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Story

Memories long past

Intro

What did we talk about

Humanity is on a big boat
- The boat is heading toward something dangerous
- Cities on this boat that are the cause of the problems
- Leaving the city to build a settlement
  - What does it mean?
    - Decentralization
    - Building a system outside the current system
We're not leaving alone, but as a tribe
- How to organize in a decentralized way
  - A network of small communities / tribes
    - Technology allows for communication that was not feasible before
    - Tribes had to meet in person to discuss anything. Now can be done online
What this is about
- Ideas of Navision
  - Network of communities and cooperation
  - Abstract for now, but need to discuss further

Before arriving, let's think of what to build

Support our Way of Life
- Sustainable
  - Includes being fulfilled
- Allows people to be connected with
  - Nature
  - Other people
  - Themselves
  - Decisions that impacts them
We look back at the city, see what is built there
- System produce what it promotes
  - Consumption
  - Being constantly in debt toward someone else make us slaves to the machine
    - Keep working to pay bills
    - Consume to distract ourselves from the jobs we don't like
    - Be more in debt
  - Economy in a nutshell
- Economy based on 'rational' & 'self-interested individuals'
  - Other words for selfish and obsessed with money
  - People playing that game are winning
    - Gap between poor and rich is accelerating
    - Are the people who are really ruling the world
- Political system being manipulated by the economy
  - Concerned with growth
  - Stability over doing right thing
    - Slow or plainly not doing anything
    - Corrupted, hidden corruption is lobbying
      - How does lobbying happen?
        
        Organized in small tribes
  - Voting = illusion of power
- Education system that teach kids that this is normal, and it's the best that exists
- Most brilliant people in academia, but voice falls flat
  - Feels learning never get implemented in policy
    - Not improving, not adapting
The city does what it's been designed to do
- Self-sustain, and make the capital rule us
  - Rather -> greedy people who have lots of money
  - Problem is not greed, it's the system that puts them at the top

Best way to build?

Standard, easier way to build?
- Build something that has been built before
  - Low risk
  - Improve it
    - Evolution
  - Missing something
    - Evolution is survival of most adaptable
      - This system is not adaptable
        
        It will have to go extinct
- Try to build something based on new ideas
  - Communism (Marx's ideas)
    - Capitalism created immense productivity
      - Also exploitation
    - Wanted the exploited (proletariat), working class overthrow the bourgeoisie
      - Again, came from a place of anger toward the bourgeoisie
    - Structure of society
      - Base = economy
      - Superstructure above
    - Common ownership and all would be good
      - But still based on economy first
      - No sustainability
      - Assume state can be this large thing
        
        Know that this cannot work
Rethink - first principles
- Albert Einstein "Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better,"
- Must be a complex system / a network
  - Inspiration from nature

Analogy

First principles of nature

Adaptable
- Good enough rule
Sustainable
- No waste
A complex system
A network
- Power is distributed
- Not overly organized
- Multiple structures
  - Beautiful
    - Like a forest

Analogy of the forest

Imagine that we are trying to mirror nature in the system we want to build
- What would it look like?
- Instinctually, we know what a forest look like
- What are the components?

Soil

Where everything grows
- Healthier soil = healthier everything
- What is soil?
  - It's nature. The land.
- Where meet sustainability
  - At the beginning
  - Everything else work toward having good soil
  - Gardener know. Not what grows, but soil

Mycelium

Fungi structure
- Decompose organic matter
- Protect the plants from diseases
- Transport water
- Electrical potential
  - Hypothesis transfer information
- Organized like a network
What is mycelium?
- Us - rather, communication
  - Within the soil, caring for it

Grass

Fast growing
- Has limit to grow - cannot grow too big
What is grass?
- Pilot projects
  - Build, measure, learn, iterate
  - Grow, burn, build up root, grow again
- Feed the soil so we can build more things over time

Flowers

Medicinal properties
- Beautiful, smell good
What are flowers?
- Culture, arts
- Heal the soul

Pollinator

Flowers need them
- Go from one flower to the other to have them reproduce
What are pollinators?
- Artists
- Inspired by existing art and building new ones

Trees

Largest structures
- Can live for a long time
  - Some die young
  - Others live for millennia
  - Never permanent
- Protects all the other
- Help soil to stay balanced
What are trees?
- Structures that we build to support us
  - Roots takes the ideas/learning from pilots
    - Deeper and stronger the roots, the more stable the structure
  - Branches are different organizational division of system
    - Just still part of the structure
  - Leaves are what does the actual work
    - Teams working to support the tree
  - Trunk is what supports all the branches together
  - Cannot have many branches and small trunk
  - Cannot have large trunk with tiny branches
  - Tree cannot grow indefinitely, would collapse under it's own weight
- Seeds
  - What emerges from these structure that can be replicated - create another tree somewhere else

Seed spreaders

Generally
- Wind
  - Carry seed to a nearby location
- Birds, animals
  - Eat, digestive track and poop
  - Carry seeds far away
What are the seed spreaders?
- Wind
  - Systems that can easily be replicated locally
- Bird, animals
  - Systems that, after some digestion, can be replicated far away

Herbivores

Grazers - cows
- Eat the grass and flowers
Browsers - moose
- Eat the woody plants, include young trees
Wood eaters - beaver
- Eats bark, and cut down trees
What are herbivores?
- External auditors that remove from the system the weak parts
- The pilots that are not working
  - No more learning to be done
  - Grown too big / hungry
- Structures that we build that are no effective
  - Trees that are compromising the forest
    - Disease within
    - Draining too much resources
    - Does not cooperate

Carnivores

Eats the herbivore
- Make sure to keep them moving
- Always less than number of herbivores
What are carnivores?
- Auditors of the auditors
  - Make sure they're doing a good job in cleaning the forest
    - Make sure they don't eat healthy grass or trees
    - Weak
    - Disease
    - Draining too much resources - Too much water

Water

Brings water = one of the 4 elements
- 1st element
Everything needs water to grow
- Comes with rain
What is water?
- Water = pleasure = desire
- Flow of creative energy
  - Required for growth
  - Nourishment
- Human efforts
  - Need human efforts to build anything in this forest
  - Pleasurable to build something

Air

2nd element
Exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen
- Without it, nothing to breathe
What is air?
- Air = love
  - Exchange, connection
  - Inspiration, attraction, diffusion
- Unseen forces that move seeds
  - Bring the smell across distance

Earth

3rd element
Soil
- Storage of every nutrient
What is Earth
- Earth = Survival
  - Stability, grounding, foundation
  - Needs
    - Tangible, the body

Sunlight

Source of energy
- Doesn't come from the forest - it comes to it
What is sunlight
- Fire = willpower
- Vision, purpose
  - Gives direction and energy to everything else
  - Without sunlight, even fertile ground cannot grow
- It's the why
  - Leaves turn to it
  - All depend on it, but interpretation is different

Where does money come in?

I haven't talked about the money
It's nuanced
- It's the distribution of water
- Can send more water to some part of the structure so it can grow faster
  - Safeguard some areas
- Grass and trees can survive a drought, but not for too long.
Economic system = how that energy is channeled and allocated
- Directs human effort
- But it doesn't create water or replace the rain
- Tool
Money, distribution of water
- Distort natural water cycle
  - Currently, billionaire are building dams, accumulating all this water. The water distribution is broken
    - Preventing the fish from swimming up river
    - Flooding massive areas of forest

There you have it

Way to organize our system to be sustainable
- Simple,
  - Everyone can understand
- Money is not at the base
- 4 elements are at the base
  - Water = Pleasure of building/human effort
  - Air = Love/Human connection
  - Soil = Survival/Needs
  - Fire = Vision/purpose
- Healthy forest stabilizes everything
- Stewardship exercise = caring
  - Comes from a place of love

Practical

What does that look like?

Imagine a NGO
- But not like any NGO you know
- Not trying to be anything. Trying to be itself
- Trying to be organized like a forest
- Mycelium = navision
- grass = pilots
- trees = businesses
  - Sun is the vision
But what does that really look like?
Imagine a senate
- People responsible for the vision
- Hire a council -> people that will get things done -> managers
- Members
  - People that bring the vision through life
  - Independent teams - organized like tribes
    - Organized in a network
    - Many expertise
      - Working together - helping each other out
Imagine the network that grows slowly
- Ideas are discussed, improved on
- Turned into pilots
  - Follow a build-measure-learn-iterate loop
- What works turned into businesses
  - Provide revenue for the network
Imagine a network that has many trees
- Sustainable products
- Waste management
- Food production and distribution
- Health
- Education
- Research
- Culture & art
- Finances
- Technology
- Political
With each trees their own branches
An example:
- A sustainable distribution system to provide more local and sustainable food to people
- A network of local food producer, distributors and retailer
- People have affordable local grocery stores they can walk to that has food grown locally
- Local restaurants that uses more local foods
- How to start?
  - with a pilot
  - Approach different existing businesses
    - Build with them what business framework can look like
      - Benefits everyone
    - Iterate
      - Adjust the framework depending on what works or not
      - Add new businesses after success
    - Can evolve
      - Include restaurants
      - Include community events
        
        hosted in local cafes and restaurants
        
        Catered by local restaurant
    - Grow
      - once set-up up, can grow naturally
      - By invitation only - people empowered to show others how
      - But deer and wolves to observe

Benefits

For the businesses = sharing of resources
- Warehouse, distribution, transportation
- Cooperation
  - Bakery partnering with restaurant
  - Restaurant partnering with corner store to have healthy meal to go
- Organize together to rival against the massive companies
- No need to be a large chain
  - Don't want large chain
Steer these businesses to be more sustainable
- Hard to be sustainable by yourself
- Easier with many others
- Rules
  - Sustainability is primordial in everything we do
  - No paywall for certain things - particularly education and research material
    - Knowledge should be free
  - Need to measure environmental impact
    - Trash generated
    - Pesticide and herbicide use
  - Transparent salary and finances
    - Build trust, fairness and equity
  - % of employees that live near by
Employees part of the network can benefit from relocation services to help relocate closer to their work
- Alternatively, change work to be closer to where they live
Customer can have the same membership card for all these businesses
- Get benefits from shopping part of the network
- May be more expansive, but being part of the network as a customer may bring other benefits, like access to community events

Fund

Businesses may pay a membership fee for being part of the network
- More customer
  - Buy Navision, know they buy values behind the network
- Sharing of resources that allow to compete against multi-nationals
Funds are used to create more pilots
- Grow the network to extend to other parts of society
  - or further geographically - similar network appearing in other cities
Funds are publicly visible
- People can have a say on where the money goes
- Have news ideas to grow
  - Develop into pilots
    - Can join them, get employed
  - Structure
But all of that requires communication

A Shared platform

Need a shared platform to facilitate those communications
- Where the funds are visible
- Where you can form and join new tribes
- Decisions are made about the structure
- Everything oriented toward a vision
Technology allows to reach everyone
- Decisions can be made fast
- Facilitate cooperation -> encourage it
  - Sharing of ideas
  - Make it easier to organize
    - Align vision/values, WOT
    - Easy to find each other
Enables organization to whole new level
- Power of nations are proportional to the scale of their organization
  - Network is only way to grow big
People that maintain it
- Funded by the network

Network

Vision, far away
- Extend to education, healthcare, funded by the system
- Research for complex systems
  - Mental health, digestion, managing forests
- Education and art mixed together
  - Children book that teach good lessons
- Waste management
  - Generate revenue from waste and turn it into sustainable products
- But not there yet
First = grow
- Grow big enough, need auditors
  - Observe each part of network
  - Suggest adaptations
    - If not adapting, suggest removal from network
Where to get started?
- Minimum viable product
  - This - what I'm talking about
    - Pilot, want to hear your feedback
- Get ideas
  - What first thing to focus on
  - How to get initial funding to get started
  - How to get more tribes in
  - What platform look like

Outro

Characteristics

Collaboration within network
Competition outside network
Nested networks
Lean
Adaptable
Sustainable
Inspiring

Inspiration

Current systems feed of our attention and efforts
- Need to be redirected
  - Toward this network
- Just ideas
  - Need to try first. Probably fail a few times. Learn
- Alternative system - but has not success story
  - Build success story
  - A story that got inspired by the forest

Exercise

What did you build or do that you are proud of?
- Race
- Podcast?
What was it about this something that made it possible?
- Clear end goal?
- Good enough
Summary
- If you are to build something proud of, what would make it easier for you to do it?
Can think of what you would want to build

Poem
Around us, the soil grew thin and tired,
Where roots forgot what they inspired
With sun as purpose, and rain as care
We'll grow a forest out in the open air

Extra

Ideas

Car and house maintenance as part of the system
Vision management

Project, The Book of Whys