How might metaphysical sage idolatry, reductionist transformational experiences and spiritual isolationism enable our dysfunctional ethical-leadership-political-religious-social-educational systems?
How might metaphysics enable the serendipity and synchronicity to restore planetary health and co-create a fair, free, flourishing future to benefit all?
Read the article below to understand the headline questions.
Why stick with simple questions and reductionist messaging?
Self-contained newsletters with simple questions, clear content and succinct messages are scripted for fasting thinking and instant comprehension. Keep it simple. Don’t make me think too much.
Social media, mass media, journalism and the blogospheres are predominantly predicated on the KISS principle: keep it simple and stupid. These propaganda machines indoctrinate people on what to think and not how to think that prevent them from asking complex questions.
The KISS principle conditions people into superficial, either-or thinking that perpetrates and perpetuates the epic fundamentalist battles between light of virtues and the dark side. Our reductionist and dichotomous mindsets reinforce warring factions of tribalism that enable ego-centric identities and regressive mobs of populism to thrive.
The “simple” newsletters are not designed to evoke ongoing dialogues about how we can collaborate and solve our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st-century: such as, political corruption, systemic isms, escalating inequities and planetary demise.
Wicked problems are complex in that they have no single, simple nor final solution: nor either-or answers. They are not per se solvable, such as eliminating our ego-centric shadows, the dark sides of human nature and the abuses of power. But there is much that can be done to minimize negative influences and their toxic impacts.
Why ask complex questions and evoke confusion?
Newsletters that use complex questions to evoke deep thinking, slow learning and musing set stages for developing collaborative learning communities to work on solving our wicked problems.
The purpose in asking these questions is to evoke curiosity in exploring and understanding the complexities of our interdependent wicked problems. Confusion and lack of clarity are part of the growth and sense-making processes in managing complexities.
Complex questions may not be fully understood on first reading. The headline question (above) is a Big Hairy Audacious Questions (#BHAQ.) The sub-headline is a Holistic Oxytocin Questions (#HOQ). #BHAQs and #HOCs represent a masculine–feminine continuum of challenge-support-nurture inquiries about how to work on the Equity Moonshot quest: : co-design and build an equitable-regenerative-sustainable-future.
The questions are designed to encourage learners to develop inquiring minds and complexity thinking skills. Complex questions may overwhelm and perplex learners. They risk triggering resistance, reject reflexes, closed-mindedness and anti-intellectualism.
Take time for slow thinking and self-reflection
It is essential to understand the rationale of posing complex questions. Learners can use AI tools to look up the meaning of words and phrases and even provide an provisional answer to a complex question for group discussion.
The first step is to define key words or phrases in the question. This inquiry process can create new questions, refine a complex question and/or break up a question into shorter ones.
Discussions about the meaning of a complex question enable learners to develop a shared understanding of it, before engaging in the process of co-creating generative dialogues about how to respond to it.
Complex questions aim to engage people in the lifelong intergenerational learning process about cultivating ethical mindsets for designing virtuous systems.
As equity muses, we align together as catalytic transformational agents to open-inspire-align our mindset about how to launch #Equity Moonshot.
Collaborating together as Socratic Sherpas, we ask people and their leaders complex questions about how to restore planetary health and co-create a fair-free-flourishing future to benefit all.
How do these contrasting headline questions evoke different emotional reactions?
Critique the limitations about saviors and the hero’s journey
Idolatry of metaphysical sages-on-the-sage suspends our discernment in asking evocative questions, such as the headline and sub-headline questions. Transformational training experiences with reductionistic foci on the inside-out (ontological) perspectives address self-awareness issues related to being, becoming, thinking, feeling, sensing, perceiving and believing.
These learning processes involve training in mindfulness, the ethics of developing virtues, the cultivation of equanimity, discernment, meta-cognition, critical thinking, emotional awareness and self-regulation, self-compassion, grief work, values clarifications and media literacy to decode the indoctrinations needed to liberate our sovereignties. This liberation process is essential for becoming open-minded, true-seeking, virtuous, free-thinkers, who collaborate together to serve the greater good.
These learning experiences build up our resiliencies, alleviate the burdens of being sensitive, develop anti-fragile skills, heal traumas, heal grief and cultivate higher levels of consciousness. Such experiences enable physical, psychological and spiritual well-being, but may do little or nothing for social-political development.
These experiences risk becoming an insular form of spiritual isolationism. Detachment from our socio-political realities disable our capacities and capabilities of solving our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems. Spiritual and psychological isolationism enables our dysfunctional ethical-leadership-political-religious-social-educational systems to thrive.
Our sages-on-the-stage, mega-influencers, marketing mavericks and our heroes cannot save us. The individual focus on hero’s journey is broken for solving wicked problems.
How might we cultivate cultural humility to transition from educational paradigms based on sages-on-the-stage and guides-on-the-side to lifelong intergenerational learning processes of guides-on-the-stage and sages-on-the-side to launch Equity Moonshot?
Use Equity Moonshot as a metaphor for transformation
Equity is the virtue of fairness. Equity Moonshot is a humanitarian-technological metaphor to inspire how to co-create evocative questions for transforming mindsets and re-designing systems.
How might we, as equity muses, leaders and learning designers, enable and mobilize people and their leaders to:
Align ethical, systemic, regenerative, ecological, complexity and human-centered design thinking to solve our self-inflicted wicked problems?
Integrate East-West indigenous-modern wisdom to do good for the commons, the common, good, humanity, and the health of the planet?
Deploy the ethical use of technology to build ethical networks of virtuous networks, open innovation hubs and entrepreneurial ecosystems to implement equity governance?
Build Equity Moonshot story movements to amplify and exponentiate the transformation of our mindsets and the re-design of our systems based on equity governance?
Equity governance is about how we co-construct fair rules, fair games and fair plays to assure fair opportunities and fair rewards for the benefit of all and to restore the health of the planet.
How might we, as equity muses, leaders and learning designers, enable and mobilize people and their leaders to contribute to, co-create and implement equity governance?
Use the Zoom metaphor to redress the perils of reductionism
How might we zoom out-in-out-in, both inside and outside, to:
Ethically develop our inside-out (ontological) capabilities of visualizing, being, becoming, thinking, feeling, sensing, perceiving and doing in virtuous ways that awaken our transcendent Self from ego-centric shadows and dark sides?
Challenge-support-nurture our inquiry processes to launch Equity Moonshot?
Solve our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st-century?
These questions calls for developing ethical networks of virtuous networks, open innovation hubs and entrepreneurial ecosystems to build launching pads for Equity Moonshot.