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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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

July 4th, 2023

We are in the midst of a self discovery revolution driven by the confluence of precision definitions for neurodiversity, gender, sexual preference, race, genetic ancestry and epigenetic triggers with the keen awareness that seems to be ubiquitous for Gen Z. They have been bravely adopting new ways to self identify and bringing us all along for the ride — although there are more than a few who are going kicking and screaming.

Here at PROOF we believe in the dictum, “Know Thyself” that is carved above the entrance to the Apollo temple in Delphi. Know thyself as an absolute, as in: What I am made of? What am I like in different situations? And what can I be in the future? In this day and age that includes our bodies, our brains and our mental and emotional states. Even if that is confusing to you dear reader, it is a good thing that we know. From knowing comes growth and eventually evolution.

In terms of neurodivergence this dawning has been growing over the past 40 years. We have learned about the numerous types of dyslexia; phonological, visual, rapid automatic naming, double deficit, auditory processing disorder, and my brand — dysgraphia. Yes I am dyslexic, I can’t spell and can’t tell if words are missing in phrases.

When I was young we were “hyperactive” if we couldn’t pay attention (there is so much wrong with that phrase). Then in high school we moved up to ADD. And then eventually today’s ADHD. The spectrum of ADHD includes, inattentive, hyperactive-impulsive and combined — and ways that our brain process that have nothing to do with attention or hyperactivity, time blindness, hyperfocus, special interests and fixations. It turns out that although I remain undiagnosed that I am not inattentive, and am no longer hyperactive-impulsive. Looking back, it would have been so much easier on me, my teachers and my parents, especially in parent teacher conferences if everyone had had these distinctions.

Over the past 10 years we have seen a parallel deepening of the understanding of autism. The old Rain-Man stereotype of autism is a crude and unfair depiction of the uniqueness of each autistic brain. There are few models that help us understand the spectrum from Autism Spectrum Disorder. These models track between 5 and 12 areas. A simple one includes a measure of: executive function, sensory processing, repetitive behaviours, motor skills, perseverative thinking, social awareness, verbal & nonverbal communication and information processing.

The image doesn’t come with a guide to the experience of a divergent measure in any one of these areas. What is very important to know is that divergence in any one area means that normal everyday interactions are vastly more taxing on the ASD individual. Looking over these myself, I can clearly see areas where I am likely on the spectrum. In the coming months I am going to have a diagnostic evaluation done on ADHD and ASD to discover and learn more about how my brain functions. When I know more I’ll let you know.

At 57, you might wonder what good it would do to have this kind of diagnosis. Afterall I am a generative futurist, a highly successful entrepreneur, award winning film director and editor, a philosopher and a spiritual teacher — doesn’t that mean that even if I have these things it doesn’t matter. Ironically it may actually be that I have these things that I am successful the exact way that I am. Under the curtain of this success you will find that I didn’t do any of it conventionally. Without knowing exactly what we were doing, my wife and I built a life that works with neurodivergence. I always joked that it was a good thing I was an entrepreneur because I was basically unhirable by a corporation.

Ultimately I am doing the diagnosis so I can better know myself. And so my children can understand their genetic inheritance from my strange brain.

One thing is true about my life. I am fulfilled and happy with my life. I love the crazy directions it has turned and I am excited by my future. While this is affected by my neurodivergence, it is not the whole story. Our brains and our identity are not fixed. My ADHD symptoms started fading once I started meditation and martial arts. My social discomfort and awkwardness shifted when I started to see every social interaction as an opportunity to practice my purpose.

My purpose is to illuminate this human life, giving insights into our true nature, teaching people to freely give their gifts to bring about a thriving future for humanity.

My hyperfixation is now targeted at easing suffering and restoring joy to the center of people’s lives. I’ve put all of these divergent qualities, ones that have caused me pain in the past, to good use for good causes and that has made all of the difference. Yes I suffer just like everyone. I am confused from time to time, but the illumination of my own life and journey puts something wonderful in the center of any discomfort I may be asked to endure.

Getting really practical now, I want you to know how important it is to know yourself. To explore all of your parts and patterns. To understand the instrument that your brain and body are. To see your physical gifts and your limitations.

Then and only then can you truly begin to stretch your wings and learn to fly the self you inherited. You can optimize your life for your strengths and find work-arounds for things that don’t work so well. You can build a life for yourself that works. I know that it may seem hard at times but the edges do wear off and like the stone in the river you soften, round and polish.

Then once you have built a comfortable life you can consciously disrupt it and dare to create a new life for yourself. If you have great fortune, perseverance and heart you can begin to live life as a work of art, a dance in flow, a river rather than a stone. Your identity then softens and wears away like an old sweater, threadbare yet still loved. This I hope for you and I know you have it in you.

We are all different, gradations across many spectrums — no two alike.

We all suffer and have long dark nights of the soul.

There is also love, joy and being moved for no apparent reason.

When you walk through life, please know that for all your uniqueness, for all of your typical traits and your divergent traits, for all of your scars and your laurels, we are all human, worthy of love, compassion and all deserve a chance to have fulfillment and happiness in this life. This is a vision of what we can see when we come to know ourselves and come to know one another. Won’t you please imagine that with me.

And later today when you are feeling that you are not enough, wrap your own wings around yourself and say, “You belong. You are loved. You are love.” Or you see someone struggling, even if you don’t understand, why or what their experience in life is, please wrap your wings around them and say,

“You belong. You are loved. You are love.”

This one is dedicated to all my weird friends.

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 54 – The Incredible Kaleidoscopic Mind, Adventures in Neurodiversity

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

-The Bold.ly Now Team

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

Follow us

• Facebook
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• Instagram
• YouTube

PROOF is a Generative Futures Initiative Project

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

The post The Incredible Kaleidoscopic Mind, Adventures in Neurodiversity appeared first on PROOFZINE.

Michael Shaun Conaway

Publishing Editor

June 28th, 2023

Virtue means doing the right thing, in relation to the right person, at the right time, to the right extent, in the right manner, and for the right purpose. — Aristotle

The sky is sunny and blue today where I live in Haarlem. Yesterday we got our first good rainstorm in the past six weeks. That’s very unusual for the Netherlands which is known for frequent rain, cool weather and overcast days. Evidently western Europe has already reached 2.3 degrees of warming. Yesterday in San Angelo, Texas it was 117F/47.5 C. The predictions are that Texas will have the warmest summer ever, like most of the states. And, maybe as to be expected, the Himalayan glaciers have accelerated their rate of melting, reported yesterday. At the same time the world is struggling to make the kind of changes necessary to stop the warming or even limit it. We talk of renewables replacing oil but my grocery store is filled with single use plastic wrapping on everything. Are things really better in plastic?

Our world is changing and it’s not for the better for us humans.

Most of us are unnerved by these challenging weather conditions. While it’s all in our hands, the way the world goes, it’s not really in my hands — as in, I am not the ruler of the world. So what do I do? Certainly do the small things that help, reduce, reuse and recycle, drive less, consume less. Most of us can do that but how do we deal with the larger issues of our responsibility of what kind of world are we leaving to our children and children’s children?

Philosophy is the science of asking the question, what is a good life? Aristotle is the originator of what is known as virtue ethics. His idea was that our character is what determines whether or not we are virtuous. Our character is built up of character traits that have to be balanced to have a eudaimonic (flourishing) life. Courage is good. Too much courage is reckless. Too little courage is cowardice. Aristotle believed that we could do the right thing if we possessed the character traits. Having the traits meant doing the right thing, so we could build those traits by our actions, our practice of being virtuous.

Emanuel Kant prescribed deontological (duties and rules) ethics that show up in the Victorian Era and continue in socially conservative culture where there are clear rules about what is right and wrong. In this ethics the duties and rules are more important than the outcomes. Kant believed that we could use reason to come to the morally correct action in any given situation. I’m guessing he was never cut off by an enormous SUV whose driver was texting rather than watching the road.

Joseph Fletcher proposed that our ethics are actually based upon the situation we find ourselves in. John Doris went on to develop Situational Ethics as a way to better describe human behaviour. He argues that any character traits that we have are based upon our local environment and situations that come up again and again, thus it seems that we have character traits when really we are a product of our environment and the specific situation we are in. Two social psychologists, Bibb Latané and John Darley, conducted an experiment where they simulated a person in distress to see if bystanders would help the person. If there were one or few bystanders they would render aid. But as the number of bystanders grew, at a certain point, no one rendered aid. It turns out the more people you have the less likely one person will take action. This is now known as the bystander effect. Latané and Darley followed this up with an experiment where students were told they were participating in a religious studies experiment and that they had to prepare a talk about the good samaritan. To give the talk they had to walk to another building where a person in distress was staged. They added a variable of telling some participants that they had to hurry to be on time for the speech. 63% of those with a low hurry condition helped the person, while only 10% of those with the high hurry condition stopped to give aid.

This certainly is good evidence that our situation or circumstances have a big effect on our ability to make ethical choices. It is important to note that even in the hurry group 10% did stop. What made them do that? It seems unlikely that Kant’s deontology (duties and rules) was on people’s minds. And if they were reasoning about the situation they might likely determine that their personal urgency was more important, considering that someone else would likely render aid. It seems to me Aristotle’s virtues ethics would better account for those who did render aid. Those who are likely to render aid, render aid regardless of the circumstances.

Thank you for sticking with me for the short ethics lesson.

Now what do Aristotle, Kant and Doris have to say about the weather?

We all have our lives to live, including all of our daily responsibilities to family, job, community etc. We are living in the busiest time ever with our 24/7 work from anywhere connectivity. When it comes to the environment, pollution and the climate crisis we are like the good samaritan test subjects, likely to walk by and assume that someone else will give aid. But this is clearly not the ethical thing to do. Ethically we must do whatever we can to avert the harm being done today and to future generations.

How do we improve upon the 10% who stop and help?

I believe that both Aristotle and Kant’s ethics can help. If we can practice virtuous behavior then we develop character traits that lead to virtuous behavior. In this case we must consider the most ethical choices we can make in regards to the environment, pollution and the climate crisis and we make it a daily practice to make ethical choices. Then when we are confronted by a situation where we may be tempted to push off the ethical choice, we are more likely, by habit, to be ethical.

Finally I do believe that we can begin to apply Kantian Ethics to examine our duty to our environment and to future generations and begin to make some rules that insure that our current generation doesn’t bring about the end of human civilization, as we know it on the Earth. We must select government representatives who will govern for the people rather than for the special interests that drive much of our policy making.

This week the Swiss people approved a net-zero climate law, adopting rules that will require climate ethical behaviour from Swiss corporations and businesses that operate in Switzerland. At the same time the people approved a minimum 15% corporate tax rate, adopting a global initiative to hold our multinational corporations accountable to paying taxes.

Our future depends on our ability to take a long and wide view of what is best for our human global civilization. Long in time, we should be planning 100 years out for the benefit of our descendants who will literally inherit the world that we leave to them. Wide in including all of humanity in our considerations. For too long the prosperous northern countries have stacked the deck in their favour. We citizens of these countries have been too prideful of the quality of our societies and the quality of our own lives. We now know that much of that prosperity has come at the expense of the global south and predominantly the world’s poorest people.

It turns out that we have a lot to do to become ethical. You and I are the place to start, as the decisions we make individually and collectively will shape life on this planet for the next 100 generations. This is a wonderful responsibility which makes our lives meaningful.

The generations alive on Earth today will be remembered…

…for all of the great, ethical decisions we made.

I believe that is what is possible for us all.

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

The Generative Futurist
Editor PROOF

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Proof 53 – The Good Life Blueprint: Unraveling Virtue, Value, and Vision for a Better World

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