A Celebration Society has always been about encouraging discussion. I don’t want to limit this to my point of view, and so we are now opening the blog for others to contribute. Good topics might include:
Blogs should ideally be 400 – 1000 words in length.
I’ve always viewed a Celebration Society as a collaborative process. After all, if people don’t collaborate in its creation, how will they feel any sense of ownership?
When I wrote the book, it was basically the pulling together of a lot of different ideas from a lot of different people. I didn’t really create very much myself. I certainly don’t ask anyone to blindly agree with me, nor do I seek followers. I seek allies.
So, I was surprised when a Twitter user accused me of creating a cult. When I asked him why he thought that, he replied with a lot of invective and nastiness. Rather than engaging with this behavior, I sat back and thought about what might have precipitated it. I realized that I hadn’t properly understood Twitter culture, and needed to make some adjustments to how I was tweeting. (I was mentioning the book in almost every Tweet.)
So far, I’ve written most of the content at this website. I’m hoping that’s going to change. Yes, I started the process… But it’s become quite clear in the past few months that there are many other thoughtful and knowledgeable people who share this vision, or who want to.
As I’ve often said, my knowledge of technology is very wide but shallow. I’ll rely on others with expertise in the many relevant disciplines to shore up my limited understanding. That’s how it should be.
The collaborative model is increasingly being proven to be a highly effective alternative to pure competition. I’m not saying competition is bad, I’m saying that it should be balanced with cooperation. Each should be used when and as appropriate to produce the best results.
A woman named Devora Belilove one told me the wisest thing I ever heard. It was, ” we all have the drawbacks of our virtues.” Another thing I have always loved is the statement “we’re all ignorant, just in different areas.”
If one puts these two statements together, and takes them to heart, the inescapable conclusion is that if anything great is to be accomplished, we really need each other. We need great alliances.
That’s what I’m hoping to co-create: a great alliance of people with interlocking strengths, and the maturity to each know our weaknesses and seek help from others who are strong where we are weak.
Little of note happens in the world from the solitary person. As has been said, even Einstein, Edison and Tesla had teams supporting them. Individually, we’re weak. But together, we can be mighty.
I’ve never cared much for the hierarchical model, though it has its place. In my view, its biggest risk is that the flaws of the person at the top are magnified, and can lead to downfall. (This has happened with both corporations and nations.)
That’s why I’ve proposed that the Celebrationist government be one in which no one holds power for more than a decade, all power has multiple checks and balances upon it, there is high transparency, and the head of state is a person of great influence but little power (as was the case in the Venetian Republic.)
Are you an ally of Celebrationism? If so, what do you have to contribute? Where do you excel, and where do your passions lie? Please share that on the forum, so that other Society members can begin to appreciate who you are and how we may all play together.
Meat consumption is a problem is many ways. A substitute for industrial “farming” of animals is needed. This could take the form of vegetable “meats” (more on this below) or a 21st century alternative to industrialized animal “husbandry”.
We will, in future, grow meat in vats in a factory-type environment without the involvement of any conscious animals. Such an alternative would reduce suffering, yield greater efficiency in conversion of resources into food (half the energy), eliminate need for antibiotics and hormones, and eliminate meat production as a source of greenhouse gases (25 times less), and reduced need for land (just 1%), are all significant.
While some recoil in principle at this, some of those same people may soon be enjoying replacement organs in their own bodies that were similarly grown. (Already, scientists have replaced a person’s trachea, grown ears, and created miniature versions of other human organs.)
I doubt that a person who’s experiencing liver failure or whose ear was lost in an accident will object to replacement organs being grown from their own stem cells. Vat grown meats will be 100% organic, optimally nutritious and cruelty free. They will be biologically indistinguishable from the same meats cut from the carcass of a once-living animal that lived (in most cases) a miserable life so that we might eat it.
I eat meat. I’m not sitting in judgment of anyone who does or does not do so. (My wife is a vegetarian, and I have been one on several occasions for years at a time. I simply find it too hard to sustain; she is stronger-willed in this regard.)
But if a Celebration Society is to adopt a philosophy of sustainability and minimizing the harm to innocent creatures, it will have to adopt new approaches to generating its meat—unless it is founded on vegetarianism, which would be at the founders’ option. Cruelty-free is a concept with some variations in interpretation, and raising animals on natural pasture with room to roam; later killing them in the quickest manner possible, satisfies this criterion for some. Not so for others.
I simply point out that, as we move further into the 21st century, such meat will increasingly be available directly, without a living being involved. In addition, some companies have figured out how to make startlingly realistic meat substitutes from vegetables. Some examples:
• Meatballs from Quorn. Serve them in a dish to friends, without explanation. I can almost guarantee you that your friends will ask what kind of meat this is, while enjoying the flavor, texture and aroma.
• Likewise, Quorn (which uses mushroom protein as a primary ingredient) makes a fine chicken substitute.
• Another company, Impossible Foods, makes the Impossible Burger. Reportedly, it looks, cooks and tastes like a good hamburger. It even oozes juice.
If a Celebration Society doesn’t want to be heavy-handed in compelling movement away from “farmed” meat, there is another option. As discussed in the book, “nudges” (as proposed by Cass Sunstein) can substitute in many cases for regulation and law. In this case, my wife Jennifer has conceived a complementary currency (CC) called “Meat Money”.
Essentially, each resident would be issued a fixed amount of this CC every week, electronically. The system would not allow sale of meat or meat-containing meals for national currency alone; one would have to match that money with Meat Money. In this way, the total consumption of meat would be limited to a level that the society deemed acceptable.
However, it gets more interesting. There would be an electronic market in which Meat Money could be traded for other money. So, vegetarians or others who eat less meat would be rewarded by earning an extra regular income from their abstention. Everyone who wanted to do so could enjoy some meat, but those wanting larger amounts would have to pay what the market will bear for enough Meat Money.
Vat meat could be exempt, and of course vegetable “meats” would not be included. This is but one possible solution, if a Celebration Society wants to limit meat consumption.
Psychologists have noted that many people, when presented with evidence that contradicts a belief of theirs, simply ignore or rationalize away that evidence, holding even more tightly to their existing beliefs.
If we are to fundamentally change the world in the direction of an Abundance Game, we must accept that many of our fellow people will face enormous such challenges. My book is replete with challenging ideas. I didn’t shy away from that, nor do I believe that we ever should. However, it would be really nice if we could find a way to help people to become more receptive to fundamentally new ideas and ways of organizing society.
Now, research is finding that awe may offer exactly the needed solution. Specifically, the experience of awe may offer a way to open up fixed mindsets such as fundamentalism, rigidity, and the general mindset of, “don’t confuse me with facts that contradict what I believe.”
According to the ASU lab and Prof. Shiota, “Awe has been defined as the positive emotion one may experience when confronting a vast stimulus that is not accounted for by one’s current understanding, and/or challenges one’s day-to-day scope of experience. In prior research, including studies funded by the John Templeton Foundation, we have found that awe promotes cognitive and physiological changes that reduce reliance on existing knowledge structures (e.g., cognitive schemas, heuristics) and facilitate taking in new information from the environment.”
Given that the experience of awe should be a common experience in a Celebration Society, once this research has been validated (and I strongly expect that it will be validated soon), we will find that simply getting large numbers of people to visit Celebration Societies as guests will convert them from having various sorts of resistance to becoming proponents, or at least open to learning more.
Of course, it is likely that many people will not even bother to visit until they are already well along the path of such open-mindedness, else why would they bother making such a trip?
Fortunately, I can foresee a solution. Specifically, we can offer to people VR experiences of life in a Celebration Society. Since those will be inexpensive and easy to deliver and obtain, participants will be able to experience awe in the privacy of their own home.
If we can deliver the experience of awe, it should become quite popular. I look forward to us testing the effects of that experience!
In the book, I spend a fair amount of time examining important aspects of society that appear inverted from their optimum functioning. However, my perspective may not have been broad enough.
I recently learned that the way we humans sleep is quite different from how we are biologically wired to sleep. I don’t just mean the number of hours, as in sleep deprivation. That’s yet another modern phenomenon, largely a result of people working longer hours to sustain a lifestyle. No, it’s more basic than that.
A groundbreaking study in the 1990s determined that we humans have a natural sleep cycle that’s entirely different from what most of us experience. Not only that, but it includes a mysterious additional state of consciousness that appears to be the realm from which much of mystical experience emerges.
Essentially, the study participants lived in the manner of our ancient ancestors. They had no artificial lighting at night. When dusk came, they allowed their natural sleep cycles to manifest and they fell into a rhythm of 8 hours sleeping per night. But not like we do it.
Instead, they slept for four hours, then “awoke” into a kind of state that was neither sleeping nor dreaming; a state of mystical reverie, that lasted for two hours. This was followed by four more hours of regular sleep. The two hours of sleep nested between the eight hours of regular sleep apparently have a spiritual quality, and participants reported deep peace, and spiritual communion.
After three weeks, they all experienced this profound change. Whether one is religious or not, such an opportunity to bask in a deeply peaceful state sounds inviting and life-enhancing.
Apart from the visions and insights gleaned from that mysterious middle state, there were specific and profound physiological changes. Specifically, “While trying to account for the peace and serenity that his subjects reported feeling during their hours of ‘quiet rest,’ Wehr discovered that prolactin (the hormone that rises in nursing mothers when their milk lets down) reached elevated levels in their bodies shortly after dusk, remaining at twice its normal waking level throughout the full length of the night. Prolactin creates a feeling of security, quietness and peace. And it is intimately, and biologically, tied to the dark.”
You can learn about this research and the experiences reported by participants in the book “Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age” by Clark Strand.
Clearly, this research warrants much further study. Corroborating studies from different cultures should be conducted to see if there are cross cultural consistencies, and if the rate of success in reaching this mysterious state of consciousness remains 100%–as it apparently was in the original study.
Likewise, and as a very practical matter, what are the consequences of doing this not every night but only on some nights? Is there a minimum frequency or number of nights one must live and sleep this way to retain the benefits? If one skips a night, is there an additional three-week waiting period each time, until one recovers this special gift?
Though I have long imagined a Celebration Society as having celebrations on most nights, now I am wondering: might we instead do so in the afternoon? (I take it as a given that few of us will have jobs requiring us to work then.) Or might two sub-cultures emerge, the “ancient sleepers” and the “moderns”?
PS–Certain types of clay, used by Native Americans for healing purposes for centuries, have now been found effective against MRSA and XRSA bacteria, the scourge of modern hospitals and a cause of significant iatrogenic disease. So, too, can a type of European tree bark, when prepared and then applied.
While quite a bit of native and ancient folk wisdom doesn’t stand up to the rigors of modern testing, enough does that this should be viewed as a continuing source of potential medical discoveries.
We’ve been giving all of our attention to the crisis automation poses for HUMAN workers. But what about cats? They have many jobs, too:
Now comes a video that shows us the serious risk of cat automation, and how the furry felines are likely to react to this cat-astrophic crisis.
All humor aside, the rapid rise of AIs and robots to pervade society will affect our furry friends as well. Already, Sony makes an animatronic seal that serves as a companion “animal” for lonely elderly people. It’s hard to argue that this isn’t a good thing.
But, markets and companies being what they are, why would it stop there? People who want pets without the mess and undesirable behaviors may in future prefer animatronic dogs and cats. IBM has already successfully modeled the functions of a cat brain in software. Certainly the capability to make such “companions” will arrive faster than full replication of human intelligence.
I don’t see this as harmful, though it will certainly be strange to those of us who grew up in a world with only biological pets. This is but one example of how the world will become increasingly strange, and at a faster and faster rate. We need to become comfortable with rapid change, and with helping to guide it in desirable directions.
A cohesive society is defined by a shared set of values. These values manifest in many different actions large and small, but in a healthy society there is an underlying glue: love. I love what a Celebration Society stands for, and so do our growing cadre of allies. If we didn’t love these values, we wouldn’t do what it takes to see this manifest. (Other strong emotions can also cause cohesion, but not necessarily constructively.)
Anything that’s truly important to a culture can be enriched by understanding and labeling the different flavors of that something. Eskimos have dozens of words for the various forms of H2O that they perceive and use. Each form means something different; something important. It would impoverish their culture to have only a handful of such words, like most of the rest of us use. Eskimos see distinctions in H2O that those of us who view it only as water, ice, steam, hail, humidity, snow, clouds and mist completely miss.
Words, wisely used, connote qualities that are meaningful.
I believe that other cultures, such as the ancient Greeks, were onto something by defining many different flavors of love, each with its own meaning. When we use “love” to represent many different kinds of affection, we impoverish ourselves. What communication skills does a person with only a 500-word vocabulary have? Limited.
On the other hand, a person with a 25,000-word vocabulary has many ways to express nuance and evoke emotions and understanding. If they use this vocabulary as a cudgel to impress people, it’s not helpful. But if they use it with discrimination, it can be beautiful.
Why, then, do we impoverish ourselves by limiting our vocabulary of love? In my view, a Celebration Society will be well-served by identifying areas of human experience and life that are under-represented in modern vocabulary and creating new words and expressions (or reinstating old ones) to remedy the deficiencies. We will be wealthier for it.
I say this as prelude to a small project that I am inspired to start. Since love—in its many flavors and expressions—will be a central aspect of a well-functioning Celebration Society, I want to co-create with allies a special blog. It will be published once, some months from now, and may be repeated.
What is love to you? How has it shown up in your life? Please share an anecdote, 250 words or less, from your own experience.
I’ll start the process by giving an example from my own life. I was eating lunch with my wife Jen and my mother at the Café de France in Denver. We had been served a complimentary dessert of fresh orange slices by Kelly, the gracious waitress. Jen and I were slurping and nibbling our way through the succulent orange slices, each bursting with flavor and an intoxicating scent.
I noticed that only one piece remained in the bowl. Planning to enjoy it, I took care of something else for a moment. When I looked up, starting to reach for it, my wife was eagerly grasping it. Instantly, my desire for the orange switched to pleasure that she would enjoy it.
This is a small story, but as soon as it happened I realized that it represented something significant. When one comes to habitually—even automatically—put another’s welfare ahead of one’s own, that is a kind of love. I am confident that each of us has such stories.
I had a heartbreaking experience recently. I met an extraordinary man, whom I thought would become both a friend and an ally. Then he was neither.
Allies are extremely important to building a Celebration Society. Each of us humans has notable strengths and notable weaknesses. (I am well aware of my limited strengths and many weaknesses.) I am convinced that we must build a large tapestry of people with mutually supportive strengths. Where I am weak, you are strong, and so on. It need not be mutual, but it must over time become complete.
In order for it to work, the various allies must start out with a clear understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses, or they must be eager to learn and open to help in doing so.
When I became introduced to this man, he impressed me with his great intelligence and deep knowledge of certain subjects about which I know little. He also SEEMED willing to acknowledge his own limitations, a crucial quality for brilliant people to have, as I have learned the hard way.
In our first lengthy conversation, he proceeded to lecture me at great length. Though I am not usually receptive to involuntary lectures, I accepted this because of his potential and because he actually did have some significant things to say. And he was exhausted, not having slept for several days. So, I made allowances.
The he asked me for money. Not once but multiple times. This, despite my clear statement that I would not do this. Later, when I pointed this fact out to him, he rationalized that he hadn’t asked me for money.
He presented me with his “great” business idea that, indeed, does have vast promise. However, he moved from his considerable technical expertise into assuming that he knows all sorts of things about other people which, based on my experience, are false. He considers most people “idiots”. When I tried to suggest other ways he might view others’ actions more profitably, he would not hear of it.
He took very little interest in me as a person (forgivable) or in a Celebration Society (not forgivable).
To be clear, alliance of the kind we need is founded on SHARED VALUES AND VISION. Each of us is eager to know the other’s, and to see how we may empower each other. It is a process of getting acquainted on a basis of mutual respect. It is never hectoring nor is it demanding.
Earlier on the day of this writing, he sent me a “revised” PowerPoint presentation of his great idea. I put revised in quotes because, despite my previously having offered substantive criticism based on years in startups and investments, little was changed.
Hours later, not having heard from me, he sent me this email message: “What are you doing? Why are you not working? (The subject: Work Ethic).
This is the antithesis of enrollment. He may have the next Facebook (I hope he does!), but it will go nowhere without an understanding of enrollment. I hope he gets one soon.
Like many of us, I’ve had a lot of pain in my life. It’s part of living. (As I’ve written on Quora, fears about robots suffering are unfounded.) Recently, I delivered a speech entitled “The Gift Box of Pain”. A realization has been dawning in me that some of the greatest gifts of my life have arisen from some of the deepest pain.
I won’t dwell on this here, but I delivered that speech in the Toastmasters semi-annual competition, and we recorded it. For now, what I wish to say is that by recognizing that pain may have hidden within it gifts in the form of lessons, I have come to welcome—not seek!—pain, as an honored companion on my journey. Also, by accepting pain as it appears, and looking for its gifts, it never becomes suffering.
What I’ve noticed, more and more, is that the journey is moving from struggle and pain to steps of joy and wonder. Every week, amazing new companions and prospective allies are emerging. Some of them are exactly the people whom I’ve sought in my heart for a long time. I feel as if a greater intelligence is dancing with me, and with us, bringing us all together to begin weaving a tapestry of tomorrow.
I don’t know where this journey will take us but, as I advised a young man recently who had asked my help, by living a life that answers for oneself Peter Diamandis’ great challenge[1], it’s already a success regardless of what happens. (I am already hearing the inner music. I hope you are, too.)
Individually, we are insignificant to the course of time. (Common “great man” theories of history generally underestimate the necessity of the many devoted allies that always align with an Einstein, a Tesla, a Curie.) Together, we are a mighty force for change, and can be a beacon that burns so brightly people will need sunglasses to look at us.
By building a society based on the sustainable science and technologies of abundance, we’ll never again be plagued by the weaknesses of “indispensable leaders” or of incorrect revealed knowledge. (Leaders and revealed knowledge may be honored, as each person feels appropriate. But such persons and knowledge should never be at the core of a society. Its Charter should be at the core, and leaders should attain that status by virtue of other people wanting to play with them in realizing a shared vision.)
Let’s dance and play our way to a future in which people generally experience continuing peace, prosperity, enthusiasm and unrestricted progress. The technologies are there to help us, the AI’s will welcome the unlimited intellectual challenge and the robots will do everything we don’t care to do.
I am even starting to envision bumper stickers. Here are some candidates:
Maybe bumper stickers won’t be such a good idea. I’m happy to hear your ideas for increasing awareness, allies, and Society members!
[1] Figure out that for which you would gladly die, then live your life in service to this vision.