Update 2: October 24, 2019
Theme of the Week:
Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. The future's changing us faster than we're changing the future. How do we innovate against that?
Overview: State of the Threat, Week 2:
People are frustrated by the inability of governments and traditional institutions to address an increasingly dire situation. They are increasingly responding with constructive ideas, as well as false starts (which are part of the process).
But other people are turning destructive. Apocalyptic cults and mass terror threats are growing. (The latest is Newton2052.) Some self-invented social organizations and technologies are saving lives. Others, like Project ARK, are too new to judge. Some groups are directing terrorism directly against ReDS sufferers, as in the Birmingham bombing and the Nevada kidnapping.
New superstructures are urgently needed, but many organizers are replicating previous ones. For example, we have ReDS Media Network, the ReDS Information Network, Seeing ReDS, Positive Influence, and Positive Thinking, all doing the same thing. Organizers should consider cross-collaborating when this happens, and then reach out to others to create "super-superstructures." A good example of super-superstructuring is the ReDS Adoption Network for epidemic orphans, which collaborates with the Open ID superstructure and the Catholic Church.
In the absence of a reliable mass communication network, rumors continue to proliferate: The Russians are concealing a ReDS cure. Big pharma has a cure, too, but they're holding back until the world meets its demands. Unfortunately, these rumors may be true.
The New Modesty is coming into fashion, thanks in part to the superstructure of the same name. Covered heads, covered hands, covered faces ... all can save lives. But fashion is one thing and violence is another. As the Administrator for Zone M17 reports, Taliban-like attacks are taking place in the street on men and women (mostly women) who are not "modestly" dressed.
In response to suggested limits on gatherings of more than twelve people, Assembly12 is leading other superstructures in creating voluntary systems for crowd reduction. Community Access Service Centers is rapidly superstructing new relationships designed to allow education to continue despite these and other restrictions. The Distributed Workforce Network is finding alternate places for people to work, while the Distributed Medical Network is linking doctors with communities. (In a move reminiscent of Mao's China, they are also training community members as what might be called "barefoot doctors" to fill in when the physicians are working elsewhere.)
People are responding to the crisis in small ways, too, like the now church-less itinerant minister who wanders from one desolate town to another, holding dinners for twelve where he asked isolated people, "How is it with your soul?" (Hmm ... one "dinner for twelve" holds a prominent position in Christian theology, if I recall correctly.)
Another person is isolating rather than traveling. He's building a "personal quarantine shelter" to live underground with his family for extended periods during the epidemic. (In another form of subterranean human life, cave living is developing in Santa Cruz. It's part of an "underground railroad" to assist and house refugees - in clear defiance of regulations.)
So human creativity is being directed toward both creation and destruction in the face of this threat. We're not just confronting ReDS, we're fighting humanity's tendency to act in self-destructive and aggressive ways when facing its deepest fears. So a question for everyone:
How can we superstruct against fear and hate?
RJ Eskow, lehall, 24 October 2019
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