These are notes to be added to and worked over by Tom Atlee, Mark Dubois and Jeffrey Courion regarding a project that grew out of an inquiry into the Power of Story and turned into a vision of a quantum leap in humanity's capacity to deal with our global situation...
New Manhattan Project for Our Full Co-Creative Potential
Individuals, human communities and societies have the latent power to shape their lives with vitality and wisdom.
Humanity can consciously, co-creatively evolve into higher forms of civilization.
How do we release, develop and realize individual and collective potential in service to our deepest selves, to greater life and to the Earth?
The power of atomic energy exists deep within the atom but was only released for human use by the massive gathering of resources and brilliance called the Manhattan Project. This was only one of a series of developments of human power in the world through which we are now co-creating consequences we cannot individually comprehend or track.
Thus we need to develop our power for collective vitality, wisdom and evolution. In the same way that the power of the atom existed for time immemorial, this collective human power already exists deep within our individual and collective selves. Diverse developments are invoking or enabling different aspects of this potential. We believe, however, that the speed and coherence of this development needs to accelerate to match the unprecedented challenges we face.
Among the potential fields where this development is happening * our social potential atom-smashers, if you will * are:
* Story * Dialogue and Deliberation * Strategic questioning * Connection with real nature, people and place * Networking * Digital information and telecommunications systems
Story is a pattern deeply embedded in reality and human consciousness. It is an incredibly powerful way to communicate, and a deep source of meaning and making sense of our world. Story is a major * if not the major * problem solving tool of humanity. The individual and collective stories we weave for ourselves and each other shape the ways we think, feel and behave, individually and collectively. Cultural meta-stories (myths, histories, visions, expectations, etc.) shape our social lives in ways we are barely conscious of. In fact, most of the stories that shape our lives influence us at an uuconscious level. Personal and social transformation often requires making these stories conscious so they can be changed. The current transformation seems to require that we not only make our existing stories conscious, but that we come to understand how we have co-created those stories, and that we co-create new stories more consciously, and that those stories feature and support our conscious co-creativity on behalf of life. This suggests that we actively seek answers to the question: How can we use the Power of Story to co-create a better world?
We*re making a song that makes the Earth sing again. We*re going to stop wasting our time screwing each other.
a list of movies, stories and songs that plant seeds of transformational action or pose powerful questions * reading list or entertainment list that*s participatory
THE RIGHT QUESTION movement WHO SAYS.NET PIECEMAKER.NET NORTHSTAR.NET DRINKINGGOURD.NET * if you follow this series of questions, you will find yourself outside of slavery
Run an international campaign to name it
Kids have power of simpleseeing and straighttalk. Imagine a movement in which they develop strategic questions (the Right Questions) with their parents (in groups of parents and kids in a community, when many other communities are also doing this) and then they go to strategic meetings or situations to ask their "Why doesn*t the emperor have any clothes on?" questions which pull the cat out of the bag in education, in business, in politics, in government, in*. The questions can be spread by rock bands and movies (such as Amazing Grace and Chuck). And then perhaps hundreds of thousands of them remain silent until the questions are addressed to their satisfaction.
The events are going to do a lot of the work for us * if we prepare properly.
1/3 of your time sweeping the floor 1/3 of your time doing your long term mission 1/3 of your time taking advantage of opportunities
Right now we are living out a family of stories and meta-stories (myths) that are being created by others for THEIR benefit, not ours or the Earth*s. Now there is a family of stories emerging that is being created by some of us, but not enough of us for us to live them out together. We need to catalyze the self-organizing co-creation (by more of us and, ultimately, all of us) of the evolving stories we need to shape our lives for the benefit of life * our deep selves, the Earth and future generations.
The creative effort will have at least two aspects * the co-creative engagement of the professional storytellers of society with the experts of sustainability AND a massive engagement of people who are readily to reword the stories of their individual and collective lives.
Our task is to heal and mature humanities (our) co-creativity.
A major approach is to transform story into a healing form of increasingly conscious and wise co-creation that enables us to engage in lives and work that nurture us and the Earth.
In my old language I*d call you my enemy. I*m not fighting you. I*m not going away. I*m here to help us address this problem that we share, this situation in our community or society that isn*t working, to find ways to nurture the best for your children and mine. This situation MUST and WILL be handled well, sooner or later, so if you accept your inevitable transformation into a co-creative partner with me, you won*t even find me irritating. If you don*t, you may perceive that I will make it exceedingly difficult for you to continue what I presently believe to be your destructive ways, even as I open myself to your views, appreciate your story and join with your deepest desires to play a positive role in the world.
This is something we might say to the golden handcuffed turkeys (uh, beauties) at the top who are just as trapped as us by our own views.
Story extends our senses. Our senses are designed for local opportunities and threats. Story, consciousness, intelligence and wisdom can all extend the reach of our senses beyond the immediate situation, into things far away in space, time, abstraction, causality, etc. Shamans used to use these tools to reach beyond the immediate on behalf of their tribe and the tribe delegated that responsibility to the Shaman. Today we practice collective shamanism via the web, science, many intuitives among us, and so one. The more participatory we can make it, the more successful our co-shamanism will be.
Localness has small feedback loops that make us conscious of the results of our actions in a timely way. The increasing complexity and reach of our technologies to create effects vastly removed from localness (distant in time and space) make it harder for our old cognitive wiring (see New World, New Mind by Ornstein and Ehrlich) to comprehend the consequences of our actions. This increases the need for more powerful co-shamanism (including Story) to help us experience those consequences with adequate immediacy to influence our behavior in a timely way and thus prevent catastrophes.
A brainstorm of possible NMP functions
The New Manhattan Project will make it more possible for thousands of transformational agents to do their work more powerfully by:
- researching new knowledge deemed strategically vital to the purpose of the project, including overviews of the state of various fields, theoretical work and actual social experiments;
- making sure educational materials, educational opportunities and incentives are available to satisfy the knowledge and manpower needs of various vital activities;
- convening strategic conversations -- both temporary and ongoing -- and creating empowering forums and networking activities and structures to link important players;
- catalyzing any new organizations or networks discovered by research to be needed;
- stimulating a transformational orientation in philanthropic circles;
- seeking out, incubating and supporting key innovations through research, contests, publicity, funding, etc.;
- otherwise being the locus of collective intelligence of and for people and organizations working to increase human potential in ways that will have likely impact on the destiny of civilization.
