How might equity become the guiding virtue of cooperation to co-create a fair-free-flourishing-future to benefit all?
How might Equity Moonshot become the antidote for solving our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century, such as corrupt power, systemic isms and escalating inequities?
How is it decided what the fairness of equity means? Who decides whether this is a positive or negative word? Propaganda machines have been highly effective in indoctrinating people into believing that equity mean “equal outcomes.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
Equity is about fair opportunities and fair rewards for all. It is about exponentiating a diverse abundance of multicultural capabilities and human capacities needed to solve our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century.
Despite this positive meaning, the weaponization of this word emotionally evokes paranoid associations with Marxism and Communism: a legacy of post-McCarthyism. This anti-red-reflex-trigger rejects equity. The political abuse of this negative reframe maintains the status quo of unfair advantages for the elites and unfair disadvantages for the non-elites.
The original meaning of the derivative Latin word for equity was fairness. Equity is a virtue. The simple rule for equity is: be fair and kind to everyone. So simple, yet so hard. This golden rule is constantly broken.
Equity is a win/win/win approach to cooperation. From an evolutionary, cooperation outperforms competition.
Neoliberalism locks our mindsets into the zero-sum, win-lose games of war and sport metaphors. It extracts and take advantages over others and the planet. Neoliberalism is an aberrant elite cult against evolution and humanity. It normalizes the deadly sin of greed and devalues virtues.
Devoid of the ethics of equity, these exploitative and competitive metaphors set up uneven-playing fields of unfair advantages to the elites and unfair disadvantages to the non-elites. Our rigged and corrupt systems are morally bankrupt.
Empowered with the ethics of equity, we defeat the power abuses and injustices of tyranny, fascism and autocracies to set up just systems of civility, integrity, truth-seeking and transparent accountability.
Equity is about how we co-create enabling systems that give each person, according to their particular needs, fair opportunities to strive and thrive to their highest potential of healthy well-being.
Equity Moonshot is humanitarian–technological metaphor to integrate indigenous wisdom with ethical systems of virtuous technology to deploy systems, complexity, and human-centered design thinking to serve the greater good and the health of the planet.
This holistic metaphor goes beyond solving our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems to using an ecological framework of metaphysical, meta, macro, meso, micro and nano questions about how to build networks of launching pads for Equity Moonshot.
This integrated approach calls on us to take the time for slow thinking, self-reflection and deep collaborative learning about how we might harmonize and orchestrate a symphony of galvanizing innovative solutions in service of the common cause.
Adopting this metaphor, we can co-design lifelong intergenerational learning processes to build launching pads for Equity Moonshot. This higher ethical cause calls for cultivating the virtues needed to transform our mindsets and re-design our systems for the greater good.
We need new forms of transformational change agent archetypes to cultivate and operationalize equity governance. Equity muses are Socratic Sherpas who enable people and their leaders our lifelong intergenerational learning into the unknown territories of the uncertainty in addressing ethical dilemmas of polarities and dialectics, moral ambiguities and virtuous quests.
As equity muses, we ask complex questions to generate new insights into co-creative and innovative ways of addressing the deep systemic influences that perpetrate and perpetuate our dystopian journeys toward the amoral abyss of exacerbating our wicked problems
As lifelong learners, we can use complex questions to explore the meaning and purpose of these lines of inquiry before even responding to them. This preparation sets the stage for co-creating generative dialogues needed to solve wicked problems and to collaborate on the Equity Moonshot Quest. Each of these complex questions are worthy of hour long dialogues.
How might we, equity muse trainers, leaders and learning designers, liberate equity to:
Free ourselves from suffocating paradigms and the constraints of war and sport metaphors to address our tangled web of interconnected wicked problems?
Expand beyond nature and biomimicry metaphors (such as mycelium networks) to artistic metaphors (such as co-creating relational and conversational tapestries of ecosystems) needed to cultivate equity governance?
Cultivate cultural humility to move beyond the moribund hegemony of narcissistic thought leadership, marketing persuasion and the indoctrination of mindsets to the enlightening plurality of altruistic thought facilitation, the diversity of egalitarian influences and the emancipations of sovereignties?
Enable people to move beyond being pawns, puppets, pit bulls and propaganda pushers of political, religious, scientific and educational paradigms to open minded, truth-seeking, virtuous free-thinkers collaborating to co-create innovative solutions to solve our self-inflicted wicked problems?
Align our self-interests in common cause to do good for the commons, the common, good, humanity, and the health of the planet?
Shift beyond the imperialism of neoliberalism of maximizing profits over higher purpose, people and the planet to corporate emancipation entrepreneurship of assuring higher purpose, people and the planet harmonize with profit-making?
In capitalism, money creates opportunity / access to all things. Outcomes are then a result of opportunity / access plus decisions and effort but access is fundamental (foundational) to effort or decisions having any impact at all. These are also different depending on the context. In healthcare, its mostly about money but race matters too. I just read that black women statistically have worse healthcare outcomes in this country no matter their finances or healthcare policy. In housing, equal opportunity / access again comes down to money. We don't have sufficient housing for poor people, period. But they have equal opportunity... they just need a bunch of money. In education, again, opportunity to attend a neighborhood public school or community college is not equal to Harvard. But redlining is a real thing and in some places black people cannot get a loan, no matter their situation. In Finland private schools are illegal to ensure all schools are equally good and that kids of all stripes are socialized together. (The rich are not isolated from everyone else behind gated communities and private schools). Access to bad food is not equal to access to good food. I think the answer is that policy needs to be fine tuned to achieve targeted equity outcomes, while opportunity is the mechanim to.support that. So for example, if a person can't afford a place to live society should ensure that a basic place to live is is provided to them (access). There need to be basic outcomes to live that are guaranteed by society. You are not guaranteed a mansion by the sea (great outcome), you are guaranteed a place to live that provides all the basic requirements to survive (a minimally acceptable outcome). To fail in that concept, in my view, is to fail in equity completely. The challenge is to determine what is a minimally acceptable outcome that society will guarantee. It must be a guarantee, like social security. We are talking about a basic social contract. Today, there is no social contract anymore. It has been ripped up and used for toilet paper by the elites and politicians. Also, geography matters. Locating public or low income housing near power lines, freeways, factories, dumps and chemicals is not equitable even if its completely free.