:00.000-08:00

I found this to be a difficult topic to write about. It’s unique for THEE because of its apparent abstraction. Previous drafts of this piece became quickly bogged down in philosophical speculation and slippery slopes. I suppose that’s what you get for trying to make conventional sense of the ethereal and intangible realm of the human imagination—which is exactly what we’re dealing with here. However, two very important concepts come to the surface.

But first, you’ve got to get clear on the Primal Quests. You can read about them on the website or you can read my inquiry into them in a previous piece. As a reminder, there are 7 quests that people take up on their road to happiness and fulfillment. We’ve all got one or two, and it’s nice to know about them and gain validation and confirmation of your efforts.

Assuming you’re all up to speed, let’s talk about my “two big realizations” first, then we’ll explore some of the nuts and bolts of this topic.

Divinity

I’m quite satisfied with this concept of divinity that emerges in this topic. Read more about them below under the “Model Beings” heading. It’s easy to confuse the stories thrown up by the religions. It’s easy to wonder where Great Saviors end and Supreme Beings begin and how it’s not all a Universal Spirit. It’s tempting to relegate them to the realm of cultural artifacts or the rants of deluded adherents. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the pleas of “militant atheists” or charismatic evangelists. And as the old saying, “Don’t discuss politics or religion in polite company” implies, it can be a very contentious issue.

For me, this concept of divinity offers a practical application: Though I don’t personally feel strongly that a God truly exists—at least as It/He/She is presented in religious texts or dogmas—this idea helps me to accept the real-ness of this notion for others. Suddenly, what they say and believe isn’t ridiculous, or even untrue; it’s actually quite real and true—for them. Why? Because what exists in the imagination is very real and quite powerful indeed, as any building that began as an idea in some architect’s head, or piece of art, or book or anything else human-created would attest.

Evil

What is evil? How do we define or recognize it? Perhaps you, like most people, take an “I know it when I see it” approach.

The answer to these question is summarized nicely on the page entitled Review II: Planes of Power and Evil and examined in detail in the topic entitled Tree of Good and Evil, which is easily worth an exploration all by itself.

Essentially, each quest has a dark side. This dark side is perceived as either an inherent trait of a quest or when the quest is twisted into a destructive and detrimental version of its better self.

For example, when the Instrumental Being, in its search for pleasure, safety and security operates in such a way as to get the things it wants without any regard for the well being of others, this is Evil.

When an Awakened Being, having discovered wisdom and truth, decides to exploit others using charisma, this is Evil.

The Supreme Being, the Creator who brought all into existence—including Evil—must therefore be both Good and Evil.

Many religions represent this as two distinct characters, i.e. God and Satan. That’s an easy fix, isn’t it? It is this paradox where Evil—on the Plane of Divine Creation—exists.

That’s big stuff, right? Can’t just assert stuff like that. Let’s try and get a fix on where these concepts come from.

Model Beings

Each of the primal quests spawns a perfect version of itself via our respective imaginations.

If you’re at all into philosophy, think of Plato’s forms. Much of his philosophy was centered around the idea of forms of perfection associated with ultimate values. So, according to Plato, somewhere out there exists perfect justice, perfect beauty, perfect virtue, etc. When we go to judge if something is, say, beautiful, we hold it up to this picture of perfection and see how it stacks up.

This topic contains strikingly similar ideas. For each Primal Quest, humanity has imagined a corresponding picture of perfection. The Creation Quest imagines a perfect Creator, the Salvation Quest imagines an ideal Savior, the Meaning Quest imagines a perfect Mindful Self, etc.

These Model Beings have popped up in the literature, lore and legend of every culture throughout history. We might recognize such familiar characters as God, the Supreme Being in the Book of Genesis, who is the Model Being associated with the Creative Quest. Or maybe you’ve heard of Jesus, who is a perfect version of someone on the Salvation Quest. Native Americans, Buddhists and Hindus have their respective versions of the Universal Spirit, that entity that is, itself, everything that is and ever was all at once. Existentialists (various characters in the novels of Herman Hesse come to mind) described ideal Mindful Beings, those people perfectly aware of their “true self.”

That’s easy enough to grasp—as long as we keep in mind they exist in our imaginations. Things get a little bit more difficult (for me) when we examine these Model Beings’ corresponding Planes of Existence.

The Planes of Existence Even if these Model Beings exist only in our imaginations, we have to create somewhere for them to live. An alternative explanation could be: We have to define the space from which Model Beings (and consequently us if we’re on that particular quest) must operate. This place is what THEE calls a Plane of Existence. One relatable example for the Supreme Beings, those Divine Creators, might be the ancient Greeks’ Mount Olympus.

However, it’s easier to conceive of the Planes of Existence, imaginatively of course, as physical borders, inside of which are the criteria for how someone on a given quest will go about making creative and ethical choices within their life.

Each Model Being has a corresponding Plane. All the Planes combined create what’s been labeled The Pleroma, or “the vessel or field containing all the energies that power humanities creation of psychosocial reality: i.e. everything enabling what is non-physical/non-material/non-technical in human existence. All human thoughts and deeds affect the Pleroma in ways that are not apparent or fully predictable.”

As you can probably see, there’s a lot of material here for some serious metaphysical philosophizing and all the mysticism you could ever want. I’ll leave you to it.

Final Thoughts

This is a risky topic, not just because it could be perceived as taking a position on issues where tempers have been known to flare, but also because it flies in the face of current ideas about the domain of science. THEE is a scientific object and I would venture to assert that many scientists today would run screaming from a topic like this.

But we must remember something about science: Its job is to acknowledge, observe, test and report on what exists. Science, and consequently humanity, is done a disservice by “scientists” who would relegate such pervasive and enduring ideas as divinity, good and evil to the rubbish bin. They most certainly exist, in our minds, hearts, beliefs, books, stories, films, art, music and our social institutions—including religion and even government. All American money—the most widely distributed currency on the planet, used to facilitate the movement of goods and services across the entire globe, is emblazoned with the words: “In God We Trust.”

Mankind is a spiritual being, with questions and ideas in his mind that have yet to be extinguished.

Perhaps it is time that science starts to take these questions and ideas a bit more seriously.

This topic—and the entire Your Better Self framework—is a great start.

Investigating THEE’s “7 Primal Quests”

2013-12-20T13:34:00.000-08:00

The purpose of life?

This is certainly bold, isn’t it? I imagine many people would be skeptical in hearing that someone claims to have any insight into their purpose of life. I would be. I am.

It’s so subjective, for one, and there are so many ways of looking at it, questioning it. Did some deity assign my purpose of life? Do I choose it at some point, or just fall into it? Is there really any purpose to life at all? It’s not particularly difficult to make the case that we are simply organic machines, bent on survival and reproduction alone. But that is, in itself, a purpose of sorts.

As impenetrable as it may seem, the topic holds universal appeal. It’s a question humanity has asked itself time and time again, which makes it even more difficult to accept that here and now, someone figured it out.

One of the first pages in the satellite, Answers to “The Purpose/Meaning of Life,” addresses these concerns, and it does so without discounting the many other approaches or ideas regarding what the “purpose of life” might be. The myriad ways of approaching our personal purpose—be it religious or psychological, intellectual or ethical—have their place in the taxonomy. They are important to human endeavor in some way. This sort of purpose, as part of the taxonomy, is much more specific, more focused.

Think of it as answering this question: If you had to say what drives the type of things you do with your free time, what would that be?

Sure, we all have the regular rigmarole to deal with—stay employed, eat, keep clean, spend time with the family—the normal stuff. But what makes you happy, and more importantly, what do you feel best doing? I think of it as what you really want to do when you get off work. Are you itching to hit the bars and go dancing? Is there a painting you’re working on that you want to get home and continue working on? Are you off to go volunteer at a soup kitchen? Did you hear about some new life affirming activity, like yoga or meditation, and you’re excited to go try it out?

The taxonomy identifies seven distinct “Quests” and asserts that we all strongly relate to at least one of them. These quests are our purpose. They are central in our identity. They are why we do what we do when we have the choice of things to do.

Of course, the taxonomy being what it is, there is a technical, epistemological rationale for the existence and validity of these quests, but I don’t want to get into that. My personal experience is what sold me on these quests. I can think of everyone I know and, with a bit of speculation and maybe an assumption or two, I get the sense that they fit quite nicely into one quest or another. Also, it helps to think of the Quests as emerging out of a taxonomic inquiry rather than someone’s attempt at philosophy or theology. Furthermore, they are part of a much larger context—the Your Better Self framework and the taxonomy as a whole. Apparently, much of this framework’s discovery was quite surprising and unexpected. You can read about Warren Kinston’s shock and awe at stumbling across parts of this framework in its Background Story.

The Quests

Reading through the quests reveals fairly straightforward descriptions, but it forces self-examination. It touches on the “searching” that, when articulated, is nearly the most succinct description of what if fundamentally means to be a human being.

We search for pleasure. We search for meaning. We search for truth. We want to help others. We want to create something new and beautiful. We want some guiding light to show us the way through life. We want to feel one with the universe and ourselves and each other.

In a way, every one of us is all of these things. This makes it hard to self-identify. But again, what most speaks to you? What reminds you of others you may know?

My Struggles with The Quests

The Pleasure Quest seems vacuous to me. I acknowledge its existence. My job used to be to entertain these people. I would play gigs at bars or festivals or casinos and see them in their element all the time. I even made close friends with some, but I always wondered how they lived that way without looking for “something more.”

I am equally repelled by the Obedience Quest. How can following be at all satisfying?

These sort of highlight THEE diversity for me. I try not to judge and simply accept The Pleasure and Obedience Quests as a reality without questioning their value.

I’m a bit confused by the Meaning Quest. THEE says that for someone on a Meaning Quest, “The Purpose of Life is to find a personal meaning for existing.” This seems kind of circular. And is it perpetual searching? So, if you find something that adds meaning to your life—having children or doing well at your job—is that satisfactory or must you then continue your search?

I think I am on a Meaning Quest—and a Creation Quest (proving that we can be on two at once as discussed on the THEE page Personal Combinations). I’ve attached my identity to being a musician, a writer, a father, a thinking person and various other things. This may be why it’s so confusing to me; it’s a bit too close to the cuff. And I do personally find it difficult to be ultimately satisfied—though this may be part of the human condition.

Interesting Taxonomic Side-Note

The psychological/social dichotomy is one of the clearest examples of a THEE oscillating duality. Level 1, Pleasure Quest, is focused inwards: What makes me feel good? Level 2, The Meaning Quest, is focused outwards: What social role can I play that gives my life meaning? Level 3, The Enlightenment Quest, is focused inward: What within me is a true expression of my “self?” Level 4, The Salvation Quest, is focused outward: How can I help others? Etc.

There’s a lot of exciting discoveries regarding oscillating dualities in The Architecture Room in the TOP Studio. It turns out manipulating them in a certain way spawns frameworks for overcoming difficulties in life.

Where Further Exploration Will Take You

Understanding the Quests paves the way for exploring some fascinating stuff, like how to become a better person, ideas addressed by religion such as Oneness, divinity and good and evil and how we as a species can enable a more harmonious communal existence.

These topics might be next on my list of inquiries.

But understanding the quests is necessary to gaining understanding during deeper inquiries into the Your Better Self framework.

Until next time, happy discoveries.

Changing Politics to Match the Times

2013-12-13T13:47:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my 100th blog!

For the occasion, I thought I would discuss an idea to take THEE principles off the Internet and into the political arena. Let’s talk about real solutions that, without a violent revolution or total social upheaval, could bring about much-needed, radical change to our political system—and it wouldn’t even be that hard to do!

The trick is to make it seem as if what we’re doing isn’t radical at all. If we can manage that, it will keep politicians and the media from marginalizing the initiative and writing it off as the mad ideas of some whacky fringe group.

As I have discussed numerous times in my 100 blogs, (yes, I’m going to milk it when I can) we are entering a new phase in our political development. THEE calls it Conventionalism and perhaps its most striking feature is a populace that is much more active in politics as a single, unified group. This will be enabled by advances in communication technology and will be a reaction to the obvious failings of the political and social elite (and us, quite frankly) during the current political phase—Plutocratic Pluralism.

An Anchor

Step one is to continue our adherence to the already-existing constitutional system. This isn’t because the Constitution is perfect and the forefathers (speaking as an American here) were demi-gods who graced us with their infinite wisdom. It’s because the Constitution is familiar and has deep cultural roots. It’s something a mass of people knows about and can largely agree on. It provides for solid political ground, something to latch on to for a crowd—which has the tendency to be a catalyst for chaos if there’s not some boundary over which they unconsciously agree not to cross.

“Politics by the people” has its downsides. When the crowd gets fired up, scary things can happen. But this can be tempered by, as noted above, a compass like the Constitution and the diffusion of power and responsibility. This is where interest groups come in.

The Political Unit that Counts

Every democratic society is rife with a multitude of diverse, quasi-political interest groups. This isn’t the Republican Party, the prison industrial complex or the pharmaceutical lobby we’re talking about. Imagine something more on the scale of the Prostate Cancer Coalition or the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. They span the spectrum of human interests but the common thread is that they must all engage with the political system to some degree. And there are just so many of them. It is estimated that there are 1.5 million non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the U.S.

The leaders of these groups, for the most part, are well versed on the problems inherent in the uncaring bureaucracy, the ineptocracy and the kleptocracy. They realize that they are competing with large, vested interests who have armies of lawyers and lobbyists. They generally feel powerless and marginalized because they are—but only because they stand alone. Yet, more people belong to some interest group than to any given political party, probably without even realizing it. My wife, for example, is a member of the American Translator Association and I pay my yearly dues to the American Society for Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). A lot of latent power waits, spread across these many groups, aching to be tapped.

I understand that it’s difficult to imagine that groups as different as a bird watching society and a music publishing association could have anything in common. However, their efforts to influence the political system are often thwarted, and there are reasons for this, reasons leaders understand. These reasons are what could unite them.

The Plan

Let’s start another interest group, an interest group interest group. The THEE page that describes this plan gives a suggestion for naming it the National Association for Proper Politician Participation and Practices (NAPPPP). But that’s not really all that important. It would have only three simple duties.

Reach out to the multitude of interest groups and organize itself as a nexus. Our new “meta-interest group” would act as a meeting point for all of a society’s interest groups.
Survey and gauge these groups, ask them what stands in their way. It must be about the political system, not something within their particular realm of interest. Maybe it is that they don’t have enough financing to compete with corporate lobbyists. Maybe their protestors keep getting beaten up and arrested. Maybe Congressmen don’t even respond to their communications with anything other than a stock letter. It’s up to these interest groups to determine what most stands in their way.
Lastly, this meta-interest group will find common themes, organize an annual convention and invite representatives to attend and conduct referenda. Groups will vote on, say, to reform the tax code so that corporations can’t take advantage of loopholes—and our meta-interest group will submit the results to government.

Just imagine the headline!

Every Interest Group in America, Representing 280 million People, Pushes for Tax Reforms

And you’ve got your grassroots, non-violent revolution. Politicians would hate it. They’d have no choice but to respond in some fashion—perhaps only a token speech at first, but if these annual conventions gain steam and referenda keep coming, we could see real, democratic change based on the Conventionalist ethos.

That’s the basic thrust. Please visit THEE’s Conventionalist satellite for deeper understanding.

Or, just think about it for a while. It won’t solve all of our problems. However, consider these points:

The meta-interest group could be operated on a relatively small budget and with a small secretariat.
It would perhaps be the most democratic aspect of Western society as it currently stands.
It wouldn’t seem too radical, because who’s threatened by a bunch of translators and musicians and bird lovers getting together?
It could affect real political change at a time when too many of us feel totally powerless and adrift in the choices of elites who exist well beyond our reach. Our own little interest groups are, however, easily within reach.

What do you think? Leave a comment with your response.

Lavabit, Willy Wonka and Economic Intervention

2013-11-22T15:00:00.001-08:00

Governments tend to attract some very intelligent, educated people. They offer decent pay, benefits, vacations, sick time and the perks of working for a large, successful organization.

So why do governments on the whole seem to be so stupid?

It’s not my intention to be inflammatory. But I’d be rather surprised to learn you hadn’t thought something similar at some point in time.

Granted, governments must grapple with a wide range of conflicts and dilemmas. There are all sorts of people to please—fat cat CEOs, foreign powers, central bank chairpersons, lobbyists, the party apparatus, and of course, the teeming masses. Even then, “the masses” isn’t some homogenous body. There are thousands of interest groups and organizations that emerge from the populace—not to mention every individual’s personal opinion and agenda. It’s a lot to think about.

But the jockeying for government attention by a wide variety of vested interest groups is only a feature of our current political paradigm. It likely won’t ever totally disappear, but as a defining, driving force in society, it will fade.

The perceived stupidity isn’t stupidity at all—it’s the mentality of the politician. They want power, then they want more power. We can’t really fault them. We need some sort of government. And government inevitably has power. So it attracts people for whom wielding power is attractive. These are politicians. While we all want power over our own lives, it takes a special mentality to crave power over vast numbers of unknown others. As such, the pursuit of power is an important and necessary drive in society, like the drive to be an entrepreneur or an activist or an academic.

What emerges is the paradox of control.

Politicians think themselves in control of something wildly complex and beyond them, things like entire economies or the activities of other sovereign nations or the actions of their people.

As I’ve discussed in a previous blog and its sequel, two of the best ways government can intervene in the economy is to vocally support commerce and promote capitalism. It’s very simple, actually. Politicians are, out of necessity, good at giving speeches that’s all they must do to help set a social context in favor of commerce.

If only they could leave it at that!

I’m reminded of the case of Lavabit. Edward Snowden used Lavabit to send and receive encrypted emails to and from the United States. Power-centered bureaucrats and politicians got wind of this and, in the early days of the ongoing NSA scandal, subpoenaed Lavabit’s owner, Ladar Levison, for information on his clients.

In an admirable display of his principles, Levison refused to give up the information, preferring to shut the business down instead. It was, after all, his business’ raison d’etre to not give up personal information. He was even told that to speak about the experience with the press (and his lawyer!) would result in some unspecified, but sufficiently scary, consequences.

Lavabit filled a gap in the marketplace. It’s not illegal for people to want their information kept private, and some people do. So it’s not as if the government was cracking down on prostitution rings or drug cartels.

Government coercion, born of fear and the misguided notion that their actions could stop up a hole in the marketplace inadvertently created a destructive ripple effect. Commerce was discouraged. Someone will fill the gap, probably from outside the U.S., depriving that country from a small but significant industry. Last I heard, New Zealand’s Kim Dotcom was planning on offering a similar service.

It’s pretty easy to screw up the economy when deliberate action is taken. Increasing taxes to the wealthy results in tax havens cropping up, brain drains, decreased investment and more corruption as rich people turn to paying bureaucrats off to achieve their aims. Banning certain products or services results in black markets or offshoring. Bailouts mean more money printed, leading to inflation, and more debt. All sorts of unintended things occur. I’m reminded of the two most beneficial economic policies to emerge from the U.S. government—the G.I. Bill and the freeway system. Neither was intended as an economic intervention. Both were a boon to the U.S.

I guess the lesson is: don’t think the government is going to save you. They’re more about power than they are about your prosperity. Yet, everyone seems to have their eyes turned toward statehouses and administrative buildings, just waiting for someone to emerge—like Willy Wonka from his factory—with a sugarcoated solution and a big, silly smile. What’s government going to do? Say: “We don’t know what to do…” That’d go over well come the next election. Maybe, as has been said dozens of times in this blog, we’ve got a responsibility. At the moment, I would say that responsibility is to quit expecting so much from government. Start expecting more from yourself.

Great Dreams and the Goodness Within Us

2013-11-15T21:16:00.004-08:00

“To this war of every man against every man, this also inconsequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues. No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

-Thomas Hobbes, Laviathan

In a sense, these are powerful, motivating words. There is a Spartan in all of us; there is a warrior, a violent individualist. Hobbes speaks to a deep, latent beast inside of us. And while he is condemning this unavoidable aspect of man, one can’t help but sense an alignment with something old, dark and natural that we all share.

Our most basic instincts are animalistic—we must survive. If we didn’t, well, then everything else is pointless.

This penchant for violence and brutality got us through some tough times as a species. The classic scene is the primordial wilderness; a night sky filled with stars, dense, steamy jungle and a small band of near-primates gathered around a fire. The dreaded saber-toothed tiger leaps out of the brush and the men, sinewy and strong, fight back, stabbing at him with their sharpened, fire-hardened sticks until they kill the beast.

Our violent nature was not only directed toward other species. The current manifestation of mankind is the distant progeny of the most deadly and heartless our species could produce. Murder was not a moral issue for early man; it was an accepted way of life. Tribal wars killed off a significant portion of the would-be gene pool no doubt. The ancient Assyrians would slaughter entire cities in a day, killing tens of thousands in a matter of hours.

The darkened annals of history hold untold scores of genocides.

One mustn’t even look to the ancients. We all know about the Nazis, you might have heard about the Kurds or the attempt to kill off Bosnian Muslims in former Yugoslavia. But have you heard of the Cathars? They were a fringe Christian sect in Southern France. The Vatican and the Parisian kings considered them a thorn in their side and over several years during the 14th Century, killed them off to the man. Perhaps a few drops of Cathar blood flow through the veins of a handful of villagers in Languedoc, but they are effectively gone without a trace. How many more races, creeds and ethnic groups that we’ve never heard of have been wiped out?

And who does that leave? The killers.

This is partially why it is so difficult for us, as a race, to actively pursue producing Goodness, to enable peace, harmony and communal existence. We must fight a raging battle within ourselves. This paradox is our Achilles Heel. It is our impediment to progress and evolution and it must be overcome.

What’s required is a conscious, active, aware use of another part of us. I believe and see evidence of something ethereal within humanity; there is goodwill. It is often brushed aside in today’s spiritual climate, where mechanistic materialists—the scientific determinists who populate much of neuroscience and evolutionary biology—and militant atheists seem to hold the floor of our society’s discussion in some great, echoing filibuster.

But it’s that part of us that film studios try to tickle with cutesy Christmas movies. It’s the part of us that awakens in even the most hardened, jaded person when they happen across a child or animal in danger. It’s the part of us that enables the existence of organizations like Amnesty International or The Red Cross. It’s the part of us that tingles when we hear one of Martin Luther King or Gandhi’s speeches, when they powerfully assert ultimate values like freedom, truth, justice and beauty.

The pain and suffering that grabs headlines and our collective attention is a web as fine as spiders silk. In between the threads is not a void, but a great many tiny successes that together, are much greater and more powerful than the darkness. If this were not the case, we probably wouldn’t exist anymore—or the fight for goodness would be long dead. And it’s not. It has survived millennia of attempts to destroy it.

What sustains us are our dreams, great dreams that, as THEE puts it, consists of “having a personal vision of a good world and believing that any goodness that comes into the world can start as easily from you as from anyone else.”

This is the answer to Hobbes’ Laviathan. And I think he tried to show us that—and succeeded to some extent.

I have great dreams, you have great dreams. We all do. Let’s hear yours.

To Be Complex and True, or to Be Simple and Easy

2013-11-08T11:13:00.001-08:00

We like to do what’s easy, or should I say, we like to do what’s easier.

I think modern civilization makes it even easier to do what’s easier. It’s no longer necessary that every family must work their own field and raise their own livestock and govern their own tribe. I write this, by the way, as I sit in my apartment, impatiently awaiting the delivery of my new washing machine.

Things are particularly easy in smaller doses. Of course, it’s unfathomable to our minds that everything “is one,” but we’ve gone even further. We’re not a species; we’re Germans or Indians or fans of the Philadelphia Eagles or Mormons or Republicans or BMW owners or someone who only listens to vinyl or whatever. It’s dizzying the number of ways we’ve devised to split and fracture ourselves.

One of the great maxims of science is that nothing should be conceived of as more complicated than is absolutely necessary.

From a wide angle, humans and their ways are quite complex. But from behind our own eyes, it’s all very simple. I am what I understand myself to be, everyone else rambles through my periphery, separate and distinct from my “self.”

But now these paradoxes are getting too complicated.

It’s only natural—too much sonder, as they say these days—would be confusing. Who’s got the time? To evaluate each political issue, for example, would be too time and energy consuming. Rather see what my favorite pundit has to say about it, or hold it up to my ideological scaffolding, see if it hangs.

I’m as guilty as anyone. My nickname is high school was “Commie Tommy.” I had a Che Guevara T-shirt. I listened to Rage Against the Machine, hung on every word that came from Tom Morello’s mouth. If only that was the most embarrassing aspect of my teenage years.

Now, I’m confused rather often. Where do I put new information? I’m no longer satisfied to accept or reject something based on previously held ideological notions. When something new arises, I think: “Is it good for me? Is it good for everyone else? Should I worry that it’s good for everyone else or just worry about myself? What do all the certified MENSA members in the comments section have to say? I should probably think the opposite to be safe.”

Of course, this paves the way for relativity, something rather dangerous in its own right. It’s quite good for some things, like what kinds of music someone likes or questions such as: “Do you more enjoy spring of autumn?” But for others, there does exist truth and falsehood, joy and suffering, creation and destruction.

The fact of the matter is we are more complex creatures than we are simple. Just inside our own minds is something seemingly endless. What is it? You don’t even know! If you did, please enjoy your tenured position at the Ivy League university of your choice and a legacy as long as the human race happens to survive.

Then, make it bigger. Think about society. All of those little microcosms bumping into each other, communicating, doing things, bouncing ideas and thoughts around, trying to reconcile their own will with their family, their community, their country, their race, their species.

It’s so much easier to say things like: “This group is good, that one is bad. I’ll do and think and say what they do and not what ‘the other’ does.”

But that’s not fair, it’s not correct and you know it. You live it, but you know it’s not at all accurate. It’s like a biologist saying that skin cells are good and liver cells are bad. It’s absolutely ridiculous. And it is counter-productive to the progress of biological science because it’s simply not true and it misses the whole point. Biologists absolutely must understand that it’s all part of this overwhelmingly complex system.

Is being human any different? Surely not!

The truth, the real honest-to-goodness truth is that “you” and “we” are complex. There are all sorts of bits and pieces to us, separate in their own way, but joined together to make us human. And man, it’s hard work getting down to the truth, especially when we’ve got kids and bills and surviving on our minds.

That’s why I understand why the work I do for TOP goes relatively unnoticed, why THEE in its entirety has yet to take off. Where to begin, right? How can a grand ordering seem so chaotic? What does “RH’7” mean anyway? How do I wrap my head around a spiral or a tree or an oscillating duality? I just clicked a link to get some insights on how to make my business profitable, expecting some pithy 10-step article about location and advertising and customer service.

I know what you got. I created the link!

We are always considering how to make THEE and TOP more accessible. Someday we might strike communicative gold.

In the meantime, take my word for it that what’s going on here is important. It’s truth and beauty and symmetry and, yes, even simplicity itself at times.

And if you’ve got the energy and time, talk to us! Challenge a claim I make in the blog. Ask for clarification or give your opinion in the comments section of thee-online. Have a conversation on Twitter. Leave a comment on Facebook. Watch a YouTube video and tell us what you think. I guarantee that conversing with you would be the highlight of my workday. And we both might learn something in the process.

Confusing and Clarifying Work and Play

2013-11-01T14:17:00.001-07:00

I never gave much thought to work. I have and do work, of course, as most of us do. There have been many mornings (or afternoons depending on the job) where I’ve dragged myself out of bed while whining: “I don’t want to go. Work is no fun.”

Conversely, there have been days when the hours flew by and I finished up the day feeling accomplished and fulfilled.

There have been many things I’ve done that were extremely stressful and taxing, though I did them purely for my own, personal fulfillment. Does that make me a masochist? Last year, for example, I released my fifth studio album and for the fifth time in a row, I lost money.

Recently, I had a yard sale. According to my European friends, this is a uniquely American phenomenon. I filled a large portion of my yard with items I no longer wanted and labeled them with price tags. My daughter and I put a few signs on the busier roads near my house and my wife took out a couple of online classified ads. Then the three of us sat on our porch for most of the day as random people drove or walked or biked up to our house to pick through our belongings and haggle us over items we were offering away for 50 cents.

We ended making a couple hundred dollars while ridding ourselves of a lot of dead weight. At one point, I remarked to my wife that it was the most relaxing day I’d had in recent memory.

I’ve had jobs where I worked in the traditional sense. My first two summers in college, I would pick up large rocks at construction sites by hand and toss them into tractor buckets. I worked with hardened cowboys in the rocky, snow-tipped mountains of Utah who, by the age of forty or so, couldn’t get through a workday without a few cheap beers.

For six years, I was a short-order cook at a series of busy restaurants. Cooks are notorious for a warrior mentality and lifelong brotherhoods are formed under the crushing weight of the peak-hour rush. Knives become a blur, shouting and profanity becomes the common language and blood boils in the heat and stress as two or three guys pump out upwards of two hundred plates. It takes an amazing amount of concentration, efficiency and focus and there’s a certain addictive quality to it. Few cooks make more than $50 a day, if that. But you don’t have to look very hard to find someone who considers it his or her calling in life. I could always hold my own, but I was never one of those guys. And when I was offered management positions, I always turned them down. I considered it a temporary arrangement and if I was going to be there, I wanted to be on the front lines.

Nowadays, I can make a few hundred bucks in a day writing marketing copy for pawnshops and payday loan outfits from the comfort of my front porch. It’s really boring and one of the highlights of my week is writing this blog for significantly less. Another highlight is writing articles for a Berlin arts and politics magazine for free.

I Could Have Just Read Your Resume. What’s the Point?

The point is: “work” is really complex. It’s a psychosocial phenomenon. If the previous stories prove nothing else, it’s that work is only partly about money.

Sometimes work is fun, and having fun is work. But work is never play. The difference is that when it’s work, you have a sense of accountability for the outcomes, and to yourself and those you’re working for.

Take the yard sale example. I didn’t really care if anyone bought my junk. I would have given it to the thrift store down the street if they hadn’t. Yeah, I made some money—which was nice—but there was no real sense of responsibility. And as I said, it was ultimately a very relaxing day.

On the other hand, cooks make next to nothing but they work very hard. Furthermore, most of them take cooking very seriously. Let that comfort my more conservative readers who worry when they see that a tattooed cook with a mohawk is handling their food. I can almost guarantee that your order might be the most important thing in his life at that moment. I’m sure the same goes for most professions.

I’ve just begun to embark upon THEE’s Levels of Work framework. It’s still quite new, so I’m sure in a few months or so, once I’ve properly processed it, I’ll be able to write more specifically about things. But I’m starting to think of work as concept or phenomenon in a whole new, extremely fascinating way. Check back in the blog for more developments. And while you’re at it, let’s hear some of your work experiences.

Imagining a Future Politics: Looking Backwards While Moving Forward

2013-10-25T14:15:00.001-07:00

I never thought I’d write this, but I miss the good ‘ol waning days of the Industrial Revolution, back when six year-olds worked in coal mines and the gap between society’s richest and society’s poorest was so wide that to this day, it’s used as a measuring stick for social inequity. Yes, the Victorian Era, when prudishness and repression were the norm and homosexuality was a prosecutable crime in England—even if you were a celebrity.

Now don’t stop reading yet! I’m quite happy that these practices have gone by the wayside. What I want to bring back is what ended up abolishing them.

The Industrial Revolution was an absolute orgy of free markets and lassaiz faire capitalism. Business interests like the East India Co. spurred on rapid global expansion of the British Empire and laid waste to the environment while exploiting not only foreign peoples but native women and children as well.

It was the era of Individualism, where enterprising, intelligent, hard working (and lucky) folks faced almost no political or social roadblocks to wealth and success. It all came with a hefty price, though. For one, the competition between European nations to industrialize and compete economically (mostly with Britain) resulted in World War I. But beyond that, unimpeded business endeavors caused what we call the tragedy of the commons, where individuals pursuing their own self-interest destroyed public or shared land and resources.

In response, the British government and its people called for some trusted body to investigate a hairy situation and find out not only what a sensible course of action might be, but what the people themselves wanted to see. These investigations became known as Royal Commissions. (A little personal side-note—you can read about one of my ancestors, Patience Kershaw, testifying before the Ashley Mines Commission in 1842, telling her story of dragging buckets of coal through tunnels on her hands and knees six days a week for 12-hour days.)

As the Empire broke apart, Commonwealth countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand took up the practice of Royal Commissions, and most Western countries had their own versions as well.

Now, on to the point. A few blogs back, I advocated for a more rational and truth-oriented approach in politics as we move forward into a new phase. It’s obvious to most that politics has become absolute madness in so many ways, with a corollary being the decline in Royal Commissions and public inquiry in non-Commonwealth countries, such as the United States. For example, if you take a look at this list of Australian Royal Commissions from 1900-present, you’ll notice that between 1900 and 1950, there were 85 Royal Commissions. Between 1950 and 2000, there were just 39. Since the turn of the century, there have only been six.

This decline is disturbing. Commissions such as these are powerful tools for the betterment of society. They operate independent of any branch of government or political party, they are given wide powers to investigate into matters often off-limits to journalists or even law enforcement and their recommendations are, more often than not, passed into law eventually.

Nowadays, bureaucrats and politicians seem to have a rabid case of commission-phobia. You’ll notice, for example, that after campaigning to close Guantanamo Bay and halt what many consider inhumane interrogation tactics in 2008, President Obama pushed aside the formation of a commission into interrogation tactics in 2009. And when the NSA scandal broke—a perfect time for a commission inquiry into surveillance practices—an investigation was initiated, but it was filled with Democratic Party insiders rather than being a formal commission, or at all independent for that matter.

Commissions are merely an outward expression of something deeper. It’s not inquiries or reviews that have politicians scared—they are perfectly capable of fixing or tampering with these. It’s that formal commissions’ independence allowed them to not be fiddled or tampered with in their search for truth and it’s truth that strikes fear into the hearts of every modern politician.

And it’s not even wishy-washy philosophical truth. It’s simple questions like:

Is it true that 2/3 of those killed during drone campaigns are civilians, yes or no?

Did banks and corporations who agreed to repay their money from the bail-outs within a certain period of time do so, yes or no?

The problem is, we’re not going backwards in our political development and the emergence of rationalism came out of the excesses of the Industrial Revolution and Individualism. That time is passed. Now we have to deal with the excesses of financial manipulation and corporatism with government suppression of civil liberties. The pressures here are growing.

However, we must start to imagine, and see the seedlings of a future political era molded by new communication technology and increased participation of the masses. It will be the age of mass opinion, of the crowd and all that comes with it. In a sense, it could be considered the opposite of rationalism. Crowds are not known for being rational and/or intelligent.

Nevertheless, we can absorb and utilize useful features of previous political eras. So while rationalism in this sense might not be the defining feature of politics, it can still exist and be influential. Current sentiments toward politicians show that we don’t trust them at all—and for good reason. But, if the crowd’s opinion is that independent commissions and other truth-seeking bodies are valuable, we could enjoy the best of both worlds.

In Hopes of a Truth-Seeking Society

2013-10-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

There’s something I’ve been hearing a lot lately—the call for a more scientific society. Scientific American thinks Big Data is the wave of the future. British associations call for more scientists in political office. As far back as 1998, UNESCO released an opinion piece of sorts, declaring that “scientists have an increasing obligation to become involved with policy makers and the public in finding or implementing solutions as means of adaptation to issues that are both local and world-wide…”

If you follow this blog, you might be anticipating some sort of defense of the opposite. It’s not uncommon that I take a devil’s advocate position in this space. But this time, I want to join the chorus. Call up the choirmaster, see if there’s a position in the baritone section!

Really, I couldn’t agree more. However, I would like to clarify some terms. By “scientific,” I mean truth-seeking. Though often considered synonymous, being rational or scientific frequently means floating along with the current of what is popularly considered true. If we are not too arrogant and have even a minimal grasp of the history of ideas and knowledge, we can safely assume that our current era is no different than previous ones. Our knowledge of the universe and ourselves, though generally more than in previous epochs, is no less flawed, incomplete or, at times, completely wrong.

Current problems in inquiry span the spectrum from physics to neuroscience to politics to pop culture, but for this blog, let’s focus on what most applies to our personal and social lives (that is the focus of this blog after all) and take a look at the social sciences.

The social sciences have always been considered soft in the middle—things are so subjective, theories might assert opposing viewpoints, studies are subject to various biases, and at times it seems that the border between philosophy and science greatly overlaps.

I don’t see this as really the problem, and I’ll get into that later. What seems to be the problem lately is a lack of integrity. It’s difficult to trust much of what we’re seeing lately—for a variety of reasons.

A few striking examples:

Diederik Stapel’s falsified data to support his premise that a dirtier environment correlates with racism. It was a relatively big study. It garnered significant attention, but it turns out he simply made a lot of it up.
“The Positivity Ratio” This could be a canary in the coal mine. It begs the question: How many studies like this exist that we’re not putting in the effort to debunk? Essentially, this 2005 paper claims that there is a sort of magic ratio (2.9013) of happiness to unhappiness that determines any given person’s success in life. It seems silly in those terms—and it is—but this study has been cited nearly 1,000 times on Google scholar alone, showing the danger for bad science to quickly proliferate.
Modern economics is one of my favorite axes to grind. First of all, look around, it’s not working. Second of all, is it a social science—as in having to do with people—or is it abstract mathematical models?

What’s the solution?

There are many. First, social science and its critics might simply embrace what is “wrong” with social science. Yes, it’s ambiguous—people are ambiguous. Yes, it is subjective—experience is subjective. Yes, it is philosophical—what it is to be human, individually and socially, is a philosophical quandary. Sure, these are problems when you’re concerned with demarcation, pseudoscience and academic definitions, but we should be concerned with reality.

Academic research is important; it has its place. So, when we engage in it and present it, we need to do so with more rigor—both from researchers and scientific publications and their journalists. This goes without saying. But the state of scientific publishing is dismal and evermore racked with scandals and uncertainty.

While much of the responsibility for bad scientific publishing falls on the heads of publishers, editors and journalist, much of it falls on us as well. We continue to click through to bigthink.com. We continue to take un-replicated, pop science research using white kids at expensive American colleges for subjects as gospel. That needs to change.

But there’s more.

A New Approach is Possible

The social sciences are in crisis, but we can see this as a good thing. Necessary and positive changes often emerge from crisis and breakdown.

My hope for what comes out of this crisis is the acknowledgement of a unity. We cannot truly comprehend it (almost if we really try), but we can acknowledge it. And in doing so, we can begin to understand the interrelation of the social sciences. While the work of psychologists and sociologists within their respective fields is important and necessary, they shouldn’t feel that there is some border over which they cannot cross. The sum of the social sciences should simply be a mirror of the multi-faceted, yet unified and one-contained phenomenon that is the individual. You feel a unity within yourself, don’t you? Zoom out and you’ll find that you probably feel a similar multi-faceted, yet unified and one-contained phenomenon that is all of us—or society. You’re unique, but also the same as everyone else. Can current social science handle that apparent contradiction?

What social science needs is a method for—and openness to—trans-disciplinary inquiry, and THEE offers that method. We are, after all, individuals, members of a family, a neighborhood, political beings and spiritual all at once. THEE is a myriad of different, distinct “things,” or elements we all share that, when combined, are the total person and the society he or she and all others create. The insights within, discovered and undiscovered, seem boundless. It is a social science in and of itself, dedicated to helping create a world fit for people by acknowledging the truth about them, not just what seems popular or in-fashion.

Mankind has always been served by the willingness and openness of individuals and society to investigate and accept new pathways to truth. Science has already undergone various revolutions and every time this occurs, we leap forward in our overall social development.

Social science still has much to teach us, but only if we’re willing to change our attitude from “make it interesting so people keep coming to the website” and academic wrangling to orienting ourselves to making our personal and social lives better. That is a scientific society I would like to see.

The Earnestness of What’s Important

2013-10-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

I often think back to a seminal moment I had in high school. It was a rough time—as it is for most people at that age. Everything was so dramatic, so magnified. I struggled with physical changes, family issues, social acceptance and my place in the world. Didn’t we all.

I was walking between classes. I must have been late to something; there was no one else in the hallways or in the yard. I asked myself, very earnestly, what was important. It wasn’t so much what was important to me personally, rather what was important in general. My conclusion? Money.

I remember being disappointed with my own answer, as if I had uncovered some dirty little secret about society or human nature.

Looking back, 15 years later, I have to admit that I wasn’t necessarily wrong. That pimply-faced, awkward boy—how wise he was! Of course, money is important in a sense. We all need it to survive in society. But it wasn’t my answer that was wise—I think I missed the mark there a bit—it was the question.

What’s important to us is of the utmost importance, don’t you think? That’s not just a play on words, it’s quite profound if I say so myself. I’d be happy to take credit for the profundity too, but it’s not mine.

We’re delving into the depths of what makes our personal and social reality go round. We’re talking about values. And values seem to be drastically underappreciated in general, which is strange. One would think that what’s important would be seen as rather… important. (OK, I’m writing important so much, it’s starting to lose its meaning.)

There is a branch of philosophy dedicated to values of course. It’s called axiology. But we all know how the esoteric word-bending of philosophers rarely makes any impact on the world at large.

Still, it’s strange that we don’t talk more about values. They are the “why” of everything we do. Maybe it’s because we tend to take them for granted.

Exploring values can take you in a thousand directions. Each one of us is the sum of our values. They are our identity. We express it in the things we buy, or what we wear, or the sorts of friends we acquire or how we raise our children.

We join or create groups around shared values. Nations and societies rally around values. Young men go off to war to defend values espoused by kings, clergymen, senators and presidents, knowing they could very well die.

They can be seemingly arbitrary—like wearing the color black—or they can change the course of human history—the old go-to example being how Helen of Troy’s beauty launched a thousand ships.

Values conflict, and so people conflict. These conflicts express themselves in everything from devastating wars like World War II, or in festering sores like the Israel-Palestine conflict, or even when husband and wife are trying to pick what color to paint a room. The concept is the same—what’s important to me is different from what’s important to you. Let’s fight about it.

Value conflicts are to be expected. What is important to each of the 7 billion living people is quite diverse, ergo human diversity, ergo human conflict. This can never change, nor would we want it to. Thankfully, something very beautiful has been happening within humanity in recent history. We have begun to discuss diversity, are much more aware of it than in times past and, as a species, we are often encouraged to accept and value diversity as something enriching. However, we tend to orient our attention to diversity toward things like race when we orienting it to values might be more beneficial.

So, let’s start talking about it. Seriously. If values are at the root of conflict, and harmony is a value nearly all of us can agree to share, let’s put values on our social to-do list and start considering them in earnest. If one tenth of the academic studies and papers that are produced, or a fraction of the outrage that follows a court decision involving race could be allocated to values, we might see some real progress!

Values are absolutely fundamental in personal and social life, so they are absolutely fundamental in THEE. Unfortunately, very little happens to be on the website about the basic principles of values, though there is a little info and space for it. Ultimate values (one of many types) are explored on the website in terms of spirituality and humanity’s ability to create goodness—or badness. That’s a big topic, perhaps for another blog. Still, it’s worth looking at, if nothing more than to understand yet another way in which values underlie fundamental aspects of humanity.

TOP’s creator, Warren Kinston, wrote a giant book about values that is freely available for download. Once I’ve read and processed the entire thing, I thought I might put it on the website myself. Then again, maybe you could be the one to develop it for mass consumption—and learn a little something in the process, or we could do it together. I think it’s important.

Be Epic, Be Something Great, Take Responsibility Part 3: Our Role in Imagining the Future

2013-10-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

In part 1, we acknowledged your dissatisfaction and sense of powerlessness in the face of our current social crisis. In part 2, we discussed the need and nature of change itself and identified the need for some guidance on the way forward. Here, we discuss that way forward.

This is a big topic. Oh man, what a big topic! Currently, many a revolutionary organization calls for a three-step process, those steps being:

Education – We learn about the current state of affairs, understand the truth behind the propaganda, diffusion, distraction and lies, and pass this information along however we can and as much as we can.
Non-violent resistance – things like boycotting products, services, companies and corporations that are in cahoots with the powers-that-be and/or are detrimental to society and social progress. It’s about protests and community gatherings. It’s about making the power structure aware of our extreme dissatisfaction, striking fear into their hearts and pushing them to step 3.
The physical pushback – This is the outright revolt, the uprising, the physical toppling of the power structure. It is most often portrayed as “the revolution,” usually suggesting that it might be oriented to violence.

This is a fairly realistic view; one supported by loads of history, but let’s make it better. Let’s do a little addition and subtraction. We’ll call it revolutionary math!

First of all, step one is lacking substance and tends to focus on ideology. We hear much about what is wrong, not about anything positive. Understanding current events and how they relate to corruption and injustice is fine. And understanding the ideas and theories of the great social and political thinkers is all well and good. But there must be a more well-rounded education that includes how society might reasonably develop and what it might realistically look like.

This leads us nicely into step two. Having subtracted, from our first step, a dependence on ideology and an orientation toward the long list of maddening problems journalists, pundits and would-be revolutionaries love to reference, we’ve got to balance the equation by adding a couple of things to step two.

Step two is just a means. It asks us to do things—but why and to what end? Perhaps amidst all the hubbub of action and assembly, we start considering and planning for the future we want. Let it be something that allows thinkers and those of integrity to ascend to the halls of power. Let it be non-utopian, rational and realistic. More on that below, but first, let’s subtract an assumption out of step three.

While violence will certainly be a part of this coming social transition, it doesn’t have to come from us. The power structures and supporters of the status quo will use any method available to hold on to power or maintain course and heading. We’ve already seen a complete lack of integrity from our leaders and self-inflicted blindness by those who want nothing to change; why not expect more of the same. And as desperation mounts, the more coercive they will become. However, we do not have to participate. Many positive social changes have come without any violence from the masses—Gandhi’s India, Dr. King’s civil rights movement, the fall of the communist totalitarian regimes in the Eastern Bloc. We can do it again. However, step three does get one thing right: any change will require the participation of most, if not all, of us.

The great revolutionaries of the past, for good or ill, like Guevara, Castro, Lennin and Marx, were certainly right about some things—one of those being that revolution is about hearts and minds. Revolution is not a point in time, nor is it a battle cry. It’s not an excuse for violent or destructive behavior. It’s a mentality, a way of life. It’s fuel and purpose and strength. When it spreads, it is the magnificent act of a society and its peoples taking responsibility for their past, present and future.

This gathering of the masses is a defining feature of what we can expect after our current political state of affairs buckles under its own weight. THEE calls it the Conventionalist mode. Here, our responsibility becomes more an explicit factor than in any previous political era. Only when the course of society is determined by our willingness to participate in politics and not by the goals of elites, vested interests, self-serving bureaucrats and corrupt politicians, will we have any hope of sensible government.

The question is—and this takes us back to issues inherent in step two—what is it that we’ll ask for. What will we hope to gain from our revolution? As the crowd comes together to call for change, they will inevitably fall prey to the crowd mentality. Like the French Revolution, will we call for the execution of our former leaders? Or, like the Cuban revolution, will one deposed dictator only install another (or plutocrats or parties, etc.)? The dissonance of Conventionalism lies in the irrationality of the crowd and the need for rational political choices. We’ll need to go back and revisit the principles of a political mode now largely ignored—Rationalism.

We’ll need to take into account people’s values. We’ll need to find ways to reign in the goals of individual politicians and moneyed interest groups. We’ll have to look to case studies, consider human nature over idealistic, utopian pipe dreams.

This is all much easier said than done. When the crowd takes over, the rational voices crying out for reason, pragmatism and an acknowledgement of the sometimes dirty realities of politics get swallowed up in a sea of rage and resentment. Torches and pitchforks.

To all you would-be revolutionaries, we at the TOP Project want to help. We offer ourselves and resources for realistic, rational and positive change. We offer frameworks for handling political tensions as well as for determining political choice. We offer insights into appropriate governance at different geopolitical levels and a glimpse at where we’ve been politically and where we’re headed.

No one has “the answer.” We certainly don’t. However, we have important guiding principles necessary for positive social change. Any revolutionary hoping to use these principles need only to custom-tailor them to the nature and values of their society.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Be Epic, Be Something Great, Take Responsibility Part 2: The Meaning and Origin of Large-Scale Social Change

2013-09-20T18:46:00.001-07:00

Things have to change, that’s for sure.

A lot of people have come to that conclusion recently. A lot of movements, large and small, have cropped up in response to that conclusion.

People are thinking. They see things like ignorance, apathy, corruption, violence, crime, poverty and desperation. They start looking for root causes and they often whittle it down to one institution or another. Some blame government, others blame religion, some think it’s their society’s approach to education. Maybe it’s the media, or a lack of morality—maybe it’s simply the existence of a certain idea like communism or nationalism or anarchism.

Some see it as an unhealthy combination of all of these things. And they’re right to think systemically. Society is a dynamic, moving, fluid “thing” composed of individuals, social institutions, organizations, governance systems, business arrangements, ideas and more. It is impossible to pinpoint one of those things and say, “That’s the problem. That’s what needs to change.”

Still, things in general within society don’t seem to be going well these days. Things in general seem to be falling apart!

Societies have fallen apart in the past. It’s nothing new. The difference now is that it’s happening amidst a population of aware, educated, liberated people—most of whom are more than capable of seeing, feeling or intuiting that their society, and consequently them, are on a dark, foreboding path.

Nevertheless, I’ve been seeing a certain approach toward our problems rear its head more and more lately, that approach being: “Tear it all down!”

I hear things like:

“Well, animals don’t send their young to classrooms to be indoctrinated. Education itself is a ridiculous institution.”

OK, animals don’t really endeavor to do much of anything except survive and reproduce. (Obviously, some animals like gorillas and dolphins have slightly more complex social arrangements, but you get the idea.)

Or, I’ll hear:

“Government is immoral. Get rid of it altogether.”

Well, then you’ve got a bunch of unsupervised people with jet fighters and nuclear bombs running around. Then you’ve got no rule of law and no hope of justice beyond taking matters into your own hands. That’s never gone well.

For societies to operate at all, certain institutions must exist. Government is one of them. Education in some form or another is too. Various moral institutions crop up around everything from a society’s most treasured ultimate values to what they think is acceptable or unacceptable speech. Businesses, even those mean old corporations, provide us with products and services and jobs that are required for the urbanized society we have created over thousands of years. Moreover, they enable large, beneficial projects that would be unfeasible otherwise.

This is not to say that these institutions don’t need to change as well. They do! That’s the whole point. The issue is how they should change and how we can sensibly enable that. Our institutions are a reflection of the society that we’ve created, and as such, are built upon the same values, beliefs and ethical principles that brought us to this unfortunate crossroads. It all becomes so daunting when you start to realize the scope of what we’re up against. It’s not as if we can just take our metaphorical screwdriver, make a few minor adjustments to the social machinery and expect anything substantial to happen. We’re too far gone for that.

What needs to change is us. And that might be the hardest thing to do of all.

In the spirit of things, let’s examine “change,” shall we?

Change implies that some system existed and that a different, new system has emerged out of it. It’s a matter of states. There was a state of affairs, now there is a new state of affairs.

The current state of affairs, in America at least, is the mentality that more stuff is better. It’s the mentality that coercion and force—upon other nations, each other and ourselves—is perfectly acceptable. It’s the mentality that while our politicians are corrupt and stupid, there’s nothing we can do about it and it’s not our fault. It’s the mentality that we deserve something for nothing. It’s the idea that we can have total freedom and total security at the same time. It’s the mentality that other peoples, other ways of thinking don’t matter—or maybe don’t even really exist.

The new state of affairs must be different. That’s the “change” we require. Tearing down the social machinery will only result in new, maybe worse, social machinery. It is only when we become fundamentally different that our thoughts and subsequent actions will permeate and ripple throughout the rest of society, gently molding our institutions into what we will them to be.

Now, you might be thinking: “Telling us that we all need to change really isn’t all that helpful.” That’s true. The real question is how to go about doing that. People and societies change on their own anyway. The difference now is that we have past failed revolutions to learn from. While we know that ideology alone never works, we do have relevant principles that we can apply. So we ought to be able to get some sense of what is possible and beneficial. This investigative work has been done as part of TOP. It doesn’t give answers but it let’s us all think for ourselves, and does offer some sort of general direction that is both feasible and desirable.

Check out the next blog and we’ll talk about how THEE can enable healthy, conscious social change.

Be Epic, Be Something Great, Take Responsibility

2013-09-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

You’re upset. I can feel you seething through the computer screen. And all you’ve been doing is reading the news. You look around and wonder why everyone isn’t as upset as you are. Looking even further, you’re wondering why all of society has yet to erupt in a firestorm of indignant rage.

What got you? Was it your democratically elected government spying on you? Was it bonuses and federal money for Wall Street CEOs who speculated with your money and lost? Was it a friend-of-a-friend who died in one of America’s wars? Or was it someone closer? Was it the sneaking suspicion that your country is really the bad guy? Was it the vague sense that your democracy isn’t working, that your choices aren’t really choices at all? Was it something else?

Do you look around at the people you know, the people you happen upon and want to shake them awake? Do you spit fire with your friends, talking about how everyone is a little lamb, how they are satisfied so long as they can get their ice cream bars at Wal-Mart or put gas in their SUV? They don’t realize that people are dying! They don’t seem to care that they’re being taken for fools, that they are just cattle, the property of some banker or politician and they are being led to the slaughter!

What did you do about it?

Got you there, didn’t I? You know as well as I do that sitting around with your buddies, whining about Obama or the NSA isn’t going to change a single thing. You feel powerless. You’re no less a cog in the machine than the rascal-riding Wal-Mart shoppers, stuffing themselves to the brim with government-subsidized high fructose corn syrup. Your best option is to be some corporation’s robot—work, consume, work, consume. Your worst option is to be cannon fodder in some rich guy’s war.

Now that I’ve got your attention, you’re starting to get antsy about where I’m going with this. “When is he going to tell me what to do?” you ask.

But you already know. You just don’t think it’s worth it. You don’t think anyone will back you up. You saw Occupy fizzle. You’ve seen how everyone thinks the Tea Party is crazy. Maybe you went to a protest or two and you didn’t fit it, or you thought they were on the wrong track.

Maybe you’ve got the wrong attitude.

You’ve got to fight fire with fire. How do the politicians have power? How do lobbyists get anything done?

They make friends.

As individuals, Obama or Ben Bernanke or General Patraeus don’t have any more power than you do. They must rely on their friends and associates, who in turn must rely on their friends and associates. They all scratch each other’s backs and share the wealth and power. Each has their own group who jockeys for power and influence. Society becomes a kaleidoscope of interests—PACs, political interest groups, think tanks, lobby firms, associations, churches, non-profits, corporations, unions, human rights groups and more. They all want a piece of the pie. It’s part of a system of ethics that underpins the way in which our society currently operates. We can do it too. We’ll have to.

“But they’ve got all the money,” you argue. “They’ve got all the guns,” you fret.

We’ve got all the people.

At some point soon, when there are no more ice cream bars left at Wal-Mart, and no more gas to fuel the SUVs, and no more willing soldiers, when it becomes clear that the cries to upset the system aren’t coming from radical nut jobs on the ideological fringe, when the drip-line that feeds our media addiction, our junk food addiction and our dependence on government “help” runs dry, there will only be two groups: us and them.

Then, when the smoke clears, it will just be “us.”

So where does that leave you?

“Great, thanks for the pep talk Tom. I’m still just sitting here wondering what to do next.”

Start or join a group. Mobilize for results. That’s how it’s done.

Spread ideas. Share this blog or write your own. Wake those people up.

Start taking responsibility for your society. Admit to yourself that you’ve been complicit in every stupid thing your government has done during your lifetime. Can’t swallow that? Click here.

Go to a protest, even if it’s not about your pet issue. Eventually, all protests will be about the same thing anyway and we all would do well to acclimate ourselves to nonviolent resistance.

Don’t buy things from companies you don’t like. Save your money. Become more self-sufficient.

Be mobile.

Make friends. Talk, write, post to your Facebook or Twitter. Rail on and on and on and on. Talking to your buddies over a beer does help. But take it a step further.

The “system” isn’t working for you, but all of your fear comes from not knowing how to operate outside of the system. Learn it. Political work is hard work. But we live in a time where great courage and perseverance is required. From what I’ve seen from this generation, I’ve got every reason to believe that we’ve got what it takes.

In the next couple of blogs, we’ll talk about “change” and concrete ways to bring it about.

And if you are inspired but don’t know where to start, message me and I will brainstorm with you and point you to some great information.

-Tom

A Tale of Two Bosses

2013-09-06T11:44:00.001-07:00

Leadership is very hip right now. All the cool cats are into leadership these days. I imagine them in skinny slacks, sweater vests and bow ties, hanging around the water cooler, bragging about the leadership conference they’re putting on over the weekend—not attending, mind you. That wouldn’t be leadership at all. I’m reminded of a blog that Warren Kinston wrote about this very phenomenon, one great quote about the popularity of leadership today being:

“Is the ratio in real life a thousand leaders for every single follower? Or is it the reverse? All the effort going into being a wonderful leader is rather pointless if you don't have a few followers. One thousandth of one follower doesn't do much for the ego. Is leading worth the effort?”

I’ll be honest; I don’t have a lot of real-world experience in this area. I suppose I’ve been a bandleader of sorts, but we always tried to adhere to a somewhat anarcho-communalist ideal—very democratic, very anti-authority. It’s just that someone had to do all the work, and that someone was often me. No, most of my experience in this area is from the perspective of the led. But you learn a lot watching others, so I would like to regale you with:

A Tale of Two Bosses

It was the best of times,
It was the worst of times,
It was the age of the knife,
It was the age of the spatula,
It was the epoch of heat,
It was the epoch of grease,
It was the Christmas season,
It was the Mother’s Day rush,
It was the St Patrick’s Day happy hour,
It was the Thanksgiving feast.

It all began in the year of Our Lord two thousand and four. The king of the steakhouse kitchen noticed the zeal and stamina of a fresh-faced busboy. He was as sharp as a cleaver, quick with a joke and mild-mannered, and he worked with speed and precision. The royal steakhouse court granted him the title of cook, though he had never before wielded either knife or spatula.

This all occurred as the Great War with Christmas was beginning. The restaurant walls echoed with the sounds of assault after assault of company parties and large family gatherings. Amidst all of this, the steakhouse king was charged with many royal duties: delegating, strategizing, cooking, scheduling, ordering and training. But his authority and capability was unquestioned. With grace and skill, he attended to his duties. With a smile and a gentle hand, he guided his men, offering them the perfect ratio of butter to white wine in a buerre blanc sauce, or demonstrating for them the texture of a truly medium rare steak.

The War with Christmas was won and the steakhouse kitchen king garnered unfailing loyalty from his men. For many years, the steakhouse kitchen was blessed with low turnover and posterity forever remembered the king as a visionary leader.

On the other side of town, the less favored on the whole, the kingdom of the brewpub was in shambles. The king entertained himself with fits of rage and dozens of smoke breaks, causing the desertion of many a member of the royal court. The young busboy, now a hardened knight of the kitchen, was obliged to fight many of the king’s battles for him. And despite his best efforts, he watched as the brewpub kingdom degenerated slowly into chaos.

The king could only handle each crisis as they came. Duties were delegated to the person physically closest to him at the time. The inability to plan further than a few days in advance resulted in scores of dissatisfied customers. Profits sank and in response, the king attempted to pass his royal duties on to anyone he could in hopes of recovery. He did not want to sacrifice a single smoke break, but his minions were not loyal. They feigned to please the king, but took advantage of his absence and inattention and cut corners anywhere they could. They were not paid for their administrative work and eventually began to conspire against the king. Ultimately, the busboy-turned-cook threw his apron down in disgust and never entered a kitchen for the rest of his days.

Back in the 21st Century

Are we talking about a “bad boss” here? Both bosses had the same duties, the same challenges and the same tools. One flourished and one failed. Personally, I’m inclined to call the brewpub manager lazy and incompetent—though perhaps he was simply out of his depth—and the steakhouse manager a brilliant leader—though perhaps he was working at an appropriate level of responsibility. Granted, the job of a kitchen manager is all encompassing, something THEE calls “line management,” and very few people can do it. As the brewpub sank into despair, they offered me the position. I refused and I don’t regret it for a second.

We must acknowledge something else. The culture of these organizations was different. The owner of the steakhouse was involved, present and the steakhouse was his source of income. The hierarchy of authority worked. The owner of the brewpub was an absentee millionaire who wanted his own brewery to show off to his posh friends. He never once entered the kitchen in the three years I worked there.

THEE offers innumerable insights into leadership, management, work organization, being employed, authority, working within organizations and more. In fact, professional, work-related frameworks are probably half or more of what’s on the website. It’s not something I blog about very often because, as I previously mentioned, it’s not my natural area of interest. I do like stories, though, and I think you probably do as well. If this is your area of expertise, I strongly encourage you to click the links, open your mind and jump in.

Cowboy Proverbs: Wisdom from the Old West and THEE

2013-08-30T13:42:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I wonder if life is endlessly difficult or if we just take it harder than we should.

Then I read in THEE, which is completely about doing things (hence the “Endeavour” in Taxonomy of Human Elements in Endeavour). I find this strangely discouraging in a way because I’m always doing things and sometimes I don’t want to do anything at all! Or is it that I don’t want to do anything that might be difficult?

I hear children, when asked to do something by their parents, whine: “But it’s too hard!” This is particularly infuriating for adults when what they are whining about is as simple as putting their toys away or riding their bicycle.

I have some attraction to the good ‘ole boy method of handling life’s relentless onslaughts. Maybe it’s my upbringing amidst the rugged mountains and dusty fields of Idaho where everywhere you turn, it’s clear that the American Old West is far from dead. Around here, if a child can’t swim, we throw them in the water and let them work it out while bellowing, “It’s just like life, kid. You sink or swim.” And we pat ourselves on the back for being so clever.

Luckily for my daughter, these tactics are only passing thoughts in my head. I’m actually a big softie when it comes to her. Plus, my wife would kill me! Still, the Old West, tough-old-codger way of thinking keeps me going sometimes. I’ll hear the echo of my grandfather’s voice when I’m tired:

“Sleep? There’s plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead!”

Or discouraged:

“I had a bad day too once. It was called D-Day.”

It makes me chuckle now, but at the time, I would think, “Geez, grandpa, let’s just calm down with all the tough guy stuff.”

I think he’s right, though. His words are just colloquialisms whose message transcends any culture, epoch or context. He and the weathered, leathery old cowboys I grew up around here in Idaho have their own, special way of instilling age-old concepts of handling life’s challenges. Like them, their wisdom is coarse and a little bit crass, but endearing.

THEE, simply being a map of life, has come to the same conclusions as these cowboys—the difference being the science behind it and, of course, the use of a more logical language. To understand a cowboy, you have to understand his context, and most cowboys, being rather proud and protective of their identity, will say you don’t. So, as an Idaho boy, born and bred, let me do some translating for you.

"A good horse is never a bad color."

I interpret this one as gratitude. A sense of entitlement is poisonous. In THEE, gratitude is connected to producing goodness in the world and is one of the methods for healing yourself and overcoming pain.

“Shoot straight and speak the truth.”

I see this one as authenticity. It’s about having integrity and character. Be honest, do your best—you know, schoolyard stuff.

“Your belt buckle don’t shine in the dirt, get up.”

Ah yes, the old cowboy call for perseverance. “Get back on the horse” might be more recognizable, but I like the image of a big, cumbersome, shiny belt buckle and the slow, bowlegged gait that goes along with it.

Every group—cowboys, clowns or card players—have their own wisdom, expressed in their own way. Every culture and subculture passes lessons and encouragement down through the ages using turns of phrase or metaphors to which the next batch of members can relate. It’s even been the subject of much academic study.

So, is THEE simply lifting age-old wisdom from the great oral and written traditions of human history? Yes! (With the added benefit of a coherent, useful, validated structure to back it up.) THEE is life and these traditions came from people living life with awareness and commitment. People know how to live; they’ve been doing it for ages. Sometimes we just need encouragement and sometimes we just need to hear it in a new way.

The Necessity and Pitfall of Ideology

2013-08-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

How important is ideology? How important are ideals? Did I just start a blog with questions?

I imagine many of you are thinking that these things are profoundly important—and you’re right.

Societies and governance systems are so complex and big and daunting—and they impact our everyday lives. In an attempt to bring order to the perceived chaos, we attempt to systematize our approach. And if something isn’t working, we try to change it.

Ideals and ideologies have been instrumental in bringing about important, large-scale change since societies were first formed. Democracy arose in ancient Greece, then it arose again from the ashes of Europe’s fallen monarchs. Dictators mounted an ideological defense of fascism in the early 20th Century. In response, blood was shed in the name of democracy. The next great battle was between communism and capitalism.

The arc of history is marked by sea changes in ideological thinking.

We internalize our ideologies; make them a part of our identities. They emerge from the core of our humanity, those abstract ultimate values like freedom and justice and equality. “What is freedom?” we ask. The answer becomes an ideology, an ideology becomes a system of thought by which we hope to encourage our societies to become better, or even perfect.

There is much to be admired about the great social and political thinkers and their ideas. Anarchy beautifully puts faith in the goodness of humanity. Socialism admirably strives for fairness and equality. Libertarianism righteously guards personal and economic freedom. These are all good things.

However, problems arise in the ethical dimension. Does the application of an ideology really make a society better? So we often believe, and we will religiously defend our ideological positions in the face of facts, evidence, history and crises.

What is good for society cannot be contained within a single ideology. Let’s think of some examples:

Private corporations exploit their workers. This is true in many cases (but not all). They pay people as little as they can get away with, extract as much productivity from them as they can get away with and charge as much for their products as they can get away with.

Is the answer to nationalize everything? The workers are being exploited! They are not free! Well, there’s not a lot of freedom in not being able to choose what you can and cannot buy, which is precisely what would happen in the event of a state monopoly of consumer goods.

So the answer must be lassaiz-faire capitalism or strict libertarianism, right?

Well, when it comes to health care, choosing between life and death because you can’t afford medication or surgery isn’t much of a choice is it? And adding a profit motive to prisons adds a profit motive to making people criminals. That can only go badly.

Ideology quickly gets mixed up with the messy realities of politics. And the role of politics is not to push ideals and ideologies—though that is often what politicians do. Politics is intertwined with ethics. Charged with managing the wealth and resources of an entire society, politics must grapple with how to do this so as to produce goodness for society.

Not a single politician in Washington D.C. or Brussels or New Delhi or Seoul or Ottawa or Canberra would ever say that they don’t believe in the ideals of democracy. They might, however, heatedly debate how to apply it—or even what that means. And it is the inflexible ideologues who inevitably fail themselves and their societies because their ideologies are more important than what is best for their societies. They argue and debate and journalists as well as citizens hang on every word, hoping for a triumph or affirmation of their own ideologies. In fact, if I get any comments on this blog, I expect they will be in defense of some ideology that is perceived to have been slighted. I will be told I don’t really understand socialism or that the free markets would work if we ever just let them be truly free. I get it; I have my opinions too.

But societies are as unique as the people within them. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to prosperity, freedom, equality or justice. Our societies and the political systems that oversee them must be allowed and encouraged to evolve, grow, to respond to the needs of the people, to anticipate change and react accordingly to problems. Every so often, new Enlightenments must emerge and being stuck on an ideology will hinder them from doing so. As Immanuel Kant said:

“Enlightenment is mankind’s leaving behind its self-imposed immaturity.”

It’s Society’s Fault!

2013-08-16T14:27:00.001-07:00

I have this funky app I like to use on Twitter where I can track, in real time, hashtags and keywords. Currently on my list is “Society,” “Politics,” “Science,” “Social Science,” “21st Century Enlightenment” and “Philosophy.” How it works is that every time somebody tweets a message with one of these words, it pops up on my feed—courtesy of Hootsuite in case you were curious.

I’m starting to question my “Society” tag, though. It should be about as relevant to my work as anything, but most of what shows up in my feed is young people—teenagers and people in their early 20s—who are expressing a sort of conflict between themselves and “society.” Here are a couple of examples from this exact moment:

“Who can be real in society. i bet no one is real. but some are good at pretending to be so.”

“Who wants to give up society and go live in a treehouse with me?”

Quite revealing, isn’t it? We might all relate. Young adults are at the height of identity-development. Perhaps they’ve outgrown the family home or are taking their first, timid steps into society-at-large and finding it’s not quite what they suspected. They are simply acting out an age-old and natural process, leading and developing the gradual evolution of cultures and societies And the subtext of their pleas are important and relevant questions for all of us: What is “society” in this context? And what is this pressure it exerts on us? Where does it come from?

All societies, past and present, modern and primitive, contain natural moral institutions that decide what is right and good for society. They have always been there and will continue in some form or another for as long as humankind continues to exist.

The most obvious ones are government and religion, both topics I have written about extensively in this blog, (see Religion, Morality & New Atheism or Politics and Values for some examples).

Both of these institutions seem to float atop society like tectonic plates on oceans of magma. Their moral imperatives, in the service of stability and meaning respectively, filter down into society’s other moral institutions. Resisting religion—particularly in very spiritual societies is dangerous and resisting government pits individuals against the law as well as government’s many coercive powers. It can feel futile to even attempt resistance, but it happens and the moral outlook of these institutions can and does slowly evolve.

There are several more moral institutions whose existence and influence is much more subtle, though you certainly know they are there. For example, society dictates rules of etiquette, answering questions like: What are proper table manners? What is considered proper dress?

Society dictates the acceptable use of our bodies. Is alcohol socially accepted? What are the conventions regarding sexual activity?

We are socialized to feel a sense of loyalty to our social/cultural institutions. Germans take pride in their beer, thumbing their noses at the Belgians and Czechs. The French believe their wine to be superior and might bristle if anyone were to insinuate that the Italians do it better. Americans swell at the thought of their military superiority and even the most peaceful citizen would freely assert that, yes, we could beat the Russians if it came down to it.

We’re dictated as to how we handle our personal relationships. How do we treat strangers, friends, coworkers, husbands and wives, children, guests and hosts? How do we treat animals? How do we deal with people of different races, religions, genders, sexual orientations, etc.?

As a sum, it can seem incredibly complex, and transplants to new cultures and societies find themselves reeling at the interwoven layers of morality and convention they face. Youths, coming to grips with their own, unique identities, find their own ideas of how society should operate butting up against these institutions. They lash out, or “give up on society.”

Throughout history, rebels and revolutionaries find themselves at odds with one or many of these institutions. And when these particular people find themselves in positions of power, with the resources to attempt an abrupt change in how these institutions operate, the results have been disastrous. Consider Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution, or Lenin and Stalin’s attempts to rid Russia of religion, completely restructure the political/economic system and reboot Russians’ relationship to their own society.

It’s difficult for me, as someone who writes about psychosocial phenomena, to offer advice for those who dispute the value or relevance of their society’s moral institutions, but why write a blog about these things if there wasn’t some overall point? It would be much easier to leave it at information and nothing more but we here at the TOP project highly value individuality and authenticity—these are the lifeblood of creativity, ingenuity and fulfillment—and moral institutions are the source of much, if not most of social and personal conflict.

On one hand, there are obvious consequences to defying religion, government, etiquette, popular morality, ethical convention and one’s culture. On the other hand, it is good to be true to oneself. I’ll leave it with a quote by a very wise American—someone who I am proud to share my heritage with, Thomas Jefferson:

“If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.”

Family as Politics

2013-08-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

The family appears to be an institution in crisis. Speculation abounds as to why divorce hovers around 50% in developed countries and something like two-thirds of women in the U.S. experience domestic abuse. Some blame Hollywood, the waning influence of religion, feminism, sexual deviance or a breakdown in “family values.” And that’s just the West. In many developing countries, women aren’t allowed to drive, get an education or even be seen—though that’s certainly nothing new. I’ll spare you my personal sentiments, but I will say that perhaps we aren’t quite viewing the family for what it really is—a political unit.

To accept that assertion, we’ll have to look at what features constitute “politics.” It’s safe to say that much about politics is power. Of course in families, power is expressed differently but the principles are similar enough.

Some examples: I imagine my little four year-old daughter as a Napoleon of sorts (because she’s quite short, naturally). She sweeps through with her endless appeals and limitless requests, leaving the landscapes and villages of our nerves in tatters. I’ve heard that the average toddler will appeal to their parents in some way or another somewhere in the vicinity of 400 times per day and I believe it. It works, too. We very often submit to her demands, offering a piece of candy or a half hour with her favorite TV show for tiny moments of peace.

My wife and often go to battle over resources. We compete and haggle for time: “I’ll give you Wednesday night with your friends for poker, but I need Saturday morning for a haircut.” My wife is a master of the filibuster. She’ll wear me down over some family initiative until I relent. I tend to handily appeal to ultimate values like fairness and equality, or I’ll make some backroom deal with our daughter, employing her considerable skills of persuasion to my benefit. Or, at last resort, I’ll invoke the ideals of democracy: “Two against one!”

It may seem like all in good fun, but just like in politics, things can become rather sticky in the family. Someone may feel slighted, overly dominated or taken advantage of. In the worst cases, this can result in the familial version of a coup d’etat: infidelity, domestic abuse or a complete breakdown.

How do we manage family power struggles?

They are, at once, easier and more difficult to manage than power struggles in society. For one, things are quite a bit more immediate. As opposed to addressing some grand social problem—which requires the will of many people and organizations, enormous sums of money, social movements, shifts in values and more—the family is right there in front of us and seemingly much more receptive to our efforts, yet obviously resistant to them at the same time. Furthermore, tensions and frustrations are also more immediate and often require our attention and care, even when we’re not prepared or in the mood for problems. (Who’s ever in the mood for problems, right? At least with politics, you can just switch off the TV or put the newspaper down.) Also realize that families are the most fundamental political unit dedicated to the survival of a group. There is enormous pressure to makes sure people’s vital needs are met and to maintain group cohesion. Disagreements quickly arise regarding how to go approach these endeavors.

Acknowledgement is the first step. Yes, there will be power struggles. Managing them is often a matter of proper communication, boundary setting and awareness. In a political setting, we would parallel this by communication with the power structures via voting, demonstrations, letter writing, proper journalism and rule of law. Every family is unique, but generally rules must be set for the children and spouses and children should reasonably know and honestly communicate each other’s wishes, needs, limits, thoughts and feelings. We don’t have to look far to see these methods failing in the political system, and if politicians were children, (far too accurate a comparison, by the way) they don’t know their limits, tell too many lies to cover their mistakes or simply hide their wrongdoings from us.

On every level, families and the individuals within them are faced with choices. Do we mow the lawn or slink off to the basement for a beer, knowing full well that a conflict will ensue? Do we express our concerns or seethe in secret until, when the wife commandeers the TV remote, we flip out? If someone disagrees with us or defies the family, do we fly into a rage, sulk or alienate them? Or, do we attempt to understand them and rationally choose to support them or leave them to their own devices? Change some of the wording and societies and their governments face similar questions. And in both cases, the paths we take have very real consequences. And in both cases, social and familial, all anyone wants is peace, love and acceptance.

A Different Kind of Technology: Tools for More Effective Living

2013-08-02T12:40:00.000-07:00

Technology has been all the rage since the Pliocene epoch. Almost two million years later, it shows no signs of abating. What began as rocks tied to sticks has become space travel, artificial knees and supercomputers. It’s an interesting part of our history and as important to the evolution of mankind as anything biological, intellectual or linguistic.

Currently, the speed at which technology develops is dizzying. In previous eras, generations came and went without much in the way of technological development and when something big was developed—like steam power or the printing press—it resulted in a complete social reordering. These days, as soon as we buy a piece of technology, we can barely walk out of the store without some new development making our purchase obsolete.

We now find ourselves in the “technological era” –or- the “information age.” Rare is the person who isn’t attached to some sort of device, linked to the web and, by association, everyone else. It has begun to affect the way we think, our minds, lifestyles, ideologies, philosophies and societies. We’ve all but integrated technology into ourselves. What could possibly be the next step?

We Are Primed and Ready

Technology focuses ever inward, aiding movements like the “quantifiable self,” inspiring techno-centric cosmologies where God is replaced with the “Great Programmer” and machine-oriented ontologies like mechanistic materialism where the mind (among most other things) is viewed as a massive parallel-processing computer-like machine.

Given the greater role technology plays in our lives, its effects on the self and the ripples and waves it is creating through the greater social consciousness, perhaps society and the individual have reached a point where they are ready to adopt and use sophisticated intellectual technologies. This will require a slight adjustment in how we view technology, but I think we’re game.

This blog does not purport to introduce the general concept of intellectual technologies to the world. They are in use regularly, most often within organizations and in the service of management—have a look at Six Sigma or the “5 Whys Method” for examples. Rather, it aims to expose a vast collection of intellectual technologies with far-reaching applications to nearly every facet of personal and social life.

What are Intellectual Technologies and What Can They Do?

Using the metaphor that our brains are computers, an intellectual technology would be a software program, or an update. The computer on which you are reading this blog is a dynamic tool. It can do innumerable things. It probably came with a word processor and an Internet browser. It can also edit photos in Photoshop or record music in Pro Tools. But to do these things, you would obviously have to install these programs.

Your mind is similarly dynamic. It is capable of anything from communicating in everyday situations to engineering spacecraft. But it would take “installing” the “spacecraft engineering program” to do that. That’s why certain applications of your education are intellectual technologies. And this doesn’t only apply to hard sciences of engineering. If you studied journalism, for example, you probably learned about the reverse pyramid. If you were to write a standard newspaper article in that format, you would be using an intellectual technology.

These technologies enable us to operate beyond our base abilities, to exceed what socialization and education have instilled in us, to adapt our “software” to different situations and contexts. However, up until recently, they have gone un-acknowledged as technologies and largely unsophisticated as such. That’s where THEE (The Taxonomy of Human Elements in Endeavour) changes the landscape.

What About these Technologies for Personal and Social Life?

THEE began as intellectual technologies for organizational consultants to use in their work with top managers. Over 30+ years, it has evolved to something much more. THEE, taken as a whole, is about fundamentals, and while fascinating, it must be significantly focused and adapted before parts of it are practical as technologies for your everyday use.

THEE has many intellectual technologies for organizations and managers, including strategies for marketing, making businesses profitable, how governments can effectively intervene in the economy, motivating employees, strengthening the management culture and more.

But where THEE gets really new and exciting is its intellectual technologies for individuals. We all struggle with and question our purpose, our role in society, how we should approach our career, how to handle our family life and numerous other personal and social challenges. More and more technologies are always emerging, being developed and in varying stages of completion, but currently individuals can benefit by learning how to use your autonomy creatively. They can explore their role and how to participate in society, how to interact with others for benefit, how to progress in their career, release their innate creativity and much more.

Much like software that is programmed to stealthily act upon the functions of a computer when needed or called upon, THEE intellectual technologies, once integrated, (and this takes some intensive reflection) wait in your mind for the appropriate context. They activate like knowledge that has become second nature. They are the technoligization of what it is to be a human being in action.

As enthusiastic as we are about physical technology, it only stands to reason that we would extend that enthusiasm to include ourselves, our minds and our endeavors. We’ve made everything faster, smarter, more effective and more efficient—except what is most important: ourselves with our political life, organizational life, and social life. Isn’t it about time?

Politics and Ethics: Coupled or Contradictory?

2013-07-26T13:47:00.001-07:00

It seems like society is having a pretty tough time at the moment. The pessimism, disappointment and anger are almost palpable these days. I’d rattle off a list of problems for you, but you know what they are.

Assuming you subscribe to the negative sentiments of our current social and political situation, how would you answer the question: Are our politics unethical? Keep in mind that I’m not asking if our politicians are unethical. Corruption is par for the course and any social or political progress must happen despite it. What I’m asking is: Is the way in which political choices are made unethical? Is the system itself unethical?

Ethics in society as a whole are often confused with whatever ethical position is held by the individual evaluator. To put it another way, even if you feel something is unethical, your society might not. If enough people individually feel a certain way of doing things is unethical, then society changes.

Here, we touch on our responsibility. And given the circumstances, we could argue that our current social/political system is both ethical and unethical.

How and why is it ethical?

Clearly, the system persists because enough of us accept it. Even those of us who do not participate in politics—who shut our eyes and plug our ears—are allowing the current way of things to continue.

Our ethical positions en masse, considered in a very broad sense, set the context for our political system. What and how much can politicians get away with? It depends on how we view our ethical system. Our current system is pluralistic, so it is accepted that groups will assert their interests, jockey for power and influence and compete for resources, legislation, regulation, money, etc.

Here’s an example: Is it unethical for public service unions (such as bus drivers or trash collectors) to strike, even if their actions negatively impact the public?

In our current system, this is considered perfectly ethical. You might not like it, you might be inconvenienced or you might object to unions in general. But it is unlikely that to argue against this on ethical grounds would garner much support. We all understand that this union is a group asserting its interests in society. There may come a time when subverting the interests of the larger group for the interests of a small group is no longer an accepted social ethic. But for now, we reap the benefits and pay the costs.

One fairly hefty cost is the emergence of government as interest group. Our governments have been co-opted by “members” (politicians and bureaucrats) who view the entire apparatus as a tool for their own interest group. A huge portion of the power and wealth of society isn’t enough for them and government becomes their mechanism for competing with other groups for what’s left. The people—who theoretically are the government in a democracy—are viewed as a competing group. Using every tool at their disposal (completely “ethical” given the circumstances) such as a police force, military, legislation, technology, regulation, subterfuge, empty promises, distraction, clout, money and more, governments throw their weight against their own people. You could say something quite similar about large corporations as well, which at this point seem to simply be the business branch of government—or the government is the governing division of the corporate world. It’s difficult to tell at this point.

At any rate, it’s a rather lopsided competition if the public is to continue to play by established ethical rules. If the outrage surrounding the revelations that governments don’t just spy on each other, but their own constituents proves anything, it’s that the people don’t really like this game, which brings me to…

How and why is it not ethical?

Refer to the opening section of this blog. We’re not very happy about the road our society is on. Our view of this way of doing things is changing as we realize that certain interest groups have grown too powerful and most of us are being robbed of our opportunities and liberties as a result.

This is a society maturing. It is a society taking responsibility for its own circumstances. Clearly, leaving our well being up to an interest group (government) with only its own, often sordid interests in mind isn’t going to work out. We are almost to a point where we can say that the overall ethic has changed. Only one barrier remains to be overcome—the idea that this is all that can ever exist.

How do we give it that one, little push?

In one word? Effort. Have a look at Egypt at the moment. It’s obvious that Egyptians don’t want just a symbolic change. They don’t simply want appeasement and more pretty words. They ousted one president, elected another. They didn’t like the way he arrogated power for himself and his own group, so they ousted him as well. They did it with sustained protests, millions of people in the streets and a willingness to take a bit of a beating in the process. We don’t know what will happen next, but one thing seems certain: Egyptians won’t stop until they are satisfied.

If the U.S. and Europe want something beyond symbolic change—which I think they do—we will have to do the same thing. No leaving it up to activists this time. The West will have to absolutely erupt in defiance. It will have to be enough to overpower the inevitable paramilitary pushback. It will have to see through the distraction and appeasement government will throw up. We will have to do no less than literally scare our power structures straight. It won’t be pleasant, but our ethics will demand it.

The Artificial Intelligence Quandary and a Potential Way Forward

2013-07-19T12:06:00.000-07:00

Within the domains of science and technology, no field grapples with philosophical problems more than artificial intelligence. AI research attempts to physically express human attributes such as intelligence, the mind, decision making, interaction, a self and so on. In doing so, they have inadvertently made the greatest recent strides in ontology and the philosophy of mind. That’s great! But there are still many miles to go.

“Intelligence” is turning out to be a remarkably more complex concept than originally thought—which isn’t a huge surprise. But AI researchers have proven themselves quite capable of working with complexity. The problems lie in other, more difficult descriptors of human intelligence such as, say, ambiguous, fluid, enigmatic, diffuse, contextual and idiomatic.

Cut to the emergence of another popular field of scientific study at the moment: neuroscience. Here, many scientists have concluded that humanity is nothing more than neurons firing. We are machines. We are flesh and bone rather than steel and silicon but we are machines nonetheless.

Naturally, this is an appealing idea to many AI researchers. They hope that as neuroscience’s mechanistic materialist worldview advances, it will prop up the sinking foundation of Artificial Intelligence. Spurred on by this, many AI researchers’ answer to any hurdle is simply: more computing power! More code! Currently, the amount of computing power required to approach an infinitesimal speck of all that it is to be human becomes ever more astronomical despite shrinking, faster processors and more efficient memory technology. This alone is almost enough evidence to support the notion that “the mind” and “the self,” though certainly aware and a part of the physical world, are still distinct from it somehow.

None of this is to say that a comprehensive ontology cannot be structured—quite the opposite, actually. AI researchers are simply approaching it from the wrong angle. Their first step should be to acknowledge a reality emerging from the physical, something my TOP colleagues and I call psychosocial reality. This will be difficult for them, and understandably so. Scientists and technologists’ domain is the physical world. And their philosophy that the physical is all that exists has found a rather strong foothold in the social consciousness (slightly ironic as this is, itself, a psychosocial entity). Opposing views in the sciences are often rejected outright, (see Rupert Sheldrake’s censored TED talk) making funding and social support in short supply for those who might like to inquire into anything counter to mechanistic materialism.

Beyond that, it would take a realistic inquiry into what it is to be human, as being human is the necessary infrastructure and context. But mechanistic materialists have constructed a completely inaccurate facsimile of what human intelligence is. Nor will they acknowledge that intelligence cannot be taken out of context of other features of living. Furthermore, we still seem to be mired in the thinking that “intelligence” is the ability to think logically and mathematically, which it is not.

Perhaps it would be best for AI to supplement their notion of intelligence. Perhaps it would be better for pioneers in the field of artificial intelligence to consider something more like artificial intuition—another nearly synonymous phrase would be “artificial awareness.” Aware machines are what we’re after, isn’t it?

Intuition and subconscious understanding of context; the ability to change one’s frame of reference based the changing situation; making decisions despite a lack of information—or fuzzy information; the ability to interact with and respond to emotions; to understand values—or not understand them; to seek out or understand hidden agendas and subtext—or the truth that is not shown—and scores of other similar everyday phenomena are what constitute human intelligence. It can be difficult for humans, as self-aware as we are, to understand these things for ourselves. Making a machine that can do it seems a near-impossible task.

It isn’t as though AI researchers have completely avoided or neglected to take these things into consideration. Have a look at Wikipedia’s entry on Artificial Intelligence. Brief synopses of the challenges facing AI research are given, including common sense, planning, learning, language processing, perception, social intelligence and creativity. And some encouraging advances have been made in artificial general intelligence, which according to Wikipedia, “does not attempt to simulate the full range of human cognitive abilities.”

Still, more understanding of psychosocial reality is needed. It is the reality inhabited by the mind. The Taxonomy of Human Elements in Endeavour (THEE) has already done a good bit of the legwork here. Giant steps have been taken to structure psychosocial reality, to order and group and show the relationship between the thousands of elements that combine and interact to make up what it is to be human beyond the physical. AI research would most certainly have to interact with a structure of this sort to grasp what has eluded it all this time. We certainly hope they will.

Scientific inquiries into the nature of THEE’s structures have only just begun, though more patterns emerge all the time and a wider view becomes more possible every day. For AI to make use of THEE, it will likely be necessary that THEE architecture be better understood. Perhaps a combined effort would produce results and THEE and AI can evolve together. We welcome any input.

The Artist and the Canvas

2013-07-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

“Conviction means weaving yourself mentally into critical features of your creative efforts.” –The Taxonomy of Human Elements in Endeavor

True art is inextricable from the artist. Even those famous ancient cave paintings peppered across the Iberian Peninsula, the creators of which we can never know, portray a powerful, simple image of the artists’ lives and endeavors. We see reenactments of the hunt, religious symbols and we’re allowed to experience, each of us in our own way, those ancient social situations. These unnamed artists showed us their world, as it was to them, in the best way they knew how.

In the modern era, artistic movements reflect not only the social context from which they emerged but the minds, mentalities, thoughts and feelings of the artist. What emerges is an extension of the world these artists’ inhabited, their psychosocial reality. But why do some works still intrigue us hundreds of years after their completion?

According to Benedetto Croce, Croce, whose work is the measuring stick for all aesthetic philosophy, the best art conveys conviction. These artists gave themselves fully to their work; they’ve sunk all of the available creative energy within themselves into their creation. So, this seemingly abstract thread that connects the fluid realism of ancient Greek sculpture with the geometric functionalism of Bauhaus architecture to the eerie distortions within Surrealist painting to the subjectivity of abstract and modern art isn’t technical skill, or originality, or an accurate representation of physical reality, or time or money spent—it’s the conviction of the artist who created it.

Every artist knows this in his or her own way. They realize how their work must reflect their inner self. They understand how they must do their best, cultivate their talents, work hard and courageously present their self—in a very real way—to the scrutiny and harsh gaze of the outside world. In short, they must be authentic.

Artists are a unique group whose quest is the bringing into existence something new. These concepts of authenticity and conviction do not apply only to artists. One of the most fundamental truths of being human is that, as such, we all create our own reality. Grappling with limits placed upon us by our societies and the physical world, we toil and struggle to bring about the fruition of our endeavors, pursue our purposes, express our values in thought and action and achieve. It’s hard. It’s really hard. Again and again, life throws up challenges and we muster the courage to rise to them. Our success or failure depends largely upon how authentic we are throughout, how willing we are to stay positive and the conviction with which we face our challenges.

The lives lived that we look to throughout history for study and inspiration, be they religious figures, political leaders, conquerors, artists or otherwise share the same traits the great works of art do. They were lives created with conviction.

This is not to say that the billions of human lives that have come and gone or that exist today are Salieri to these great historical figures’ Mozart—condemned to mediocrity. Think of those you know that have left a positive impression on your life: your father, a teacher, a mentor or friend. What qualities do these people possess? Most likely, at the root, these people approach their lives with courage, conviction and authenticity. Every day, most people live these things.

What about you?

You are a potential always in readiness. Your family, your job, your hobbies, friendships and even your society are your canvas. You and everyone else is a creative being imbued with all the necessary elements with which to create a masterpiece. All that is required is that you commit wholeheartedly to being yourself, your better self, your best self.

Disputing the Dalai Lama

2013-07-05T13:55:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of being in a crowded outdoor amphitheater during a beautiful day in Salt Lake City, Utah where the Dalai Lama spoke. I was sitting high in the stands and from my vantage point, he was little more than a dot in the distance. Still, I felt a certain peaceful energy in his presence. He greeted the crowd in broken English before deferring his remarks to a translator. I don’t remember anything he said save for one thing: “It is not wise to change one’s religion. If you and your family are a part of any religion, it is best that you stay a part of that religion.”

This struck me. I was in my early 20s at the time and had only recently emancipated myself from the religion of my family. For whatever reason, their faith didn’t sit well with me and I was, at the time, in the early stages of finding my own way. I wondered about what the Dalai Lama had said and I thought about how difficult my choice had been for my parents, my extended family and some of our shared social circles. I wondered if this suffering was the reason the Dalai Lama advised against rejecting the religion of one’s upbringing.

By now, this episode is a closed chapter of my life story. It’s rare that I even give it much thought anymore. But I do occasionally think about the advice the Dalai Lama gave to the crowd that day, and when I do, I wonder if I had made a mistake.

Then, as I was reading about Humanity’s Codes on the THEE website, I stumbled across something that eased any residual doubts I had.

But before I get to the point, a little background information:

Each of us must find our own purpose in life—that’s easy enough to accept. And though there are seven broad “Quests,” each of us must find our own way of expressing or pursuing them. This is one of THEE’s most basic principles. While it may look on the surface that THEE places us in a series of pre-defined categories, so much more comes into play—one’s frame of reference, one’s social context, the limits of one’s abilities, the traditions of one’s family and culture, the mixture and interplay of mentalities within one’s identity, and more. Only we can truly realize who we are, what we want, and more to the point, what our purpose might be. (There has been some speculation among TOP team members that realizing one’s Quest is actually quite difficult and may not come until later than life, but I think the thee-online website facilitates this realization.)

Still, despite context, these quests drive our ambitions toward personal fulfillment.

Now, on to the point.

The account of Humanity’s Codes highlights how religion came about in history to counteract the potentially destructive forces of humanity’s innate animal nature. In doing so, the connection between fundamental aspects of many of the major religions and each of the aforementioned Quests is exposed. I couldn’t write it better myself, so I've adapted the original text:

Taoism is mysterious and focuses on Spirituality so it naturally supports those on the Spirituality Quest
Islam is controlling and focuses on Obedience so it naturally supports those on the Obedience Quest
Christianity is sin-preoccupied and focuses on Salvation so it naturally supports those on the Salvation Quest
Buddhism is atheistic and focuses on Enlightenment so it naturally supports those on the Enlightenment Quest
Judaism is practical and focuses on Meaning so it naturally supports those on the Meaning Quest

It is pointed out that no major religion seems to focus on the Creation Quest or the Pleasure Quest, though certain philosophical movements such as Epicureanism do glorify pleasure in a certain way.

What this meant for me was perhaps I had not made a mistake. I must follow my own path, and I did. The one laid out before me was Christian. But I’m sure not on a Salvation Quest. If anything, (I think) I’m on a Creation Quest.

And so, begrudgingly I must dispute the wisdom of the Dalai Lama in this particular matter; because it is imperative that I, and you, and everyone is authentic and true to themselves. A little bit of hardship is to be expected.

We’ve Got Your Examples Right Here: Fundamental Changes in Values

2013-06-28T12:23:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut once wrote that if you want to affect any sort of change in society, you need three types of people working in concert: 1) A true visionary, a brilliantly creative person with a revolutionary idea, 2) A highly respected individual who can and will endorse the visionary, reassuring people that they aren’t insane and 3) An effective communicator, or as Vonnegut put it: [Someone who] “will say almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting. Working alone, depending solely on his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being full of shit."

I’m acutely aware that I might be viewed as falling into that third category. And I’m acutely aware that I have and will be viewed as being “full of shit.” I certainly hope this won’t always be the case, but for now I accept it, happy that I can be of service in some way to anything positively transformative.

With that in mind, I turn your attention toward something I and my fellow TOP teammates are calling the 21st Century Enlightenment. Click the link for a rather stimulating description of this phenomenon, but to put it succinctly the 21st Century Enlightenment refers to a major shift in the way in which we as a species view our humanity and our engagement with each other. It refers to a myriad of changes, from major political and economic shifts to an evolution in the way in which we communicate and relate. Engagement with governments, businesses and social institutions will all be drastically altered from what is now considered an entrenched status quo.

“Wild assertions!” you might say. It’s understandable that you might think that, but I’m confident that it’s happening—and not just because plenty of indicators exist within THEE, (you’re welcome to delve into the epistemological underpinnings of THEE if you like) but because ever since I’ve been turned on to the idea, I see evidence of it all around. In fact, the more you’re aware of what’s happening in society, the more radical and revolutionary our particular point in history appears.

It’s probably no surprise that most of what’s happening revolves around Internet technology, but here are a few examples:

Bitcoin

I’ve been researching this new type of currency and the implications are quite exciting. It’s rife with problems and perhaps Bitcoin itself won’t be the currency of the future, but something like it might be. Crypto-currencies could give us the ability to separate our money from governments, central banks and the financial institutions ready and waiting to pull a fast one with our bank accounts. And even further evidence of its significance is the fact that the powers that be—corporate and government economists, corporate media pundits and journalists, and government agencies—are going out of their way to tell us how ridiculous such an idea is.

Social media

We’ve heard it all before, but sometimes the power of Twitter is mind-boggling. Its trending feature allows users to catch events of importance from across the globe. For example, CNN Turkey was broadcasting cooking shows and pictures of cats recently while Turks revolted on the streets below. In the old days, we might have never known anything significant was going on in Istanbul, but thanks to social media, the whole world was aware and the people of Turkey were given worldwide support.

“Intrapreneurship.”

It’s a new word for an old idea: changing the system from the inside. The great thing is, people willing to press their employers for higher product standards, better working conditions and social/environmental responsibility are being supported by wider society. And big organizations like Google are realizing the value of giving their employees more freedom to innovate. One of the features of the 21st Century Enlightenment is that people take responsibility for the organizations they work in, and that govern them, rather than just accepting what exists despite possible incongruences in values.

In the end, it’s all about values. And what’s happening now is the emergence of new values like respect and responsibility toward the environment, respect and acceptance of diversity, an expectation of integrity from our leaders and organizations and an individual desire to be authentic.

If that’s not enough to convince you that times are changing, I don’t know what will. Perhaps you don’t want to call it an “Enlightenment.” Fine, but parallels to the 18th Century Enlightenment, when considered in terms of values, are hard to ignore.

I’m finding that THEE is hard for people to penetrate and accept. I do understand why. But I am able to easily point out examples of what has been discovered by working with THEE, and not just in the context of a coming Enlightenment. Every bit of THEE is based on common sense, has real-world application and can be found in your own experience if you’re willing to look. It’s not a theory (which has been a roadblock for some, strangely), it’s not some fringe spiritual movement and it’s not wild, unsupported assertions. It’s simply you and it’s happening within you and without you at this very moment.

Carne Ross: A Voice for the Times

2013-06-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

So I get an email the other day from a friend about this fellow Carne Ross, advising me to look into him as he’s likely a person I would be interested in, not just because he seems to share my personal approach to politics and society, but also because his ideas seem to align with my work.

Well, I did—look into him that is. On the surface, he’s a former high-ranking British diplomat who resigned his post over disagreements regarding Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War. He then founded an independent diplomacy service and is now attempting to represent Syrian rebels on the world stage.

First impression: impressed. Clearly, we’ve got a man of principle, intelligence, courage and conviction. His bread and butter was peddling the agenda of the British (and U.S.) government—and a fine living it was, I’m sure—and he testified during the Butler Review that Iraq did not have WMD’s, undermining their justification for war. Some considered it a profound betrayal and the UK toyed with prosecuting him… for something or other.

Then I got into Ross’ book, The Leaderless Revolution, started reading his Op-Ed contributions to various news outlets and watching his promo videos. What I found was a man with a small but significant voice in the limelight, painting an accurate portrayal of the current political paradigm: democracy is flailing and the people are effectively powerless, banks and financial institutions eat away at society’s ability to function, corruption in politics is rampant and the entire system is unsustainable.

Yes, this is all sounding very THEE.

Ross was (maybe still is) heavily involved with the Occupy movement. His aforementioned book was a response to the ideals he experienced working within the movement. He promotes and glorifies the leaderless decision-making of Occupy and sees it as a model for the next evolution of governance.

Initially, I was skeptical of this. First of all, leadership is absolutely fundamental. Society couldn’t get by without it. Secondly, my own experience with Occupy was quite frustrating, in part because half our meetings seemed to get hung-up on extremely trivial details like how we can accommodate our gluten-intolerant members at the next picnic. But Ross addressed this during an interview on The Colbert Report, rightly pointing out that decisions in government are equally cumbersome—if not worse—and I thought to myself: “It’s actually great that every Occupy participant’s needs were addressed. I mean, that’s what we want in society, isn’t it?

Ross is certainly an idealist, and an eloquent one. He wrote:

“This is the start of a new politics, but obviously mere meetings and protest marches are not enough. There is nothing certain about the future, save that it is our actions that will create it and that others are already exploiting our inaction. It is no longer sufficient to appeal to government to put things right; a corrupted system will not reform itself. We must create new systems, new modes of decision-making and interaction, and new forms of economic behavior to replace the old.”

So what is this new system, the new mode of decision-making? According to Ross, it’s going to be reminiscent of Occupy, where the group calls the shots for society as one. For many, this may sound, frankly, inconceivable. But it’s difficult to see past what currently defines our reality.

If THEE’s Spiral of Political Maturation is correct, however, Ross has managed to see through this cloud of current thinking and capture the spirit of precisely what defines the next mode in our political development—something THEE calls Conventionalism.

I’d like to call him forward thinking, but that’s not it. It’s more that he’s acutely aware and his thinking is perfectly appropriate for what’s required at this exact moment in human history. From the belly of the beast, Ross emerged to tell us these things about the present. And thank goodness. The more it’s said, the more it will sink in for us. And the more we can start orienting ourselves now to what truly will be a pretty amazing shift that we all need to be discussing and working on each in our own way.