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    21st Century Ideas: Five in One?

    Fighting all the superthreats at once

    Started by: suzanne Raves:5

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    I'm having a hard time concentrating on working to counter just one superthreat at a time. The New Pony Express, the networked postal system we're building, is facing questions around borders, refugees, information, biological transmission, and seed distribution. It seems like many of the visionary superstructs (like Facilitators or the Nomadic ML) have repercussions for most if not all of the superthreats. So, my question is, how are you concentrating on working against just one specific superthreat? Do you think it's useful to do so? Should we try to develop ideas and plans that respond to all of the threats, or focus on one? Is a diversity of tactics a good idea? What strategies are working best for you?

    I would suggest that we need a balance of "focus" and "awareness". Focus means that we should think of superstructs designed to combat a particular supersthreat. Often a superstruct which claims to be relevant to all five (and I'm guilty of this myself) is really, simply too vague and lacking in enough worked out detail. Superstructs like "let's get everyone together to solve all the problems" are almost useless. On the other hand, the superthreats do interact. And in some quite specific ways. And having an awareness of that is particularly important. So if you can say "this superstruct helps with Ravanous, but this feature of it is particularly useful to prevent Generation Exile having this effect" then that's a very concrete and very useful piece of planning.

    Suzanne, How about approaching this as a smaller problem. For instance on a community level. To think of this on a planet wide scale hurts my mind. Why not find solutions that work on a local scale, share and then spread out to the world.

    I like Phils viewpoint. I really know where you are coming from suzanne. It seems like there should be something we can do to have an impact on all five. However, I think we do ourselves a disservice. By lacking focus on a particular issue and its drivers, we might dilute our effectiveness and impact. We all must learn to trust each other to do what each of us has the energy to do. Maybe you are a big picture person and you have a particular attraction to working the issues of relationship between the different superthreats.. you should go for it with other of like mind. However, we have find trust the some us are going to make a contribution by biting off a little piece of the problem and that might be tipping point.

    I was thinking about this again. I have mentioned this elsewhere, but it seems to me that the superthreats are symptoms of larger forces in play. For instance climate change is driving ravenous and genexile in part. Gov and economy is driving ( or an element of ) genexile, power struggle, and outlaw in parts. Seeing what there is to be done on some of the drivers of these threats might be fruitful.

    I'm making the assumption that reDS will wipe out 50-80% of metropolitan populations, because it's so easily spread. I say move our knowledge bases to the fringes of civilization. Project ARK.

    These divisions seem like they're made out of substance on the surface. The delineations seem logical and straightforward enough, but in fact they are arbitrary as no one thing is not attached to any other. It's like saying your arm is of itself.




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