Holotopia: Convenience paradox

The Renaissance liberated our ancestors from preoccupation with the afterlife, and empowered them to seek happiness here and now. Their lifestyle changed, and culture blossomed. Have we followed the pursuit of happiness to its end? Or could a surprising new turn still be in store for us today?

Scope

We look at the value that orients our "pursuit of happiness". We look at the very way to happiness: Are we walking it in the right direction? Does the way itself need to be illuminated with the right information?

We look at the way in which our choices influence ourselves—our ability to experience joy and fulfillment.

View

We've been pursuing happiness 'in the light of the candle'.

Not having any real information to rely on, we identified happiness with convenience—with what appears attractive. Needless to say, this naive way of choosing directions has been endlessly amplified by advertising.

What remained in the shadow is a wealth of possibilities to pursue joy and fulfillment—through human development!

Action

What the tradition gave us was far from perfect; yet through a plethora of myths, customs, rituals, social taboos...—the traditional culture had a way to provide guidelines, and an environment for human development. This we now need to recreate, in completely new ways.

Federation

The holoscope, and the holotopia, can now be seen as a concerted action to provide exactly that.

Already 25 centuries ago, Lao Tzu left us the message about the convenience paradox, which we are echoing here—that we must not "pursue happiness" by following the appearances, but by understanding the way that takes us there! We show how to illuminate this way by federating insights from a variety of ancient traditions, contemporary therapy schools, scientific disciplines... which have just recently become available to us.

Suitable prototypes show how this re-creation of basic culture can be integrated in academic research, and education.

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