The MAP -- A Platform for Global Transformation - V0.1

A very hAppy Platform!

DISCLAIMER: This document is an incomplete working draft.

A Call to Action

Humanity is at a crossroads. We are facing multiple interconnected existential risks that are systemically rooted in cultural assumptions (i.e., memes) operating for tens, hundreds and even thousands of years. These assumptions are so pervasive and deeply seated as to be almost invisible. Yet they inform the foundations of our economic, educational, governance and social systems.

Avoiding civilizational collapse demands a profound shift in culture at global scale -- a re-imagining of who we are and how we interact as people and as participants in the web of life. Yet this need for coordinated global action comes at a time when our systems for collective sense-making, meaning-making and choice-making are, themselves, breaking-down. Furthermore, asymmetric power coupled with exponentially progressing technology is wielded by those most invested in the current cultural assumptions -- the inter-connected engines of global commerce.

But what if we could apply our technological prowess in service to cultural evolution towards a world that works for all life and in which everyone has a role to play? What if we could offer the unempowered and disillusioned a means to discover meaningful answers to the profound questions of what can I do? and what can we do? What if we could amplify the agency of those on the forefront of cultural innovation to help manifest entirely new systems and structures patterned on principles of living systems proven over the course of 4.5B years of evolution?

Introducing the MAP

The Memetic Activation Platform (MAP) is an open-ended, de-centralized, computing and application services platform whose audacious goal is to foster the emergence of self-organizing, evolutionary transformation at personal, interpersonal, organizational, inter-organizational and, ultimately, global levels.

As befitting any good map, the Memetic Activation Platform supports orientation (where am I? / where are we?), consideration of potential destinations (where do I/we want to go?) and route-finding (how can I/we get there?).

But the true power of a map is the journeys it helps you make.The MAP supports inner and outer journeys of self-discovery, exploration, and innovation. And it helps individuals, find, collaborate, cooperate, and co-create with fellow travelers.

Beyond individual action, the MAP allows people to amplify their agency by forming self-organized groups of agents, fractally composed and inter-connected via a rich and extensible array of reciprocal value flows and de-centralized governance models to enable coordinated action at ever greater scales.

Much of the cultural territory we need to navigate is uncharted. Accordingly, evolutionary thought leaders, artists and story-tellers can help "paint" the MAP with descriptions of the cultural territory they envision (i.e., they can steward new memes): new governance models, new types of reciprocal value flow agreements, new framings of the concept of money, emerging and re-discovered practices for managing the commons, re-generative agriculture, circular economies, etc. Explorers and practitioners relying on those descriptions can then put those memes to use and, based on their experience, affirm or refute the accuracy of the meme's articulation as well as its effectiveness in action. This will lead to refinements in the memetic descriptions and growing communities of practice in their application. Accurate descriptions of memes proven to be effective in practice are rewarded by increased adoption. What doesn't work subsides. Arguing is largely unnecessary -- if you think you have a better idea, put it on the MAP and let the evolutionary process decide.

No person or organization "owns" the MAP and the MAP does NOT prescribe some grand design for a utopian future. While the goal of the MAP is bold, the orientation of its designers is one of profound humility. We make no claim to THE answer. Rather, we believe everyone has part of an answer. The future is ours, collectively, to co-create via an evolutionary process -- which is to say, a messy process that depends upon a rich diversity of evolutionary experiments whose mettle is tested in the crucible of lived experience and whose success is measured in its objective and subjective effects on well-being at all levels.

It is up to us -- all of us -- to be and manifest the world we want to see. The MAP invites you to see what emerges... together!

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Last updated 1 year ago