Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

September 20th, 2023

What is consciousness?

Do I have it or am I it?

Does consciousness exist physically?

And if it does, where?

The answer to this question was proven to still be, “don’t know” by the now famous wager between Christof Koch, neuroscientist and David Chalmers, philosopher that came to a conclusion after its initial 25 year period. Koch bet Chalmers that he would discover the physical signature of consciousness in the brain, Chalmers bet he would not. In June of this year The Association for the Study of Consciousness declared Chalmers the winner.

At this point we can say that there is no agreed upon discovery of a physical seat of consciousness in neuroscience. So if we are conscious and there is no part of the brain that is responsible for consciousness, where is it?

To explore this, we are going to have to question…everything.

When we say consciousness what do we mean? The definition is: The state of being aware of and able to think and perceive one’s surroundings, thoughts, and experiences. We have a first person experience of being aware, including an awareness of a self experiencing the surroundings from moment to moment. This is a phenomenological consciousness.

We are phenomenologically conscious almost every moment of our waking life and even aware from time to time when we are asleep. We are not always conscious of being conscious. In fact most of us are blissfully unaware of the experience of being aware. It falls into the everyday background obliviousness of our life.

So where is this consciousness if it isn’t in the brain? Some say that consciousness is an emergent property of the complex system of a human being. Emergent properties are those that arise from a system that cannot be found in the component parts. For example a cell respirates, it rhythmically breathes. Yet respiration cannot be found in any one of the component parts of the cell. It’s not in the cell wall. It’s not in the nucleus, the dna. Yet it emerges when the cell is all together intact — a dead cell does not respirate. If consciousness is emergent then we don’t have to find it in the brain or any other part of our body to have a viable explanation of consciousness.

The emergent model underpins the current philosophy in Artificial General Intelligence, AI that can think like a human being, generalizing knowledge from one area of learning to another. The idea is that once an AI has as many neural connections as we do, consciousness will emerge. But what kind of consciousness? A human’s consciousness? A dog’s consciousness?

Yes dogs are aware of their surroundings and in a limited way they have self awareness. Stepping aside from the AI conversation we should take a look at the ways we use the term consciousness.

In psychology we have the idea of the conscious and subconscious mind. The idea is that there are alot of psychological processes that are going on below the level of our conscious awareness. The problem with this idea is that there is no clear definition of where the diving line is. A more contemporary definition is automatic and controlled thought processes. Automatic processes being those that do not require conscious attention. Even in this definition it is hard to see that you could have an automatic process that is not a part of the subjective awareness of oneself and one’s surroundings. For the most part these automatic processes are in response to the surroundings and moment by moment circumstances of life. Think about pressing the brake pedal when you see a red traffic light.

In spirituality we have the idea of levels of consciousness. There are the basic awareness of self and surroundings, and other more esoteric levels of consciousness. These levels of consciousness include experiences of unity consciousness, emptiness, higher realms and other non-ordinary experiences. Yet are these higher levels of consciousness any different than being aware of self and surroundings? I can’t see how changing what you are aware of changes the basic understanding of consciousness, afterall each of us has differing surroundings, including physical, historical and linguistic elements and patterns.

Another highly contested kind of consciousness is that of wokeness. The term started out in the 1960’s as an African American term to indicate that one had “their eyes opened” to racial injustice and systemic oppression. Since that time it has expanded to include LGBTQ+ communities. It includes those who are “Woke” to their own oppression and to those who are allies. Woke is a way to say that they are conscious of their oppression. In this case we are using the “conscious of” construction. There are many things we can be conscious of, all of which require us to be conscious.

The idea of “conscious of” is referred to as intentionality by the Phenomenologists, Huserl and Heidigger. Intentionality is the capacity of our thoughts, beliefs, desires, and perceptions to be about something — to have content or to refer to objects, states of affairs, or events. When you think about your car, your thoughts are directed towards or “about” the car. Huserl and Heidigger argued that this is the only kind of consciousness, as we are always directing our intention to one thing or another. Thus consciousness isn’t an isolated phenomenon that exists on its own. Instead, it’s inherently relational. It’s always in relation to some content, whether it’s an external object, an internal thought, a memory, or some other mental content.

Chalmers, the winner of the bet with Koch says that intentionality is helpful in solving the easy problems with consciousness, which concern behaviors, mechanisms, and functions, it does not help us with the hard problem of consciousness which concerns why we have subjective experiences at all.

Why am I me?

That is the ultimate hard question in regard to consciousness. All intentionality can give us is: I am me because I am the one who is conscious of my surroundings, which is a half baked version of Descartes Cogito sum ergo. I think, therefore I am. This does nothing to tell us why there is an I in the first place or if that I is a reliable observer.

There are two ways out of this. One is the still unanswered question, where is consciousness. Maybe someday we will discover the part of our brain that is the seat of consciousness. At that point we could examine other creatures and see if they have this part in their brains as well. Those with the consciousness center would be conscious, others would not.

This would mean that there are sentient beings, ones that have subjective experiences, that are not conscious because they don’t have the ability to think about their surroundings or have self awareness. This seems seems to be a big misstep as it would mean that in order to answer the question of why we have subjective experience we would say that in one class of beings it is because of the structure of our brain, but for other, less conscious beings, we still can’t say why they have subjective experiences.

I prefer the other way out of this conundrum, one that Chalmers also considers to be a strong candidate for understanding why we have subjective experience. This is the philosophical view that mind or consciousness is a fundamental and universal aspect of reality. It posits that even the smallest particles of matter might have rudimentary forms of consciousness or experience. In western philosophy this is called Panpsychism.

Alfred North Whitehead, proposed a form of panpsychism in his process philosophy. He argued that the basic constituents of reality are “actual occasions” or “drops of experience.” These entities have both a physical and mental aspect.

If consciousness is one of the fundamental parts of the underlying fabric of the universe, then the hard problem goes away. We have subjective experience because that is universal. There is no special human case for consciousness, rather we can cast our imagination out in the universe and wonder what other marvelous forms of consciousness exist out there.

The Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen teachings hold that all beings have a pristine non-dual awareness called Rigpa. This awareness is self-existing and a priori to a being’s awareness. We have individual consciousness or thoughts because of this self-existing consciousness. The Dzogchen teachings are about how to directly experience the non-dual, pure Rigpa.

Both Panpsychism and Dzogchen point in the same direction, yet they are not the same thing. Panpsychism assigns consciousness to the smallest building blocks of reality while Dzogchen describes Rigpa as having a non-dual existence that is like the Yogācāra “Mind-only” school that holds that all phenomena are manifestations of the mind. Still, as one of my teachers used to say, that’s close enough for jazz.

Consciousness is a self-existing and fundamental part (or cause) of the universe.

Thus the hard problem is solved. We know why we are aware and we know where consciousness is located…everywhere all the time.

Welcome to the reality where consciousness is the universe in which you exist.

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 62 – Adventures in Consciousness from Neuroscience to Philosophy

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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Generating a Thriving Future for All
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The post Adventures in Consciousness from Neuroscience to Philosophy appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

August 23th, 2023

There’s the classic moment in a horror film where the naive young character decides to enter into the building where we know the villain is hiding. At that moment, we want to shout, “NO, DON’T DO IT”. Even knowing that something terrible is going to happen, we can’t take our eyes off the screen.

This is exactly the feeling I get looking at the state of democracies across the world, and especially the US and the UK. Politics and its toxic cousin populism play the role of the villain and the naive young character, that’s us, the everyday people who rely on their governments to provide a secure and safe society. In this era of climate crisis, radical wealth disparity, and rising authoritarianism, it’s clear our governance systems are failing us. And I for one, don’t want to wait around to witness the fate of the naive.

What’s wrong with our democracy?

The answer is in the known pitfalls of democracy in general and representational democracy. Plato in his Republic, argued against democracy. He had seen his teacher Socrates put to death by the democratic government of the Athenian state in 399 BCE for “corrupting the youth” and “impiety.” The travesty and tragic loss of Socrates led Plato to examine the inherent problems with democracy. A number of these issues are at the heart of our failing democracy.

Susceptibility to Demagogues: Plato observed that democratic systems were vulnerable to charismatic leaders who could manipulate public sentiment for their own interests, potentially leading the society astray. Brexit is a prime example of this. The Tory party capitalized on the fear of immigration and blamed the EU for this and other “self-governance” problems. The UK voted for Brexit, likely to the surprise of the Tories, and the fallout has been devastating the economy of the UK.

Influence of Passions: Plato believed that a successful state should be governed by reason rather than emotion. He worried that democratic systems could be overly influenced by the passions and whims of the populace, leading to erratic and potentially harmful policies. The abortion fight in the US is all about the intersection of politics and passion. Right to life and Right to choose have become a rallying cry for both parties to charge up their bases. Over the past 40 years, pushing the passion button has given us an unworkable patchwork of laws and lawsuits. Surely good governance could come up with a rational solution to this issue.

Rule by the Ignorant: Plato believed that governance required wisdom and expertise. In a democracy, however, every citizen, irrespective of their knowledge, experience, or education, has an equal say in decision-making. Plato likened this to allowing a random person, rather than a qualified doctor, to make medical decisions. Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, broke the mold of presidents who educated themselves about the issues that were of great importance to the nation. Reportedly, he preferred his gut feeling on things to research and facts. Plato was concerned with the populace making ill-informed decisions while voting. It’s unlikely that he would have thought that elected leaders would actually rule by ignorance. It took the US democracy to achieve this new low in governance.

Inherent Instability: Plato believed that the democratic focus on individual freedoms and equality could cause internal divisions. These divisions might make the state vulnerable to both internal decay and external threats. He thought that democracy, with its emphasis on individualism and freedom, could eventually degrade into tyranny. Our freedoms overlap, as is seen in economic policy. What’s good for the corporation may not be good for the individual and vice versa. The freedom of an individual’s right to their lifestyle can conflict with the consensus of what an acceptable lifestyle is. Politics emphasizes these divisions and exacerbates the conflict. This creates a democracy with policies that swing from one election to the next.

This last one brings up an additional issue with our current representational democracy: Short Termism, where governance moves away from long-term solutions to problems in favor of short-term wins that play well with their bases.

Looking at this short list of pitfalls, and the examples of the issues that are plaguing our democracies today, there are those that argue that there is no way to fix the system. I disagree, there are many novel approaches that could produce good governance. For the US system, we could dramatically reduce the role that money plays in being elected by adopting public financing of elections. We could also adopt ranked-choice voting and proportional representation to greatly reduce the winner-takes-all results we have today.

Still these are only stop-gap solutions to the large problems that representational democracies face. There are too many powerful players who use politics to game the system to benefit their own ends. Standing at the top of that list would be multinational corporations and billionaires. Their wealth and power has grown unchecked since the 1980s. A governance system that is driven by politics, is one that is vulnerable to gaming. And those with the resources to manipulate the system will do so in a tragedy of the commons race to the bottom.

What we need is a governance system that relies on two main pillars. One is the use of a civil service of technocrats tasked with creating consensus-based expert-driven decision-making and legislation creation. The second is moving to a liquid democracy creating a fluid system mixing direct democracy and representational democracy that is a fit for our digital era. The representative democracy currently practiced across the world was created at a time when travel to participate in the democratic process made it so that citizens needed a representative who could travel by horse and buggy to congresses. Travel time for democracy is nearly instant in the digital era. We don’t need these horse and buggy systems any more.

What we do need is the ability to quickly form consensus decision assemblies informed by experts to be convened, given a mandate and then allowed to serve through the process of creating a consensus to then be dissolved. This is the way that a network can respond to the complexity of this era.

A good example of how this might function would be a hypothetical decision that needs to be made around college education. A group might be convened around incentivising certain types of education responding to the needs of the marketplace based upon the research of technocrats. A second group might be convened around the long term impacts of the costs of higher education. These two decisions might go to a third group who determines universal university fees/incentives to encourage specific long term stability for the youth that are looking forward to a university education.

These groups could be formed digitally, selecting participants randomly from a pool of those who have the specific knowledge to make a good decision. This selection process would radically depoliticize the system. As those who were selected to serve who step down when their work was done, it would dramatically reduce the incentive to make decisions that play to a specific audience. And being a politician would become a thing of the past. A form of direct democracy would take its place.

I offer this idea not as a plan but rather as a vision of how we might reinvent our governance system. We need these visions of an alternative future. We need to see that we are not stuck with the mess of political governance that we are saddled with, one that seems hell bent on destroying our ecosystem and our society for short term political gain.

It’s time to get politics out of governance.

We need to be unafraid to change the things that are no longer working. We need the best ideas from all of us to be elevated to become the new rules by which we govern our world. And we need a governance system built for this digital, AI, everywhere all at once age we live in. I imagine a future where we use AI to help us balance diversity, social and wealth justice inside our sustainable planetary boundaries while helping us transition to long term futures for humanity.

This may be our best way forward given the complexity of our global systems. This then is the time to build frameworks for altruistic AI that is not gameable. Ironically, those in power today are going to be working to make sure they have backdoors into these systems to maintain their power for generations to come. We could use some good governance to achieve that aim.

It’s a vicious cycle that we can disrupt if we keep our eyes on the future.

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 61 – In Search of Good Governance

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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PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

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

The post In Search of Good Governance appeared first on PROOFZINE.

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.

Follow us

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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 26th, 2023

Over the past 54 years since the Stonewall Riots, the world has become more inclusive and diverse, a progression symbolized by the emergence of pride parades. At PROOF, we wholeheartedly support the full spectrum of human identities and stand united in the ongoing quest for justice and equality for all. We envision a future where embracing one’s sexual orientation and gender identity is considered a natural part of personal development and self-discovery. To achieve this, we must strive to raise our collective consciousness. Unfortunately, numerous regions worldwide still have cultural, societal, and governmental systems that wrongly presume the authority to dictate the parameters of a fulfilling life. We all have a right to discover ourselves and our unique paths to fulfillment — full stop.

What is a fulfilling life?

Somehow it seems that culturally we have lost our way. Have we traded fulfillment for ambition, fourteen hour work days, side hustles, endless scrolling comparison culture? The answer is a measured no. Yes all of these things can hold us back from a fulfilling life but they don’t necessarily keep you from a fulfilling life.

So then what makes a fulfilling life? And what does this have to do with a Bodhisattva and Pride?

Discovering who we are is essential to our personal development. This includes our sexual orientation and gender identity, the way our brains work — including neurodiversity, our health and fitness patterns, our traumas, our preferences and so on. Some of these are considered by the dominant culture to be normal and typical and others atypical. For you, what matters most is that you have an open and unfettered chance to discover who you are for yourself, no matter what it takes.

Discovering who you are is life altering, suddenly all of the dots connect and you feel at home in the world — for the first time for some of us.

Once we discover who we are, then we can really settle in to be who we are. This is when we build a life for ourselves including all of the diverse aspects that make us so unique. There is no fulfillment in life if we are thwarted in being who we are. Within bounds, personal freedom to express ourselves is a large part of social justice. Collective accountability is essential in preventing harm and injustice in our societies, which encompasses acts of violence, abuse, and crime. One of these harms is the suppression of one’s true identity, preventing them from fully embracing who they are

The next step is to invent or generate who we are. In becoming we embrace who we discovered, now we have the chance to grow beyond who we are into who we are becoming. You are not a fixed object. You can’t discover who you are once just like you can’t step in the same river twice. We are constantly becoming, in every moment of every day. If you are fortunate enough to build a life based upon who you are, you will likely discover that that life is not always fulfilling. Maybe you have a wonderful relationship but don’t have a career you love. Maybe you have skills in your physical health but feel isolated from the larger community. Once we uncover the areas of life that aren’t working for us, we can imagine a new future for ourselves and consciously grow and evolve to that new future.

In my own case, I used to feel disconnected from people in the larger world. I am introverted, neurodivergent and can feel awkward in social situations — what am I doing here? My wife, Alex, on the other hand loves people and being social. It created tension in our relationship. And I could clearly see that what brought me discomfort brought her joy. I decided that I would evolve to the kind of person who was fed by social situations.

It took about a year for me to discover the key for me, which was about finding my purpose in every conversation. My purpose is to illuminate people’s true nature, give insights and tools for awakening, and to generate a thriving future for humanity. And key to this becoming was the idea that people have a true nature. To me that is a true nature that is wise, compassionate, loving, courageous and generous. Now when I go out in social settings, if I am resourced, I simply look at every person I meet with the eyes that sees their true nature. And I fall in love with the beauty of their humanity. That feeds my heart and I am uplifted. I have become someone who is fed by being with people. That doesn’t mean that I am no longer introverted (maybe now intro/extrovert) or that I am no longer neurodivergent. I am that and more. And, as I said, if I am not resourced (regulated) then I lose access to this part of me until I get resourced.

Once we are free to be who we are and can become who we want to be we are free now and in the future, then we can really open ourselves up to the most important element of having a fulfilling life and that is service or contribution. You see, as long as we are struggling to take care of ourselves, get our needs met or build a life where we are free to be ourselves, it is very hard to be those things for someone else. Conversely when we have reached the point in life where we are free, then we have the most miraculous capacity to be of service and help others.

This is where the bodhisattva comes into the story. A bodhisattva, from the Buddhist tradition is one who has promised to end the suffering of all beings. This includes animals and even magical beings from other realms. It sounds like a promise that has a steep cost as it requires that you think about all beings in the day to day living of life, and do something. The irony is that that promise creates the conditions for fulfillment — being of service is the most fulfilling act a human can make. Quick disclosure here, I took the bodhisattva vows in 1991 in Bouddha Nepal where I was living at the time as a Tibetan Buddhist student.

Back to the Pride Parade: I am so thankful for those who made pride possible, starting with the ones who stood up in the Stonewall Riots, and ones that organized the first parade in NYC in 1970 one year after the riots, all of those who have ever marched in or cheered on Pride. Pride reminds us to be who we are, to become whatever we imagine ourselves to be, no matter what it takes. It also reminds us that when we take a stand for the rights of all, we serve the best parts of humanity.

We march in solidarity and march in love. I can’t imagine something more fulfilling.

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 51 – Speaking Out Loud – 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.

Follow us

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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 Speaking Out Loud – Unleashed appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

March 29, 2022

I came upon a fork in the road and I took the one that led to the life of my dreams. While I may walk long days, I smile knowing that my every step is one taken in the right direction.

Our life is lived one moment at a time. Each moment is complete with all of the life that we will ever know.

Just think about it, you have never physically traveled to the past because it is no more. And you’ve never traveled to the future because it is yet to come. We live in an eternal now that stretches from our first breath to the last.

While it’s true that we can never be in the past or the future, we all have somewhere we are coming from, and somewhere we are going to. I call this the ever-present past and the ever-present future. They are both visions about about time, the time that is no longer and the time that is not yet. These visions or narratives feel very real and have real life impacts.

Sometimes it feels that your vision of your past dictates how we see and understand who we are. You might consider that the vision your have of your own the future is even more powerful in how you see yourself and your life. Just think of the times that you made a brave decision to do something new and exciting with your life. It’s likely that the days, weeks and months leading up to and for many days after, you were filled with energy and enthusiasm.

Regardless of whether or not you’ve had this experience, we have all felt the dread hand of anticipating a negative future. Visiting a relative that makes you uncomfortable, a past lover who caused you trauma or having to make a move for work to a place you really don’t want to live.

While these personal futures clearly shape your experience of life day to day, the larger societal futures shape our collective experience of life. When the economy is booming we want to invest in the stock market and go out for a nice meal. When there is a threat of war or violence we seek protect ourselves and our loved ones. We stock up on essentials so we are prepared for the worst.

Most of us would think that these societal futures swing from positive to negative and back again. Yet, if you think about it our current narratives about the future are almost entirely negative. Hollywood would have us think that either the zombies or the robots are going to wipe us out. Today’s media is driven to grab your attention. One way to get your attention is to trigger your reptile brain with fear and outrage. Take a moment and scroll your news feed and see that a vast majority of the articles are either doom and gloom or you won’t believe what so and so have done this time.

We live in a sea of negative futures. Many of us, if not most of us, struggle to maintain good mental health. Many happiness experts have suggested that we cut out our exposure to the news completely.

For years I have personally struggled with this. I’m crave information and read everything I can get my hands on, especially the news. On the days that I spend more than fifteen minutes reading the news, I feel heart sick and bit icky. Every time I feel this way I wonder, where is all the good news? It must be out there somewhere. It is, if you go digging for it.

That is why I started PROOF. It is a curated magazine of news that is PROOF of a positive, desirable and even thriving future. When I read these PROOF positive articles the world suddenly doesn’t seem so dark.

In fact there are many many uplifting discoveries and projects that give me inspiration and keep me working towards a better future for all.

In the end there are both dark things and inspirational things happening on this planet. Objectively we should have some awareness of the whole spectrum of information. This give us the ability to make sense of the world and make good decisions about our lives.

The real discovery is that your vision of the future is more important the narrative that you are fed about it. If you want a fulfilling life with meaning and sense that you matter, you will need some vision of a positive future calling you forward.

Ultimately you are what you pay attention to…where you consciously put your attention. Transform what you pay attention to and you will transform who you are and what you are capable of doing in this world.

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 39 – Creating a Positive Future Today

In the News:

PROOF in ACTION – Ten Steps to Generate a Positive Future

Like plants, we all grow towards the light or wilt, suffer and survive in the darkness. The challenge in these chaotic times is finding the light. We are surrounded by visions of doom and gloom futures, with threats coming from every direction.

One way out of this Catch-22 is to create the light for yourself. That is often difficult to do in the moment, as the current circumstances could be pretty bad — you don’t want to fall into the trap trying to be positive regardless of the circumstances.

The future is a place where you can be positive without this pitfall. The future doesn’t yet exist, so you are free to imagine anything you want about it. Why not imagine positive futures? The more you do so with a clear focus and an intention to bring about positive futures, the more light you produce for yourself and for the world.

Here are 10 steps you can take to generate a positive future:

1. Start with what is really desirable for you. While your first thought might be to want a future with “a-million-dollars”, you would be better off considering what about the money would be good for your life; freedom, escaping scarcity, being generous, working on what you love rather than what pays the bills. This is the underlying state that is the desirable future.
2. Consider how the future state changes your life, your behavior and actions. You know you have imagined a positive future when you can clearly see that you life would be better in all ways, rather that better in someways and worse in others.
3. What is the effect on your community, your city, country or world if this future state was realized? Powerful positive futures impact the world around us. If you can’t see how your future impacts the greater world then go back to step one.
4. Decide on a by-when this future will be realized. Small futures can be realized in months. Bigger ones may require years. Audacious futures can even take multiple lifetimes.
5. Standing in the future look backwards and plan out the steps it would take to get there. Start in the future and look one step back — What is the step that got me here? Then take another step back in time and ask again — What is the step that got me here? Do this until you know what your first step is.
6. Write this plan down and share it with others. This might include friends and family for personal futures, and outside experts for larger futures. Take the input and include it in your plan. Don’t be attached to the timeframe. If the future is going to take more time than you originally thought then move the by-when.
7. Take the first step. This is the critical move. If you can take one step in the direction of your future, no matter how small, you will have PROOF that realizing your future is possible.
8. Seek out feedback from your first step and every step you take. None of us know what we don’t know until we discover it. Take in this new information and make adjustments to your plan and actions.
9. Repeat the cycle: Imagine the future. Determine the by-when. Make a plan. Take a step. Collect feedback. Make adjustments. Doing this over and over reliably through time has you realize the future.
10. Wake up every morning knowing that today you are working on your positive future. You are growing towards the light.

Any fool can tell you how the world is going to end. That path leads nowhere we want to go. Make the choice to strike out towards a positive future for yourself and the world. That one action will make all the difference in your life.

Imagine what the world would be like if we all did this together. Now that’s a positive future I’m interested in generating.

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 Creating a Positive Future Today appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

March 29, 2022

There can be no illusion that humanity has evolved beyond war or that conquest by force is something of our dark past. The consciousness that has brought us the invasion of Ukraine, is the same consciousness that drives nationalism and tribalism in the US today. The politics of keeping the consumer (read us) endlessly busy earning and buying and ultimately driving the dynamics of wealth inequality, only works if the facade of a free and prosperous life is maintained. Putin, in his narcissistic act of conquest, has thrown aside the pretense that he is in any way concerned with the lives of the Russian people. In this war he has peeled back the facade to show the true nature of power in this world. With few exceptions, our leaders are not good stewards of this planet and its people. Certainly not Putin. Not the populists on the left or the right. Not the Russian Oligarchs or our own tech billionaires. Sharks swim with sharks and the rest of us pray we don’t get eaten. This is indeed a dark awakening for humanity, one that has been hidden in plain sight for far too long.

The Ukrainian war is a world shattering event. 

The world of steady economic growth and relative global stability has ended. Covid, climate crisis and now war have dramatically and abruptly changed our lives. And given our global leadership and our ongoing addiction to petroleum and consumerism, we are likely to continue to receive shock after shock to the system.  These are the frothy chaotic waters that lead to civilization collapse or civilization rebirth.  The past based thinking is no longer a fit for the times and no matter how hard our leaders try and pull the dials and levers of power, we are not going back. The genie is out of the bottle. We have too much globally destructive capacity for nation states to stabilize our worst hungers and drives.

No we are not going back to normal life, not even a new normal. Rather we will be riding the waves of disruption until a new aligned structure starts to emerge, or it doesn’t and collapse accelerates. The good news for generative futurists and change makers is that “we the people” are hungry for new models.  We want new ways to live together.  We want a world that values our gifts and contributions and gives us a shot at living a fulfilling life of contribution.   

Like every evolutionary breakpoint, the peril is great. The fear is great. But as we have seen with the people of Ukraine, when you have everything to lose, there can be no question of your courage, what other choice is there? We, you and me my friend, are in the same boat with the people of Ukraine. It’s time for action and courageous reinvention.

Not only do we need systems-change, we need people-change. We need to become those who can steward the world during this time.  We must emerge from the era of celebrating peak predators and elevate our natural nurturers, the empathetic caregivers, our wise elders.  We must remove the incentives for sociopathy and reward the generous, the difference makers and the transformers. The question is, can we set aside our own personal drive to live life better than others, to have a nicer car, bigger house, prettier spouse?  Can we move beyond seeing others in terms of their success or failure and begin to see the clear, simple humanity in each other? This is a moment for sorrow, compassion and deep reflection. 

Then we must imagine our way out of this morass and into a world that really works for all life and the planet.

My heart goes out to the people of Ukraine. There will be lasting impacts on them for generations. And my heart goes out to you, my dear reader, there will be lasting impacts of this time on you and your descendants.  The world is counting on us all to pull ourselves together and invent our way out of this mess. May we have the foresight to not settle for survival but rather insist on thriving for all.

With great love,

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:

The invasion of Ukraine has shocked and saddened us all. We stand by the Ukrainian people and their right to a sovereign nation. Bold.ly NOW founder Alexandra Melnyk is a second generation Ukrainian from Lviv. Her father Michael was arrested by the Soviets in the second World War for refusing conscription into the Soviet Army to fight against his own people, the Ukrainians. History repeats itself when we forget the past and fail to invent a powerful future.

We titled this issue Stop Word War X recognizing both the threat of a hot world war in Eastern Europe and the ongoing geopolitical wars of one kind or another between nations, both superpowers and regional powers. According to the Correlates of War Project we have not had a sustained a period of global peace since their earliest dataset in 1816. They define a war as a “sustained combat involving substantial fatalities” and institute an arbitrary cutoff of 1000 battle-related deaths. 

War has evolved from World War to Cold War and then Proxy War. Currently we seem to be exploring a new Hot War/Cold War combo between Russia, China and the western powers. Old territorial ambitions are being revived just as the last of the WWII generation takes their memories and learnings to the grave.  

Against the backdrop of the Climate Crisis, the war in the Ukraine has two clear impacts. The first is the power of oil. Putin financed the war on petro-dollars taken from Europe who is highly dependent on Russian natural gas and oil. Increasingly over the past twenty years, Europe has been naively feeding the largest threat to their sovereignty and peace. As in all of this centuries wars, it’s all about the oil baby.   The second impact can be seen in Germany’s new commitments to a 100b defense budget, almost double the prior mark.  These are funds that could and arguably should be focused on renewable energy and other climate initiatives.  When we spend more on war, we reduce our capacity to reduce carbon emissions and warming.

Is humanity damned by our short term vision threatening our long term viability?

Or is there hope emerging for new long term, omni-considerate, visions of how we might collaborate at mass scale in building a human civilization that works in balance with the planetary ecosystem and produces thriving for all life.    

In this issue we are going to look towards the war to see what good is being done in the worst of circumstances. There are always humans that rise to the moment, who provide service when and where it is most needed and who give us all hope for the future.

Proof 38 – Stop World War X

In the News:

Organizations Generating a Thriving Future: People in Need

The People in Need organization was established in 1992 by a group of Czech war correspondents who were no longer satisfied with merely relaying information about ongoing conflicts and began sending out aid. It gradually became established as a professional humanitarian organization striving to provide aid in troubled regions and support adherence to human rights around the world.

We strive for a society that is open, informed, engaged and responsible with respect to problems at home and around the world. We want to actively participate in shaping a society where cultural, ethnic, racial and other differences are a source of enrichment rather than conflict. Check them out at https://www.peopleinneed.net/

What We’re Watching: The War in Ukraine Could Change Everything | Yuval Noah Harari | TED

Technology was never neutral; its social, political, and moral impacts have become concerned about the war in Ukraine? You’re not alone. Historian Yuval Noah Harari provides important context on the Russian invasion, including Ukraine’s long history of resistance, the specter of nuclear war and his view of why, even if Putin wins all the military battles, he’s already lost the war.

What We’re Reading: Practicing Peace in Times of War: A Buddhist Perspective

With war and violence flaring  all over the world, many of us are left feeling vulnerable and utterly helpless. In this book Pema Chödrön draws on Buddhist teachings to explore the origins of aggression, hatred, and war, explaining that they lie nowhere but within our own hearts and minds. She goes on to explain that the way in which we as individuals respond to challenges in our everyday lives can either perpetuate a culture of violence or create a new culture of compassion.

“War and peace begin in the hearts of individuals,” declares Pema Chödrön at the opening of this inspiring and accessible book. She goes on to offer practical techniques any of us can use to work for peace in our own lives, at the level of our habits of thought and action. It’s never too late, she tells us, to look within and discover a new way of living and transform not only our personal lives but our whole world.

What We’re Listening to – The Bold.ly NOW Show with Speculative Fiction Writer Cory Doctorow.

Today, most of our content online is derivative of someone else’s work. It’s a remix and rework of anything and everything. It’s all reflective. It’s all copyrighted. Not that the copyrights are being enforced, but it’s still mindboggling how out of date our copyright system is. Cory Doctorow is one of the earliest adopters of the Creative Commons License for his works. He and his science fiction novels play with this emerging era of creative cynicism. Today, Cory gives us a deep insight into this issue and how the ownership of works and ideas is bound to change in the future.

PROOF in ACTION 38 – 11 Steps to Peace in times of War

Our natural reaction to the presence of violence and war is revulsion. We are then either unable to look at the horror or we become entranced by it, unable to look away. War is primal. Live, die, survive, conquer. Most of us will never bear the direct experience of war outside our door. We won’t be held responsible for the things done in war. And for most of us, war is something out there, something that happens to other people.

Unfortunately this is a misperception of what it is to live in this world today. War isn’t out there. It’s the air we breathe. It is the currency of success. It’s in the systems that run our lives, that perpetrate injustice, inequality and racism. It’s in our entertainment, our news and even in our language. And it is certainly in our fears by day and nightmares by night.

What is peace against the background of our culture of war? Resistance is the way to peace. To resist the impulse to win over the other, to benefit at the expense of the other, to get away with taking a larger slice of the pie. Here are some ways you can take action by resisting the temptation of the spoils of war.

To build a culture of peace :

We must grow our capacity to interact, make sense of our times and make collective decisions for the good of all life. Humanities tendency towards solipsism and violence can be overcome with peaceful processes and peaceful consideration of the world.

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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PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

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

The post Stop World War X appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

February 01, 2022

Really? Who are we to say what is right and wrong? Taking a broader approach at the question: Who gets to say what’s right or wrong? A past based answer would be our political, social or religious leaders. They’ve had the authority to make decisions for us and to give us guidelines on how to conduct our lives. Yet over the past decade we have had the covers pulled back to reveal that our leaders are either corrupt, a willing player in the current dysfunctional system, and/or incompetent. The corrupt ones, which may be the majority, manipulate us so that they can maintain their status and power.  They dictate what’s right and wrong to the people and then break any rule that doesn’t personally suit them. Worse yet is the day-to-day lying, gaslighting and psychological warfare that our leaders mistake for leadership.  

How about our business leaders? At one point I had great hope for the business elite to turn their wealth to the public good.  Many took the Giving Pledge to dedicate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes. Most set up foundations and do good projects. Then Covid hit and while the world crumbled the most wealthy doubled their wealth. World Bank figures show that 163 million people fell below the poverty line in the past two years while the richest ten men doubled their wealth to $1.5 trillion. Both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos topped $200 billion of wealth generation. To date, neither one of these men or the other eight on the list have announced a global effort to aid in the climate crisis, the pandemic or the wealth inequality crisis.  

It’s clear that there is no clear moral authority to be found.  

So is morality dead?  Is ethics only something studied in the philosophy departments of the world’s universities? The answer is likely that ethics, like so many of our more noble human values, has been sacrificed to the twin gods of short-termism and unrestrained selfishness. “I want what I want and I want it now.” But that doesn’t mean that ethics is dead, rather it has been driven underground where those who consider the impact of our actions, personally and collectively, grapple to define a modern ethics. Given that so much of what we historically think about right and wrong stems from  the weaponization of ethics by colonialism, monoculturalism and power, it’s hard to declare an ethical framework that works for all – or even most.

In the past few years there has been a lot of conversation and thinking about good sensemaking leading to good choice making. Bold.ly NOW contributor Daniel Schmactenberger has launched a course on the topic with Rebel Wisdom, and a “good sense” publication, the Consilience Project. I highly recommend checking both of these out. His methodological approach to educating on good sense making, paired with the examples of making good sense, are a good place to start when thinking of ethics.  We need to make sense out of what is happening in the world. Then we can determine which things are definitively unethical, i.e. murder, clearcutting, extreme wealth and which things are ethical, i.e. giving/contribution, carbon reduction, tree planting.  From there, we can examine the things between the two extremes and create a framework for understanding.  

Back to the original question, who are we to say? The who right now is very important. It is not ethical for the dominant privileged few to determine the ethics of the many.  If we make space for the voices of diverse individuals, hear their stories and do the hard, thoughtful, long-term work of dismantling the moral dictates of the past, and considering what is good for all, we will make headway on building a new ethics.

Why is this important? To generate a world that works for all, we need new systems for economics, governance and new collective and individual rights and responsibilities. And the only way those systems stand a chance to work, to support thriving for all people, for all species and the entire ecosphere, is if we have an ethical framework that gives us a measure of understanding what works for all.  

Who gets to say? ALL LIFE. Full stop. 

If you are passionate about a thriving future, join us for this very important conversation.

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:

In this issue of PROOF we are looking at Right and Wrong from the lens of generative futurism.  We have a great podcast with Juan Enriquez on his book, Right/Wrong. In his book and our conversation he helps us to see the temporality of ethics and look forward to how our actions may be judged by future generations.  

The aim is to loosen the grasp of those who champion models of fixed ethics.

Fixed models are by nature reductionist, rendering them prone to getting it wrong against the backdrop of systemic complexity. Every choice we make to benefit or fix one problem impacts all of the other problems – sometimes catastrophically. Take the case of the cane toad in Australia. It was introduced to the continent in 1935 to help control beetle grubs that damaged sugar cane crops – good for sugar cane farmers, right? Unfortunately, in Australia, the cane toad has no natural predators or diseases that control their population. The toad dramatically disrupted the ecosystem and pushed out other native species. Australia is now in an ongoing battle to limit their damage to the ecosystem.

In order to deal with complexity we will need to evolve an ethics that considers impacts to all life. We have really tough questions to consider with such an ethics. One case that has gained a lot of attention is the case for stopping petroleum production, “leave it in the ground”. While this is a powerful rallying cry for those fighting climate change, the ethics of such a decision need to be examined. What harm would come from this action? It is clear that the developing economies of the world, who have little or no access to sustainable sources of energy would be the most impacted, with the standard of living returning to pre-industrial levels. The ethical question is how do we transition to sustainable energy globally as quickly as possible. The privileged countries would have to lead by investing 73 trillion dollars (Stanford University) over the next twenty years. The privileged citizens of these countries will have to sacrifice some of their excesses to make this transition.

It’s clear from this example that we must redesign our economic system as it is impossible to untangle the climate crisis form wealth inequality and social justice. It’s the ethical thing to do. The question is, are we as humanity ready to be ethical in this way?

Enjoy this issue as we look at this topic from the theoretical to examples of ethical actions and projects in the world.

Proof 37 – The Ethics of the Future

In the News:

Organizations Generating a Thriving Future: Afrotectopia

Afrotectopia is a social institution creating at the intersections of art, design, technology, Black culture, and activism. They cultivate spaces for Black radical imagination through annual festivals, think tanks, international fellowships, alternative schools, and more. Their work is rooted in collaborative research practices and outputs for Black agency and empowerment.

We are moved by the passion and purpose of Afrotectopia. Check them out at https://www.afrotectopia.org/

What We’re Watching: Future Ethics with Cennydd Bowles

Technology was never neutral; its social, political, and moral impacts have become painfully clear. But the stakes will only get higher as connected cameras will watch over the city, algorithms oversee society’s most critical decisions, and transport, jobs, and even war will become automated. The tech industry hasn’t yet earned the trust that these technologies demand. Drawing on years of research for his new book “Future Ethics”, designer Cennydd Bowles will illuminate the moral challenges that lie ahead for technologists, and discuss how practitioners and companies can create more thoughtful, ethical products for future generations.

What We’re Reading: Right/Wrong

Most people have a strong sense of right and wrong, and they aren’t shy about expressing their opinions. But when we take a polarizing stand on something we regard as an eternal truth, we often forget that ethics evolve over time. Many shifts in the right versus wrong pendulum are driven by advances in technology. Our great-grandparents might be shocked by in vitro fertilization; our great-grandchildren might be shocked by the messiness of pregnancy, childbirth, and unedited genes. In Right/Wrong, Juan Enriquez reflects on what happens to our ethics as technology makes the once unimaginable a commonplace occurrence.

What We’re Listening to – The Bold.ly NOW Show with Bio-Futurist Juan Enriquez

Perhaps the biggest challenge looking forward to the future is to see our future selves. How will we change our biology & genetics? How will we make decisions about what we should alter? It’s important because technology constantly changes our perceptions of right and wrong. So, what are ethics in regards to human life? Why are making strong ethical and moral considerations bad? What are some of the important ethical fights today that will impact the quality of life of our future generations? And what are some of the things we should be doing today to avoid being judged harshly by our future generations? In this episode of the Boldly NOW Show, academic, author, and futurist Juan Enriquez answers all these questions. He gives us new viewpoints and tools to make choices more wisely in the face of the neo-biological revolution.  

PROOF in ACTION 37 – 10 Steps to Being Ethical

There is no civil society without a working set of ethics. Over the past 50 years since the Watergate scandal, we have experienced the decoherence of ethics. It’s not that we don’t personally have ethics, but rather ethics has become politicized and weaponized. Take the case of our former president Trump. He clearly takes unethical actions by almost all ethical standards, but his followers ascribe a higher order of ethics that somehow supersede his individual actions. With this level of decoherence we cannot collectively make good decisions for the future. Thus we must work back towards a coherent ethical framework.

Our challenge is to evolve this ethics of the future while living and acting ethically today. Here are some steps you can take personally to do so.

We can no longer depend on our governments or our leaders to dictate what is right and wrong. Here’s what we need to do instead:

The thriving future is going to be an ethical future. We will not have any kind of desirable future if we cannot collectively be ethical. We all have a role to play in evolving our ethics, in creating the ethics of the future.

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
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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 Ethics of the Future appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

December 17, 2021

We are in the midst of a cultural revolution with people and orgainzations orienting themselves to making a positive impact on the planet. This revolution is being carried out at cyber-speed, leaving some left out if they haven’t discovered their purpose and their massively transformative project. With our desire to make an impact, there is one looming question:

How do I (we) make the greatest impact given our resources and time?

The first part of the answer to this question from the perspective of Generative Futurism is to look at investments that make that pay off over time. In the year 1790, Benjamin Franklin left $2000 sterling to Philadelphia and Boston with the stipulation that after 100 years 75% of the gift could be used to help educate young trades workers. After 200 years the remainder could be withdrawn. In the late 1990’s the value of that gift was $6,500,000. Over the past 130 years many people in these cities have benefited from the education programs provided for by these gifts. Through compound interest over a long time the gift was 3,250 times more valuable not including the value of grants given. Take away, investing in impact that grows over time is incredibly powerful.

The second part of the answer is in the mathematics of generations. Currently there are about 8 billion people on the planet. Those 8 billion will have 8 billion children at a minimum not including population growth. So with every generation of those unborn you have 8 billion more people’s live you can impact. At the 200 year timeframe that Benjamin Franklin chose, you will have 7 generations of descendants with 57 billion lives you can impact. Going out a thousand years you can reach 8 trillion 160 billion people lives. A bit of a mind blowing math here is that at about 900 years you will personally have 1 billion direct descendants. Take away, if you focus your work at long timeframes the mathematics of generations will exponentially amplify your impact.

The most effective way to impact the lives of billions of people is to work at multi-generational timescales.

Combining the two aspects, compounding interest and the mathematics of generations we can get some guidance on what kinds of projects we should focus on or how we might reshape our current projects and businesses to the long term future. This means moving goals beyond the typical 1 to 5 year timeframes to 25 to 100 year timeframes. That might sound daunting to most given the extreme short term thinking we grew up with. In my work with social ventures I’ve discovered that it is far easier to imagine a long time frame than to get short term strategy right. At a long enough term we become free from the current circumstances, and can invent powerful outcomes and solutions. Standing in that future the current steps are much clearer.

This is a competency that we are all building. Climate change alone is forcing this shift to long term thinking. We have to imagine desirable futures to realize them. We call this Future Searching. You can learn more here.

Being a good ancestor includes the question of making the greatest impact but it’s really much more. We need to ask ourselves at every decision point: What would a good ancestor do? or How would a good ancestor do this thing? In return for a life lived as a good ancestor we gain a profoundly fulfilling life, secure in the knowledge that we are leaving this world better than we found it.

Just imagine for a moment – if everyone redefined success to mean being a good ancestor -how then would our world be? I think you know the answer. And just being able conceive of such a future is indeed PROOF of a Thriving Future.

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:

In this issue we explore the idea of being a good ancestor. The modern idea has it’s roots in a quote from polio vaccine developer Jonas Salk,

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.

Jonas Salk

It’s clear that the impact of the polio vaccine with only 140 cases world wide in 2020 down from a high of nearly 58,000 in the US alone. The disease’s crippling effects are no longer a worry for most of us today. Salk, we can say, is a good ancestor. Moreover Salk refused to patent his vaccine or make any money from it, believing that the vaccine should be a gift to all humanity.

In this issue we have contributions from PROOF writers, Samantha Sweetwater and Lucian Tarnowski to help us learn more about good ancestoring. We have a podcast with Adah Parris and her Ted Talk looking at Cyborg Shamanism, her model for being a good ancestor. And we have a book recommendation, “The Good Ancestor”, by Roman Krznaric.

Please enjoy the issue and put the information here to work in your life so that you too are a good ancestor.

What does it mean to be a Good Ancestor?

Samantha Sweetwater

Contributing Writer

December 17, 2021

We think of ancestors as those who have gone before – as the progenitors of the lives we live now. I prefer to think of ancestors in a continuum of time that includes both the past and the future. Because, we live in a continuum of generations. One generation builds on the next and on the next and so-on. In a very real way, we are the ancestors of the future. This is not a romantic notion. It’s a fact. Whether we are conscious of it or not, the lives we are now living are laying down cultural and ecological tracks that will define the lives of future generations. How will future generations look back on us? Will they say we were good? 

When we ask what it means to be a good ancestor, we are asking how to be a person whose ways of knowing and living effectively participate in creating a future that could be called good by those looking back from that future. We are asking how to be the kind of person that future generations will smile back at with gratitude for the wisdom of our choices. We are asking to resuscitate qualities of intergenerational, ecological and mythic memory that have been buried in the forgetfulness of colonization, slavery, genocide, emmigration, assimilation and appropriation. And, we are asking how to effectively manage our humanness in relationship to each other, technology and nature. 

The question asks us to reverse engineer life-centric worldviews that were and are embedded in all Original Cultures. What are the fundaments of a culture that can sustain harmonious reciprocity and complementarity within a human community and between humans and nature over an arc of 7, 20 or even hundreds of generations? 

And, now that we live in a transglobal, technological civilization, our map must  integrate capacity to steward not just the human relationship with nature, but the human-managed relationship between technology and our biosphere in ways that supports the perpetuation and wellbeing of humans and nature, for the very existence of future human generations lies in the balance. 

Additionally, being a good ancestor implies the capacity to navigate discontinuity. Since discontinuities are inevitable, a good ancestor must carry with them the stories and seeds that can reboot culture when things go dark. 

Let’s imagine ourselves as good ancestors. 

To be a “good ancestor” is a sort of meta-purpose. We don’t wake up one morning saying, “I want to be a good ancestor.” We wake slowly to the implications of our actions and to the immense, transpersonal project of sublimating personal choices, actions and desires in service to a project that transcends one’s own lifetime. We wake to the vacuity of living only for the benefit “I, me and mine.” Instead, we learn to contain both Me and We in the sense of self. We find deeper pleasure and meaning in tending the both-and through our choices and narratives. 

To be a good ancestor means holding the wellbeing of future generations as an ongoing, living question. What is for the greater good? What do I need to let go of or restrain in order to create greater potential harmony? What do I need to create to guarantee greater possibility for others? What stories help empower and inspire participation, co-creation, gratitude, magic, belonging and safety? What pathways restore the experience of the sacred connection with the natural world?

A good ancestor remembers her or his place in the Circle of Life. Humans are part of a Circle and members of a Web, not the top of any pyramid. As members of that Circle, our ecological role is to tend the harmony and abundance of the ecologies we occupy – not just for ourselves but for all species. It is the role of those at the top of the Trophic Cascade. We embrace that leonine role, and we re-cognize our organismic and spiritual membership in the Web. We know our interdependence and interbeing with all other beings. Our practices and storeis are oriented to expand our experience of Communion with nature and the cosmos. We exist in a continuum of living memory. We come from all bloodlines. We remember that we were once Indigenous People, and we know that we are indigenous to this one planet. 

A good ancestor plays to perpetuate the Infinite Game. We are actively engaged in a shift from finite, zero-sum game dynamics to infinite game playing. We understand that the collective project playing to win zero sum games always ends in all-lose. So, we seek to live from generosity and to enact systems change towards win-win game dynamics. 

A good ancestor seeks to align technology with nature’s logic. The word I use to describe this is bionoetic: of the mind of nature. We understand that technology itself is neutral. We build technologies that support good sense-making and democratic process and restore human attention to real relationships with other humans and nature. We work to restrain technologies that extract attention and vitality from life. We use technology to restore and regenerate living systems and human consciousness. 

A good ancestor understands that all life is dependent on place. Food, water, shelter, power – all the atoms that make up our bodies – come from place. We are grounded in place-based consciousness. We tend our local home ecologies, our watersheds, and our planet as homes. We are aware of the chains of causality that bring us our water, our food, our building supplies, our clothes, our technologies and our power. We work to engage right-relationship and reciprocity with all aspects of the supply chain from cradle to grave. We work to heal multi-generational histories of trauma in relationship to land, place and culture. 

A good ancestor works collaboratively with all that wishes humans well to bring health, happiness, peace and abundance to all beings. We work not just human beings but the more-than-human animals, plants and forces of nature that co-inhabit this earth. We think of medicine as that which restores and increases harmony and health in individuals and communities. We work with sacred plant medicines as allies to heal and elevate human souls and bodies.

Our lives are grounded in daily, seasonal, cyclical and stage-based practices that allow for circulation of human consciousness with the rest of Creation. We dance, we meditate, we make music, we pray, we build things of beauty, we plant and harvest. We welcome the souls of children at conception and birth. We initiate our youth into adulthood through rites of passage. We initiate our elders as trusted wisdom keepers. And we hold death as a sacred passage into deathlessness. 

We love and embrace death. Death and life are one Circle. A good ancestor welcomes death as our great teacher in the fullness of the Circle of life and death and the wisdom of death’s gate to the deathless as a foundation to living in balance. 

A good ancestor stitches stories of the past and the future in a vital fabric of gratitude, praise, celebration and wisdom that applies to present-tense choices. We welcome grief as praise for what we loose and grieve boldly to release the manna of what was for future generations. Above all, a good ancestor loves strong and bold and true, unashamed to stand for what is true.

If you have asked this question with me, I thank you.

You are a part of a Great Remembering that is beginning to happen all over the planet – an organismic and soul remembering that I believe to be a natural re-knowing of our true nature as Humans.

We are all indigenous to this planet. We are beginning to remember that we are Creator Beings nested within a larger organismic intelligence of the Creator Being called Gaia and that by re-learning how to harmonize with Her intelligence over the arc of many generations we will find our way Home to ourselves.

From Family Karma to Planetary Dharma

Lucian Tarnowski

Contributing Writer

December 17, 2021

Family Karma is a reaction from your past. Planetary Dharma is taking action on your purpose.

Back in 2019 at the Family Office Association annual gathering I gave a talk titled ‘From Family Karma to Planetary Dharma’. I shared a story of when I had knelt at the feet of Native American Chief White Eagle in Burning Man in 2017. I learnt that he was the descendant of Crazy Horse and Raging Bull, two bright lights of history. We walked together and stood side by side singing as the sun rose before us. As we began to be bathed in golden sunlight I turned to Chief White Eagle, looked deep into his eyes and got down on my knees on the playa. I said to him ‘I am Lucian Tarnowski. Son of Count Arthur Tarnowski and Bridget Astor and Seventh Generation Grandson of John Jacob Astor. The man who became the richest man in America by profiting off the backs of your ancestors. I kneel before you, on my own and my ancestors’ behalf, and ask for your forgiveness for the sins of my ancestors towards yours.” I looked into Chief White Eagle’s eyes as tears rolled down his face. Both of us felt the world around us shaking. It was as if healing energy was being sent through time and space. He looked at me with that of a loving gaze of a father and said “You are forgiven. I love you”.

I share this story with the belief that when we take the inner journey into the impact of our families actions we can access a redemption story for ourselves and our families. We are not responsible for the choices and impact of our ancestors. However, we can take response-ability – taking up our ability to respond. It is in acts such as this that I believe we can transmute our family karma and dedicate our lives to our dharma – our deepest purpose, virtue and righteousness – Our Soul Purpose.

I invite you to consider the premise that the actions of our ancestors are interdependent with our actions. What if there are stories being played through families generation after generation? Perhaps our own individual Soul Purpose is closely tied to the completion of our families purpose in ways that can go beyond our own capacity of awareness.
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Connection to our ancestors is a universal language in every indigenous tradition. They each hold a ritualized reverence for their ancestors. However, this practice is largely forgotten in mainstream modern society. I understand there to be deep collective trauma caused by the actions of our own and our collective ancestors. This is an understandable response to the reality that many of our ancestors created destruction. Despite this, I am going to make the case in this article that our connection to our ancestors is a key element in transitioning from a polarized world in the midst of a meta-crisis of meaning into a planetary civilization in harmony with all life. In this moment of crisis many of us are doing work to heal our past in order to give the greatest potentiality to a thriving future.

Our world is lost in left/right identity politics. Othering is rife. Some believe a path through this rift in society lies in finding common ground in the center and making compromises. I believe another dimension is essential. To go backwards and forwards through time. What if we were able to transition through the troubles of our present moment by listening to the wisdom of our individual and collective ancestry. What if by listening to the language of our ancestors as if dancing to an intergenerational melody, we were able to more accurately plot a path towards our thriving future. What if the technology to be able to actively receive the wisdom of our ancestors was the reverse gear of the capacity to communicate with our future selves. Potent wisdom can be found in the healing of intergenerational traumas. This gives us the confidence to know the ground upon which we stand. Learning to communicate with our ancestors may enable us to communicate with the future. We are them, then, now.

Einstein said ‘we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them’. I believe he was describing the dimensional perspective of time in this statement. If we take time into our perspective toolkit we are able to consider problems not only from the present moment but through the timeless perspective of our ancestors – both individual and collective. In the very act of going backwards, we discover new ways to go forwards into the best possible vision of our future.

My personal enquiry into the nature of reality often leads me back to my ancestors and forwards to my future self. I believe our connection to our ancestors is a powerful spiritual technology – a language if you like. The more one can understand and invoke our ancestors in our presence the deeper one can tap into their wisdom and healing. Our intuition is the communication channel for this wisdom and healing. I believe our intuition is a timeless instinct.

Among the many ways I am fortunate, one is in the memories I have of my ancestors. I descend from over 700 documented years of Polish nobility on my father’s side. My paternal families include the Tarnowski, Potocki and Zamoyski families. My grandparents are known 28 generations back to 1290. Many were military and academic leaders and close advisors to Kings. Many of my grandfathers led some of the most famous battles in European history such as the Siege of Vienna. On my mother’s side, I am the Great-Grandson of Field Marshal Earl Haig, Commander in Chief of the British Forces during the First World War. Given a million men died under his command I have reflected deeply on the concept of family karma. I am also the Seventh-Generation Grandson of John Jacob Astor, America’s first millionaire. John Jacob Astor amassed a fortune through the American Fur Trade and real estate investments in New York which gave the springboard for Astors to become the wealthiest family in the world. My mother grew up in Hever Castle, the childhood home of Queen Anne Boleyn, while my Grandfather was the owner and Chairman of the Times of London. My ancestry shaped the world I was born into and instilled in me the meaning of nobility – how one shows up in the time of a crisis. My father once said to me that what makes a Tarnowski is when others run away from a fire we run towards it. This was demonstrated by the bravery shown by my grandmother, Wanda Zamoyska, protecting Jews in Poland as well as my fathers service in the underground army during the Second World War.

I am on my own journey towards transmuting my family karma in my devotion to the vision of a United Planet and the UP Game to accelerate a thriving civilization in harmony with all life. I see my dharma as a storyteller and ambassador to the planetary regenaissance. I focus on creating a unifying narrative for our shared future as I believe the story is the front line of transformation.

We all have a unique role to play and our role might well be informed by the actions of our families past.

This perspective has been prophesied in various indigenous and especially Native American traditions. A good example is Black Elk’s prophecy of the Hoop of All Hoops – A vision for the uniting of the planet.

In one of the early UP Game experiments, Chief Phil Lane and I came together to prototype a concept we called the Intergenerational Leadership Alliance. The goal was and will be to convene hereditary indigenous leaders from around the world and the descendants of some of the most powerful families in the world. I believe many of the families that created great wealth from the extractive system of capitalism will play a crucial role in transforming industries into a regenerative win for all system. In fact, the largest wealth transfer in history represented by more than $60 trillion is moving from one generation to the next by 2052 and 70% of this inheritance is going to women. The vast majority wish to differentiate from the investing practices of the past and only focus their investments of this capital on impact. I see this community of wealth holders as critical to funding transition solutions.

The meme of ‘From Family Karma, to Planetary Dharma’ is an iconic story for the regenaissance. It is for this reason that I am passionate about the emergence of a decentralized Planetary Bank that can move the trillions necessary to fund the new world collective and give birth to a planetary civilization in harmony with all life. As the existing extractive financial system comes to its inevitable end this decade it will become obvious that instead of the pitchforks coming, the better story will be that the key holders of planetary dharma are taking response-ability. This will become the story of the transition from billionaires to billions of heirs. This could be a line in the redemption song in the story of the new world collective.

Proof 36 – The Good Ancestor

In the News:

Organizations Generating a Thriving Future: The Long Now Foundation

The long now foundation’s mission is to encourage the imagination at the timescale of civilisation — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan called the long now. The foundation, established in 1996, seeks to start and promote a long-term cultural institution. It aims to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today’s “faster/cheaper” mindset and to promote “slower/better” thinking. The Long Now Foundation hopes to “creatively foster responsibility” in the framework of the next 10,000 years.

The foundation has several ongoing projects, including a 10,000-year clock known as the Clock of the Long Now, the Rosetta Project, the Long Bet Project, the open source Timeline Tool (also known as Longviewer), the Long Server and an ongoing talk series.

The Long Now Foundation has established an approach to define and promote longterm thinking that PROOF is a direct beneficiary, a descendant if you will.

What We’re Watching: TEDx Amsterdam, Adah Parris

To date, most of the development of and investment into scaled technology, especially digital technology, has been for and by the WEIRD (western educated industrialized, rich and democratic). Cyborg Shamanism is a way to empathetically subvert that status quo. Cyborg Shamanism is a philosophy designed to spark a global movement that examines what could happen to innovation if we combine ‘other ways of knowing’ in the design of new technologies. Cyborg Shamanism, words that reach into our deep past and deep future.

What We’re Reading: The Good Ancestor

In The Good Ancestor, leading public philosopher Roman Krznaric delves into history and the human mind to show that we can be good ancestors. From the pyramids to the NHS, humankind has always had the innate ability to plan for posterity and take action that will resonate for decades, centuries, even millennia to come. If we want to be good ancestors and be remembered well by the generations who follow us, now is the time to recover and enrich this imaginative skill.

In The Good Ancestor, Krznaric reveals six practical ways we can retrain our brains to think of the long view, including Deep-Time Humility (recognizing our lives as a cosmic eyeblink) and Cathedral Thinking (starting projects that will take more than one lifetime to complete). His aim is to inspire more “time rebels” like Greta Thunberg—to shift our allegiance from this generation to all humanity—in short, to save our planet and our future.

What We’re Listening to – The Bold.ly NOW Show with Futurist Adah Parris

How do we learn lessons from the past? How can we leave behind our global problems and create a new era for humanity? What are the technologies and behaviors we need to adapt to make sustainable change, and how do we bring all that back to the people who can take action to change the world? These are the questions polymath tech futurist Adah Parris has been grappling with in the face of the challenges we have today. In this episode of the Boldly NOW show, Adah shines a light on these questions and gives us ways to recognize new patterns that can lead to a better future.

PROOF in ACTION 36

Being a Good Ancestor should by now seem like a good idea. The question you might be asking right now is, how do I do that? Here are some practical steps you can take to start being a good ancestor today.

Beyond the practical there are some shifts in your thinking and being that will orient you towards being a good ancestor.

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.

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PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

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Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

April 6, 2021

Why Are We So Angry?

You are one of the first generations of the hyper-media age, an age where every second of the day some story is coming at you from all corners of the globe. Some as short as a tweet and others long reads, streaming series and documentary films. Content of every kind from every angle is available to you. Strangely enough you aren’t likely to see much more than a small slice of what’s out there, thanks to the algorithms serving you up the things that you tend to pay attention to most.

And what is most likely to get our attention – OUTRAGE!  

Can you believe what “they” have done now? Outrage has replaced fear as the go to button to push in the attention economy. And we all fall for it from time to time. 

But if you are paying attention, it’s clear that you are being manipulated.  My question is: to what end? To be more compliant? To “raise arms” and fight? Or perhaps more cynically, to have you stick around and get our advertisers to give us more dollars?  

The cost has been civility, civil discourse, political progress (right or left), and the ability for us, day-to-day, to make sense of the world. When a writer aims to manipulate, facts are cherry picked or manufactured to match his or her point of view. These “facts” end up in the spin cycle and build credibility by repetition. Unfortunately, the facts that are at the extremes of a view, the ones that are least likely to be accurate or truthful get the most attention. Middle of the road facts with lots of consensus usually don’t cause outrage and thus aren’t very useful for manipulation. 

With all of this noise we can no longer make sense of the world. If you can’t make sense of the world, you can’t make good choices about life, community, or governance.  

The good news is that there are a number of projects launching now that aim to make good sense. Our colleagues at the Consilience Project are one example.  They aim to catalyze a movement towards better sense making. And they have an amazing team working to analyze information for veracity and accuracy.

We at PROOF are working to bring you specific news about the viable future.  Our angle is to report on promising projects, movements, technologies, future visions and leading edge thinkers who are pointing the way to a thriving future.

Why do we do this?

Because we want to inspire and support YOU to take Bold Action to build a world that works for all.

That is what Bold.ly NOW is all about.  Please join us and let’s rock a thriving future!

Proof of a Thriving Future for Humanity

In the News:

Organizations Generating a Thriving Future:

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

You have seen the Sea Shepherd in action if you have watched the new thrilling and controversial documentary – Seaspiracy. The crew members are brave and selfless and are willing to stand in the face of adversity, in order to protect and save the marine animals that are so precious to all of us and the planet.  

Their goal is the detection and capture of criminal enterprises that are in operation to engage in illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing operations.

What We’re Watching : The Lorax

A 25 minute conservation classic from 1972 by Dr. Seuss. The prose and animation are whimsical but the message is serious: We must protect our environment against the effects of mindless consumerism.

The mustachioed Lorax battle’s to save his ecosystem from the Once-ler’s exploitation teaches us that, “unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not.”

What We’re Reading – The Four Agreements

The book is marketed as ‘a practical guide to personal freedom,’ but it can also be used to solve a problem, listen to criticism, give constructive feedback, or resolve a conflict. The four agreements–don’t gossip, don’t take things personally, don’t make assumptions, and do your best.

What We’re Listening to – What Does It Mean to Be a Generative Futurist with Pablo Jenkins

We speak about and think about the future – a lot! Most of how we talk about the future is based on the past. But what does it take to generate a new future? Join us to explore what it takes to be a generative futurist and bring about futures that are beyond what is predictable; futures that bring about a thriving future for humanity and thriving lives for ourselves.

Please Join US – Generative Futures 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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PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

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

The post Out with Outrage appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

March 18, 2021

Yesterday, on our Bold.ly NOW Youtube Channel we got a comment on a recent podcast we did with Lucian Tarnowski: “Globalist, hard pass”. The finality and brevity of the comment is priceless, as is how completely the commenter missed the point of the conversation. My guess is that he didn’t watch much, if any of the interview.  Maybe the title might have triggered him: BN 24 | Lucian Tarnowski: Creating Planetary Embassies.

The globalization movement that swept the world in the 90’s, stood for reducing government barriers to international trade. This in turn has created an environment where some multinational corporations are essentially above the law and beyond taxation.  In response, an anti-globalization movement has emerged with a focus on how the maximization of profit without sufficient government oversight can come at the cost of labor and environmental protections and exacerbate wealth inequality.  It’s clear that capitalism requires good governance to not damage the commons.

This opens up the big question, when it comes to generating a thriving future for humanity, where then should we stand in terms of globalization? I’ll give you a short three part answer. 

1. We live in the global era.  In the past, nations could govern their citizens and businesses completely inside of a closed system. They created laws so that trade, contracts and capital could be monitored and controlled. With the birth of the digital age, national borders have become completely porous to communication, flow of capital and jurisdiction arbitrage, taking advantage of laws in one country to avoid governance in another. The genie is out of the bottle, we live in a post-nation world and economy.
   
2. We must govern the commons. Only with a global framework can we protect the commons: air, water, land and resources.  We must also protect humans from slavery, and oppression and provide them access to clean air, water, food, healthcare, shelter and dignified work.  We believe that a thriving future depends on these universal protections.  
   
3. Hyper-locatization creates good governance and resiliency. For all other governance outside of the commons, the best decisions for people and planet are most often created by the people who are closest to the impact of the those decisions. We believe in decentralized decision making based upon hyper-localities.

What this looks like is the end of corporate globalization and nations, replaced by ever-adapting, ever-innovating and ever-remixing mesh of hyper-local groups or organizations handling our day to day strategy, governance and economic frameworks, operating inside of a protected commons.  

Finally, back to Lucian. If you listen to the episode you will see that he is working on hyper-local solutions for the most pressing issues facing Ibiza, his home. He is also passionate about having a conversation about how to tap into global resources and creativity to support this hyper-local work.  And ultimately create centers – embassies – around the world for creative thinking to solve the world’s hard problems. 

Globalist? No. Globally minded? Yes. If you’re interested check out the episode for yourself.

Are you ready to work at both the global and hyper-local levels to reinvent our world?

We are!  Join Us!

Proof of a Thriving Future for Humanity

In the News:

Organizations Generating a Thriving Future:

Just Dig It

Justdiggit makes dry land green again by inspiring and activating farmers in Africa to regreen degraded land via low-cost, scalable landscape restoration techniques. Their solution of digging trenches which collect rainfall has already resulted in billions of litres of water and helped regreen 60,000 hectares across two countries.

Regreen Revolution Mindset: “By greening up and capturing carbon we can contribute to cooling down the atmosphere. The goal: capture 20 billions tons of carbon by 2050”

What We’re Watching : Understory

“There is a catastrophe looming in SE Alaska put into motion by the Trump Administration when it removed the Roadless Rule, which protected 9 million acres of Alaska wilderness, much of it richly clothed in epic old growth forests.

Permanent protection is needed. People in Washington State are always asking themselves “what kind of extravagant paradise must this place have been before we cut down all the trees” and the answer is “The Tongass National Forest.” Believe it or not, the 300 feet tall temperate rainforests in SE Alaska teeming with grizzlies are virtually the same ones that once blanketed WA, OR, and BC.

And, yes, we have actually cut down 98% or more of the trees on the American and Canadian coasts south of Alaska, many of them with ages up to a 1,500 years or more.  The old growth rainforests are now so rare in WA and OR that most residents have never actually been in one.

But Alaska is next, sadly.” Protect the Tongass permanently by Act of Congress; it’s all we (residents of planet earth) have left.

What We’re Reading – The New Possible

The New Possible offers twenty-eight unique visions of what can be if instead of choosing to go back to normal, we choose to go forward to something far better.

Assembled from global leaders on six continents, these essays are not simply speculation. They are an inspiration and a roadmap for action.

What We’re Listening to – BN24 |Creating Planetary Embassies with Lucian Tarnowski

Lucian Tarnowski describes his vision of prototyping planetary embassies to rise to meet the challenge on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Lucian describes the specific action-based solutions being exercised in Ibiza to create regenerative, sustainable changes to food-growing, health and well-being and more all through exercising the collective intelligence for the benefit of the collective.

Please Join US – Generative Futures 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!

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

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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.life

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