❤️ How might we develop our ethical literacy in making moral distinctions between virtues and values to cultivate equity meta-governance?
How might we navigate beyond the dysfunctional polarizations arising from conflicting value system across the political spectrum to launch Equity Moonshot?
Equity meta-governance is our Ultimate Meta-process for Humanity (UMH): use a guiding constellation of virtues to co-create fair rules, fair plays, fair games, fair opportunities, and fair rewards for the benefit of all, on a regenerating planet. The UMH addresses the meta-crisis: our systemic power abuse dynamics.
Equity Moonshot is our Massive Transformational Purpose (MTP): co-design and build an equitable, regenerative, and sustainable future. The MTP addresses our poly-crisis, our complex entanglement of self-inflicted, wicked problems.
Wicked problems are complex in that they have no single, simple or final solution: no either-or, right-wrong answers. They are not per se solvable, such as eliminating our ego-centric shadows and the dark sides of human nature that set up our meta-crisis of systemic power abuse dynamics. But there is much that can be done to minimize negative influences and their toxic impacts.
Musing is essential to unleash our ethical imaginations and moral co-creativities to exponentiate transformational learning network power to cultivate equity meta-governance and take on the Equity Moonshot quest.
How might we use complex questions to open, inspire and align our mindsets to transform our dysfunctional systems?
Complex questions explore the interconnectedness and interdependence of wicked problems, such as unethical governance, inept stewardship, incompetent leadership, corrupt crony democracies, political corruption, climate change, escalating inequities and many more
Supportive complex questions foster safety, trust, and transcendence to open and explore our mindsets. These questions enables us to develop the moral and cultural humility to develop the ethical literacy in understanding the moral distinctions between virtues and values.
Challenging complex questions evoke emotional, perceptual and metaphorical dissonance. These questions contain the benefits of emancipating closed-mindedness, but they also risk triggering regression to defensive-offensive ego-centric reactions that reinforce closed mindsets. Self-reflecting about our reactions to supportive and challenging questions (SCQs) provide invaluable insights into our mindsets.
Enjoy musing over SCQ. Take the time for slow thinking, sense-making, meaning-making, and clarifying your higher aspirations and ethical purposes in addressing our wicked problems.
Explore the meaning of a complex question before engaging in generative dialogues within learning communities. The synergy between self-reflection and dialoguing enable us gain new insights and breakthrough understandings about how to manage the ethical dilemmas arising between our virtues and values in addressing our wicked problems.
How might we use to build story movements to:
Cultivate equity meta-governance to redress our meta-crisis?
Launch Equity Moonshot to manage our poly-crisis of wicked problems?
Redress the injustices of systemic BIPID issues: biases, isms prejudices, inequities and discrimination?
Rinse and repeat with this process with another SCQ, within and across collaborative learning communities.
We need a healthy blend of SCQ to co-create our capabilities and capacities of cultivating equity meta-governance to launch EquityMoonshot.
How might we discover how our ego-centric shadows, assumptions, beliefs, value structures, perceptions, interpersonal affinities of positive-neutral–negative reactions, and our BIPID issues prevent us from collaborating to address our self-inflicted wicked problems?
Meta-thinking (thinking about how and why we think) enables us to move beyond the one-up-manship of tit-for-tat win-lose debates and the sage-on-the-stage phenomena of mansplaining, hubris, and hegemony of worldviews, paradigms, models, frameworks and outdated legacy systems.
These 15 sections provide the content to host 10-30 minute small group dialogue sessions that involve understanding the meaning, purpose, and implications of complex questions working in communion within beloved learning communities. This self-reflective and collaborative processes initiates lifelong intergenerational learning journeys to transform our mindsets and develop functional governance, steward and distributive leadership systems.
1. Why is the teaching about ethics and virtues inadequate?
Teaching ethics as an outside-in process of increasing knowledge about virtues and values does not inspire the intrinsic motivations to develop virtues and take moral actions for the greater good.
Ethics is about an inside-out, ontological process of being and becoming a moral agent to do good. This process involves developing ethical discernment, virtues and moral reasoning to serve the greater good.
How might we cultivate our virtues, collective wisdom, and collaborative decision-making processes to do good for the commons, humanity, the common good, and the health of the planet?
These aspirations call for enhancing our ethical literacy about virtues, values, and moral principles.
Consider initiating a lifelong intergenerational learning journey by completing a self-assessment survey of one’s virtues in communion with other learners who seek to understand the diversity of virtues and character strengths.
How might we cultivate the virtues to redress our ego-centric shadows and dark sides so that we co-create the generative dialogues needed to address ethical dilemmas related to our self-inflicted wicked problems?
2. How might we unravel the 1984 double-speak of unwokeness?
The fairness doctrine of equity meta-governance reduces the need for redressing the injustices of systemic isms and inequities. For this reason, equity is a higher calling than justice, because it prevents injustices arising in the first place. But both equity and justice are needed.
The African American word, woke (meaning aware), was used in the song "Master Piece" by Lead Belly in the 1930s. In 1960s, it was used to describe being aware of, and well-informed about racial and social injustices. More recently, the word became a mainstream meme during the Black Lives Matter movement, especially after George Lloyd's murder by the police force.
With the ensuing cultural war backlash, the white-washing, anti-woke propaganda machines disparaged this justice movement with an assault of negative projections and pejorative reframes about the word, woke.
Self-righteous cult fanatics drive the closed-minded fundamentalism of regressive populism to induce the tribal trance of blind unconditional loyalty.
A metaphor for our “unwokeness” pandemic is ethical blindness.
We see but are blind.
We listen but don’t discern.
We know, but are ethically ignorant.
Unwokeness is the unawareness of how our moral hypocrisies arise from our lack of ethical discernment between and within our hierarchical value systems on the one hand, and our constellations of virtues on the other hand.
The unwoke movement has evolved into a counter-democratic war of neo-terrorism against the fairness of equity, equality, and justice. Neo-terrorism is the weaponized war of words with sociopathic disregard for truth-seeking, integrity, and transparent accountability.
How might we dismantle neo-terrorism and call out their 1984 doublespeak to unravel unwokeness and detox from the anti-woke unwoke?
The question of this section calls on us to open our eyes and see our blind spots if we fail to redress the unwokeness pandemic.
Being unwoke is perversely reframed as a celebratory value and a contradictory virtue to normalize systemic isms and inequities.
3. Why is it essential to understand the differences between values and virtues?
Ethical clarity about understanding our values-virtues dilemma is prerequisite for co-creating a free-fair-flourishing-future for the benefit of all.
Not all values are virtues. And not all virtues are valued.
Values are about rank ordering what is important to us, as individuals, organizations, communities, and cultures. One person’s value system may devalue another, and vice versa. Our hierarchical differences in our self-centered value systems divide us in ways that set up dysfunctional polarizations and toxic conflicts.
Virtues are about doing communitarian good for our organizations, communities, and cultures. We can select a dynamic constellation of virtues without hierarchies to address any one wicked problem, such as the cultural determinants of sexism, genderism, racism, ageism, or any other ism.
Values divide us. Virtues align us.
Transcendence is the mother of all virtues. Cultural humility is an empowering virtue and guides principle for learning how to ethically manage the complexities of our our values-virtues dilemmas.
How might we:
Kindle the light of cultural humility to illuminate the ego-centric shadows of our cultural competence that enable the dark sides of cultural hubris to thrive and disable us from managing our ethical dilemmas about virtues and values?
Cultivate the transcendence of cultural humility to develop the equity leadership needed to solve our wicked problems?
4. Why is equity the highest expression of liberty for all?
Liberty and freedom are reductionist values. These values predominantly focus on human rights, separate from the virtue of communitarianism and the holism of living in harmony with nature.
The polarity between control and liberty is a restricted perspective on freedom. Freedom is an individual value and not a communitarian virtue. Freedom includes the good, the bad, and the ugly, as does control.
How might we:
Maximize the ethical upsides of control and freedom and minimize their immoral downsides to act virtuously?
Discern the differences between responsible and irresponsible free speech?
Hold violators of irresponsible free speech accountable for their negative consequences?
Irresponsible free speech enables the propaganda machines of neo-terrorism.
Freedom from the control of tyranny, autocracy, and totalitarianism is not true liberty. Liberty is much more than the absence of a negative. Malevolent control that perpetrates corruption is not the same as the benevolent control of transparent accountability that prevents malevolent control.
“Freedom does not assure equality, Liberty does not assure equity. Equality and equity assure liberty and freedom for all.“
How might we dialogue about the equity-equality dilemma to promote the fairness of liberty and freedom for all?
Within learning communities of equity muses, we collaborate and dialogue about how to co-create conditions for transforming our mindsets and systems to serve the greater good.
As Socratic Sherpas, we ask supportive and challenging questions about how to take on the #EquityMoonshot cause, campaign, and quest. This first calls for understanding the keywords and concepts in these questions, such as equity, which has multiple meanings.
5. What equity is and is not
Equity is not about treating people equally nor about achieving equal outcomes.
How does equity go above and beyond equality?
Equity is about giving each person, according to their particular needs, the opportunities to strive and thrive to their highest potential of healthy well-being.
The communitarian virtue of equity is about cultivating an abundance of diverse talents, capabilities, and capacities to do good for the commons, humanity, the common good, and the health of the planet.
How might we enable people to cultivate the virtues needed to launch Equity Moonshot: co-create a fair-free-flourishing-future to benefit all?
6. Why is equity meta-governance essential?
Equity meta-governance is about we, the people, co-constructing fair rules, fair games, and fair plays needed to ensure fair opportunities to benefit all. This aspiration calls for inviting all people to address this question in communion together.
What does fairness and unfairness mean to you?
The fairness doctrine of pursuing equity meta-governance is the antidote to the injustices of systemic isms and inequities. This aspiration calls for inviting people to share their stories about redressing unfairness.
How might we cultivate the integrity of truth-seeking and transparent accountability to ensure equity meta-governance?
7. Why do we need to change our cultural memes?
The guiding meme for #EquityMoonshot is based on communitarian virtues: to Love, truth-seeking, and the pursuit of equity. This is in sharp contrast to the freedom meme in the Declaration of Independence based on individual values: to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Absolute libertarianism, neoliberalism, and the competitive pursuit of individual freedoms perpetrate and escalate inequities. These forces atomize the political, private, and public sectors to create dysfunctional divisiveness within and between these sectors. These toxic fragmentations prevent the mutual reciprocities to integrate collaborative learning and transformation needed to work on the Equity Moonshot quest.
How might we:
Liberate ourselves from the reductionist notions of liberty and freedoms to cultivate the communitarian virtue of equity?
Cultivate the all-inclusive “We” heroism to serve the commons, humanity, the common good, and the health of planet?
These heretical questions break the taboo of questioning the holy grail of absolute libertarianism, unregulated liberty and unbridled self-centered freedom.
8. Why become equity muses together?
Equity muses are a new kind of inspirational change agent archetype: part magician, jester, holy fool and heretic. The purpose of Equity Moonshot is to co-create story movements about our lifelong intergenerational learning in making progress on this quest.
The Equity Muse learning academy trains trainers to build the #UniteEquityMuses movement for the ultimate quest(ion).
How might we, as equity muses and leaders, open-inspire-align people’s mindsets to work on building an equitable-regenerative-sustainable-future?
9. How might we better understand the complexities of wicked problems?
Wicked problems are complex in that they have no single, simple or ultimate solution: nor either-or answers. Wicked problems are not per se solvable, such as our ego-centric shadows, the dark sides of human nature, and the political abuses of power.
Within complex adaptive systems, there are a wide range of positive and negative influences that prevent, minimize, or exacerbate the political abuse of power and corruption. There are no ends to wicked problems.
Our political problems arise from inept governance, unethical stewardship, incompetent leadership, and political, financial, and legal corruption. Our economic problems are driven by neoliberal linear economics along with exploitative extractions of finite resources, shareholder capitalism that disregards common-holders’ interests and hyper-consumerism.
Our environmental degradation problems include waste production, non-sustainable growth, non-regenerative practices, global warming, and precipitous decline in biodiversity. Our abuses of human rights are driven by systemic isms, inequalities, and inequities.
How might we better understand our overwhelming wicked problems in ways that compel us to scale up collaborative and transformational learning needed to work on the Equity Moonshot quest?
10. How might we cultivate cultural humility to solve our wicked problems?
SCQs call for cultivating the cultural humility of open-mindedness, self-reflection, and discernment to reflect on what we think that we know is not so. We are blind to see that the enemy is us.
SCQs challenge our mindsets, beliefs, paradigms, frameworks, explanatory models, assumptions, and values. They expose the ignorance of our closed-mindedness and open the doors to wisdom.
How might we:
Confront the harsh realities about our complicities in our dystopian trajectory toward a perilous future of our compounding wicked problems?
See-through our pandemic of blindness to transform our paradigms on how to redress the negative systemic influences that shape our wicked problems?
Zoom out and align our perspectives to co-create a free-fair-flourishing-future for the benefit of all?
11. How might we redress self-righteous fundamentalism?
SCQ challenge the absolute certainty and closed-mindedness of self-righteous fundamentalist thinking: the blind faith in knowledge without wisdom.
How might we liberate our amygdala and reptilian brains of fast-thinking and emotional reactivity to cultivate the neocortical equanimity and emotional responsiveness of slow thinking needed to re-claim our sovereignty and become open-minded, truth-seeking and virtuous free-thinkers in communion with kindred spirits?
12. How might we build a living transformational story movement?
This learning process evokes new insights, understandings, and perspectives on how we can collaborate to build ecosystems of launching pads for #EquityMoonshot We need networks of catalytic change agents building living story movements about how to co-create a free-fair-flourishing-future.
How might we shift beyond the followership cults of individual content creators, influencers, mavericks, sages, and gurus to the relationship-and-community-building learning movements needed to cultivate communitarian heroism and wisdom for solving wicked problems?
13. How might we co-create high-touch, high-tech synergies?
#EquityMoonshot is a humanitarian-technological metaphor. This metaphor symbolizes an everlasting journey of ethical exploration, the cultivation of virtues, and moral courage to make progress. There is no final destination.
We use this metaphor to guide how to scale up virtuous synergies between mindset transformations and systemic redesigns. To change our trajectory, the Equity Muse Learning Academy unites catalytic change agents to cultivate the mycelium networks needed to launch EquityMoonshot.
14. How might we embark on lifelong intergenerational learning journeys?
Equity muses inspire and people to embark on lifelong intergenerational learning journeys of inquiry, imagination, improvisation, and innovation on how we can all serve the greater good. This Academy empowers people to learn how to redress the negative systemic influences that perpetrate and perpetuate our wicked problems.
SCQ stretch our curiosity to go beyond the limits of our current understandings and co-create new insights about how to solve wicked problems.
How might we more effectively use SCQ to open our minds to new ways of experiencing slow thinking and co-creating generative dialogues to solve our wicked problems?
15. How might we scale up the training of equity muse trainers?
The Academy's mission is to build learning communities of equity muses trainers. Equity muses guide people through the process of exploring the meaning of keywords and phrases in SCQ, such as defining the meaning of equity.
Equity muses enable people to develop shared understandings about what SCQ mean before answering them. This sets the stage to co-create generative dialogues and transformational collaborations needed to respond to these SCQ.
How might we, as equity leaders, mentor, muses, maven and supper connectors, set up lifelong intergenerational learning processes to enable we, the people to:
Cultivate equity meta-governance and launch Equity Moonshot?
Seek and verify truth with open transparent accountability to ensure that equity governance redresses the unfairness of systemic isms that drive global inequities and planetary demise?
Cultivate the ethical network power to amplify our virtues and moral actions?
Just pick one SCQ that speaks to you
Explore the meaning and purpose of one SCQ to its depth. Contemplate and discuss the meaning of the SCQ before engaging in generative dialogues within learning communities.
How would you like to build a cultural humility community of bold, hearted-centered change agents, thought leaders, and leaders who seek to launch Equity Moonshot and solve our wicked problems?
The next newsletter will address the equality-equity dilemmas of parenting.
Here are the suggestions of Potentialism: Overview video – simplest start (look at the description for links to further details): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAXRCjfiNf0