Holotopia

HOLOTOPIA

An Actionable Strategy

Imagine...

You are about to board a bus for a long night ride, when you notice the flickering streaks of light emanating from two wax candles, placed where the headlights of the bus are expected to be. Candles? As headlights?

Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it?

Because on a much larger scale this absurdity has become reality.

The Modernity ideogram renders the essence of our contemporary situation by depicting our society as an accelerating bus without a steering wheel, and the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it as guided by a pair of candle headlights.

Modernity ideogram

Convenience paradox

Scope

We turn to culture and to "human quality", and ask:

Why is "a great cultural revival" realistically possible?

What insight, and what strategy, may divert our"pursuit of happiness" from material consumption to human cultivation?

We may approach the same theme from a different angle: Suppose we developed the praxis of federating information—and used it to combine all relevant heritage and insights—from the sciences, the world traditions, the therapy schools...

Suppose we used real information to guide our choices, instead of advertising. What changes would develop? What difference would they make?

During the Renaissance, preoccupations with original sin and eternal reward gradually gave way to a pursuit of happiness and beauty here and now; and the arts prospered.

What might the next "great cultural revival" be like?

Diagnosis

The "pursuit of happiness" 'in the light of a candle' made two values prominent, at the detriment of others: convenience (favoring what appears to be pleasant and easy) and egotism (favoring narrowly conceived "personal interests"). Both appear as scientific: convenience because it resembles the experiment; egotism because it is (claim the followers of Darwin) the way in which the nature herself pursues wholeness. Both are endlessly supported by advertising.

Remedy

The convenience paradox insight—by which we point to a remedial course—may be understood in terms of three more specific insights. They all become transparent as soon as we abandon the stories and socialized realities, and focus on the human experience that the traditions point to and embody.

1. Human wholeness exists.

And it feels better than anything that most of us can experience, or even imagine.

We called this insight "the best kept secret of human culture" , and made it a theme of one of our chosen ten conversations.

It was this glimpse or experience of human wholeness that attracted our ancestors to the Buddha, the Christ, Mohammed and other adepts and teachers of the way, or "sages", or "prophets". In "Sermon on the Mount", C.F. Andrews described this phenomenon:

"(Through their practice, the early disciples of Jesus found out) that the Way of Life, which Jesus had marked out for them in His teaching, was revolutionary in its moral principles. It turned the world upside down (Acts 17. 6). (...) They found in this new 'Way of Life' such a superabundance of joy, even in the midst of suffering, that they could hardly contain it. Their radiance was unmistakable. When the Jewish rulers saw their boldness, they 'marvelled and took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus' (Acts 4. 13). (...) It was this exuberance of joy and love which was so novel and arresting. It was a 'Way of Life' about which men had no previous experience. Indeed, at first those who saw it could not in the least understand it; and some mocking said, 'These men are full of new wine' (Acts 2. 13)."

The existence and character of this experience can, however, readily be verified by simply observing or asking the people who have followed the way, and tasted some of its fruits.

2. The way to it is paradoxical.

But it follows a "natural law", which can be understood—not by a mechanistic-causal but by a phenomenological approach.

This "natural law" or way is what the Buddhists call "Dhamma" and the Taoists "Tao". This second insight readily results when we observe the uniformity of both the practices that constitute the way, and of the experiences that reportedly resulted.

To get a glimpse of it, compare the above utterances by Lao Tzu, with what Christ taught in his Sermon on the Mount. Why was Teacher Lao claiming that "the weak can defeat the strong"? Why did the Christ asked his disciples to "turn the other cheek"?

A contemporary story, of Aldous Huxley and his book "Perennial Philosophy", will however alone be sufficient. Coming from a family that gave some of Britain's leading scientists, Aldous Huxley undertook to federate some of the elements of a new kind of science—by showing, methodically and convincingly, the uniformity in what the adepts and followers of the way wrote and experienced, across historical periods and cultures.

3. The key to unraveling the paradox is to reverse the values.

Convenience must be replaced by long-term cultivation, or praxis. <p> <p>Egotism must be overcome through selfless service.

While this insight can easily be federated in the manner just described, we here point to it by a curiosity.

In "The Art of Seeing", Aldous Huxley observed that overcoming egotism is necessary even for mastering physical or psychomotoric skills!

We leave this parabolic image for further exploration: We develop the technology to reduce effort; but the heaviest thing we ever lift and carry around we can never get rid of! What if effortlessness exists, and can be developed—but only as part and parcel of an integral approach to human wholeness!

We may now see in the history of our culture an age-long struggle between cultivation of wholeness guided by insights into the nature of the way—and the power structure aided by the attraction of convenience and egotism. It is a struggle which, Peccei observed, we seem to be losing. It is also a struggle on which our future will depend.

What hope do we have of reversing its course, and outcome?

The answer is, of course, that we now have a whole new realm, or dimension, to work with.

We can design communication.

We can both create media content that will communicate the above messages in clear and convincing ways, and create various elements of culture to socialize us or cultivate us accordingly. Including, of course, the systems in which we live and work. We can create the very way in which information is selected and consumed.

A vast creative frontier opens up.

We now illustrate this uniquely fertile creative space, which the Holotopia project has undertaken to prime and develop, by only a handful of examples.

Keywords

We motivated our definition of culture by discussing Zygmunt Bauman's book "Culture as Praxis"—where Bauman surveyed a large number of historical definitions of culture, and reached the conclusion that they are so diverse that they cannot be reconciled with one another. How can we develop culture as praxis—if we don't know what "culture" means? The change of the relationship we have with information, or in other words of epistemology, allowed us to define culture as a way of looking at the real thing or phenomenon—which illuminates its core aspect that tends to be ignored. We defined culture by de defined culture as "cultivation of wholeness", where the keyword cultivation is defined by analogy with planting and watering a seed. A key point here (intended as a parable) is to observe that no amount of dissecting and studying a seed would suggest that it needs to be planted and watered. And hence that cultivation profoundly depends on taking advantage of the experience of others—regarding how certain actions produce certain effects in the long run. As soon as we apply the same idea to human cultivation—similarly spectacular insights and the opportunities come within reach.

We motivated our definition of addiction by observing that evolution equipped us with pleasant and unpleasant emotions to guide our choices toward wholeness. But we humans has devised ways to deceive our perception—by creating attractive and pleasurable things that lead us away from wholeness. We defined addiction as a pattern, and offered it as a conceptual remedy for this anomaly. Since selling addictions has always been lucrative yet destructive, the traditions identified certain activities or things (such as opiates and gambling) as addictions and developed suitable legislation and ethical norms. But with the help of technology, contemporary industries can develop hundreds of new addictions—without us having a way to even recognize them as that.

We defined religion as "reconnection with the archetype". The archetypes here include "justice", "beauty", "truth", "love" and anything else that may make a person overcome egotism and convenience and serve a "higher" ideal.

Stories

Werner Kollath was a medical researcher, and pioneer of the scientific study of "hygiene" (which he understood most generally as life-enhancing lifestyle). Kollath observed that while scientific medicine developed through its successes in combating infectious diseases (where developing "causes" and "remedies" is most effective), the upsurge of lifestyle-caused diseases requires a different approach to medicine altogether. Kollath observed that this problem is both scientific and political (we must learn to overcome the power structure), and undertook to develop "political hygiene as science". The power structure of his day, however, thwarted his efforts.

Aaron Antonovsky was a researcher in the sociology of health, who is today widely considered the progenitor of scientific "salutogenesis" (creation of health). In post-war Israel, Antonovsky studied women who were Holocaust survivers, and focused on about one third of them who did not develop otherwise common health problems. He found that what they had in common was a high level of what he branded "sense of coherence", which "integrates the meaningfulness, comprehensibility and manageability of a situation or disease". Later research confirmed his insight.

Ven. Ajahn Buddhadasa was a Thai Buddhist monk and Buddhism reformer, who (having been disillusioned by the conventional monastery practice) withdrew into a forest near his home village Chaya and undertook to 'repeat the Buddha's experiment'. The result (Buddhadasa observed) was not only a rediscovery of the Buddha's way—but also an antidote to the rampant materialism that in his time began to permeate the world. Dutifully, being a follower of Dhamma, Buddhadasa undertook to develop ways to federate his insight to the world.

Prototypes

The NaCuHeal-Information Design was our project developed in collaboration with the European Public Health Association, through Prof. Gunnar Tellnes who was then its president. In Norway Tellnes developed an authentic approach to health, which was based on nature and culture-related activities. This collaboration resulted in several prototypes, including

• Kommunewiki—a dialog-based communication project for Norwegian municipalities (as basic units of Norwegian democracy), to empower their members to counter power structure lifestyle tendencies, and develop salutogenic new ones
• "Healthcare as a power structure"—an application of polyscopy to historical development of health and healthcare

We developed the "Movement and Qi" educational prototype as a way to add to the conventional academic portfolio a collection of ways to use human body as medium—and work with "human quality" directly.

"Liberation", subtitled "Religion beyond Belief", is a book manuscript about to be turned into a book project. The book federates the message of Ven. Ajahn Buddhadasa, by

• developing a concrete understanding of human wholeness, in terms of its four components (body, mind, creativity and vitality)
• explaining Buddhadasa's (or the Buddha's) insight as an essential and integral element of human wholeness
• showing how the change of values that Buddhism is pointing also leads to social and cultural wholeness.

The "Liberation" book is intended to serve as part of the strategy to launch the Holotopia project. Religion tends to be a theme on which many people have strong opinions, either pro or against. What is told in the book will challenge both positions in equal measure—and at the same time offer a way to discharge and reconcile their differences.

We conclude this very brief exploration of our cultural blind spots and emergent opportunities by a handful of keywords and prototypes. As always, the design patterns they embody will illustrate our handling of the larger issue at hand—how the change of the relationship we have with information (as modeled by the holoscope) can illuminate the way to "a great cultural revival" (modeled by the holotopia).

The book "Liberation" subtitled "Religion beyond Belief" is an ice breaker. It federates "the best kept secret", and creates a dialog.