Making Future Communities Real: 20th Century Efforts, 21st Century Projects & Guiding Principles

Transcript

[Music] hello okay everyone I'm going to give a little bit of a survey of alternative communities emerging in the um 20th century where we're at right now and in terms of alternative communities uh emerging some of the principles underneath them um and place uh web 3 and defi sort of in the the lineage of this also give us some Frameworks to think about these things it doesn't seem oh there we go

okay so first I'm going to start with some Concepts and some Frameworks to begin thinking in place us I'm a fellow of the long now Foundation I work with several other organizations um and so I'm going to try to situate Us in time and a bigger time frame uh uh so the first idea first concept is the great turning this was um initiated in the 70s by uh Joanna Macy who's a really famous ecos psychologist the ideas were moving from a industrial growth Society into a society that actually is in Harmony and in Integrity with the Earth Systems at large and that this great turning uh I heard Joanna Macy maybe 20 years ago talk about that there's three

great narratives three stories that we all find ourselves within one of those stories is status quo everything's fine Second Story is Apocalypse Now it's all going to it's all going to burn and the third story is Another World's possible and she says these are the The Meta stories of our time you find yourself in one of those choose your lane and I was talking with some indigenous leaders in New Mexico one time and they said no no no that's they said that's there's another story and I said well what's the other narrative and they said the other narrative is we've been here we've always been here we will always be here and and why I introduce this is that the three narratives of of meta culture of where we're at the culture we situate in

are stories fundamentally of disconnection right they're fundamentally we're all living in a life way that's fundamentally at odds with the life system as we know it and I think the idea if you're here listening to communities want to know about communities it's coming from a deep longing to reconnect in some way shape or form into a different uh life system this is nothing new this is heronimus Bosch uh about 1500 when he was painting this and you'll see sort of a Garden of even scene here you'll see some really weird transhumanism human world here that's

sort of an ideal techno Utopia of sorts or Eco Utopia and then you'll see sort of like where the shadow side of humanity leads right and we're still playing out these themes and these these apocalyptic Visions today so I'm also going to introduce this idea of the ship the raft and the shore real quick so the ship the raft in the shore the ship this is old religious metaphors mainly comes from Buddhism a lot of other Mystics used it the ship is think of the cruise ship mainstream Society basically the world as we know it since World War II at least the predominant one neoliberal capitalism um most people are consuming on it most

people are asleep at the buffet line they don't even realize it's a ship they just take it as granted for reality the rafts are all the countercultural movements counterculture communities that have tried to bail off the ship and either tried to move the ship or tried to form their own raft up and form their own communities we'll go into those and do a little bit of survey of those they're really important um and the shore is something that I'll introduce which is um a concept which is uh a very different how would I say it state of being or State of Consciousness from the ship or the raft phase of things I would say predominantly this conference here almost everyone's in the rafts and the rafts are defined by like a hyper ephemerality right it's the startup

activism culture everything's moving fast communities don't hold together relationships come and go digital nomadism it's a very it's a it's a lot of movement right and the shore is another quality we'll get there this is important framing for the rest of the conversation so I'm also going to introduce one more framework real quick um which is I think the work of web 3 and Defi and where we're at in the world right now actually fits in a much larger historic narrative and I think we're in a different Epoch as humans and as a Humanity basically it falls a a High dier thesis antithesis synthesis

framework theology humans have made sense of the world myth making god making uh for most of human history that shifted during the Enlightenment period into scientific materialism and reductionism that's the framework we've been in that's pretty well bankrupt right now I think from a soul perspective but also a life systems perspective and now we're trying to see and people are grasping and I would argue that most of the alternative community and and raft projects that we've seen are an effort to try to Define what humanity is Define what our lives are and something more meaningful than either one of the previous systems maybe inclusive of both but it really transcends them both and we don't have

we don't know where we're going right now right this third category is really new territory we're entering an entirely new phase of being humans and I think you guys have a really fundamentally important uh role to play actually and there's a lot at stake so just to start going into the anant to where we are today so some 20th century WFTS where they're emerging from this is not um uh exhaustive by this is just scratching the surface but it's some important uh precedence so in the 1920s and 40s you had these movements around art and creativity and in disciplinary thought that were happening bow house here in Europe um that then emerged in this thing called The Black

Mountain college in the United States this is Buck Minister Fuller here um this is actually the first experimental geodesic dome that was ever made um this was in 1949 actually so and this was really radical experiments in community and education and and and transdisciplinary um being in the world and many 20th century great artists and movements emerged out of both of those although they're not as well known B house obviously it's a little more known than Black Mountain College another raft is the LGB PQ plus communities these were mainly to survive they were looking for refugees for their gender and sexual identities in the 1950s they were able to survive in small communities and cities like San Francisco New York other

places they were real communities right they really bonded together out of persecution that then led to massive change we've seen over the past uh the the the next 70 years um with those communities and our cultural ways' 60s and 7s this was obviously a radical revolutionary time but really was The Dawn and Awakening of stripping out of those mythmaking systems from before adopting Eastern thought adopting different alternative spiritual ways of being and the first time the humans got the overview effect first time we saw planet Earth right first time that we began to awaken that we're a planetary species on a very fragile Planet

ecological awareness and Consciousness starts to emerge and you have some real Earnest movements at that moment to Institute communities on the ground that are reconciled with that truth and that reality um some of those still exist there's a long list of them um both in Europe and the United States we can talk about and lessons from some of those um and then interestingly as technology really starts to um shape culture and begin to shape culture especially in San Francisco Bay Area um you had this emerging group of futurists and futurist communities and um we'll go into detail zoom in hopefully there we go so the future is

I'm going to cite this because I think it's important principles or antecedence to um to ethereum and web 3 in general um the context for them is they were deeply embedded in Silicon Valley in the emergence of Silicon Valley in web 1.0 in proto web. one 1.0 and their values were coming from a bunch of social cultural conditions at those times emerging out of the' 60s and' 70s more or less listed here which is they began to say this time is transformational it's not just it's exponential and it's transformational it's not just linear um we've got to embrace unconventional thinking scenario planning is the

discipline um it's participatory and Liberator and liberating and we have to enhance public ownership um that structural and individual factors should be balanced equally this is the emergence and of the discipline of um complexity and systems thinking in Earnest from these groups um and that we have to take an active uh role in world transformation they're very pragmatic group um and they always were looking at sustainable Futures which is more around future optionality um Stuart brand one of the the the principal founders of of futurist movement said we are as Gods we might as well get good at it referring to our technological

power um and out of that you have Eco Utopia Visions emerging and you have techno Utopia versions uh emerging they were quite separated they were quite different right they were flying cars and no trees and then they were were all living in tree houses and have Gardens and get to Bicycle around right and thankfully there's some like solar Punk Futures now and other things that hybridize all these things um I think a really important concept that I didn't write up here is called protopia this is introduced by Kevin Kelly another one of the seminol futurists protopia is this idea that Utopias are all these visions that are impossible to grasp protopia is an idea that actually are our actions now if they're radical enough day by day

by day actually steer us into a lived and realized version of a very different world than we we realize today amar's law maybe you know this uh kind of associated with mois law is we tend to overestimate Technology's impact in the immediate term and underestimate its impact in the longterm right so protopia is built on this idea that the long-term impacts are massive and I'll get to some details of that um some 21st century rafts things shift as technology accelerates for our lives basically if um it's a very fuzzy image but this is an image from the too when they're raving in the caves

down below right remember that scene um and um they're you know they're all the humans are all having interesting times in the caves and then Morpheus and the rest of them are actually fighting out fighting the the fight um and I would say kind of our our current world of digital Nomads is that it's mostly fluff and parties and like and then there's some people actually fighting an as exential battle out there I think that's very real and I'll I'll frame FR that more specifically um but this is all fueled by the electronic Revolution by the digital Revolution including electronic music and the cultures around that and there's a couple important um values these are values

coming out of Burning Man um so these ideas basically a Libertarian participatory governance system is effectively what these 10 principles of Burning Man underly um we could go into into deeper exploration around those in Q&A if you want um I think the immediacy one maybe is is really important when we um get to the talk IM mediacy means this lived experience that's relational and live in the moment and tactile and connected it's not really digital they're also quite um radically uh around gifting and de decommodification so they felt like kind of born from a 20th century mindset which is I'll get

back to the so the activist entrepreneurs 20 cinch is is a pretty interesting concept actually and we take it for granted but in the 20th century um and really our elders they it was Nos and governments or were trying to do the good work and for-profit companies were just out for profit and this emergence of communities around act being activist entrepreneurs systems Changers disruptors it's a really really eff and big deal because it really collapses those walls down that were there in the 20th century and I think sometimes in our capitalist

system we still get captured and sucked back into uh producing value and economic and financial value but I think this there's an active debate and tension going on that's mostly being lost right now Around Mission ethics versus capitalism and and money I decided to come to uh to ethereum conference because I really respected the community whereas so much at crypto no offense is just full of douchebags you don't give a about ethics or philosophy so and I don't find that with this community so um so I really have appreciated this community for a long time um I actually didn't know see if I can go back I cover oh yeah this is important so um

the emergence of this community of web 3D I think is table Stakes for human survival actually and I'll get into what I mean so we're we're entering in the past two decades into uh uh mainly envisioning dystopian future scenarios that feel like and we don't even see our way out right it's either sort of catastrophe through bioweapons or something ridiculous um the Democracy of mass destru weapons of mass destruction is not a good thing like that's a great way like that's being decentralized so technology is decentralizing things that are very destructive how do we handle that on one side and it's also creating massive centralization right whether it's uh large Mega corporations like Google and others who are who are owning

all the data um or whether it's countries like China um and and that just leads us to you know dystopias um and so now we're like wrestling with the question not we are as Gods with all this power you might as well get good at it it's like how the hell we survive this god-like powers that are being Unleashed that we're unleashing on ourselves right that's as exential question that's very real or feels very real whether it's real or not that we're wrestling with and I think that's why also web 3 and defi is so critical it may be one of the only avenu to start to create other Power Systems power dynamics and what's a uh really dangerous game right now

um this is not my area of expertise but I felt like it was important to go into I don't know if you know the work of Tristan Harris or Daniel schmachtenberger consilience project um or the center for uh Humane technology but Tech is not values neutral these naive ideas that technology is neutral that a hammer can be used to build a house or to hurt someone is absolutely incorrect uh the Techno utopian version which says that it's net positive the market will sort out what technologies are valuable also yes um the Lite view if you guys I don't know if you know who the Lites are the leites were Weavers in Great Britain when the loom was

invented and they weren't anti- technology they just got completely their their jobs got completely automated and wiped out and so they developed a whole ethos around how technology is net negative I think that's also an incorrect view by the way and so what we do know is that it's very complex technology has good bad and especially unforeseen um consequences especially aspect of technology I work in psychedelics and in Neuroscience um is how much we're learning about um neuroplasticity what you pay attention to wires that recursive feedback loop especially with technology is unbelievably powerful it shapes our

perceptions of reality it shapes our intentions it shapes the capacities that we can do so it's not just the technology it's the relationship our neuroplastic brains have with technology that steer Us in exponential ways radically if you have an axe or a chainsaw you look to cut down a tree if you have a camera you look for beauty if you have a spear you're looking to what you can stab with it or throw at it right and usually technology because it's a I've also been in startup land forever it's you guys know it's brutal right you're just killing yourself to build and the pace you have to do it at is radical and you have to do it uh in Sprints and it's usually

designed very narrowly but it has massive Downstream effects so uh Instagram filters and sharing images I didn't uh what I didn't share up here is a a chart since I do work in mental health that the rate of teenage suicides among women and the direct correlation between screen time and suicidality teenage girls is off the charts it hasn't hit the Press yet it's unbelievably depressing it's it's insane right so these are second and third order consequences to technology we don't think about you guys are the creators of Technology right now um that has massive second and third order

consequences and I don't know how you in being Builders and creators begin to even wrestle with these second and third order consequences that are absolutely fundamental potentially for the survival of humanity legitimately it's kind of absurd but real and quite scary actually so just one more example example of the plow so when the plow was invented um uh agriculture was revolutionized uh caloric output significantly Rose but if you create a technology that seems neutral like the plow more calories more efficient farming that granted a strategic advantage in a competitive environment

right so those Villages that adopted it versus those that didn't in the highlands um they went off and killed them they gained more power those communities that didn't adopt the technology lose right it's a really uh it is technology is obligate it obligates us to consequences it is absolutely not not neutral in any way anyway shape or form um and it also radically shifted societal values it increased patriarchal structures women couldn't plow guess who controls the power now and the means of production uh the increased wealth uh inequality and an increased hierarchy as

well massive consequences for something as seemingly simple as a plow um so ways forward I what I wanted one point I wanted to really make is this that nihilistic Tech design has to end it must end we kind of inherited this idea that technology is somewhat neutral and it's fine to do whatever you want with it it's not it's absolutely value centered axiological is the term I would invite you to look up um if we abs abolutely have to embed values and externalities and consequences into into our design um the other piece and this goes back in some

of the precedents of communities is that full active participation um to shipped culture and then finally Consciousness as the only exit door what I mean by that is what we don't surface our our worst sides of our Humanity the shadow sides of our technology if we don't look at the consequences will devour us the only most philosophers of the mind will tell you that um Free Will doesn't exist with one exception the ability the recursive ability of awareness to look back at itself gives us choice and so for each one of you as builders in your respective ecosystems you have to be active participants you have to think about the consequences and you have to rise to the occasion to bring to

Consciousness what the table Stakes are right now um real quick and we'll have a little time for questions um personally uh my work is that I uh work with a company developing psychedelic medicines the whole point and mission of it is to help Consciousness basically to open and expand Consciousness we have clinical State we're based out of Switzerland we have a bunch of clinical stage um drugs um but my real passion is reconnect refuges or clinics which is actually situating placemaking and communities in place around Consciousness Culture Connection basically I see us going through a massive transition a lot of suffering over the next several hundred

years so can we rather than being in the raft State I want to start working on Shore projects how can we start Landing people on the shore and Landing ourselves in integrated and connected ways while we go through the great turning and then we also have reconnect Foundation where we pour a bunch of profits from the biotech company back out to land conservation uh with indigenous stewards in the Amazon basin specifically some of our medicines are inspired by them um and we do a lot of research at the University of zurk around uh Consciousness okay maybe one question or two thank you so much for uh planting these seeds um and sharing so much food for thought yeah we do have time for one

question so please raise your hand if you would like to ask something and then the mic will find you here in the front first row hi thanks for your presentation um yeah you the maybe the the rafts and the shore conceptualization and then the Psychedelic MH container seems to me quite rafty how do you make a translation from a psychedelic container to more of a yeah totally thank you yeah I mean I think the the raft to the shore transition or different phases in psychedelics being

quite ra um psychedelics have two many things they do one easy way to describe them is that they dissolve boundaries right so sort of contracted thinking contracted uh neural patterns and they help to open those up in that sense they're very rafty because they're dissolving right structure and Foundation however the other thing they're doing is really situating oneself in a relational constellation in an ecosystemic uh point of view in the world in an lived way not a conceptual way understanding our place in the world like maybe the fundamental problem is we have a partially developed prefrontal cortex we know enough to develop

ethereum but we can't recognize that we are a part of an entire Earth system and that we're related to each other and so we're still competing and stabbing each other and bombing Ukraine so what psychedelics do is actually raise that up an octave and May diminish that desire for fight and so in that ways they're all grounding yeah thank you um I do believe you will be around so if you have more questions for Daniel please uh find him around the stage and another big thank you and Applause to him we will be back with the next session in a few minutes so bear with us [Music]