Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

July 11th, 2023

We all know about the accelerating pace of change that we are going through. There are those who argue that this change has an exponential curve, that the rate of change is actually doubling in every unit of time. Logically that’s not accurate or provable but it’s a way for us to picture the fact that change is happening more and more quickly. One way this is happening is that fundamental changes in our world are multiplying, a breakthrough in materials science changes computing, a breakthrough in neuroscience leads to new approaches in mental health.

In no small way is PROOF a product of this era of rapid growth and change. We are out to help you understand how all of this change affects your life and more importantly our future together. Our particular concern is generating a positive future, a desirable and thriving future for humanity. My intention is that PROOF emails expose you to the positive future being generated, and how your contribution can help shape it into the kind of future we desire for ourselves and the world. By immersing ourselves in these innovations, you gain a clearer vision of the future and recognize the various ways you can actively participate in making it a reality.

Right now you may be thinking, what can I do about something as big as the future of the world? The answer is everything. Innovations in science, tech, art, education, media, communications, meditation, business, economics, physics, etc. come from the collective consciousness of any one of these areas. The history of simultaneous inventions is full of examples of two or more people inventing the same thing at the same time. For example:

Calculus — Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

Telephone — Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied for a patent on the same day in 1876.

Radio — Nikola Tesla, Guglielmo Marconi. Television — Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin independently inventing the first electronic television.

Thermometer — Galileo Galilei and Santorio Santorio.

Light Bulb — Sir Hiram Maxim, Sir Joseph Swan, and Thomas Edison all developed versions of incandescent light bulbs around the same time.

Photography — Louis Daguerre and William Fox Talbot

You may wonder why? The explanation lies in one of humanity’s greatest superpowers, synthesis. Given an information rich environment we put two and two together and create something new, some new understanding or approach that both relies on the already present information and builds something completely new out of it.

The above inventions are all things that made a positive impact on the future of humanity. There are other terrible inventions that have had a devastating impact on humanity including:

The Atomic Bomb — During World War II, both the Allies and the Axis powers were working on developing nuclear weapons. The Allies’ Manhattan Project, however, succeeded first in 1945. The Soviet Union, working independently, developed their own atomic bomb by 1949.

Chemical Weapons — Germany, France, and Britain all began developing and using chemical warfare agents like chlorine and mustard gas around the same time.

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) — The United States and the Soviet Union were both working on ICBMs during the Cold War.

Biological Weapons — United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the Soviet Union.

Automatic Firearms — Maxim gun, Browning Automatic Rifle, and various models of machine guns.

History would argue that these inventions, just like the ones I mentioned earlier, were created in response to the collective conditions of their time. Yet the impact of these perfected killing technologies in terms of lives lost and their ability to harm life at scale, makes them things that we wish we had never invented.

Now back to you, and me and what we have to do with these kinds of inventions. As I talked about in You are what you attend to who we are is directly related to what we think about and give our attention to. This works on both the individual and the collective level. We are collectively what we attend to, as I am what I attend to.This has lead to some really bizarre inventions like Tik-Tok a place where people try and condense video based content into a very tiny container to atomize attention. It was hilarious watching my wife trying to follow a recipe for a tahini beet dressing from a 60 second video clip.

If you think about it for a moment, Tik Tok is a natural evolution of social media. And it has a direction towards more and more sensational, more and more shorter clips. It changes both the way we process information and the way that we create information. We are what we create. Or you might consider that we create our future selves by the things we fill our days with today. This is our contribution to evolution and many satirists have poked fun at the future of humanity where we are confined to floating chairs with a steady stream of meaningless content plugged into our brains.

Seriously, we are in charge of our own destiny as a species.

If we want a future that is desirable. If we want to evolve to be more ethical, loving and kind, we can do so. All that is required is that a sufficient number of us focus our attention, time and work on the steps that lead us there, while at the same time governing and prohibiting technologies and businesses that cause damage to people and the earth.

You can learn about the ideas that have us head us towards a thriving future in PROOF. You can consciously take ownership of your attention and focus on the things that elevate life, that inspire you towards positive action in the world.

My hope for you is that you discover your gifts, that you orientate yourself towards your purpose, and that you make a contribution to the world you want to live in.

If we all do this, then imagine all of the great things that will come about from our collective consciousness.

In the meantime, we’ll be looking for PROOF of a thriving future for humanity.

The Generative Futurist
Editor PROOF

P.S.  I would love you to follow our Podcast, subscribe to us on Youtube, sign up for the PROOF email and subscribe if you love reading PROOF

Proof 55 – Conscious Innovation Unleashed

May this information inspire you to generate a thriving future for humanity and a thriving life for yourself. For more resources please check out our Podcast and Youtube channel.

-The Bold.ly Now Team

BOLD.LY NOW is a movement of co-creative up-levelers who have a burning desire to step free of our collapsing world & take the most daring leap forward to a thriving world.

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PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

The Generative Futures Initiative
Generating a Thriving Future for All
generativefutures.org

The post Conscious Innovation Unleashed appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

June 27th, 2023

It’s late at night, past my bedtime and I am still up scrolling through the news. Next to me my wife Alex is watching food reels on Instagram, you know the ones that look so great but never get made by anyone anytime. The moments slip by and we slowly exchange a good night’s sleep for mental junk food. Smart phones were supposed to liberate us from our computers. Social media promised to connect us to old friends and family. We all know it didn’t work out that way. Rather we have invented and optimized an attention grabbing machine that gobbles up our time. But we all know that the Faustian bargain we signed was a bad deal.

Your attention is your most valuable possession.

We live our lives moment-by-moment. Each moment holds our entire existence. We have a past that is made up of your recollections, stories, and memories you can see in your mind, but you can’t touch them — they’re not real in this moment. The future is the same. You might have plans, expectations, visions and scheduled events, but none of that is real, in this moment. This moment is all we have and it is precious. The question is will we celebrate our moments or will we squander them away.

Imagine, if you will, a silver bowl of perfect pearls. These are the moments left in your life. Young or old there are a finite number of them. And every moment you take a pearl out of the bowl and do something with it. The bowl now has one less pearl as you take another one in your hand. Stop and contemplate the pearl in your hand. It is perfect, luminous, rare and so fragile it will be gone before the second hand can make its sweep of the clock. And now there is a new pearl to consider.

In this way your life is renewed, reborn every moment of your existence.

This might be a good time to stop reading this essay and go for a walk, tell someone you love them, or go smell the roses. If you journey forward with me a little further, I very much appreciate you investing your time in me and this conversation.

If you can get the immediacy of this one precious moment — the pearl that is your life, it’s easy to see why people would want to grab your attention and keep it for as many moments as they can. The combined market cap of Meta (Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram), Alphabet (Google and Youtube) and upcomer Tik Tok is nearly $3 trillion. That’s a 3 with 9 zeros. $3,000,000,000. That’s a lot of wealth being generated from your minutes.

So what do we do?

By now we all know that we should be “more present”, “be mindful”, “be here now”. But knowing this doesn’t magically make us more present or mindful. WHY NOT? It hardly seems fair. If we want to develop the ability to really savor our moments, we have to get to the bottom of this question.

First of all let’s face the facts, most of us are highly distracted. We spend large chunks of time down rabbit holes that leave us unable to explain “where the time has gone”. Worse yet we are like blackout drunks, unable to even recall exactly what we did last night. In the morning we might even say to ourselves, I’m not doing that again. But when the evening sets in our willpower is weak and we are back at whatever time wasting activity is calling us most loudly, binging a new series, infinite scrolling our social feeds, left/right swiping our desires or old school channel flipping (if you are old enough to have that time wasting pattern in your brain).

The reason why we do this is not very complicated. It goes like this: Life is not so easy. We get roughed up by the pressure of our jobs or school. We have challenging relationships with colleagues, lovers, friends and family. The background of our cultural life is filled with divisiveness and turmoil. Media pundits tell us that the sky is falling everyday. Civility is rare if you live in the states, traffic is ubiquitous. Even the weather cannot be counted upon any more due to climate change. It can seem like you are under assault all day everyday. It’s no wonder you want a break, or more accurately your brain want’s stimulation that distracts it from the onslaught. So we click that link when we should be working on a report. We leave our notices on and end up a million miles away in an instant.

From a psychological perspective these are coping mechanisms and they are not necessarily bad (addictions being the exception to this statement). They help us manage our emotional world. The problem is when we go from needing a coping mechanism a few times a month or a week, to needing a coping mechanism everyday and for some of us almost every minute of everyday.

Getting this illuminates why you can’t just be present. If you are triggered and a coping mechanism comes up, it’s unlikely, unless you practice, that you can say no to engaging in the coping mechanism.

Digging a little deeper we can see that the real lever here is stimulus that triggers us. If we can limit, slow down or disconnect from the onslaught, then we will begin to experience life when it is not an emergency. Then we can start doing things that are important to us rather than dealing with emergencies, including the urgent items we can handle and the urgent ones we practically have no say about like political drama.

It’s time for a digital/information detox.

The first step here is to find a way to limit your exposure to the drama machine that our media provides. This might include scheduled time away from your phone and computer every day. You might consider a media free vacation or staycation where you don’t touch a phone or a computer for a number of days. Or you could set aside a day that is device and media free.

Then, with nothing streaming in, it gets quiet in your brain. That alone might trigger you if there are underlying issues in your life like loneliness, depression or physical challenges. If you stay with it though, even those issues will begin to calm. After a number of days, hours for some of us, a kind of boredom will arise. This is when you can begin to focus on the things that bring joy to your life. I recommend reading, making a cup of tea or coffee and drinking it in silence — savoring the flavor, going on a long walk to nowhere for no reason, preparing a simple healthy meal, gardening, listening to some favorite music or simply being quiet for some time. These are all activities that have you be present with whatever is happening in the moment. This includes daydreaming, which can also be present in the moment. Make a list of these small quiet things that bring you joy, and calm your mind.

All of these activities are ones that foster mindfulness. You don’t have to have any special mediation practice, just the practice of doing the things that bring you simple joy.

If and when you are ready to take a step towards meditation, I recommend a simple breathing practice to my students. You can start with a box breath: Inhale fully for a slow count of four. Hold your breath in for a count of four. Slowly exhale for a count of four. Hold your breath out for a count of four. You can start with 5–10 breaths in the box and slowly extend that time to 10 minutes. I find that this breath pattern puts me into a deep reflective and relaxed state after only a few minutes of breathing. And if I am ever stressed or about to do something stressful, I take three box breaths as a grounding reset.

To live a life savoring our precious moments, we have to make space for us to be. This is swimming against the media current and is a challenge if you don’t have a habit of having media free time. Then the kind of media you put your attention on is important. You can seek out positive news like our PROOF magazine, or read curated news themes on Flipboard. If you feel the need to be social, phone calls with friends and family can be very sweet. Creating these new habits builds a mindful existence that leads to the presence of life that we have all been missing so much.

You can get started with this joyful project by scheduling a few hours of media/device free time today. It’s absolutely worth your time.

In the meantime, we’ll be looking for PROOF of a thriving future for humanity.

The Generative Futurist
Editor PROOF

P.S.  I would love you to follow our Podcast, subscribe to us on Youtube, sign up for the PROOF email and subscribe if you love reading PROOF

Proof 52 – The Key to Investing Your Attention Wisely

May this information inspire you to generate a thriving future for humanity and a thriving life for yourself. For more resources please check out our Podcast and Youtube channel.

-The Bold.ly Now Team

BOLD.LY NOW is a movement of co-creative up-levelers who have a burning desire to step free of our collapsing world & take the most daring leap forward to a thriving world.

Follow us

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube

PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

The Generative Futures Initiative
Generating a Thriving Future for All
generativefutures.org

The post The Key to Investing Your Attention Wisely appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

June 1st, 2023

I woke up this morning, uneasy. Was it a dream? Something I ate last night? I sat up confused by the dull headache, reminiscent of a hangover — impossible as I had had nothing to drink the night before. “All is not well this morning,” was the broadcast I was receiving. What then? News on the feed was bad, is bad, is always bad. Maybe it’s a news hangover, I thought. I need to swear off the default American news sources.

Who am I this morning? Uneasy, not at home in the body.

Breathe then, always the breath. We take 17,000 of them a day. I try to make at least 500 of those conscious ones. In…hold…out…hold…repeat…times 10. Green tea and then a stretch into my body. Starting to feel — a — bit — more — like — the — becoming — me.

My spiritual practice is to take everything in every moment as the path to awakening. Poison as path. Joy as path. Work as path. Boredom as path. Path as path.

I have a craving to know what is going on in the world. I want the news of the day, everyday. I take it in full firehose. Like all cravings it comes with a clear cost — mostly my tranquility. I close the traditional feeds and switch to my PROOF feed, everyday the AI sends me a collection of positive stories about the future. Stories from people who give a damn about the future. My nervous system resets and I start feeling a glimmer of excitement. There are good things going on out there.

As is inside so is it outside, as it is outside so it is inside — clear — but what to make of it? If I am uneasy is that because the world is uneasy, or is the world uneasy because I am uneasy? Until I shift my attention to the outside piece that is positive, and then I am positive. I am what my I put my attention on, or where my attention gets grabbed. Rabbit holes are everywhere: 12 notifications have gone off in the last 4 minutes, updates and responses, notes to read and research

Snap awake, question: How do we transcend who we are to make way for who we are becoming?

We don’t have the life we want today, the world we want to live in today. No one likes the state of the world today. My inner cynic knows these roads only too well.

Yet we can see what is emergent in the world. A growing movement of world designers are sharpening their imagineering pencils and designing their way out of the chaos. New economic systems, new physics, new governance models, new transport and energy systems. All we need to do is let them get their hands on the wheel and drive this old world forward into a thriving future.

How do we get the powerful of this world to step aside?

As it is outside so it is inside. What is it in me that is standing in the way of that which I am becoming? Fixed, attached, impatient little old me. How do I get you to stand aside to let love and wisdom emerge?

Time to meditate, to be.

Evolution is messy. Our evolution is uneven, more of a probability cloud moving in the direction of a better future than a linear progression. We have remnants of Neanderthal DNA in our genetics. We are a mishmash of everything that has gone before with some really cool features, like thinking, imagination, laguage, empathy, love and compassion. The same is true of our civilization. We have Hamurabi’s eye-for-an-eye code of justice living side by side with the International Court of Justice (World Court). We have pollution spewing 200m super yachts ferrying champagne guzzling elites alongside radical gift economists who refuse payment for work and live off the gifts of others. Evolution is here, just unevenly distributed (Wiliam Gibson, on the future).

We are evolving towards becoming a new kind of human and we are stuck in the past and we are playing with technologies that threaten the very viability of life on earth. All of these things and more are a part of the emergent future.

Same on the inside. Most of us are at war with ourselves, belittling ourselves with our imperfect bodies, our imperfect minds, our left/right broken hearts, all the while doubling down on courses, workout classes, yoga retreats, low fat-keto fat-animal protein-vegan diets, all the while measuring our self worth by the likes our — superficial, glossy, made for streaming, I am camera ready always, even when I am crying my eyes out — social communities.

How do we transcend who we are to make room for who we are becoming.

The answer is that we must transcend our current self without leaving it behind. This means that we can erase ourselves, even the parts we may not like, rather we have to include who we are today as we become our future selves. That rings true, right?

So I get out of bed, uneasy, and breathe…and stretch…and settle into my future self, without having to reconcile or repress or make my uneasy experience wrong. It is just what it is, an uneasy feeling today, a sad one tomorrow, and something else the day after. I am just how I am. Who I am becoming is okay with that, more okay than today’s self is.

That feels a lot like evolution. It’s a good day to become. That’s true for me. That’s true for the future of humanity.

In the meantime, we’ll be looking for PROOF of a thriving future for humanity.

The Generative Futurist
Editor PROOF

P.S.  I would love you to follow our Podcast, subscribe to us on Youtube, sign up for the PROOF email and subscribe if you love reading PROOF

Proof 50 – World Building from the Inside Out

May this information inspire you to generate a thriving future for humanity and a thriving life for yourself. For more resources please check out our Podcast and Youtube channel.

-The Bold.ly Now Team

BOLD.LY NOW is a movement of co-creative up-levelers who have a burning desire to step free of our collapsing world & take the most daring leap forward to a thriving world.

Follow us

• Facebook
• Twitter
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PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

The Generative Futures Initiative
Generating a Thriving Future for All
generativefutures.org

The post World Building from the Inside appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

June 1st, 2023

My journey down the Nile, into the heart the Egyptian soul.

I have just returned from leading and facilitating a life development and spiritual growth retreat in Egypt, visiting the pyramids of Giza and temples and tombs on the Nile between Luxor and Aswan where I had a startling insight about my work as a generative futurist.

Over the past eight years I have dedicated my life to the emerging movement to re-imagine, and re-create this world to be a place that works for everyone and everything. With my film WeRiseUP I documented how we can shift our global success models from consumption to contribution, from the me to the we. At Boldly YOU we have built courses and meditation programs to help people to discover their gifts and purpose and find ways to make a difference for their communities with big and small projects. I am honored to be a part of the impulse to build a better future for humanity and the planet.

Yet there has been one element of this work that has never felt right to me, which is that we have a tendency to want to fix the world and make a positive impact on issues that we care about.

The problem with fixing things is that our global systems are so complicated that fixing one thing can exacerbate a separate problem across the world. For example, using western style industrial agricultural production in Africa has produced an increase in crop yields providing increased food security for the hungry, yet it is causing great economic damage to the small farmer who could not afford the fertilize and till approach of big ag. A knock on effect was the loss of food diversity and nutrient content of the food produced.

Currently Germany is caught between two forces as they try to green their energy production. On one hand they want to transition away from petroleum based energy production towards sustainable energy. On the other, they are closing nuclear power plants across the country to protect the environment and safeguard against potential future nuclear meltdowns. As a result of these two competing solutions there is really nowhere to turn but to coal which accounts for 30% of their production. Coal is by far the dirtiest fossil fuel that they use to produce power. Two steps forward, five steps back.

We can’t apply linear solutions to complicated problems.

The second element of making the world a better place, is the notion of being or creating a positive impact on the world. At its root level, impact is a word that points to a collision between two objects. A car impacts a wall damaging both the car and the wall. A bomb creates an impact crater. Positive impact would be to use a collision which results in a better state or a better result. Again we are back to a linear approach to problem solving.

Complicated problems require complex solutions.

Complexity is found in nature. Living ecosystems are built of complex chains of symbiotic relationships, where the by-product of one species helps in some way the success of another species. Fixing the environment has often caused more damage than help. This has given rise to the rewilding approach of restoring the environment. Wilderness has its own intelligence. The question is how do we get the wilderness to return when it is wild by nature. The answer is to provide the conditions that allow for the regrowth of the wild.

Could we work to provide certain conditions for civilization that give rise to complex solutions?

The birth of ancient civilization took place in floodplains. The floodplains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in Syria and Iraq, gave rise to Mesopotamia, “the land between the rivers.” The floodplains of the Indus River, in Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan, gave rise to the Harappan/Indus River Civilization. And the river with the world’s greatest delta, the Nile, produced the ancient Egyptian culture. The floods brought nutrient rich silt and sediment to the soil of the floodplain creating fertile soil for farming.

Human civilization was an emergent creation of the floodplain ecosystem.

Sometimes we forget that they are a part of the ecosystems that we live in. This forgetfulness leads to the simpleminded linear thinking that plagues our approach to making the world a better place.

The ancient Egyptians harbored no such foolishness over the course of their 4000 year time span. They celebrated and honored the fertility that the floods brought to the land. They worked both spiritually and physically to ensure that the floods would bring life and prosperity to the land and their people.

In 1902 modern civilization built the first of 14 dams on the Nile and brought about the end of the floodplain fertility. We conquered the wild unpredictability of the floods and achieved linearity. And lost biodiversity, like the blue lotus that previously had flourished on the Nile. We submerged ancient temples where the Egyptians had carved the blue lotus on the walls. And the Nubian people lost thousands of square kilometers of their homelands between Egypt and Sudan.

Walking through the ancient monuments that the Egyptians built and floating along the Nile, the story of fertility was deeply moving. We are beings that live by the cycles of day and night, flood and drought, life and death. Our place is not outside and above these cycles, like an all knowing deity, but rather inside the rhythm of life.

It’s time for us to set aside the notion that we are the masters of this planet and to return to the wild wisdom of the planet. From now on I am relinquishing my drive to make and impact. Rather I am going to dedicate my life into creating a fertile environment for complex life affirming growth to take the lead.

We can help to usher in a new age of fertility where everyone can contribute to the dance of leaving this planet more fertile for the next generation. And our descendants can do the same for their descendants, generation, after generation. We can gain wisdom on how to support the growth of complex systems solving complicated problems, but to do so we have to give up fixing, give up impact and ultimately give up on our entitlement as a species.

On our last day in Aswan we took a boat to the gate of the old Philae temple. Philae was a temple built for Isis the god of fertility. The temple had been flooded with the building of the Aswan Low Dam in 1906.

In 1971 the temple was moved 500 meters to higher ground and reconstructed block by block. The old gate was left to mark the spot where the temple had stood for 2300 years before the flood. I swam reverently through the gate and out into the open water thinking of the blue lotus that we went to visit earlier in the day.

Even though the temple had seen such dramatic changes, and although the blue lotus no longer grew wild on the Nile, I felt happy and hopeful for the future. I sensed Isis, the profound power of fertility, and I knew that the flood would come again, the cycle would be restored and civilization would be reborn on the banks of the Nile.

In the meantime, we’ll be looking for PROOF of a thriving future for humanity.

The Generative Futurist
Editor PROOF

P.S.  I would love you to follow our Podcast, subscribe to us on Youtube, sign up for the PROOF email and subscribe if you love reading PROOF

Proof 49 – Reimagining Making a Difference

May this information inspire you to generate a thriving future for humanity and a thriving life for yourself. For more resources please check out our Podcast and Youtube channel.

-The Bold.ly Now Team

BOLD.LY NOW is a movement of co-creative up-levelers who have a burning desire to step free of our collapsing world & take the most daring leap forward to a thriving world.

Follow us

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube

PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

The Generative Futures Initiative
Generating a Thriving Future for All
generativefutures.org

The post Reimagining Making a Difference appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

November 10, 2021

COP26 – a heady melange of triumphant world leaders, angry dissatisfied sign hoisting activists, fat-cat-petro-lobbyists, back room meeting system changers, groupies and real working diplomats and scientists who know that this should be much easier than this, considering that the house is on fire.

It’s enough to give you the worst hangover of your life in exchange for a party that never really seems to get started.

The 26th edition of the UN Climate Change Conference is an ongoing global exercise in cognitive bias. For 26 years scientists have been giving us accurate models of the impact of climate change and how to avoid the most catastrophic of those impacts – CUT CARBON AND METHANE NOW! It’s dead simple, still we get timelines and commitments from leaders that kick the can down the road in terms of making hard choices and getting humanity on the road to regeneration. Politicians and diplomats “do what they can” never diverging from the limited scope of actions. If their hands aren’t tied then they act as if they are.

Every year the conference has laid bare the brutal politics of tribalism. Each country represented works to get the best deal it can. It’s like negotiating where to put your chair on the deck of the Titanic to get the best view of the sea. And worse yet it’s a slow rolled stage play, scripted months before the actual event. We learned this week that the US and China are going to “ramp up cooperation tackling climate change”. This surprise announcement came at the end of ten months of negotiating. No commitments to targets or policies or well anything but the afore mentioned ramping up of cooperation. Ten months to agree to announce that they had an agreement to cooperate, something that any rational person might have assumed given wide scale distraction the climate crisis is bringing to us all.

It’s both clear that the UN and the Climate Change Conference are inadequate tools to help us deal with the climate crisis, and that the UN and the Climate Change Conference are the only global tools that we have to do the job. It’s enough to have you running stark naked and mad over the Scottish Highlands looking for way out of the hall of mirrors.

This editorial is being released a few days before the closing of the conference and I hope that I will be proved wrong and lambasted for my lack of belief in the process. But none of that really matters. We have no choice but to get this right and take the clear steps that must be taken. The only question is what will the cost of inaction or inadequate coordinated global action be? The answer to that ranges from human extinction to a rough hundred years on the planet.

Now that that is cleared up, I want to acknowledge the scientists, diplomats, bureaucrats, activists, indigenous youth leaders, press agents, celebrities, CEOs and anyone who has had a hand in creating policy, targets or actions that lead us to achieving the agreed upon 2016 Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5° C. Thank you for your work and service on behalf of the rest of us who are trying to figure it all out.

This issue is dedicated to helping you do just that, figure it out. You will get an idea of what is needed, what is being done and what might help us bridge the gap. We are very excited by our podcast interview with Kim Stanley Robinson who lays out a futuristic vision of a UN based agency that is responsible for the rights of future generations in regards to global climate policy, The Ministry for the Future.

We hope that in our new PROOF in ACTION feature will help you to move beyond understanding into action in your own life, oriented to ending the climate crisis and generating a thriving future for humanity.

We believe it’s the only game in town, and the best ever cure for a COP26 hangover.

P.S.  I would love you to follow our Podcast, subscribe to us on Youtube, sign up for the PROOF email and subscribe if you love reading PROOF

Letter From the Editors:

Welcome to the new home of PROOF at proofzine.com.  PROOF of a Thriving Future started one year ago as an email update on news that provided proof that there are people and projects that are taking action that are generating a thriving future. At Issue number 16 we moved the newsletter onto the internet as Bold.ly NOW’s blog.  By issue 34 it was clear that you, our readers wanted more, so we set about building PROOF as a standalone magazine – hence proofzine.com.

Over the coming months we will be adding more content areas and guest writers.  We are very excited about our new column PROOF in ACTION where in every issue we give you a concise list of actions you can take to align with and bring about a thriving future.

The Bold.ly NOW Show, our podcast series has also grown both in audience and ambition.  We now have three sub-brands to the show so you can tune into the conversations that matter most to you.  The Bold.ly NOW Show name will continue with conversations with thought leaders, businesses and organizations that contribute to a thriving future. 

Generative Futures Initiative (GFI) conversations is a series of conversations that directly relate to Generative Futurism.  We will be hosting fellow futurists and those who are leading long-term to multi-generational impact projects.  Look for our second episode of this series with Sci-Fi author and futurist Kim Stanley Robinson. We will be digging deep into his new book The Ministry for the Future.  

We will also begin a series of transformational/educational conversations with the name Bold.ly YOU, reflecting on how to see and realize a future.  Tune into these conversations if you are looking to discover your purpose, design a thriving future project or get into action on an area of life that is important to you.  

With all these projects we are looking into reliable ways to financially support the work.  You can become a subscriber to PROOF by clicking on subscribe in the menu or scrolling to the bottom of this page.  As practitioners of the Gift Economy, PROOF is our gift to you.  If you are moved to give a gift to us, a subscription or one time donation would be greatly appreciated. By the way, you can become a subscriber with a $0 gift to us. Your time to connect with us by subscribing at this level is appreciated and keeps us going. 

Our transformational and educational courses are available for members of Bold.ly YOU, our app.  Be sure and check out our three-course program, Do What You Love Change the World.  The three courses are: Burning Desire, Big Idea and Bold Action.  Each course features 9 hours of highly interactive content designed to move you in action from one level to the next.  These programs are all unlocked for a monthly membership of $17. 

We value you no matter how you choose to connect with the Bold.ly NOW Movement. If you have ideas or input, you can email us at bebold@bold.ly.

Proof 35 – What’s Up COP26?

In the News:

Organizations Generating a Thriving Future: The Gambia

The Gambia is a small West African country, bounded by Senegal, with a narrow Atlantic coastline. It’s known for its diverse ecosystems around the central Gambia River. It is the only one of the 39 countries being tracked by the climate action tracker whose policies, targets and actions are fully in alignment with the Paris Agreement of limiting warming to 1.5° C

See the the climate action tracker click here.

What We’re Watching: David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet

In his 93 years, Attenborough has visited every continent on the globe, exploring the wild places of the planet and documenting the living world in all its variety and wonder. But during his lifetime, Attenborough has also seen first-hand the monumental scale of humanity’s impact on nature. With stunning cinematography and a story that exposes the impact that man has had on the natural world, this is a must watch film for anyone who cares about the planet.

What We’re Reading: ReGeneration

Paul Hawken’s Regeneration is a radical new approach to the climate crisis, one that weaves justice, climate, biodiversity, and human dignity into a seamless tapestry of action, policy, and transformation that can end the climate crisis in one generation. It is the first book to describe and define the burgeoning regeneration movement spreading rapidly throughout the world.

The purpose of the book and the project is to end the climate crisis in one generation. Ending the crisis does not complete the challenge of global warming. That is a century-long commitment. Ending the crisis means that by 2030 collective action by humanity will have reduced total greenhouse gas emissions by 45 to 50 percent. At this time, we are going backward and increasing emissions. Regeneration is an inclusive and effective strategy compared to combating, fighting, or mitigating climate change. Regeneration creates, builds, and heals. Regeneration is what life has always done, we are life, and that is our focus. It includes how we live and what we do—everywhere. We have a common interest and that interest can only be served when we come together.

What We’re Listening to –  The Bold.ly NOW Show with Kim Stanley Robinson

Tune in to the Boldy Now Show featuring Kim Stanley Robinson, the Hugo and Nebula-winning author of the Mars Trilogy. He is known as a realistic, science-based highly-literary science fiction author with over 20 books published. Stan’s work often focuses on themes like sustainability, economic & social justice, climate change, and speculative futures.

In this podcast, we discuss these themes covered in Stan’s atypical sci-fi novel, The Ministry for the Future. Stan uses the book to demonstrate a vision of a new future for humanity and investigates what it might take to survive and transcend the climate crisis. 

PROOF in ACTION 35

This issue we have been looking in on COP26. That this UN led conference deals at the level of nations can leave you wondering what is there to do at the personal level.  We’re going to break that down into two parts, the political and the practical.

At the political level here’s what you can do:

At the practical level we can all make an impact on reaching our targets.  Here are a few simple steps:

If you have additional thoughts on actions we can all take, please post them in the conversation below.

May this information inspire you to generate a thriving future for humanity and a thriving life for yourself. For more resources please check out our Podcast and Youtube channel.

-The Bold.ly Now Team

BOLD.LY NOW is a movement of co-creative up-levelers who have a burning desire to step free of our collapsing world & take the most daring leap forward to a thriving world.

Follow us

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube

PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

The Generative Futures Initiative
Generating a Thriving Future for All
generativefutures.org

The post What’s Up COP26? appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Micheal Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

July 8, 2021

“A la mode”, “modisch”, “alla moda”, “fashionable” – up to date with current style or trend. FASHION. We have all been trained to try and keep up with the current colors, cuts and styles. We feel good when we are in fashion and awkward at best when we are out.

We’ve been taught to never judge a book by its cover, while trying to adopt coverings that “make a good impression”, quite the contradiction. So we dress, we dress well, we dress down and we dress for the occasion.

The fashion industry knows that the more we care about our looks the more clothing they sell. They trained us to seasonal looks, and then they revved up the cycle and created fast fashion where style changes every few weeks. And we consume and consume and consume mountains of inexpensive clothing that makes us feel great for a moment.

Dancing on the end of this string we lose our ability to be confident in the indelible self, the enduring self.

If this is not bad enough, fast and cheap clothing has created mountains of waste by over production and disposal of out of date styles.

Our obsession with fast fashion is toxic.

Still, we all do want to express ourselves, to celebrate our uniqueness with our clothes and costumes. There is nothing wrong with that but it’s a fundamental fallacy that we need to follow a brand to do that. The rise of second hand fashion shows us that we can engage in our personal style and expression without being on the fashion hamster wheel.

Thinking through the idea of a growing second hand fashion industry, it’s clear that unlike the products of fast fashion where clothes are made as cheaply as possible, a well made, good wearing piece of clothing can be resold again and again, creating a cycle of earnings for second hand clothing retailers without the negative environmental impacts.

Who knew that one of the ways to fight the climate crisis would be to buy quality second hand clothing, and then sell it on when we are done with it. The good news is that many people are waking up to this idea. Quality and sustainability are suddenly fashionable and that is a trend we all should follow.

In this weeks PROOF we will explore sustainable fashion and the ways that you can shift your dollars from toxic consumption to a closed loop cycle of virtue that gives us a vast amount of freedom to really be yourself.

We hope you enjoy this weeks PROOF. Please share it with your friends.

Join us as we help to invent and invest in a sustainable future.

Michael Shaun

P.S.  I would love you to follow our Podcast, subscribe to us on Youtube, sign up for the PROOF email and subscribe if you love reading PROOF

Proof 33 – The Future of Fashion

In the News:

Organizations Generating a Thriving Future: Candiani Denim

Candiani Denim was established in 1938 in a tiny town near Milano and is a family-run company ever since.

In 75 years of experience the enterprise grew to become the World’s finest and most sustainable denim mill creating the fabrics that gave birth to the Premium Denim Industry.

Today Candiani is known as the greenest textile company in the blue World and produces for the most prestigious names in the market, such as Levi’s, Lucky Brand, Hugo Boss, Madewell and J. Crew.

See the company’s website here, and read more about the company here.

What We’re Watching : Where the future of fashion is headed

What is the future of fashion and where is the fashion industry heading to? What kind of future do fashion pioneers think of and how do they try to change the way of thinking about fashion? A documentary about the future and a new way of approach to fashion.

Backlight shows five future fashion pioneers who make their industry future-proof by experimenting with new fabrics, reuse and hi-tech design. Their ‘fashion of the future’ goes far beyond sustainability alone. They also force us to look differently at beauty and the role that clothing plays in our lives.

(Note – turn on subtitles to understand the people speaking in Dutch.)

What We’re Reading – Unraveled

A groundbreaking chronicle of the birth–and death–of a pair of jeans, that exposes the fractures in our global supply chains, and our relationships to each other, ourselves, and the planet.

A sprawling, deeply researched, and provocative tour-de-force, Unraveled is not just the story of a pair of pants, but also the story of our global economy and our role in it. Told with piercing insight and unprecedented reporting, Unraveled challenges us to use our relationship with our jeans–and all that we wear–to reclaim our central role as citizens to refashion a society in which all people can thrive and preserve the planet for generations to come.

You can read an excerpt here, and listen to a discussion with author Maxine Bédat here.

What We’re Listening to –  Conscious Chatter

Conscious Chatter opens the door to conversations about our clothing + the layers of stories, meaning and potential impact connected to what we wear.  It reimagines the narrative around sustainability, explores the importance of resourcefulness, questions conscious consumerism, and works to deconstruct how oppressive systems impact the sustainable fashion space.

In Episode 237 listen to a discussion with Ben Mead, the Managing Director of Hohenstein Institute USA, about green chemistry and the OEKO-TEX® Association which attempts to certify green practices in the textile supply chain.

May this information inspire you to generate a thriving future for humanity and a thriving life for yourself. For more resources please check out our Podcast and Youtube channel.

-The Bold.ly Now Team

BOLD.LY NOW is a movement of co-creative up-levelers who have a burning desire to step free of our collapsing world & take the most daring leap forward to a thriving world.

Follow us

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• Twitter
• Instagram
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PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

The Generative Futures Initiative
Generating a Thriving Future for All
generativefutures.org

The post The Future of Fashion appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

May 19, 2021

We live in a material world, a built world, an endlessly changing world. The cycle between material desires and fulfillment of those desires has shortened from weeks to days to “same day delivery”.  We consume, therefore we are. Full stop until the world stops.

It’s no mystery how we got here.  The invisible hand of the market has propelled growth, some of it producing profound benefits for humanity, some of it producing illness, heartache and darkness and much of it producing nothing more than excess and waste. Producing a product or service and then psychologically manipulating people to want that product or service with smart learning algorithms, is not a free market.  It is anything but free as we see the costs literally piling up around us as we bury ourselves in waste.

This cannot go on.

But what would a future without waste, or extraction toxicity look like? Would we have to go back to a preindustrial way of life? Or can we invent new ways of living in a material world that is sane and balanced for the benefit of all?  Can we design completely closed loop systems that recycle every bit of material into new products?  Can we harvest energy without toxicity? Can we let go of the impulse to consume and fan the flames of the impulse to connect?

I say that if we can imagine it then we can do it.

We are already off to a new start on the materials side.  Recycling rather than new extraction is gaining momentum.  Sharing is becoming more fashionable than ownership.  Experiences more fulfilling than a growing pile of stuff.  

In this week’s PROOF we will see some of the steps being taken to explore a new relationship to our material world.  In between the articles you will catch a glimpse of what we are becoming.  This reinvention is perhaps the most important investment we will ever make in the future of humanity.  We will innovate what it means to live a good, sustainable, fulfilling life – not just for you and me, but for every one of us, all life on the planet and the planet itself down to the last molecule.  

Please join us as we reimagine the future for humanity. 

Proof 28-  Generating Our Sustainable Future

In the News:

Organizations Generating a Thriving Future: Recycling Technologies

Recycling Technologies Ltd is a UK-based company founded in 2011. Through a decade of research, engineering and collaboration with academia, it has developed a proprietary, patented technology to recycle mixed plastic waste.With a uniquely collaborative approach and innovative industry expertise, Recycling Technologies has managed to establish itself as a prominent player in the chemical recycling sector at both a national and global level.

What We’re Watching : Sustainable

A vital investigation of the economic and environmental instability of America’s food system, from the agricultural issues we face — soil loss, water depletion, climate change, pesticide use — to the community of leaders who are determined to fix it. Sustainable is a film about the land, the people who work it and what must be done to sustain it for future generations.

What We’re Reading – Turning the Tide on Plastic: How Humanity (And You) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again

Journalist, broadcaster and eco lifestyle expert Lucy Siegle provides a powerful call to arms to end the plastic pandemic along with the tools we need to make decisive change. It is a clear-eyed, authoritative and accessible guide to help us to take decisive and effective personal action. So now is the time to speak up, take action and demand the change you want to see in the ocean, in the supermarket aisles and on the streets. It’s time to turn the tide on plastic, and this book will show you how.

What We’re Listening to –  Turning the Tide on Plastic

Do you want to leave a lasting mark on the world? Throw a plastic bottle into the sea – and chances are that it will still be there well after you are gone.

In this podcast, we discuss our global plastic addiction and what we can do about it. The Natural Resources Podcast by Highgrade Media speaks with Denise Hardesty, an expert on plastic pollution at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

May this information inspire you to generate a thriving future for humanity and a thriving life for yourself. For more resources please check out our Podcast and Youtube channel.

-The Bold.ly Now Team

BOLD.LY NOW is a movement of co-creative up-levelers who have a burning desire to step free of our collapsing world & take the most daring leap forward to a thriving world.

Follow us

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• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube

PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

The Generative Futures Initiative
Generating a Thriving Future for All
generativefutures.life

The post Generating Our Sustainable Future appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

April 20, 2021

This week in PROOF, we are going to look at the Future of Cities and some of the great thinking and work that is happening in regards to how we might rethink the way we live together. As human beings moved from nomadic life to agrarian life, the first cities were built. These cities were a place to store grain and conduct trade. Grain storage was the first store of wealth for emerging civilizations. With it came the need to defend the grain from the threat of theft. Cities quickly became fortified and with that came the division between living in town, safe, and living out of town, not so much.

In the time prior to railways, small cities dotted the landscape with at most an hour’s horse ride between them. Inside the city itself, for the most part, people moved on foot. Larger cities which required carriages to move about were more rare and usually the seat of the government for a country, like Paris, London, Istanbul, or Rome.

Large and mega cities are a result of the industrial revolution. Factories provided centralized jobs. All one had to do was move to the city to find factory work. Urbanization has led to 54% of people living in a city up from 30% in the 1930’s. This number is predicted to move to 66% over the next 15-20 years. Africa alone will see a billion Africans move to cities from rural areas. In addition, climate refugees will account for 600 million people needing a new city home.

Currently cities consume 78% of the world’s energy and produce 60% of the world greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental impacts extend to the individuals living in these cities with 11 million deaths annually being directly related to pollution and its health impacts.

The twin pressures of population growth and climate impact will necessitate redesigning today’s cities and imagining entirely new cities to deal with both relocation from climate impacted locations and refugee populations.

I say all of this to paint a picture of a 20 year future of cities. Given the numbers and the immediacy of the problems we are facing at the city level, we will have to reconsider the entire notion of what a city is and how it shapes the lives of the people who live in them.

This past weekend my wife Alex and I traveled to a community near us called Prospect Park. It is a designed neighborhood in the city that is closest to our rural home. In the neighborhood there are a number of professional offices including a medical clinic. There is a bakery, a coffee shop, several restaurants and a number of boutique style retail stores. The neighborhood is medium to high density with a mix of houses, condos and apartments. This makes it a very walkable place.

Having an outdoor coffee at the coffee shop reminded me of the pedestrian cities of Europe. Places like the old centers of European cities and these kinds of designed neighborhoods are human scale and thus have a natural quality of life to them.

As we turn to look into a generative future, what kinds of cities do we imagine and who are the people that the cities are aimed to serve? Is it the corporations who have been the historic drivers of urbanization? Or could we design cites that are good for people, families, health, sustainability and the global environment? Do we want megacities or would smaller, more distributed communities be a better idea? Should we rehabilitate and redesign cities designed for an era that is ending, like the automobile centric cities of the west, or do we compost those cities and build newly?

All of these questions provide grist for the mill of this age of invention and innovation. We should not shy away from the challenge of imagining and building new neighborhoods and new cities that better serve humanity. More importantly, we must avoid the pitfall of designing short term solutions to current problems and look forward to creating paradigmatic shifts in what a city is, what size is it, where it is located and what it means to be a resident. We must do this and do it boldly.

From where we stand the view of who is going to lead the way in this planet wide revolution of innovation: It’s you, and you and you, every one of you. Everyone of us.

Proof of a Thriving Future for Humanity

In the News:

Organizations Generating a Thriving Future:

re-build

Join us April 30th – May 2nd for an online festival to support the new-village movement by enabling knowledge sharing and multi-disciplinary collaboration between all the people and organizations who are re:building our world. ? ? ?

Each conversation and workshop is meant to teach you something new, or inspire you in your journey of being part of the regenerative village building movement. Connect with other village builders and meet future partners to collaborate and co-create with. ??

Use discount code BOLDLY10 to receive a 10% discount on the event here.

What We’re Watching : The Future of Cities

More than 31 cities around the globe — including Tokyo, Delhi, Cairo and Mexico City — are considered megacities, with populations of more than 10 million people. As the number of city dwellers increases, so do problems like overcrowding, pollution, housing shortages and aging infrastructure.

In his  mini-documentary, “The Future of Cities,” New York-based director Oscar Boyson stepped out of the commercial film and TV world to explore what governments, communities, and everyday people around the globe are doing to make increasing density in their cities sustainable for the future.

What We’re Reading – Inventing Future Cities

We cannot predict future cities, but we can invent them. Cities are largely unpredictable because they are complex systems that are more like organisms than machines. Neither the laws of economics nor the laws of mechanics apply; cities are the product of countless individual and collective decisions that do not conform to any grand plan. They are the product of our inventions; they evolve. In Inventing Future Cities, Michael Batty explores what we need to understand about cities in order to invent their future.

What We’re Listening to –  Our Future in Cities

Humanity’s future is the future of cities. Explore the crowded favelas, greened-up blocks and futuristic districts that could shape the future of cities — and take a profane, hilarious side trip to the suburbs. Listen to a series of TED talks that speak to different aspects of how we can have cities contribute to a thriving future for humanity.

Please Join US – Generative Futures on Clubhouse

We are hosting weekly conversations for Generative Futures every Saturday at 11:00am PT. Clubhouse is iPhone only and you need an invite to get on the app, please email us at bebold@bold.ly and we will invite you!

May this information inspire you to generate a thriving future for humanity and a thriving life for yourself.

-The Bold.ly Now Team

BOLD.LY NOW is a movement of co-creative up-levelers who have a burning desire to step free of our collapsing world & take the most daring leap forward to a thriving world.

Follow us

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• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube

PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

The Generative Futures Initiative
Generating a Thriving Future for All
generativefutures.life

The post The Future of Cities appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

March 31, 2021

One thing that all futurists have in common is a driving curiosity about the future. We want to know how things are going to advance in technology, health, life extension, reproduction, society, law, economics, etc. In general, most futurists work to make accurate predictions about this future and share those predictions with the world. I got my start in futurism doing this kind of work. It took the form of what the future of games will be like, when will we have true telepresence VR, what the high speed internet will look like, what’s going to happen when our TV and our PCs merge, and so on.

I got a lot of things right and I missed the mark on others. The strange thing was that the technological revolution we were working on was less about the future for humanity and more about money and future wealth for entrepreneurs and the Silicon Valley magic money machine.

Over the past twenty years this wealth generating machine has reached staggering heights regardless of the world circumstances as evidenced by the top tech companies adding $3.4 trillion in wealth in 2020, during a disastrous economic year for the world at large. As a futurist, it’s easy to predict that unless we decide to govern our largest tech companies differently, the top tech companies will continue their astronomical growth and the appetite to devour traditional business models – hello Uber, Airbnb and Amazon WholeFoods.

One of the biggest debates about the future right now is whether or not technology is the path to saving humanity or the path to destroying humanity. Those who are pro tech are said to believe in techno-utopianism. The idea is that we can develop tech to solve our problems at a faster rate than the problems develop. The skeptics to this belief are legion. The dark sides are well explored and summed up by looking at the acceleration of technologically driven existential risks to humanity. This idea is that technology is becoming more and more capable of extinguishing all life on the earth.

So how does PROOF see this debate? We have a couple of points to consider. One, unconstrained innovation in pursuit of wealth maximization is a bad bet for humanity and the planet. Two, thoughtfully-considered, ethical innovation in pursuit of human and planetary thriving is not only desirable, but likely our way out of the various hard problems facing humanity. Technology itself is doesn’t drive good or bad outcomes for the future, people do.

It’s time to focus our creativity and our lives to designing a world that works for all. It’s time to do it now and to do it boldly.

Are you ready to build a thriving future for humanity?

We are, come and join us!

Proof of a Thriving Future for Humanity

In the News:

Organizations Generating a Thriving Future:

Kibbo

Working remotly is one of the changes that will likely solidify in the post-pandemic world. The question is – If you can work from anywhere, why not live anywhere?

Kibbo offers a new way to live and work wherever you want without giving up relationships or the comforts of “home”. For less than the cost of living in a studio apartment, Kibbo rents you a top-of-the-line Sprinter Van, a network of home bases across the West, essential groceries and provisions, wi-fi and an inclusive, adventurous community — everything you need to live an extraordinary life.

Their motto: “Where freedom meets community”

What We’re Watching : Climate Solutions 101

Climate Solutions 101 is the world’s first major educational effort focused solely on solutions rather than rehashing well-known climate challenges.

This 6 unit course, presented in video units and in-depth conversations, combines trusted resources with the expertise of several inspiring voices from around the world. Climate solutions become attainable with increased access to free, science-based educational resources, elevated public discourse, and tangible examples of real-world action.

What We’re Reading – Under A White Sky: The Nature of the Future.

In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.

One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. She examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.

What We’re Listening to – BN 15: A Fatal Blow to an Already Dead System with Daniel Schmachtenberger

Daniel Schmachtenberger offers his perspectives on how the shift in information ecology is creating a world of misinformation and offers some basic steps to building good sense-making. He discusses how the mass closure of small businesses represents one of the most severe consolidations of wealth possibilities we’ve ever seen and ways to rethink our current social structures.

Join us on CLUBHOUSE!

We are hosting weekly conversations for Generative Futures on Wednesdays at 7:30pm PT.  Clubhouse is iPhone only for now and you need an invite to get on the app, please email us at bebold@bold.ly and we will invite you!

May this information inspire you to generate a thriving future for humanity and a thriving life for yourself.

-The Bold.ly Now Team

BOLD.LY NOW is a movement of co-creative up-levelers who have a burning desire to step free of our collapsing world & take the most daring leap forward to a thriving world.

Follow us

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• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube

PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

The Generative Futures Initiative
Generating a Thriving Future for All
generativefutures.life

The post Designing the Future appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Doug Fisher

Publishing Editor

March 3, 2021

Are you ready to Bold.ly reimagine human life on this planet?

I feel we all want to answer “yes” to that question.  After all, isn’t that the right answer? Isn’t that what’s needed now?

But for some of us, considering how seemingly hard it is to make even small changes, reimagining human society, culture, government, economics and… all of it’s daunting at best and sometimes frankly overwhelming.  We’re just not ready to reimagine human life.  Taking it one step further, we can have a pretty grim view of the future – so grim that we want to pull our heads under the covers and binge watch until the end of the universe.

So how can we Bold.ly reimagine life?

For a start we can see our grim view of the future as just that – a view of the future, not the truth about the future. Positive or negative our view of the future is generated by our brain based on past experience.  You and I don’t have to do anything to have our view of the future – it’s automatically there – its our default, likely dystopic, version of the future.

If we can see our default/automatic view of the future as merely a view, we have a certain freedom to reimagine the future, to reimagine life. And, this is one of the key practices of a generative futurist: to acknowledge the past-based automatic view of the future, and then step out and imagine a new future, one not limited by the past.

That’s part of why we publish this news magazine – to provide stories of people who are actively bringing about a thriving future.  To prove that it is possible and that it is happening.  And ultimately to encourage each of us to boldly reimagine life on this planet.

So I’ll ask again:

Are you ready to boldly reimagine human life on this planet?

We ARE – Come join us!

Proof of a Thriving Future for Humanity

In the News:

Organizations Generating a Thriving Future:

Project Drawdown

A nonprofit organization that seeks to help the world reach “Drawdown”— the future point in time when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline.

Upcoming Virtual Event:
Drawdown 101: An Introduction to the Science of Climate Solutions
Thursday, March 18, 2021 @ 2:00 PM Central Daylight Time (GMT-5)

Join the Executive Director of Project Drawdown, for a live presentation of the Project Drawdown Climate Solutions Framework. event link

What We’re Watching :  Is France’s groundbreaking food-waste law working?

A third of the world’s food goes to waste, but France is attempting to do something about it. Since 2016, large grocery stores in the country have been banned from throwing away unsold food that could be given away. Watch this short video to find out all the positive benefits that have occurred since the law was put in place.

What We’re Reading – Ministry for the Future ?

“The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us—and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.”

What We’re Listening to – BN25 The Future of Healthcare

Tune in to The Boldy Now Show featuring Dr. David Tusek, Direct Care and Health Exchange Pioneer, to forever change the way we think about personal and community health. Dr. Tusek asks for a deeper understanding of the body, reconnection with ourselves, people around us, and nature, so that we can transform our healthcare system to help us to thrive rather than merely survive.

Please Join US – Generative Futures on Clubhouse

it! It’s an invitation-only audio chat app that allows people to host and join conversations with other users. Clubhouse give us the chance to have open conversations with you, our community in an authentic, trustworthy environment.

We will will hosting weekly conversations for Generative Futures on Wednesdays at 7:30pm PT.  Clubhouse is iPhone only for now and you need an invite to get on.  If you need an invite please email us at bebold@bold.ly and we will see what we can do to get you invited to the app.

A Thriving Life Updates

Contrary to conventional thought, thriving isn’t about your circumstances.  We say thriving is about how you respond to your circumstances.  In A Thriving Life you will explore the 12 foundational elements of life and generate a pathway for yourself to thrive in any circumstance.

? Download our app to take the program assessments and gain access to core content here

May this information inspire you to generate a thriving future for humanity and a thriving life for yourself.

-The Bold.ly Now Team

BOLD.LY NOW is a movement of co-creative up-levelers who have a burning desire to step free of our collapsing world & take the most daring leap forward to a thriving world.

Follow us

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube

PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

The Generative Futures Initiative
Generating a Thriving Future for All
generativefutures.life

The post Bold.ly Reimagining Life appeared first on PROOFZINE.