A Celebration Society

Category: Philosophy

  • Love, the Glue of a Celebration Society

    Love, the Glue of a Celebration Society

    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.

  • How NOT to find an ally

    How NOT to find an ally

    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.

  • First Social Disruption from Technological Unemployment–a Warning

    First Social Disruption from Technological Unemployment–a Warning

    Donald Trump’s ascendancy in politics is certainly disruptive. It probably wouldn’t be happening if large numbers of well-paying middle class jobs hadn’t been outsourced in recent years, either permanently lost or replaced by minimum wage jobs. The people to whom this has happened understandably feel frustrated and scared.

    What nobody has put together, at least that I have seen, is the understanding that outsourcing is a form of technological unemployment. Outsourcing wouldn’t be possible, certainly not on anything like the scale we’ve seen, without advanced technology:

    • Internet telephony has enabled companies to move customer service to third world nations
    • Distance learning and the non-physical nature of software work have enabled relocation of software jobs, with the work product available worldwide
    • Complex and automated supply chain management has made it possible to have different aspects of a production process in different countries, allowing manufacturers to use the nations with the cheapest labor

    If we don’t find a way to address the very real frustrations and fears of large populations of people, the Trump ascendancy will look like a mere warmup act to what comes in the 2020s. Desperate people will grab at any solution that’s offered, whether that solution seems rational or irrational to others who still enjoy comfort and safety. When your home and livelihood are threatened, anything new seems better than the status quo.

    Oxford and other researchers have forecast job losses in the United States and other developed countries in the range of 40%+, and job losses up to 85% in less developed countries. The highest unemployment levels reached during the Great Depression didn’t exceed 25%. Yet, even at those levels, the disruption was enough that Americans flirted with electing Huey Long, and Father Coughlin’s demagoguery was quite popular.

    Accelerating automation is the ultimate form of outsourcing. it will not be limited to a single nation, but will instead be a worldwide phenomenon. It will hit all nations like a tsunami in the 2020s. Also, unlike the Great Depression, this source of unemployment will not be curable by public works programs. The notion of massive “make work” programs will only insult and degrade those “workers”, who will quickly become painfully aware that they are being forced to do things that machines could do better and cheaper.

    Likewise, the various flavors of a guaranteed income, as commonly proposed, are seriously insufficient for reasons I have discussed elsewhere on these blogs, on Quora and elsewhere.

    Social disruption from technological unemployment is already upon us. We’d better heed the warning before things get ugly.

  • Perils of Utopian Science for Societal Design

    Perils of Utopian Science for Societal Design

    One of the earliest books that could be called utopian was Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. It described a future scientific society, devoid of competition, in which everything was run scientifically. It was all to be rational and orderly.

    As a 16 year old, I was captivated by his vision. I later realized, with hindsight, that Mr. Bellamy probably never spent much time with actual scientists doing actual science.

    Science is messy. It is an unending quest for knowledge that the scientists know can never be called certain in the way that religious people[1] crave. They are trying to take snapshots of a complex reality, discerning from careful tests what are generally small truths. Yet they know that whatever truths they may uncover could later be superseded.

    (To understand HOW messy science can be, http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/the-quest-to-make-synthetic-cells-shows-how-little-we-know-about-life/475053/ and http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/failure-is-moving-science-forward/)

    In this lack of certainty, science differs from revealed knowledge. It also differs by virtue of being testable and repeatable. Scientists pursue their quest anyway because knowing—even if only partial and conditional—is far more satisfying to them than ignorance.

    Even “settled” science such as the Big Bang Theory could still be superseded by more complete or deeper understandings. As described in my book, a highly respected physicist recently developed a theory that appears to explain the origins and behavior of the cosmos as well as does the Big Bang, but with a cyclic universe. Likewise, scientists discovered evidence that life may possibly only arise in dry conditions and not within water, as had long been assumed necessary.

    Other such examples exist and will continue to be found.  All of science consists of developing testable, falsifiable hypotheses. The experimenters, if good scientists, do everything they can to reduce the experiment to a single variable.  But sometimes it’s the unexamined assumptions that may do them in.

    This isn’t hypothetical. Dr. Bruce Alexander developed his famous Rat Park experiments after examining such an unspoken assumption. He observed that nearly all of the addiction research studies used Norwegian white rats. The rats eagerly consumed all manner of drugs, and displayed addictive behavior.

    While others took this as evidence that the substances are themselves addictive, Alexander asked a different question. Given that these rats are sociable, intelligent, playful creatures, might their lab conditions—essentially, solitary confinement for life—constitute a kind of torture, from which the rats would desperately seek escape?

    He and his team built Rat Park as a kind of utopia for rats. They ran the experiment for many years, with one key finding: they could not induce the rats to consume drugs, even when mixed with favored sugar water. Their conclusion was that the previous experimenters had failed to examine a crucial assumption.

    Again, science is an evolving body of knowledge. That’s what makes it exciting to scientists, and to those of us who admire their work and revel in their discoveries. There is, however, a lot of popular confusion about science. For example, some hear scientists use the word “theory” and misunderstand:

    “… the two words, theory and law, have very different common meanings. But in science, their meanings are very similar. A theory is an explanation which is backed by “a considerable body of evidence,” while a law is a set of regularities expressed in a “mathematical statement.” … A scientific law is not “better” or “more accurate” than a scientific theory. (http://evolutionfaq.com/faq/why-isnt-evolution-considered-law)

     

    What has this to do with societal design? Mr. Bellamy, and more recent advocates of a scientific society such as Jacques Fresco (The Venus Project) share what I regard as a serious misunderstanding. They believe that, if only we were to scrupulously follow a scientific approach to societal design, everything would be fine.

    When Mr. Fresco speaks of a proper system of governance for his ideal society, he proposes to turn over all important decisions to machines. The machines will make decisions that allocate everything rationally, he believes.(Said his associate, Roxanne Meadows, in a February 2016 Atlantic interview, “We would use scientific scales of performance for measurement and allocation of resources so that human biases are left out of the equation.”)

    Once systems are in place, they’re hard to change and harder to replace. Even more seriously, the machines will need to have guiding values. If the values selected are interpreted by the AI in a way that’s inimical to human interests, the consequences may be severe. For example, if an AI with power to rule us decides to minimize pain, it may permanently immobilize all humans in order to protect us.

    This is why a Celebrationist system of governance will be by people, but people who coexist within a very different kind of system than we have now. Celebrationism will encourage cooperation, mutual respect, evidence-based decision making, mutual service, and the cherishing of differences. Further, as I envision it, none of the people in government will have strong individual powers. Likewise, the AI’s will be partners who advise us.

    I advocate a scientific, technological basis for society, but do so in order to create a neutral vessel within which all manner of beliefs and lifestyles, including faith-based practices and revealed knowledge, can flourish.

    Finally, while some such as Mr. Fresco believe that a single model of a scientific society can be perfected, I have no such expectations, and true sustainability requires significant diversity. As I see it, those of us who come together to simulate a Celebration Society will not seek to make a single perfect model, but instead compete in teams to see who can devise the first viable and practical societal design—knowing that it still includes flaws, which will come to light over time. Then we’ll test that design in the real world, with each implementation being locally appropriate, and refine it further.

    When others, inspired by our successes, want to build their own Celebration Societies, we’ll support them and allow them to share the “brand’ if they agree to certain principles. But beyond that, they may well take very different paths to expressing how their society(ies) serve those principles.

    We’ll all learn from each other, because we’re all imperfect beings. So, too, will superhuman AI’s be imperfect, should such emerge. We will ever more closely approach truth and perfection, never achieving either in this relative world. But the journey will be delightful and awe-inspiring.

     

     

     

    [1] I am using the word “religious” more broadly than most do

  • Let’s Replace Our Lead Pipes

    Let’s Replace Our Lead Pipes

    Every great civilization has its high points and its low points. Often, it’s difficult to see the low points of one’s own society from within it.

    One popular pastime among Americans is to compare it to Rome. Such people often opine that American will soon go the way of the Roman Empire.

    The Romans were known for many accomplishments, from amphitheaters to roads that still exist today. They even had a system of government that made those they conquered often want to be part of the Roman Empire.

    They also had lead pipes. Lead is a wonderful material for pipes. It’s malleable, and resistant to corrosion and breakage. It is also a neurotoxin. It causes brain damage, and damage to other organs as well. Over time, exposure can lead to loss of intelligence and even insanity.

    Rome was known for some insane emperors. Caligula and Nero come to mind. It doesn’t take many insane leaders to turn a civilization uncivilized.

    What are our lead pipes? We Americans live in a society where:

    • We feel so unsafe, many of us feel the need to carry guns
    • Our kids are forced into a system that trains them to be drones. At the same time, we’re training drones to think like us
    • We slave at jobs that many of us hate, to pay for lives that we don’t have enough time to enjoy
    • Our financial system protects the financial service providers, leaving the rest of us at their mercy
    • Almost everyone detests the tax system, but no one seems able to do anything about it
    • We’re proud of democratic institutions that barely function, often giving us laws that 80% of us dislike

    I could go on, and other societies have their issues as well. But here’s a modest proposal: let’s try something different!

    Let’s create one model Celebration Society somewhere on Earth within the next decade. We can start it as a simulation; something fun and risk-free. Once that works, those participants who wish can join together and create a new city-state for real to further test it out.

    As I’ve demonstrated in my book, we have the technology and understandings right now to create a society in which everyone’s basic needs are met automatically, by machines. Done thoughtfully, our allies including leaders in different fields are saying that this could be a blueprint for a new world.

    We don’t have to go the way of the Romans.

     

  • The Achilles Heel of Guaranteed Income Plans

    The Achilles Heel of Guaranteed Income Plans

    Most of us derive two entirely different things from work. Both are vital. The first is income, the second is meaning.

    I’ve been told that people who are given the opportunity for a guaranteed income manage to find their own meaning in short order. I would love to see this research, but so far it’s not been presented and I haven’t found it.

    Involuntary loss of job is actually a risk factor for suicide. Back in the 1990’s, IBM began switching from its long-standing policy of a guaranteed job for life to a more conventional policy.

    According to my wife, who was with IBM for 22 years and witnessed this unfolding, when IBM began encouraging people to leave the company they didn’t just offer attractive severance packages.

    IBM also provided a (mandatory) two-week counseling process. The purpose of the counseling was to assure that the departing employee found meaning in life after IBM.

    The reason this was considered so important was that IBM’s research had determined that employees who separated from the employer and did not have a continuing sense of meaning in life significantly elevated risk of suicide.

    It didn’t matter so much where the meaning came from. it could be spending time with grandkids, volunteering in a church, or some other activity that involved contributing to other people’s lives. IBM was determined that each departing employee identify something of this nature before they were let go.

    Being a large, highly successful company, IBM doesn’t like to waste money. The fact that they did this highlights the importance of meeting for people who no longer find it from their work. Research does exist supporting this. Indeed, one study found that “social exclusion could threaten people at such a basic level that it would impair their sense of meaningful existence “ (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2717555/)

    A guaranteed income does not and never will provide meaning, regardless of which form it takes. At best, it could offer people the necessities of life—if that. But meaning comes from our social connections, and if a guaranteed income replaces the loss of a job those connections will remain lost. Many of those who are about to become technologically unemployed will not have an IBM looking out for them. They will need a different way to find meaning in their lives.

    The Citizen Income of a Celebration Society addresses the need for meaning by its very nature. It’s certainly not the only solution to this problem, but it is a solution.

  • This Must Become a Collaboration

    This Must Become a Collaboration

    So far, nearly all of the postings at this website have been my own. However, I do not want this to continue. I have invited Society members with whom I correspond; men and women of accomplishment, to write guest blogs. None has yet found the time. They are busy people who, unlike me, are not focused on this, so that is no surprise. But it will come.

    More importantly, as I see it, the next two major projects should be a simulation and developing a plan for building a Celebration Society. The two would appear to support each other. (Ideally, there will be a virtuous cycle of mutual feedback and improvement.) The key difference between them is that the simulation will be a co-participative process involving large numbers of regular people, while the planning process will be a co-participative process involving experts in all of the relevant disciplines.

    In neither of these do I see myself as running the process. I have no expertise as a planner, nor with simulations. A Celebration Society will not happen in a hierarchical fashion. It will happen as a network of people, with deference granted based on the ability to articulate a persuasive argument. As I said in the book, “Leadership will not be based on hierarchical power structures of how many people are obligated to follow your orders, but rather on a collaborative model of how many people are willing to follow your vision.”

    It needs to go beyond even that. Mature people recognize both their competencies and their limitations. A project of this magnitude will require one of the widest sets of expertise of any project in history. What we will need, then, are mature people whose strengths and weaknesses overlap. If I am strong where you are weak, and you are strong where I am weak, we complement each other. If we both recognize this, and defer to each other (not blindly, but based on evidence), we can be stronger together than apart.

    Extend this thinking to dozens of people, and you have the basis for a project. If each domain of expertise goes further, creating its own collaborative team, then we will avoid many of the mistakes that inevitably happen when an individual (however gifted) is solely responsible for such a domain.

    The book is a very high level overview. It offers a scaffolding upon which many different ideas can be hung and tested. It doesn’t go deeper than that, because I lack the expertise to do so. Even if I did have relevant expertise in some of the domains, it would be imprudent for me to go into such depth.

    If this isn’t a collaborative process of definition, testing, and refinement, we will fail before we begin. For that reason, I am deliberately limiting my role to those things I do well: articulating a vision, enrolling people into that vision, speaking and writing.

    Already, our allies include experts in transportation, architecture, software security, organizational development, education, and certain other disciplines. I am excited to see how this is unfolding!

  • What Will the World be like in 2053?

    What Will the World be like in 2053?

    (Note: this was originally posted as an invited answer on Quora. However, by writing this I extended my previous thinking in some new ways, so I thought it should also appear here.)

    I’ll turn 100 in that year, so I’m pleased you chose it.

    As I see it, assuming we avoid scenarios in which civilization implodes, we will have a world of universal material abundance. Further, this abundance will be much less physically expressed than in our time because of the universal availability of fully immersive, zero latency VR.

    I expect tomorrow’s VR to be marketed as “Better than Real”. Sight will be at 8K visual levels or better, sound will be full surround, and touch will be as if one were there. All manner of future, past, alternate universe/SF, and even fantasy scenarios will be available, with the option to play any character in the narrative or to invent and insert one’s own character. I imagine that groups of friends will have an endless hobby of joining VR simulations and playing in them together. (Some, the Simulation Theorists, might argue that’s what we’re doing right now.)

    I expect such gaming to be the primary form of recreation circa 2053, Concerns about physical inactivity can be addressed in multiple ways: (1) the VR experience can be designed to include real movement of one’s physical body, (2) biological and nanotech means will likely exist to give the benefits of exercise to one’s body. (There is already genetic treatment that produces massive muscles in mammals. Researchers create “mighty mouse” with gene tweak that doubles muscle strength GHB, used in Europe to treat depression, insomnia and as an aid to childbirth, strongly stimulates growth hormone release.), (3) people can actually spend some time in “real” reality (which I hope we can make so enticing and delightful that this will be a pleasure, and not a duty. If they do so, technologies such as PACE exercise (for aerobic capacity) and the PowerPlate (for muscle strength, flexibility and balance) will allow people to stay fit with little time invested.

    That said, there are basically two ways this abundance can be manifested. Either a small, elite group of owners will enjoy abundance like the space colony dwellers in Elysium and the Tomorrowland residents, with the rest of the people warehoused (still with VR, though), or everyone will enjoy that kind of abundance. I have made a specific proposal for how we can assure the latter outcome.

    Exponential acceleration of technology notwithstanding, I do expect human inertia and irrationality to delay adoption of the above technologies in various parts of the world. However, given the tremendous benefits to those desiring entertainment, education, and tourism, I fully expect an effective black market to develop for VR software that doesn’t comport with the moral codes that will seek to regulate it. (Even though no real people or animals are harmed!)

  • Reality isn’t realistic

    Reality isn’t realistic

    When people tell me that a Celebration Society isn’t “realistic”, I’m perplexed. Sure, it’s bold; perhaps even outrageous. But unrealistic is a far more damning term. Is it valid?

    As I’ve explained elsewhere, those who believe that automation will once again create more jobs than it destroys are engaged in dangerous, wishful thinking. They are assuming that history will repeat itself here, and ignoring vital new machine learning capabilities. Among those who agree with me, most believe that the solution is retraining or a guaranteed income for those displaced. As I have also explained elsewhere, neither of those is going to be enough. At best they’re palliatives; at worst mirages.

    If I’m right in the above conclusions—and some pretty solid people agree with me here—then the Holmesian response would be, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

    I’m not saying that a Celebration Society is the only solution that remains. But I will go so far as to say that all of the remaining solutions will have to be based on abundance rather than scarcity–at least, if we are to avert massive social disruption and eventual total state control of everyday life. If others have a better abundance-based solution than a Celebration Society , I’m eager to learn about it. (Perhaps the two, combined in some manner, would be better still.)

    All of that is to explain why I’m not much impressed by arguments that a Celebration Society isn’t realistic. But we could go further. Reality isn’t very realistic either—at least, if we define “realistic” as Google does: “representing familiar things in a way that is accurate or true to life.” To be clear about this, we have to go deeper. “True to life” means that it comports with our understanding of how life works.

    The problem is that this understanding is not how reality works. We know this from science. Most people used to believe the Earth was flat and that it was the center of the solar system, if not the whole universe. Why not? Those appear to be true, based on everyday experience.

    Biologists have long known that human senses of sight and hearing capture and interpret only a tiny fraction of the available spectra. Some animals smell thousands of times better than we do.

    Now, physics knows that matter is mostly empty space. But that’s hardly true to life. We know that time only moves forward, but a recent finding in physics solves a great problem in physics by showing that time mostly moves forward, but it also “jiggles” backwards. That certainly isn’t our experience in life.

    So, we have to accept that we’re imperfect modelers of reality. Much of scientific advancement has happened by developing ever more accurate models. However, as quantum physics demonstrates perhaps best of all, the most accurate models may have little to do with anything that is familiar, accurate, or true to life.

    A Celebration Society may not fit the definition of realistic, but it offers a way out of technological unemployment, a problem that most of us are going to find very realistic in the 2020’s. So, the next time someone says that a Celebration Society isn’t realistic, I’m going to respond, “Compared to what?”

  • Rites of Passage

    Rites of Passage

    Google’s dictionary defines a rite of passage as, “a ceremony or event marking an important stage in someone’s life, especially birth, puberty, marriage, and death.”  I think this is a very serviceable definition.

    One thing missing from our modern society is a complete set of these. Yes, we have marriage, divorce, birth, birthdays and funerals/wakes. But some of the most important of these events are not recognized in modern society. They were very much part of traditional societies.

    I should think that a Celebration Society would benefit from also recognizing these events: puberty, formation of a new House/family corporation, First Recognition (the first time one is acknowledged in a city-state wide celebration for one’s service), induction into the Royalty, becoming a resident, becoming an adult, renewing of marriage vows, adoption into a family, and others–most importantly, becoming a Citizen.

    Some rites of passage would be brief and private; others lengthy and public. Each would be designed by the Citizens as a whole to be appropriate to the needs and desires of the society; excepting those that are very private in nature, which would be designed by those involved (possibly using model examples from previous such events, as those participating may wish to share their libraries.) I envision the Royalty as developing a Rite of Passage for those inducted; perhaps something to finally integrate one’s shadows.

    The Oath of Office for a Citizen would be brief yet poignant, coming as the completion of a long, arduous journey in which the person’s character would be tested and found worthy. The entire Rite of Passage for Citizenship would, it seems to me, likely include something like this:

    Begins with a resident who is of age (perhaps 25, as that is when the brain matures), or who has special judicial exemption, formally petitioning the Parliament. This is the Application Stage.

    Parliament reviews these applications either as they come in or in batches. (It may delegate this process.) Each receives either Approved or Not Yet as a response. The latter comes with remedial preparation recommendations. The former comes with an agenda for the Candidate Citizen to follow. This will include some particular service(s) the person is to do, usually as part of a team. Such services will be those that Parliament has deemed important to the society or in service to another Celebration Society, perhaps one in its formative stages. This is the Service Stage. I would envision this Stage extending over months, though it will be a community decision.

    Upon completion of the Service Stage, the participants evaluate each other. Those directly affected by the service also evaluate them, and Parliament or its representatives (advisors, who accompany the Candidate Citizens in their service or at least regularly check in and available for consultation) does so as well. This is a formal process, which may be either anonymous or not. At the end of this Stage, each Candidate Citizen is either Passed or given a grade of Needs Review. If Needs Review is the result, they would have to repeat this Stage. If Passed, they would move on to the next stage.

    The next Stage, which might immediately follow the Service Stage or might be offered on a periodic basis, would be the Community Stage. This is by far the toughest Stage. Here, the Candidate Citizens are taken to live in primitive conditions for a period of time, perhaps a week, as a group. They are provided with minimal tools, clothing (or the means to make clothing), and the means to find or build shelter. Food is available, but may require significant gathering, preparation and even the figuring out of clues to find a stash or a source. Temperatures and precipitation may be challenging.

    In this stage,  the group would determine its own leaders and structure. It would determine if there were time only for survival activities or also some fun and games. (Possible games would be suggested by advisors.) There would be team building exercises, such as those on PSI 7, guided by the advisors, who would accompany the group. In quiet time, each participant would be expected to read and re-read the Charter until they had it memorized.

    If the people fail to cooperate, fail to work hard and long hours, or fail to uphold community principles, they will fail together. Some may become sick. On rare occasions, someone may die–though medical care and evacuation will be standing by. The point is that these people will experience, for once in their lives, the kinds of unremitting harsh conditions that many of our ancestors survived through backbreaking work, fear and pain. In so doing, they will learn their own characters and those of their neighbors at a depth and clarity not otherwise available. The point is that people who survive this test will be ready to accept the mantle of Citizenship, with all of its benefits, and also to cherish the duties that accompany the office.

    Also, a nation-state ruled by people who will never forget the hard lives of their ancestors is a nation-state that will never take for granted its own prosperity, ease of life, and celebration.

    At the end of the Community Stage, the survivors will evaluate each other. It may be private, public or both; a decision that Parliament will make and evolve. They will be asking themselves one question, ruthlessly: is this a person I would trust with my life, and the lives of my dear ones? They ask this of each fellow participant in turn, followed by asking it of themselves. The goal is to find objectivity through group process.

    Those who fail this stage will be invited to repeat it, after a suitable rest period. They may also be required to repeat the Service Stage, if there is a consensus that such would be important. The Citizen’s Rite of Passage is guided by this motto: Character is Destiny.

    The goal of all this is simple. When a group of Candidate Citizens stands together, dressed in their finery, palms upheld in front of a Supreme Court Justice or a member of the Royalty, that they will swear their Oath of Office together, without fear or hesitation–confident, joyous, eager, and prepared to be Citizens of a Celebration Society; proud to be pioneers of a new world.

    (An example of an abundance-based society that is missing such a Rite of Passage for Citizenship is The Mandalorian, Season 3, Episode 6. Aside: it shows robots displaying emotions that robots will almost certainly not feel. We need to remember that robots are and always will be dumb boxes, governed by essentially non-corporeal AIs.)