1a: How might we zoom out to pose complex questions about equity meta-governance and Equity Moonshot?
How might we take time for slow thinking and contemplate the future meaning of equity: the virtue of fairness, kindness and civility?
How might we take time for slow thinking about the meaning of equity?
The word, equite, is a 4th old century French word, derived from Latin, meaning fairness. The meaning of this virtue has been modernized. Equity is the humanitarian virtue of fairness, kindness and civility.
Equity is about giving each of us, according to our individual needs, fair opportunities to strive and thrive to our highest potential of healthy well-being.
Equity meta-governance is our UMH: use a constellation of virtues to co-create fair rules, fair plays, fair games, fair opportunities, and fair rewards for the benefit of all, on a healthy planet.
Equity Moonshot is our UMP: co-design and build an equitable, regenerative, and sustainable future on a healthy planet for the benefit of all.
Take time for slow reading and self-reflection about the meaning of equity and zoom out to contemplate about the implications of our Ultimate Meta-process for humanity (UMH) and our Ultimate Meta-Purpose (UMP).
Explore what complex questions mean to you, before engaging in generative-strategic dialogues and civil discourse about solving our interconnected webs of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century.
How might we explore the implications and meanings of complex questions?
Each question header (below) provides a context for organizing inverted classrooms as unconference-style sessions to address additional questions and create new ones. This transformational learning process sets up inquiry and improvisation stages of ethical entrepreneurship and open virtuous innovation to launch Equity Moonshot.
Learners choose which questions to explore further, using AI to understand its strengths and weaknesses as a research and evocative tool.
Begin this learning journey by reflecting on the purpose of any one complex question. Read it slowly, re-read them, reflect, and deeply contemplate about the implications of their meaning. Use AI to research the meaning of keywords, concepts, and phrases in the question, and engage in meta-questioning: ask questions about the question.
To develop beloved learning communities, each person takes the opportunity to explain what the question means to them, before engaging in generative-strategic dialogues and civil discourse about Equity Moonshot.
The purpose of these questions is not to tell you what to think.
How might we use complex questions to learn together on how to think critically with self-awareness, and develop meta-cognition and emotional skills: learning to think about how we think and feel, and why?
How might we pose complex questions to solve our wicked problems?
As equity leaders, mentors, muses, mavens and learning design architects. we pose complex questions to transform our mindsets about re-designing our systems based on the fairness of equity. This calls for building Equity Moonshot story movements and setting up lifelong intergenerational learning journeys to solve our wicked problems.
How might we co-create ecological frameworks of complex questions to inquire about how to understand and collaborate on solving our wicked problems?
Wicked problems are complex in that they have no simple, single, ultimate solutions, with no definite answers.
How might we deconstruct the prejudice against equity?
Political conflicts arise from different perspectives of what equality and equity mean. Equity is a word that triggers emotional reactivity and causes conflicts based on different understandings about the meaning of this concept.
The alt-right propaganda machines have brilliantly launched a full-scale neo-terrorist war on equity and the concept of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). They have turned this word and concept into an bogey man and an evil pariah, just as they have done to the word “woke” and “critical race theory”. Word becomes destructive weapons in the war of identity politics.
Alt-right marketing propagandists deploy the time-test of fear-based manipulation and scapegoating techniques to amassing a herd mindset and prejudice against its target. They orchestrate Greek chorus media blasts of tropes, memes and clichés. The negative smear campaign against equity escalate meritocracy to favor the elites and inequities to disadvantage working people. These strategies are deployed to enrich the wealthy elites and mega-corporations as a way to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
Pathological megalomania and malignant narcissism are the drivers of neo-terrorism. Neo-terrorism is the authoritarian propaganda war of words, with a sociopathic disregard for the integrity of transparent accountability and truth-seeking.
A just criticism about DEI in the workplace is that they have had little or no progress in redressing the injustices of BIPID: biases, isms, prejudices, inequities and discriminations. The purpose of DEI is a noble cause, but its execution has been lacking.
These shortcomings do not mean throwing the baby out with the bath water. It means that we need more effective learning platforms that go beyond raising consciousness about DEI to redress the injustices of BIPID. This is extremely difficult to do during a disinformation pandemic of neo-terrorism that incites extreme dysfunctional political polarizations and exacerbates the divisive toxicities of identity politics.
This word equity has been tarred, fathered and smeared with Marxism and Communism: claiming that gifted children are denied with opportunities to excel, and taking from the advantaged and giving to the disadvantaged. Equity is about ensuring that all children excel at all levels.
Equality is about level-playing fields. Each child has a equal right to an education, but schools varies widely in their funding levels, resources, learning opportunities and the quality of their educational experiences. Equal access does not ensure fair opportunities for all.
Equity is about redressing the uneven playing fields of unfair disadvantages but also about ensuring that gifted children excel with the right support as much as the special education need kids who have learning disabilities.
Equity is not about aiming for equal outcomes, not about providing equal opportunities, and not about treating people equally.
Equity is about giving each of us, according to our individual needs, fair opportunities to strive and thrive to our highest potential of healthy well-being. As caring parents, we treat our children equally but each according to their needs (equity).
How might we take the time to:
Self-reflect and dialogue about the ethical meaning and implications of cultivating equity meta-governance to co-create a fair-free-flourishing our future in our daily lives?
Zoom out to contemplate about how to launch Equity Moonshot: co-design and build an equitable, regenerative, and sustainable future to benefit all on a healthy planet?
Zoom in and share stories about redressing the injustices of Biases, Isms, Prejudices, Inequities, Discriminations (#BIPID) issues?
Session 1 in a blog series in exploring this questions.