Connecting the Good: Using the Internet to Serve the “Outernet” Chapter 11, Part 4
Welcome to the Birthing the Symbiotic Age Book!
NEW here? — please visit the TABLE OF CONTENTS FIRST and catch up!
You are in Chapter 11, Part 4, Connecting the Good: Using the Internet to Serve the “Outernet” — Coordinating Coherence … Being of Service to the Bottom Up and Grassroots … OneSphera As Augmented Intelligence
Chapter 11 posts:
Building a “Super-Highway of Love”… One Sphera is Born … The Currency of One Sphera: TRUST
OneSphera in Action – Putting It All Together… The Future of OneSphera
Are you trying to figure out where this is All Going? Read Building Bridges to a New World — embodying the Transcendent through the nodes of intersection within local, grassroots-empowered community networks.
Voice-overs are now at the top of my posts for anyone who doesn’t have the time to sit and read! Also, find this chapter post and all previous posts as podcast episodes on
Spotify and Apple!
REMINDER of the READER SURVEY
Previously from Chapter 11, Part 3
At age fourteen, after talking with her and meeting with other women in the business, Dr. Ari supported them in creating the area’s first women’s coconut husking cooperative. As you can see, Dr. Ari was imbued with the Ancient Blueprint a dozen years before he started Sarvodaya.
Remember that young Ari’s instinct to flatten the supply chain aligned with his desire to address material and spiritual poverty, economic injustice, ageism (taking advantage of the old woman), and ecology.
Disintermediation is also an ecological issue, as some 20% of greenhouse gas emissions from the global food system can be attributed to transporting food.
The critical point is that many of those “middlemen” in the coconut husk business added minimal value but extracted money. This story seems to reflect a universal pattern underlying the rise and fall of empires over the past 3,000 years, and it is both the bane and, at the same time, could be a real boon — awakening the need to get to the root of modern economic and political systems.
And at the root – as I’ve asserted so many times in this book, it is the Ancient Blueprint, radiating Divine Love, that is at the foundation of a new Culture of Connection.
Coordinating Coherence
In the decade since we came up with OneSphera, numerous “New Economy” and other movements (see Chapter 6) and platforms have emerged to unite and coordinate those working to create a better world. Just about every one of these well-intentioned projects focuses on the idea that if we build a community, bringing together the “like-minded " and connecting them, then functional solutions will organically emerge.
There is some truth to this – but it’s not the whole story. I would say that connection and coordination are necessary but not sufficient.
Given the confluence of problems we face as a civilization and as a world, it is understandable that there is an immediate impulse to focus on material solutions and for those involved with a particular networked silo thread to see their way as THE way.
Because of my unique journey, I’ve been literally able to see the “bigger picture”—that each of these solutions ADDS UP to become THE solution only when woven together as a whole-cloth movement to Connect the Good in any and every community.
As we discovered organizing our symbiotic networks and designing OneSphera, the healing threads and “islands of coherence” need to be coordinated so that the network rests firmly atop the powerful Ancient Blueprint and the purpose of mutual benefit. That foundation will help create a community “container” large enough to bring together ALL of the competing religious/spiritual, political, economic, or identity-based and issue-focused factions.
In unpacking and “reverse-engineering” lessons learned from the real-world Sarvodaya movement and Symbiotic Networks in Reno—based on the limitless wisdom and power of the Ancient Blueprint—we discovered a naturally unfolding sequence that can indeed invert the worldwide economic and political pyramid.
The foundation for this new bottom-up, global alternative begins with sovereign individuals coming together around a common purpose based on the Coherence of the Ancient Blueprint, with its foundation in Divine Love.
Divine Love is the underlying pattern of spiritual reality in the same sense that Gravity is an underlying pattern of physical reality. Love is the only sound and practical basis for building a new society.
Coherence naturally leads individuals to operate from this way of being, with a desire to consciously establish Connections with one another and initiate Cooperation for mutual benefit—to Connect the Good. Based on their interests, mission, and passions, they establish a more extensive, radically inclusive network through Collaboration around one or more of the 12 community needs.
Coordination makes sense only on this foundation of coherence, connection,
cooperation, and collaboration!
In OneSphera, as with our real-world symbiotic networks, the Symbiotic Culture DNA
informs every interaction.
As you may remember from Chapter 8, it all begins with a common PURPOSE, Connecting the Good and proliferating mutual benefit.
We then acknowledge and activate the PRINCIPLES that emanate from this singular purpose.
Likewise, we are aware of the UNIVERSAL VIRTUES required to achieve this purpose and live these Virtues and principles, which we infuse into every aspect of our network.
Rather than just sharing great ideas, we identify shared COMMUNITY NEEDS (matched with individual interests and sub-interests) and focus our attention, energy, and resources on addressing those community needs and interests together in the real world and in real-time.
Finally, we weave the NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE to connect ALL of the resources in a local community to address those needs and build a new Network Commons, aggregating the power of people and ALL of the organizations that resonate with our unifying purpose and principles.
Here is the bottom line:
Before attempting to coordinate anything, you need to start with first principles that come from the way real communities function and build coherent trust networks
based on a shared purpose.
You may remember from Chapter 10 that manifesting true Symbiotic Kinship involves the head, heart, and hands. If we want to make the Transcendent immanent, we have to bring our lofty ideals down to earth through the Love in our hearts expressed through the Virtues, brought to life through helpful, functional actions in the world. That’s the integrated process we sought to emulate in OneSphera – to “shorten the path” between loving intention and manifesting mutual benefit in a community.
To create this networked infrastructure or scaffolding—a literal superhighway of Love that gives the entire community 24/7 access to a “cloud of knowledge and resources”—we had to drill down to specifics.
There’s a reason why it took two years to codify the specific actions that connected networks and built our symbiotic community. We weren’t leaving it up to random connections between individuals and groups to create some unattainable utopia in the future.
We were looking at how the talents, skills, and interests within the community could address our region’s practical identified needs in the present. Many conversations helped us map the best pathways to speed connections and identify the keywords and phrases that would most efficiently match individual interests with community needs.
That means that instead of random interactions we have intentional ones focused on common purpose in the larger context of symbiotic kinship.
That’s coherence, something worth coordinating!
In the course of connecting with change-makers over the past few years, I’ve been inspired to see many brilliant ideas, theories, plans, and designs. Again, I’ve recognized that as long as these ideas are trapped inside silos and echo chambers, they are just “preaching to the converted.”
Symbiotic networks and radically inclusive projects like OneSphera are proven ways to transform novel ideas into mainstream reality.
Once again, consider our Food Network. Had we followed the prevailing ideology and only engaged organic or regenerative farmers, we never would have included the largest conventional grower in the area – who converted to organic because he found it to be a better way, proven in a real-world market context.
Being of Service to the Bottom-Up and Grassroots
This may sound painfully obvious, but if we are philosophically dedicated to
re-localizing the economy, building regional community resilience, and building technology to support that, doesn’t it make sense to engage with ALL of the real people, projects, businesses, nonprofits, and other institutions already operating “on the ground”?
In Chapter 10, as you may remember, I identified as potential allies the 11 million formal nonprofits worldwide (and fifty million informal groups), 2.35 million religious congregations (and 10 million informal religious groups), with an impressive 350,000 religious groups in the United States alone and 500,000 in Europe – all doing good works in their silos and siloed networks. In addition, 70 million small business owners globally act on a purpose-driven mission.
And these leaders have been siloed into a variety of networked contexts without realizing there is a “bigger tent” context that will allow them to work together across their silos. As I have mentioned, these promising network threads include:
• Religious and spiritual groups, formal and informal, that provide direct care and services.
• Regenerative culture movements.
• Civic engagement and bridge builders.
• Charities and social change efforts.
• Religious individuals and organizations supporting "creation care."
• “Purpose-driven” small businesses globally.
• New economy and “communing” movements.
• Localization, re-localization, and Cosmo-localization movements.
• Pro-democracy and civil society movements.
Imagine the coherent power of gathering all these good intentions under “one big intent” – to use technology to accelerate intentional mutual benefit!
The laboratory for testing these novel ideas isn’t the classroom or computer screen. It’s out in the world where people live – in the real communities we inhabit and struggle to meet our own community’s needs.
In my more than forty years of working in various movements, I have noticed how easy it is for “activists” to get disconnected from the daily concerns of the masses of people at the bottom. We might intellectualize the issues, ideas, and even theories that excite us, but are those ideas relevant to the reality and needs of today?
I am reminded of a quote from Mahatma Gandhi addressing the India National Conference when he returned to India in the early 1900s:
“Until we stand in the fields with the millions that toil each day under the hot sun, we will not represent India, nor will we ever be able to challenge the British as one nation.”
Again, remember “head, heart, and hands?” Gandhi was addressing a group primarily in their heads, occasionally in their hearts, and he encouraged them to get their hands dirty with the affairs of those at the bottom.
This was the same message found within young Dr. Ariyaratne’s approach.
Not only did he get “down” with the untouchables in one of the poorest communities in Sri Lanka, but he also tapped their “practical wisdom.” He asked the villagers themselves to help map their own needs, and that’s how he came up with the shared needs on which he built his Sarvodaya movement.
You’ll remember Jesus’ teaching, reiterated in Matthew 25: "As you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me.”
Dr. Ari didn’t consult with the Sri Lankan ruling political or top-echelon economic class or the national government, nor did he ask them for money and resources. Instead, he went right to the “least of us,” and perhaps for the first time, these untouchables were “touched” by constructive compassion.
Our Conscious Community Network followed Dr. Ari’s lead more than 45 years later when we crowd-sourced our Reno community to identify Universal and shared principles, Virtues, and needs. Dr. Ari and his villagers came up with ten shared needs, and we in Reno had twelve. Significantly, six out of the ten needs identified by villagers in Sri Lanka’s “under-developed” society were identified in our “over-developed” Reno community.
So why is this important?
Because unlike so many of the solutions that emanate from the “world of ideas,” our network emerged from the bottom, from the one-on-one, trusted connections and real-world needs of our local community. Whatever “ideals” we had launching our networks, we had to address the real-deal issues in our community:
That people seek safety, security, and happiness for themselves and their families
Are concerned about earning a living (economic inequality), homeownership, and affordable healthcare.
Care about the decline of morality and civility
Want a clean and healthy local environment
Disgusted with the polarization around party politics and the corruption of institutions
A sense that regional economies are suffering the sucking sound of our hard-earned money leaving and going to support national and global oligarchs, both political and corporate.
To address these challenges, we had to connect with and tap the existing resources seeking to address these problems: nonprofits, churches, Main Street businesses, and local government.
OneSphera As Augmented Intelligence
Now imagine having sophisticated digital technology that amplifies and accelerates the coherence and effectiveness of existing organizations and programs that address those real-world needs.
Think of OneSphera as a reflection of your real life — and your community's spiritual, social, economic, and political life — extended into the digital domain.
This is NOT the same as “virtual reality,” where the technology seeks to keep you engaged online in some version of the “metaverse.” We weren’t trying to capture eyeballs but rather provide a tool to accelerate Connecting the Good and bring that goodness to all corners of the community. It is a natural extension of our already-built networks and existing connections with the higher purpose of bringing everybody together to build community self-reliance based on love, sharing, and cooperation.
Essentially, we created a digital representation of the cloud of knowledge, knowing, resources, and people (and their roles and skills) that exist in the real world so the entire community could access it and accelerate their offline face-to-face interactions to
build community self-reliance.
Perhaps the clearest metaphor for OneSphera is the smartphone's mapping function. The map reflects your underlying physical reality and helps you get from point A to point B. Now, it does more by showing you hyperlocal information, such as your favorite local restaurants. It’s in the background—you take it for granted, and it works.
So, think of OneSphera as the invisible infrastructure that allows you to map and “locate” your people, interests, and passions and connect these with the community projects that speak to your heart. Naturally, this map also allows individuals to connect with organizations, and organizations connect with one another.
Unlike siloed networks that organize around a specific idea, philosophy, or project, OneSphera is not a “thing.” It is not separate from anything but rather a network for everything—everything that is true and good in a community. Like your smartphone's mapping function, it’s transparent and invisible, working behind the scenes to help you get where you want to go.
OneSphera is not a compartmentalized technology like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram, but rather a living, interactive “whole life” platform that addresses individual passions and community needs and integrates the head, heart, and hands of any community. It empowers the community to “play together” for mutual benefit and crowdsources the collective community sense and wisdom to operationalize Love.
You may recall a term I have used, “collective or co-intelligence,” to describe how communities developed shared principles, virtues, and needs. I have already described the example in Chapter 8 of how we did that at the Valentine’s Day meeting in 2006.
OneSphera is an example of what has recently been called “Collective Augmented Intelligence.”
That simply means that technology can augment or increase a person’s and even a whole community’s capacity to function as a superorganism with superintelligence and a supermind!
How? You’ll find out in our next post.
Stay tuned for the last installment, Chapter 11, Post 5 … OneSphera in Action – Putting It All Together… The Future of OneSphera
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