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    PowerStruggle: Energeia

    Making use of potential

    Started by: Antisocial Hermit Raves:10 Badge Winner! Open Authorship

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    We are fundamentally limited by our biology. Fight or flight, procreation, self-preservation, just like everything else on the planet sophisticated enough to have a nervous system. Our self-awareness and our intelligence merely let us build social structures and tools to short-circuit or speed up physical evolution, without changing our basic drives and needs.

    Which has brought us to where we are today.

    Short of an extropian existence or technological singularity, human nature is not likely to change on anything short of an evolutionary scale. But, we as a species have shown that ideas of sufficient power can motivate us above and beyond our biological imperatives. We will give up procreation to serve a faith, or lay down our lives for the sake of a national identity.

    Of all the possible combinations of biological hardwiring and social memes, is there one or several that can, in combination:

    • empower individuals

    • resist outside coercive pressure

    • overcome boundaries of nation and race

    • be sustainable in terms of technology and resources

    • self-correct to avoid deviation from these goals

    This is not necessarily “peace on earth, goodwill towards men“. Conflict, at either a group or individual level is undoubtedly inevitable. An approximation of these goals would be earliest Christianity, which accepted all, survived intense persecution and eventually became a major power bloc, a geopolitical juggernaut without a territory. Another approximation would be organized crime. But both ultimately fail at one or more of the criteria.

    The key question for this discussion is: What human behaviors exist that can be combined into a belief system that can profit both its adherents (to encourage adopting it) and the species as a whole (for the good of humanity), with self-correcting mechanisms to counter griefers, manipulators and persecution? How can we make the most of the best of what we are, and minimize the worst? What would you be willing to put your life on the line for, knowing that such a belief would put you at odds with every coercive power structure that stands to lose influence if you are successful?

    We might not be able to find a solution, but by finding both what it is not and what it must include as part of what we are, we can enclose the volume in which that solution lies.

    How to change consciousness level of whole humanity at once?

    Sloba, it is probably not necessary or desirable to change things all at once. An aspect of such a belief system is that it is adopted voluntarily by each adherent as a matter of self-interest, but the belief has a cumulative effect is beneficial to the group. People join because it is seen as better than the alternatives.

    From my personal experience, I would venture that concern for our children is probably one of the more powerful motivational forces. Assuming you agree, how do you think we might harness that concern - or some other - to effect significant change?

    Have you created a Superstructure to explore these ideas? I\\\'d be interested.

    DarkOptimism: See the \\\"Trustnet\\\" superstruct

    DarkOptimism: See the \\\"Trustnet\\\" superstruct

    csven: I\\\'d say the trick would be to harness the concern for one\\\'s own children into a concern for all children. This, like many other things is easier said than done, but it is a good example of a universal human behavior that needs to be used or taken into account in Energeia. Everything remotely related to procreation will have to be taken into account, as this is intrusive into every aspect of society and daily life.

    There is another discussion thread on the similar topic of hacking homo sapiens, but I think this is a more productive frame for teh issue. How do we reconcile our biology and our higher aspirations? I think sometimes our biology gets the short end of the stick. there are lots of things I like about being a human animal. A couple of things that I would wish for in anew social structure: 1) Something that feeds my need for community and connection. My early twenties were a lonely time in an isolated society (pre-coup USA). Humans need other humans, and I think we can tap into that. 2) A sense of positive impact. When we know we are doing something that will help others and concretely improve our world, humans will sacrifice a lot. There\\\'s a reason we write fairy tales about good and evil-we want to really know that we are on the side of good. How do give people opportunities to help that have tangible results and are clearly for the good? I think one of the most important things is to never demonize what we want and need as human animals. We are what we are-blame and repression just don\\\'t work. That\\\'s why I love this frame of harnessing our inherent nature.

    Hermit, I like this idea, but I think it goes way beyond Trustnet (or I\\\'m not seeing what you see in Trustnet) and deserves its own superstructure. What you\\\'re essentially trying to do is design an ideology, which has its ups and downs, but is a worthy effort. It\\\'s a lot like designing an ad campaign for a product, because you have to sell this ideology to people. You have to hack them to make an opening for it before they even know it. Branding, symbolism, memetics, and the tols of the marketing genius are the tools you need here. Furthermore, I\\\'ll go out on a limb and say that it has to be a value system that\\\'s prepared to break down, because since it\\\'s going to wind up being essentially arbitrary (as in we just made it up), it\\\'s going to sooner or later. It\\\'d have to be sharp, and leave behind very few concrete edifices, like some kind of humanity virus, otherwise it\\\'d slowly become dogmatic and begin to perpetuate problems instead of solutions.

    Prophessor Bedlam: The link to Trustnet is that Trustnet is an example of using technology to address one of the aspects of human behavior we may want to minimize, the inherent \\\"fear of the different-other\\\". I put Energeia in the strategy section because it is an idea rather than an organization with assets and hierarchy. I\\\'m not sure that Energeia should be prepared to break down, but it should be adaptable as new technology alters the way we live (like the birth control pill and the sexual revolution).

    I don\\\'t know that fear of the other is an inherent character of the human condition so much as something that\\\'s present in our current ideology, probably developed partly from the idea of scarcity. Still, I agree that it\\\'s present, and that\\\' it\\\'s an obstacle to be overcome, which is something a new value system would have to account for. As for Energeia breaking down or evolving...Yes. Ideas need to adapt to remain current or they begin to stagnate and die. However, in the vein of value systems and ideology, they have a hard time standing up to scrutiny as anything but a very good idea, which is fine, but lacks the external authority that a lot of other systems claim (categorical imperatives, divine command, morality in general). I maintain that since it can\\\'t stand up to that kind of scrutiny unless you can make a claim for its legitimate authority beyond being a good idea within a certain set of criteria, it\\\'s going to break down anyway. However, if it\\\'s designed with that in mind, to instill certain values and then fade away, flashing its contents into the human psyche for a few decades or centuries, when people get around to examining it, it won\\\'t be there to dissect. The ideological entity that is Energeia will be gone, but the marks it leaves behind will remain in subsequent value systems and in the legacies of its adherents.

    several item\\\'s come to mind: 1. are ablite to create a machine mind combo 2. are ablite to create med\\\'s that can enhance are self\\\'s 3. as for non tech wikinomics is a good place too start

    This looks good but must look at trustnet first.




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