Audacity
What does it mean to start over, like to genuinely approach a challenge or opportunity with fresh eyes and fresh approaches?
Sometimes we can fix, alter or edit the “legacy systems” we know. Sometimes this is all that seems remotely practical. But more and more often, tweaks or edits aren’t enough. More and more often we need to start over.
For example:
Long ago, new instruments and slight changes to viking longboats allowed Norse cultures to leave sight of land and discover new shores. Today it’s as if we are so desperately clinging to old systems that we prefer to expend vast energy and resources, pressure sealing our viking longships, attaching rockets to their sides and attempting to launch them to the moon or Mars.
In many cases, we’d be better served by new paradigms, by putting away the longships entirely and reimagining our systems from first principles. Our moment requires us to forget boats and imagine rocket ships.
Imagine democracy was invented now. Imagine a system where the vast majority of us believed in how we DO democracy today.
Imagine if growing GDP was seen as ecological suicide and instead our economies strived for symbiosis with nature.
Imagine if we aspired to intrinsic fulfillment rather than material accumulation, placing human dignity at the center of our civilization.
If we focus on new paradigms, we can then test them through Minimum Viable Experiments (MVEs) in the real world. We can allow civilization and the biosphere to teach us, revealing whether our models are helpful or not.
Audacity is a blog, maybe interviews and possibly a podcast that focuses on a magic wand question. If you could truly replace our current systems, if you could start over, what would you build?
We talk to experts and broad syncretic thinkers (deep and wide minds) and offer them the opportunity to reconsider all the ways humans operate in the world. The results reveal a future of manifest optimism and universal flourishing.
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