Holotopia: Five insights

Federating the holotopia

The holotopia vision is made concrete in terms of five insights.

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. If in spite the technology we are still as busy as were—should we not see if our systems might be wasting our time? And if the effect of our best efforts turns out to be problems rather than solutions—should we not check whether those systems might be causing us problems?

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

In effect, the network-interconnected interactive digital media have connected us all together in a similar way as the nervous system connects together the cells in an organism. We look at the process which we use, as cells, to process the knowledge together. How does our collective mind work? Our civilization is like an overgrown organism, so poorly coordinated that it presents a danger to its environment, and to itself. It has recently acquired a nervous system, which could help its organs coordinate their action; but its cells have not yet learned how to use it. 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 Without thinking, from the traditional culture we've adopted a myth, incomparably more subversive than the myth of creation—the myth that the purpose of knowledge is to show us "the reality" as it truly is. The insight that we are constructing rather than "discovering" is now so well documented and so widely accepted, that we may consider it the state of the art in science and philosophy. But that's only one half of the story. The other half is that the reality construction has been the tool of choice of traditional socialization—which has been the leading source of renegade power.

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

We here look at our 'eyeglasses'; we look at the very way in which we see the world. Once we've seen that the scientific concepts and methods are our own creation—we become empowered to create new ways of looking at the world, in order to see more. We can create the way we see the world! </div> </div>

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: Deep Ecology—Ethical Foundations for Sustainability

Norway's philosopher and public intellectual Arne Næss is credited for contributing to "deep ecology" an initial theory and this name. The founding president of The Club of Rome Aurelio Peccei postulated, as his final message to mankind, that "human development is the most important goal". What they share, of course also with others, is the insight that we are not going to engineer the "solutions to our problems"; that we, and our values, need to change. An aim of this dialog is to develop an informed approach to ethics—whereby (we propose) egocenteredness as value is replaced by wholeness. The point is to see how this deeper change follows from the knowledge we own—and leads to "a great cultural revival".

PS—>CM: Augmenting our Collective IQ—Public Informing and the Future of Democracy

Having decided to direct his career as it wold best benefit the mankind, Douglas Engelbart concluded that "augmenting our collective IQ" would be the best way to do that. Combining the systems or the cybernetic view (developed here as the power structure insight) with the capabilities new information technology (the collective mind) gives us a solid and most promising platform for changing our collective mind. 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: 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.

The yellow arrows (starting from convenience paradox):

CP—>CM: Humanity's Best Kept Secret—Happiness between One and Plus Infinity

How shall I say this...? Perhaps a good place to begin might be to talk about planting and watering a seed, as the metaphor by which we defined cultivation, and culture. And then to observe that while the results of an outer cultivation (a rice field, an orchard full of savory apples...) are plain for everyone to see, the results of an inner cultivation can hardly be experienced, or communicated. In the shadow of our failure to communicate about this uniquely important theme, we find a jewel of an insight, pointing to a most spectacular opportunity to improve our condition. Our challenge, and opportunity, is to perceive and develop the range of happiness between one (happiness as we know it) and plus infinity (the kinds and the ranges of happiness we have never experienced, and don't even know they exist). A combination of convenience paradox (understanding that our way to happiness must be informed), and collective mind (systematic refinement and communication of culturally important insights) will provide a suitable context.

PS—>SR: How to Put an end to War

Alfred Nobel had the right intention: 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 been confined to resolving specific conflicts and improving specific situations. What would it take to put an end to war—once and for all? A combination of the power structure insight and the socialized reality insight will provide us the right context for answering that question. The Chomsky–Harari–Graeber thread, discussed in Federation through Conversations, will give us a head start.

CM—>NF: The Largest Contribution to Human 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: In Conversation with Noah—The Future of Education

This may or may not be the way to introduce this theme, but let's use it to start with. Noah here serves the purpose to make the abstract theme very concrete—with anecdotes, photos and all. The insight which is the theme of this dialog is that our troubles may well be reduced to this most basic error—that we've adopted from the traditional culture an education which is at best stuffing people with data, and in practice a socialization into a certain already obsolete paradigm. Here socialization means that the young people's natural inclination to understand and create is shall we say 'tamed'—as they are turned into bored and passive recipients of irrelevant stuff... A natural antidote is, of course, an education that develops "the human quality", as Peccei would have it. The combination of (a resolution of) the socialized reality, with (a resolution of) the convenience paradox provides us a fertile context for developing this line of approach further.

NF—>PS: Beyond Capitalism and Communism—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.