Federating the holotopia

A natural way to introduce a new paradigm is to explore the analogy with a historical precedent. This strategy has been taken in Holoscope.org, and we here develop it further.

The holotopia vision is made concrete or federated in terms of five insights. Together, they show why a comprehensive paradigm shift is ready to take place in our time, by exploring specific five insights that are ready to emerge in pivotal areas of interest—as soon as we begin to connect the dots:

• The Convenience Paradox insight points to a revolution in "pursuit of happiness" and in culture, similar to the Renaissance

The Renaissance liberated our ancestors from a religious dogma, and empowered them to seek and experience the joy of living here and now. The lifestyle changed, and the arts blossomed. Could a similar advent be in store for us today?

We use knowledge to illuminate what has remained obscure: the way our own inner condition and our cultural and natural environments influence the way we feel, and our very ability to feel; and how our handling changes those conditions—in the long run.

• The Power Structure insight points to a revolution in innovation, on the scale of the Industrial Revolution, by which human work will be made incomparably more effective and efficient

We look at what remained ignored: the "systems in which we live and work" (which we'll here call simply systems). Think of those systems as gigantic mechanisms, comprising people and technology. Their purpose is to take everyone's daily work as input, and turn it into socially useful effects.</p>

• The Collective Mind insight points to a revolution in communication, analogous to the advent of the printing press

• The Socialized Reality insight is about a new foundation on which the truth and the meaning are developed, and a possibility for a quantum leap in awareness, similar to the Enlightenment

• The Narrow Frame insight is about a new way to explore the reality, with similar consequences as the once that science had

Holotopia as a whole

While each of the five insights brings forth a spectacular development taking place imperceptibly slowly in our present time, considered together they afford an even more spectacular sight—of a complete new paradigm that is ready to emerge. The point here is to see that the five insights and the changes they are pointing to and demanding are so closely related to each other, that it is easiest and most natural to consider them as one single whole. And that the natural strategy is to change that whole as a whole.

It is an easy exercise, to begin with, to see that the black arrows in the above ideogram can be interpreted as signifying direct consequences. One thing leads to another! Together, they form a vicious cycle—within which the contemporary issues we are witnessing are perpetually recreated. Already this may be sufficient to see the holotopia's main insight—that comprehensive change can be easy, even when smaller changes appear to be impossible.

The yellow arrows point to synergistic relationships. They show why the two insights or issues they connect may be perceived as two sides of a single coin.

Holotopia as a conversation

The holotopia is, however, not about one-way communication. The shift to a new paradigm definitely demands audience participation.

The five insights here present us with a context within which age-old themes and challenges can be explored and understood in a completely new way—in the context of the emerging paradigm, the holotopia. Hence we here, in this context, open the dialogs on fifteen most timely themes—which we label by the five insights, and their ten direct relationships. Since we've already seen the insights, it remains to name the relationships.

The black arrows (starting from convenience paradox):

• CP—>PS: From Zero to One—The Future of Happiness

• PS—>CM: Cybernetics and the Future of Democracy

Without suitable communication–and–control, nobody is in control, and "democracy" is only a fiction. The Wiener–Jantsch–Reagan thread, detailed in Federation through Conversations, provides us a suitable springboard story.

• CM—>SR: Ludens—A Recent History of Humankind

While we may be biologically equipped to evolve as the homo sapiens, we have in recent decades devolved culturally as the homo ludens, man the (game) player—who shuns knowledge and merely learns his various roles, and plays them out competitively. The Nietzsche–Ehrlich–Giddens thread, detailed in Federation through Conversations, will provide a suitable start.

• SR—>NP: Transdisciplinary Research and the Future of Academia

However it might appear today, the original purpose of the academia (which we define as "the institutionalized academic tradition") is not the pursuit of "symbolic power", or academic careers. On the contrary—since its inception, its purpose has been to provide an antidote to the homo ludens devolution, by developing knowledge work and knowledge based on knowledge of knowledge. Could a similar advent be in store for us today? The socialized reality and the narrow frame insights will provide us a suitable context for proactively answering this question. The vignettes about Socrates and Galilei (founding fathers of Academia, and of science) will give us a head start.

• NP—>CP: From Zero to One—The Future of Education

The yellow arrows (starting from convenience paradox):

• CP—>CM: How to Begin the Next Renaissance

Here we have a leverage point par excellence; and a natural way to begin.

• PS—>SR: How to Put an end to War

Alfred Nobel had the right idea: Empower the creative people and their ideas, and the humanity's all-sided progress will naturally be secured. But our creativity, when applied to the cause of peace, has largely favored the palliative approaches (resolving specific conflicts and improving specific situations), and ignoring those more interesting curative ones. What would it take to really put an end to war—once and for all? A combination of the power structure insight and the socialized reality insight will help us see why this is realistically possible. The Chomsky–Harari–Graeber thread, discussed in Federation through Conversations, will give us a head start.

• CM—>NF: The Largest Contribution to Knowledge

If you've followed us thus far, you may have already understood why that the systemic contributions to human knowledge (improvements of the 'algorithm' by which knowledge is handled in our society and in all walks of life) are likely to be incomparably larger than any specific contributions of knowledge. A fine important point is that a real breakthrough in this all-important domain needs to include both the social process and the method by which knowledge is handled—because they are the yin and the yang of knowledge work. Hence the collective mind and the narrow frame insight—and especially the ways in which we propose to handle them—will provide us exactly the right context for this quest.

• SR—>CP: Liberation—The Future of Religion

In the traditional societies, religion has played the all-important role of connecting the people to an ethical purpose, and to each other. While discussing the consequences of the narrow frame (the narrow conceptual frame and way of looking at the world that our society adopted from the 19th century science), Heisenberg singled out the destruction of religion and the erosion of values. Can this trend be reversed? Imagine a world where instead of religions quarreling with one another, and the rest of us quarreling with religion—we evolve religion, so that we may learn from all traditions; and so that we may all benefit and evolve further. We offer the strategy to re-evolve religion, knowledge-based, as a natural antidote to religion-inspired hatred, terrorism and politics. The story of Buddhadasa's rediscovery of the Buddha's original insight will be a natural way to begin.

• NF—>PS: Collaboration and the Future of Politics

The story here is really about the power structure as a model of the intuitive notion of "power holder" or "enemy", and the various consequences of this view. The long story made short—we will here talk about the possibility of transcending the "us against them" approach to political thought and action altogether; and developing an approach where all of us collaborate to find remedies to the power structure issue. The context for this timely effort is here provided by combining the (resolution to) narrow frame issue, where (instead of reifying the age-old patterns of thought and action) we create completely new ways of seeing and speaking; and the (resolution to) power structure issue, where we see that our common future lies in the re-creation of "the systems in which we live and work", by being the new systems.