Thrivability Salon

Thrivability: Introduction aka Crisis and catastrophe, oh my!

Context

This Thrivability Salon covers most of our core concepts and serves as a foundation for Thrivable Society.

  • Session 1: Thrivability or Crisis and Catastrophe, oh my!

  • Session 2: Dealing with Irrational Humans that Care

  • Session 3: Steering for Thrivability

  • Session 4: Thrivable Governance and Production at Scale

Other Salons will target specific inquiries. For example:

  • Distributed Governance of Social Organisms

(Opening screen is a pendulum with a hypnotic spiral going behind it with meditation music playing)

The opening hypnotic slide was what I discovered when searching for an image to go with the pendulum swings and upward spirals that I had in mind to talk about today. Instead, I hope you are hypnotized and receptive to suggestion: you are now infected with pragmatic hope.

What is our narrative about the world and humans?

I tend toward a philosophical lens with an interest in human behavior. One powerful way our humanness shows up is through narrative. We are stories. What story are we living into? Fear and Shame? Hope and Gratitude?

  • Fear v Hope?

  • Shame or Gratitude?

I can’t see Fear without thinking of the quote from Dune: say it with me if you know it too.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

We might also say

“I must not shame. Shame is the heart-killer. Shame is the little-death that brings total exile. I will face my shame. I will permit it to pass over me and through me as guilt. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner heart to see its path. Where the shame has gone there will be a lighted way for redemption. Only we can heal harm.

Don’t be contraction. Be expansive, take a deep breath, and be the embodiment of hope and gratitude. Steward life.

Naughty humans did bad things. They/we are bad people and should suffer and repent. Heaven comes for repentant sinners.

Or

Life is a miracle. Humans are part of the web of life and have the honorable role of stewards of life. We have been gifted with much abundance and have responsibility to steward life well. 

Nods to Braiding Sweetgrass and indigenous cultures around the world…

Choose Thrivability

In this Session we will cover:

  • Seeing Ourselves
  • Big Paradigm Patterns
  • Emergent Now

Thrivability: Dealing with Irrational Humans that Care

Session 2: Irrational Humans Care

  • Hands to Heads and Hearts

  • Going Internal and the Intersubjective

  • Tricksters and Paradox

  • Homo Irrationalis

  • Choice Architecture

Narrative Shift

  • Homo Economicus

    • Humans are rational self-interested creatures (yearning for freedom and independence)

  • Irrational People that Care

    • Humans are strange social creatures: fallible, biased, and even gullible. Cooperation is a biological directive for survival.

Thrivability: Steering for Thrivability

Core Concepts for Navigating Complexity

Symmathesy

  • Nora Bateson

  • living systems are learning systems

    • A system results from relationships. If not enough relational data not a robust enough system. Warm data.

  • Are we creating support structures, such as AI that allow for learning?

    • For example, DAO innovations are focused on fixed code. How to evolve into living contracts?

Antifragile

Hydra FTW

  • Indoor plants need wind. Otherwise their stalks can be weak and gangly. If you start seeds indoors, blow on them…perturb them.

  • Striving for a way to “build back better”

  • Symmathesy: learn from disorder and perturbation

  • Feedback and feed forward

Spectrums

  • Beyond Dualism

    • false certainty

    • no box thinking

  • Dimensions and gradients of possibility
    axis: X, Y, Z….

Carrying Capacity

  • A spectrum with thresholds

  • Covid CC

    • ICU

    • hospital beds

Inverse and Shadows

  • Inverse

    • Super exciting growth chart hides the consumption of resource and personnel

    • Externalities and other ways of manipulating statistics to make invisible what is declining to support the growth chart

  • Shadow and other shady things

    • This also shows up in human behavior. Anything that seems like an admirable characteristic may cover over, hide, or justify shady elements.

Inquiry

What other core concepts do you notice supporting the ability to steer within complexity?

What is carrying capacity good for and what might it miss (see inverse)? How will we get adequate data for it?

How do we sense thrivabilty in a course correcting learning environment striving to be antifragile? Something that seems horrible in one moment turns into a necessary perturbation in hindsight.

Thrivability: Governance and Production at Scale

How do we coordinate together for a more thrivable world?

In this session, we will be covering the following core concepts and practices:

  • Action Spectrum

  • Polarity Management

  • Direction V Destination

  • Dynamic Alignment

  • Triangle of Values

  • Polycentricity

  • Cookie Model

  • Process Hierarchy

Narrative Shift

Per our usual explorations, drive by Donella Meadows stack of interventions in a system… and given how narratives drive possibilities…

We have been in a world where the driving narrative is about…

  • Control management

    • Top down control, clear boundaries,

    • Internalize resources, externalize negatives

Control is evil! Banish the devils of detailed planning. Long Live Life!

The new narrative focuses on how organic and responsive life is. Thus:

  • Emergence

    • Guidelines for steering

    • Structures that enable autonomy of subsets

    • Coordination of distributed autonomous agents

Action Spectrum

Developed from conversations with Herman, listed at the end of the Thrivability Breakthroughs book.

  • Control

    • tends to be mechanical rather than living system (unless force)

    • lower risk, higher predictability

  • Guide

    • Allows for agency of players, choicefulness, consent

  • Nurture

    • planting seeds of possibility, network effects

    • higher risk for impact and harder to attribute causality

Inquiry

Where have you noticed the control narrative? What words shows up around control as metaphors?

What narratives do you notice in the guide/nurture realms?

How does that relate to collective intelligence, for example?