0) intro - viable pathways book-zine

hey, welcome! this is a living, under-construction experimental book-zine, a hyper-linked multimedia medium that acts as a theoretical research / practical toolkit in-between.

intro

for the past 5 years i've been devoting my life to researching "what is human flourishing", "how can we enable it on both an individual and a societal scale", and "what's my role in it".

despite the boldness of the task and my humbleness to state that i don't have definitive answers, i’m happy to share that since then, i've gained some hints of profound clarity on this, as well as on the challenges and missions i decided to work towards. (might we collaborate on some of them? πŸ™ƒ)

this is my compilation of the findings, resources and references i found most valuable on this journey. let's dive in!

foundational concepts

the two major concepts that underpin this research and can help us orient ourselves on this path are: the metacrisis and the "well-lived life".

i will introduce and present a few perspectives and investigation trails on both concepts, as a way to contextualize the contents that will come afterwards and give you a few directions for further exploration.

1) the metacrisis.

or also - the systemically challenging state of our world, systems and selves.

we're living an age of the metacrisis.

our economy is based on large-scale game-theoretical win-lose dynamics, while coupled with mainstream culture/philosophies devoid of spirit and exponential technologies plugged into extractivist paradigms, we have all the ingredients to compose a self-terminating civilization heading into ever-faster collapse.

our institutions and systems are failing in recognizing and addressing this - governments, organizations, academia, religions, social systems. this research aims to map the challenges we're facing, identify the approaches being tested, under-the-radar solutions and the initiatives working to address them, as way to give us a deeper and wider understanding of our context.

one peculiarity about my research is that since ["unhealthy individuals create unhealthy systems and institutions"], i aim to highlight solutions and initiatives at both the individual and systems level - which isn't common. most people/institutions are concerned with either "personal" or "societal" challenges.

this awareness can give us both a sense of overwhelm and a golden possibility to redesign the foundational systems of our lives and civilizations to be more conscious, collaborative, regenerative, compassionate [insert another value you care about here] by design. perhaps even at the same time!

and it's our opportunity to be alchemists, architects, artists, builders and players of our own realities.

if you're not familiar with the concept of the metacrisis, it's a term coined by a certain corner of the internet, sometimes called the "sensemaking web", "liminal web" or "game b", heavily informed by the studies of wisdom traditions, transpersonal psychology, integral theory, metamodernism, game theory, cognitive science, systems/complexity science and a few other fields.

other adjacent terms and communities you might be familiar with are: the polycrisis (coined by the world economic forum), the regenerative movement, the human potential movement, effective altruism, mindfulness, the humane tech movement, the alternative education movement, effective accelerationism, web3...

for a deeper recognition of these adjacent groups, check out the memetic tribes of the metacrisis video.

there are many resources and perspectives to help you dive into this field of research, and although 'the metacrisis' is not a sexy/enticing term (people might feel a lot more moved by terms such as flourishing, love, beauty, regeneration, thriving), it's in deeply understanding the complexity and challenges that we're in that we can gain awareness over it and further empower ourselves to build the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

it's through this study that i found the most profoundly meaningful and cohesive analyses of our current situation, both as individuals and as a society at our time and age.

daniel schmachtenberger has been the primary spokesperson about it, and i highly, highly, highly recommend his videos - check out my curated playlist here.

besides daniel's work, the simplest, yet most clarifying perspectives i found came from zak stein and the transformative education alliance on their essay "education is the metacrisis".

for further breakdowns, jonathan rowson did an amazing deep dive into multiple perspectives an essay called tasting the pickle: ten flavours of meta-crisis and the appetite for a new civilisation, john vervaeke also has a great 50-lecture series on awakening from the meaning crisis, josh field shares very unique perspectives on the flow crisis, and there's a lot more you can discover by browsing the metacrisis.org website or looking at very disruptive metacrisis-informed projects such as SEEDS (ecosystem) and holochain (both are deep in the web3 space, i don't recommend if you're a beginner).

the major value i found in attempting to assess and conceptualize our current state - both as individuals and a society - is to recognize and develop vocabulary over the complex systems dynamics that are constantly affecting us, so we can be more aware of them, make better sense of what's going on and coordinate towards more desirable presents and futures.

after all, there's wisdom in the saying:

"a problem well-stated is half solved".

(a disclaimer on the framing as a problem)

2) how to live.

or also - how to design our selves, systems and lives.

the age-old question of how to live. what is a good life, a moral life or a life well-lived? these are all ethical, metaphysical and epistemological questions.

a few proposed terms:
self-actualization / self-realization / human potential / human flourishing / bem viver / eudaimonia / self-transcendence.

there are many fields of study, religions, wisdom traditions that hold diverse perspectives:

very popular: stoicism, eslan delaganore, andrew huberman.

rationalists, effective altruism, sam harris, etc...

freudian psychoanalysis, jung, CBT, IFS

NLP, NVC, hypnosis, tony robbins, etc...

proposes enlightenment / the cessation of suffering.

several traditions of zen buddhism, vipassana...

in integral, they talk about the fourth turning of buddhism.

the next buddha will be a sangha:

monastic academy - daniel thorson, intimacy crisis, relational practices.

human potential / self-realization

a spectrum of rigorous scientific research on altered states such as MAPS, the flow genome project and.

to some spiritual teachers like eckhart tolle, michael singer, mooji, etc...

ranging up to some niche/occult knowledge like qualia guy, possibility management, shamanism, hermeticism, several energetic practices, gnosticism, law of time, etc...

and some folks like stanislav grof, leo gura, wim hof, terence mckenna, and mindvalley lying somewhere around the middle.

john vervaeke and his work on awakening from the meaning crisis.

robert kegan adult development theory

ego development, moral development, etc

proposes human flourishing especially through biomimetics and self-healing.

charles eisenstein, gabor matΓ©, thomas hΓΌbl.

a few amazonian tribes propose bem viver, which is an indigenous term that directly translates "to live well". to many latin american tribes, it's an essential part of their worldview.

a state of gift (eisenstein), a state of abundance.

in right relationship with self, nature and the world (gaia education). the tao.

sri aurobindo, sadhguru, krishnamurti, tantra, vedanta

how can they be complementary? that was the genius of sri aurobindo and ken wilber's work. building on that.

hardly find consensus, but great memetic mapping:

great work by https://medium.com/s/world-wide-wtf/memetic-tribes-and-culture-war-2-0-14705c43f6bb?s=09 and its accompanying sheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11Ov1Y1xM-LCeYSSBYZ7yPXJah2ldgFX4oIlDtdd7-Qw/edit

more on https://nadia.xyz/climate-tribes and https://medium.com/@brandon_29259/comparing-approaches-to-addressing-the-meta-crisis-9393e6ee17d7.

this is a non-exhaustive list, as i know there are many other paths i haven't delved into, with different degrees of scientific/philosophical foundation (such as taoism, pathwork, etc), but it's not my intention to provide a full map/picture here and now.

one of my major objectives with building modular, open-source l1f3 operating system is precisely to test propositions such as that every perspective is partial at scale.
by creating a decentralized aggregator of worldviews and practices, we can democratize access to and support even more the practice of science, philosophy, spirituality and ultimately, wisdom.

popularity isn't necessarily a good filter.
"truth" (or scientific rigor) might also not help much. (limits/challenges of science -> not neutral observer [lifestyles, unmeasured cultural/behavioral aspects that influence results], bias for average [study what happen/may happen under most circumstances, not extraordinary/aspirational ones], etc...)

a mix of these can start to build a reasonable algorithm --> mapping claims, divergences vs. convergences of perspectives/practices, scientific findings but also subjective experience (reports from friends/network/people you trust)...

i.e. the "flavor" of this research is:

a metamodern inquiry into the concept of human flourishing and its implications for the practice of ontological design - i.e. life, self & civilization design.

other qualitative words descriptive of this research:
-> a metacognitive, anthropological, integral, ancestro-futuristic approach.

a few of the main related themes are:
regenerative systems design, personal sovereignty, food sovereignty, energetic sovereignty, attentional sovereignty, personal agency
open-source, disruptive technologies, regenerative technologies, humane tech, distributed systems, operating systems, agent-centric design
ontological design, metadesign, social systems, civilization cycles, societal collapse, game theory, existential risk, civilization design
self design, self-transformation, consciousness expansion, non-ordinary states of consciousness, trauma healing, psychological development, transpersonal psychology, psychospiritual tools & practices
embodied cognition, extended cognition, orientation, sensemaking, decision-making, cognitive offloading, self-directed learning processes
futurism, futures studies, future narratives, information ecology, reality models, worldviews, cosmovisions, decolonization, ancestral futures
21st-century, anthropology, lifestyles, life design, cultural artifacts, urban flourishing, serious games, serious play
infinite games, zero-sum games, evolutionary games (check a jogada + game theory wiki)
digital anthropology, transhumanism, non-human agents, exponential technologies, decentralized systems
flow state, environment design, digital environments, online communities, personal knowledge management, tools for thought, new media formats
data ownership, data sharing, new economic models, cryptocurrencies, currency design

where to go now?

ok, so there's a wealth of perspectives on both the metacrisis we're undergoing as a species/civilization, as well as the concept of a well-lived life, human potential and how to live.

if we can agree on a few assumptions, such as that every perspective is partial, we can start to build a set of heuristics to inform our sensemaking and decision-making going forward.

instead of going the route of a herculean effort of synthesis on a "theory of everything", such as an immanent metaphysics, (...) or integral theory, that even though truly amazing and necessary (from my viewpoint), aren't accessible to the vast majority of people (right now), i'll opt for taking bits of wisdom here and there and trying to figure out - what are the minimum and easiest set of agreements that many people, holding different values and worldviews, can agree on, and how might we work from there?

this is my attempt to answer the question: what is the minimum set of agreements we need to allow for intelligent coordination?

why choose this "minimum viable" route?

below under "go deeper", you can find all of the metaphysical, ontological and epistemological basis that i found through this research, and that currently compose my set of "minimum viable heuristics" for operating in life.

but it's not about that. this is an ongoing effort we all do in life, questioning, making sense of reality and clashing our perspectives against others.

i'm not presenting this to be "right" or to seem "wiser" than others.

so essentially the purpose of this work is to create an interoperability protocol for sensemaking and coordination at different levels.

benefits & challenges of taking this route

accessibility. more people, more awareness, more action, faster transformation.

different from being stranded at the sea, it's like swimming in a shallow pool. you can swim as much as you want, but if you need, you can just pause, place your feet on the ground and have some rest!

so if anything feels dissonant/unclear, i encourage you to pause and [dive deeper].

challenges: it's not enough. yet, compared to our baseline levels of happiness, health, wealth, it's a significant improvement.

other big challenges with working with loosely defined philosophical foundations are succumbing to relativism / urgency bias as seen in many post-modern, left-leaning initiatives, or widespread utilitarianism / superiority bias as seen in many effective altruism / effective accelerationism communities.

low hanging-fruit agreements

i believe these are easy to agree on and they can lead to a powerful level of clarity and collaboration.

dive in

thesis

to address the metacrisis we need both individual efforts to design more conscious, impactful, collaborative and regenerative lifestyles, organizations, culture and communities, as well as collective coordination to create new governance, economic, information, organizational, educational systems that honors nature and people's energies, purpose, expression and vocation as sacred.

there are many people working on designing/building these new systems, making sense of our current state and addressing it from different perspectives. so my goal here is to:

  1. curate these initiatives/perspectives and present a few maps of the conceptual and materialized territories

  2. share a few interpretation lenses/frameworks on how these efforts may be mutually supportive and integrated into a bigger whole

  3. share my perspectives on the challenges that still remain and what we can do about them

assertions / propositions

  1. we're not tapping into even 10% of the potential that maps have to offer (especially in digital/data-based formats).

  2. there are simple tools and practices for more conscious and collaborative living that we're not using, that could have a major increase on our sense of belonging, trust, collaboration and coordination towards desirable futures. (CEP+N / potluck / player toolkit / second brains -> omnichannel feeds / personal algorithms / digital gardens -> TfTs, AI agents, etc...)

  3. we're not tapping into even 2% of the potential that games have to offer.

in order to explain why - and how, i'll put this into practice, by using maps.

maps

if you know about wardley mapping you might be familiar with a lot about what i'm about to share, but in any case, this application intends to emphasize a lot of omni-win dynamics often not found in his work, as i see a strong game-theoretical win-lose dynamics/molochian bias in it.

types of maps we'll use:
challenges being under-adressed
challenges being well addressed

high risk (AI, synthetic biology, etc):

opportunities not being seized

the innovation i see/propose:

highest leverage:

doing this is not as hard as we might think. there's a lot of hanging fruits. we're just lacking intention/design.

++ improving the design/intentionality of our core technological systems:
(which feed our meta-systems of perception, sensemaking, decision-making, action and learning)

low-hanging fruits:

opportunities being well-harnessed

islands of coherence. memetic communities. sensemaking hubs/pods. communities of practice.

pathways and possible next steps

go deeper

they're below. feel free to explore them at different times, according to your own inquiries/curiosity. think of this pretty much like a glossary. if you find something in this research that clashes against your current worldview, you can dive deeper here to clean up any possible misunderstandings and understand what really makes sense for you.

fundamental questions:

initial questions:

foundational questions:

second-order questions:

principles & purpose

empower individuals and groups to develop sovereignty and agency.

questions, topics & ideas

sources & references

foundational findings & insights

i understood this research as an ongoing effort into understanding the foundational systems of our civilization and rebuilding them as open, distributed, collaborative and regenerative systems.

more on security / governance / catastrophic risks below:

despite tons of speculation, scams, misleading marketing, degens, incels and other forms of unhealthy behavior, many people in the web3 space are keenly aware of this and have been building in this direction for a long time.

something i realized through naruto (believe it! "the cycle of hatred") and SEEDS (ecosystem) is that we don't need yet another revolution, but a renaissance. if people are excluded, left out, that breeds division and hatred. if they are included, invited into new civilizations with a different set of values, where they can have a different experience of reality - one not of command and control, but of empathy and care - where by design they're taken care of and their power is gradually decentralized and shifted into the community, we have a chance to change through a change of heart.

so we don't care about regeneration just because we need to take care of earth in order to survive as a species. regeneration is the process through which us and nature unfold. if we don't regenerate (heal) ourselves, our relationships, our institutions, there's no way we can flourish and thrive.

motivation / background

this investigation started for me back in 2014, as i was a 15-year-old trying to figure out a career to follow or what to do in the future. unable to conceive of a single path to follow or a single topic to study, i was jumping around exploring possibilities until i had my first startling realization about life and the world we live in:

i can't predict who i'll be in 5-10 years, much less what the world will look like by then. so it's not about what i do right now, but about being able to learn whatever's necessary when it's necessary.

so it's about learning how to learn. so i can recognize why, when and how to do something.

essentially, this realization gave me a sense that no single project or topic was "the most important" in my life. my own life is my biggest, most important project.

(which later on can be challenged - as in there's value in being devoted to something bigger than yourself - yet, in terms of first principles, if your life isn't your nΒ° 1 priority, you may not be able to survive to dedicate yourself to that thing, or anything else)

so it's not about being a narcissist and putting your desires and priorities above everyone else's, but recognizing that the quality of anything you do or achieve is determined by how you're choosing to live your life.

the less focus, attention and awareness you have over your own life, the more unconscious and automatic behaviors you'll have, that may not be leading you to where you really want to be.

that's how for me, the object of study became the subject (myself), and the subjects (i wanted to learn) became just objects for my subject.

all this made me start questioning:

that's how i discovered GTD and lots of coaching tools at the time, but this didn't satistfy me at all. i grew up playing games, so i was used to having lots of interfaces and tools such as maps, dashboards, cheatsheets, wikis, etc, to help me play, and even more elements like an inventory, skill/talent trees, missions, achievements and challenges for managing my virtual journeys and characters.

so i was extremely confused:

wtf is going on here?

besides this lack of tools, there's an experience you might relate to even if you never played games. the feeling of an utterless lack of meaning, fun and fulfillment as you grow up and face the "real world" - the job market, relationships, or modern life in general.

much like many games, i started noticing that playing our well-established societal games is often times numbing. instead of inspiring us, helping us learn and evolve, they often disconnect us from ourselves, others and reality itself, making us fall prey to our own automatic, unconscious detrimental behaviors.

not only fun, the "normal adult life" lacked a soul. and i was on a mission to understand why.

this investigation brought me many more questions, such as:

throughout the past 8 years, these inquiries led me down many paths of discovery and self-transformation. the answers are much more complex, while at the same time, they can be simple. one of the big challenges is to actually make sense of so much divergent information, experiences and perspectives.

this collection of essays is my attempt to consolidate the results of this research and provide some possible directions to these and other important questions, such as:

how can we create more fulfilling and meaningful lives in our present day and age?

this inquiry led me to the realization of our interdependence with nature and many other beings, as well as our interconnectedness with/through our human-built systems.

how can we recognize ourselves and our role in the whole of reality and this world?

and finally,

how can we address the spiritual/psychological, ecological, economic, political and educational crises we're going through and create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible?

below i present my thoughts and discoveries, by sharing several key concepts, challenges, references, projects and prototypes i found or created, in a comprehensive way.