How Do We Organize When Systems Collapse with Simone Cicero #4

Hello, everybody, this is David Goldsmith and welcome to Redefining Tomorrow. Today we're going to be exploring how do we organize when systems collapse. And I'm extremely excited because I don't even know where this is going. We have a fantastic person on the phone, Simone Chichiro. Did I say that properly?

Yes.

Okay. Well, I found Simone on, I think it was LinkedIn. I saw something, I read his bio, I was interested and I reached out to him because of his platform work. And one of the things that he's very proud of what he's done is he's done work with the, for example, the United nations and platform design. He's also worked a lot on open source. He's created or especially proud of the we Share fest that he's been involved in. And we have him on the line today. How are you today, Simone?

Very good, very good. Preparing for intense week next. Next week we're going to run a kind important event with guests coming from all over the world. So very excited.

Good, great. Well, I'm assuming you have an outline for us. Can you share with us that outline so we can start into the program?

Yes. So basically I've been always focused on how we organize collaboratively, at scale, I would say. And now these days my biggest question is to understand, as you said, how do we organize when the systems collapse? And basically the first question that we should explore is I think, what is collapsing? So that's the first point, trying to understand what is collapsing. And my opinion is what we are seeing is, so why don't we get that?

Why don't we get the list first and then we can go into each piece?

Yes. So the second point is that essentially when systems collapse, what is the organizing that we need to do? So what's the organizing? Now we are used to a concept of organizing that needs to change, of course, when we acknowledge that systems are collapsing. And the third point that I would like to explore is what is the meaning of doing this at scale and using global network at systems and technologies so that the technology world we are immersed in. So that's more or less the three points that I would like to explore with you.

Okay, fantastic. So let's start with the first one. What is collapsing?

Well, that's a very important point. I think it's a starting point for our conversation. And more or less I believe that what is collapsing is our existing ways to make meaning, to sense, make, let's say. And this depends on essentially acknowledging that the first thing that is collapsing is what many call the game A. So our existing industrial civilization that is, let's say a result of a long term evolution starting, you know, dating back to, you know, even the Greeks, the Greek philosophers, let's say. And yeah, basically together with this industrial, this industrial civilization that is collapsing also the biosphere is collapsing. And of course these two are very much interrelated. The biosphere, I would say, is collapsing as a result of the dynamics of the game A this industrial civilization. There's excellent work that has been done, for example, by Daniel Schmachtenberger, one of the founders of Neurohacker Collective, is doing a lot of interesting work in explaining why let's say the game A this modern civilization has what he calls collapse generator functions. So basically it's kind of designed to collapse because it's a river roost civilization. It's a system where there's competition everywhere. And essentially the big issue that we need to confront with is that humans have more or less infinite potential. So these exponential capabilities to act godlike, I would say, because you know, of course, when you, for example, when you go near sea and you know, you throw a fishing net in the sea and you can capture, you can get a hundred tuna fishes, you're not the shark, you're much more than the shark, you're much more than an apex predator. You are more like a God. Our nature itself, let's say. So, you know, if you, if you connect these with the very much competitive nature of our game A of our industrial civilization, yeah, you get collapse embedded in the very functioning of the system. So you kind of have, I, maybe.

You could draw a connection for me because I loved where you were going in. I mean, I was getting it. I was understanding the biosphere collapsing. I was understanding the game A. But why the two, when they're together, do you say collapse?

Well, because basically when you couple this ever increasing possibilities that one individual has, we have increasing exponential capabilities with technologies, very pervasive technologies that we can use. Basically, if we are competing with each other, we are going to use our potential to basically grab as much as we can of nature, of resources and so on until we collapse because of this inherently competitive system that we live. Yeah, go ahead.

Is it human beings or is it the system?

Well, somehow it's human beings. Because, you know, the difference between human beings and the natural system is that, you know, for example, as I said before, a shark or a tiger can kill a limited number of preys. While we can do much more. We can, you know, we can basically with the technologies that we have the potential that we have, we and our organizations, we can do much more harm to the system because we can consume much more resources in this race for competition. Probably the idea of the tragedy of the commons, if you just put competitive actors around a natural or scarce resource, let's say they are going to consume it and destroy it because each other is concerned about what the others can do with the resources. So if you put competitive actors around, spin it, or scads or, well, even just finite resorts, they're going to destroy it because they are in competition. So unless they find a way to manage it collaboratively, that's not going to happen. So they are going to basically destroy the common resources that we have. And essentially our whole global system is, I would say, premised on this idea of competition. If you think about our markets, for example, everybody is competing with each other. If you think about the office, you are competing with your colleague. There is this competition infused in everything. And so this is what Schmatenberger calls a revarrous system. And this revarrous system, when everybody's getting much, much more potential with technologies, is fated to collapse. Imagine what's going on now, for example, with technologies like crispr, so people can actually increasingly add it to DNA with very much democratic tools. So imagine what can come up with these new possibilities that are very pervasive when everybody can change their face.

We're playing with fire.

Exactly.

So when you use the word collapse, maybe can you draw me a picture or give me an imagery of what you see collapsing look like or what a collapse means in your definition of the civilization or humans combined with the biosphere collapsing? What does that look like to you?

Well, I'm not a collapse expert, but in general, I would say there are several levels of collapse that one can witness. And, you know, let me be very practical. So, for example, now, as a consequence of our exponential capability to burn for sea seaweed, we have been messing with climate. And this year in the U.S. corn and soy output is probably going to be affected very seriously by late planting season that started only in late June, basically because of a very abundant rains that we witnessed in the corn belt. So this is a signal of a collapsing industrial system. So the industrial systems are premised on predictability. All these systems we are used that are based on the rational and mechanistic episteme, our way to confront with society through science and planning and management. All this is essentially premised on predictability. So modeling predictability, complicated systems and so on. So this complicated system don't really Deal very well with unpredictability. And you know, one time is climate becoming unpredictable, another time is just a few people running drones through, you know, Saudi oil, the oil field, exactly like it was like two weeks ago. So it's really something that you cannot predict. And you know, when these kind of systems collapse, imagine our food system starts to collapse partially. You know, now it's the corn belt, maybe next year is the Russian because of a heat wave and so on. Then you can have many, many other, you know, complex systems are really keen to cascade like effects. And so when food collapse, then you can have a social systems collapse and then you have institutions collapse. And yeah, we are, for example, if you witness what's happening in the U.S. now you have a president that is being somehow impeached and is, you know, even talking about civil war on Twitter. So those are signals that our political systems are more or less collapsing because they cannot deal with the unpredictability of this very complex and global age.

Okay, so the word that you used which really stood out, which I loved, is the predictability side of it. That's what I wasn't getting between the biosphere and the, and the industrial complex. And it was even interesting that you started all the way back from the Roman and Greek times, which was surprising. The predictability side of it is an easy way to understand collapsing. And I think that's a word that's not being used. I think that's a very powerful word because you can explain to somebody the rainforest is doing X and Y being burned, or you can explain the fact that we've had, we're overfishing the oceans. But it's really in terms of human understanding. And I'm going to bring it down to a very basic level. I think it's the understanding, if you can connect it to predictability, it makes it an easier narrative. It's just an easier connective tissue. Because you could say because of that this happened. Oh yeah, we didn't ship as much product last year or because of this, this happened. Oh yeah, yeah, there were 12 more storms than we expected. So I love that word. That was, that was very good. Thank you. So do you actually think about the collapsing?

Well, I'm thinking about this because essentially with the demise of predict predictability, what's collapsing is our episteme, our way to make sense of the world essentially. And because we are used to an episteme that is rational and mechanicistic, so it's based on predictability and causal relationships, then this episteme is related to our identity. So I would say that these reflections on collapse made me reflect very deeply one thing that I failed to see before and essentially is the relationship between my identity and colonialism. So let me explain better. So when you think about collapsing systems, you think about, oh my God, we're going to deal with food shortages in the west and maybe, you know, political instabilities and so on. But the interesting question to see is that this is happening already. So this is happening already in many places in the world. Africa, Asia, South America, like, you know, Syria, Venezuela, Darfur and so on. And the fact that we are now really dealing with this idea of collapsing system episteme, it's because of our identities are very much colonialist identities. For example, when we use smartphones, we don't really care that the cobalt that is used to build these tools is mined by kids in Congo. So you just give it for granted that you basically, you deserve your smartphone when you jump on 10 planes a month. Because your identity is the identity of a Western traveler or professional that travels all over the world. You don't care about the fact that this is generating greenhouse gases that probably means genocide for many, many island nations in the world, or even Bangladesh, that is going to be flooded by waters in a few years and is going to generate millions of refugees.

And if you've ever, have you ever been to Bangladesh?

No, I don't.

It's 156 million people. It floods every single year by nature. And a 15 centimeter rise, a six centimeter, six inch rise will displace millions and millions of people. And it will displace it not just from the water rising, but from storms and other activity that will happen in the region. So 156 million people make Syria look like a small challenge in terms of refugees.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, the question is, once you discover that your systems are collapsing, your APIs team is failing, your identity is breaking down, then what you need is a new sense making process. Because basically your sense making progress process is all about making sense of the system through your episteme and basically integrating into your identity. So if all the three things fail, how do you sense, elaborate and act on a world that is collapsing? So I think what we need now, and yeah, that helps me connect with the second point, is a new cosmology of organizing. And when I talk about a new cosmology of organizing, the point was, what do we organize now? How do we organize? What is the point of organizing in a world that is in collapse? And when I speak about cosmology of organizing. I speak about basically an approach to organizing that makes sense of us as humans in the universe. So, you know, when we spoke about where is the system coming from, you know, this game, a. This Western culture, this is basically our Western culture, is, Is a process that connects directly with many, many things that happened in history. So when I, when I mentioned the Greek, the Greeks, for example, there are some concepts of human development and human potential that are related to Aristotle. Aristotle. So, you know, we need to. I think we really need to start going back and looking into the roots of our ways of thinking to find this new cosmology of organizing, this new meaning to organizing. And yeah, at some point in history, like more or less from the Cartesian age, and in the last, probably something like 300 years or 400 years, we have really detour from, I would say from accepting that not everything that we can perceive and understand of the world can be explained passionately. So lots of our ways of knowing the world and experiencing the world before the Cartesian rational age were rooted into what we call normally religion or, or spiritual practices. Like, you know, for example, you know, I would say the basic elements of most of existing religious practices, you know, or the idea, for example, that are embedded in Buddhism or Stoicism. So all these aspects of religion as a way to connect with the unknown. I would say I'm not talking about religion in terms of a practice of going to the church, much more about understanding the limits of our capabilities to perceive the world through our senses, let's say. So I think when you start looking into organizing from this new point of view, so accepting what's going on in the world, how this is related with our identity and epistemes now, what's then. So how do we organize them? What is the meaning of organizing after we acknowledge all this? And I'm trying to really explore this, and this is not an easy question because, you know, when you, when you. Essentially, we need to build a new epistemology of organizing. So why we organize? What is the information and knowledge we are seeking by organizing? And I think one thing we need to work on is first of all to acknowledge interdependent. So most of the issues that we deal with in, in modern organizing and modern civilization is due to our tendency to rationalize and think in terms of complicated systems and mechanicistic systems and predictability, as I said. And suddenly when you realize interdependence, and I'm talking, for example, of the work of systems thinkers like Bateson, for example, and you Start to understand, for example, that learning and thinking and the process of making sense of the world is something that happens in the landscape and in the community. So it doesn't happen in one individual, but happens in the interdependence of individuals and the natural world and the context where they live, the cities, the. The landscapes and so on. Then I think this needs to be integrated in our concept of organizing. I'm really shocked sometimes when I think about how much our concept of organizing in the last hundred years has been, I would say, completely separated from the concept of landscape, for example, or from the concept of communities, for example. So when you think about a company, for example, you never think in terms of how this company integrates with the landscape, the place where it exists, or where their supply chains exist. So these are.

Yeah, you're getting. My mind is racing. You are. Definitely. As humans, we are siloed in the thinking of the design of organizations. And while we're trying to add social consciousness, while we're trying to add community engagement, while we're trying to delineate or explore different ways to be able to create a. I would say a changed society, I can't tell you in any boardroom, in any executive room, where the connective tissue between all of these pieces is drawn together in strategic thinking. I just don't see it. So you're fascinating me with the thought of how the concept of organizing does not have landscape, does not have community. But what it does is it has public relations or advertising or marketing sense of community, and there is some sense of, we can do this, it will be good for the society. But at the same time, the company's destroying the same thing. It's trying to create or even doing more harm than it will be doing in terms of good. Does that make sense?

Totally. I think one thing that makes me sometimes two things. One thing is, for example, the use of community in the business language. This has been hijacked. So basically, we talk about communities of our consumers and so on, but we never really consider a community as it is. So people having shared their experiences and lives and so on. So this is just an example of how much the business language has hijacked some of these concepts to make it to essentially fake it to the public. So in thinking, for example, about corporate social responsibility, that's one of the biggest, I think, scams of the last decades.

That's exactly what I was thinking about when I was talking about it. Is that, yes, corporate social responsibility, but is it?

Exactly. No, it's just a way to place some kind of. To paint something in the face of the public. But in reality, everybody knows that companies only think in terms of shareholder value, only think in terms of individual development of their CEOs. So there's never this idea of interdependence in how we run within an organization. And that's very important because I think there's one point that we don't really get is that learning and evolution and knowledge making and essentially sense making only happens in interdependence. So there is this concept of learning that we have as an individual process, while in reality the interdependence between individuals in a community and with their landscape, that's the learning process. So you only learn as a community in the landscape for real. You never learn as an individual. What you do as an individual is you receive an education. And there's fantastic work that's been done by. How's it called now? Lapsus. Well, get to me. But basically he wrote this book called Education in Between Worlds. And there is this idea that the industrial education essentially has been created as a way to produce the inputs to the industrial system. So the consumer, for example. So it's an education system in service of an economic system.

Maybe here's an even a larger perspective. I did a TED talk on education. There's a long story to it, but one of the things I realized was that education is government. Government puts in place people with an educational system that supports the governance, which also supports the economic system in which it thrives on. It's connected.

Yes, yes. I mean, someone would say that education is more than governance is. I would say colonialism of the mind. You know, it's really.

That's what I meant. Is it? Yeah, it fits the bill. It's the Chinese. The Chinese have rote systems. The American system, most people don't understand. The American system is very, very disconnected. You don't get the same education in every school. You don't get the same process in every school. And each region has capabilities of being able to deliver within a tolerance. So one school compared to the next school might be very, very, very different as compared to, let's say, Asia. Then you take a country like India. India hasn't been able to give clean fresh water or sewage and sanitation to its people, which has been around for thousands of years or hundreds of years. They've been around for thousands of years. So their challenge is, even going back to the fundamentals is how do we service our people? So education becomes one of the challenges that they have. That is completely different than everybody else. So it's a real big. The producing the inputs is what you were starting to say. The producing of the inputs is very much tied to how the government wants education to be able to.

Yeah, totally. I mean, I think this helps me reconnect with the work of Zachary Stain. That was the person that I was. Was talking about, you know, this idea that essentially education is in service of the continuity of the mainstream system. It's a game, a continuity machine. So we educate people so that they can play into the game a they can play into the industrial, consumerist, capitalist society that is pretty much now covering all over the world. We could have a discussion on how China and India are integrating this. It's a little bit different, especially with China. And maybe this helps me connect with the last point, which is about technology. China has a little bit different approach because of the Daoist tradition in thinking, which is completely different from our Western tradition, India, as well as a different worldview, I would say. But in general, I mean, coming back to the point we were discussing, the point to me now regarding how do we organize is how do we organize in the landscape and in the community so that we can build organizations that are in service of our learning process. And when I talk about the learning process, I talk about developmental steps. And normally the developmental step we are very much used to perceive as humans is the developmental step between being a baby kid and becoming an adult. That's very clear to people. But there is another developmental step which is from the adult to becoming wise that is similar developmental step that we never do in the traditional industrial economy or system. You never are required to become wise in a modern civilization. And my impression is if we really want to have a little chance to avoid the complete destruction of our planet and the extinction of the human species, we will need to very soon create this scalable organization that basically helps human to become wise, not just adults, and play their role in this kind of predetermined industrial society. So that's the point. The point of organizing now in a system that is collapsing is about acknowledging interdependence with landscape and community, creating organizations that are in service of evolutive learning and becoming wiser. So kind of, I would say, completely transform the relationship between the economy and the education system, the economy and organizing, you know, creating systems that are targeted to generate these powerful processes of evolution and learning across communities. So that's more or less, I think what we need to think about now. And you can imagine how much this is detach from the theory of organizing that we have these days, which is much more about.

It's completely. It's a. It's a whole new paradigm.

Exactly, exactly. And yeah, coming back to the last, to the last point, that what is the meaning of how do we essentially integrate these reflections and thinking with technology and with techniques? I would say more than technology. So, for example, now we have, and I've been working for the last five years into modeling how you design highly scalable organizations, platforms. This idea of platform, for example, is premise on the technological developments that we are dealing with. Because essentially what happened in the last couple of decades from when we have been having the Internet, is that the transaction cost, the coordination cost among people has been plummeting rapidly. And this has been quite challenging to the existing concept and idea of the firm, as in cost terms, for example. So this idea that the firm exists to reduce the transaction cost has been of course challenged deeply by widespread plummeting of transaction costs. Now you have these huge companies like Airbnbs and the Amazons or the Uber and so on that orchestrate millions of people just through technology, through algorithms. So somehow we need to acknowledge that this technology exists and gives us new possibilities in thinking about organizing. Also with this new, I would say, fire inside ourselves about reinventing organizations for learning and communities and landscape, we can still use this technology. But somehow I think this moment in which we have the technology, and on the other hand, we have this powerful insight and vision that we need to change our episteme, we need to change our identities, we need to reinvent organizing. We deal with this friction between these two things. This is not a new friction at all. I think one thing that also I've realized in the last few months is, is that philosophy is very important because most of the times when you have these questions, You can look into philosophy in the history of philosophy, and you will see many people that have dealt with these topics and these questions before you. And so you can find a lot of food for thought in philosophy, for example, and one thing that I've been thinking about lately regarding this relationship between this new way of thinking and the use of technology has been the work of Heidecker and especially his question on technology on Techniques, that is an essay that he wrote in the 50s, basically. And it's all about understanding that, you know, technology somehow is in Heidegger's term is how the being, how the, you know, somehow God, let's say, or nature manifests itself to the human in this moment in history. So we need to develop A more moral and conscious relationship with technology. Because otherwise, if we just let technology unfold itself in the world, what happens is that essentially everything becomes an object, everything becomes the background. He uses this term of gestel. So the background of technology and everything becomes an object and nobody else is the subject anymore. So basically we just look at nature, the world, humans, other humans as resources to be consumed. And if you think about what I said before when I spoke about the smartphones and the people in Congo, that's more or less what's happening. We are essentially looking at the phone and say, okay, I cannot exist without a phone. The phone is more or less something that is, I would say, something that I'm defined by. And so who cares about the people in Congo? And this can be really generalized in general about our relationship with progress and technology and our organization's relationship with progress and technology. So it's a moment, I think it's the moment in which we really become more aware of this technological progress and more aware of our potential and try to re embed in our theory of organizing, a cosmology of organizing. So we really try to see the connection between the universe and ourselves and our organization in the landscape, in the community. I know this is a massive undertaking. It's not something that is going to flow in the market like the corporate social responsibility age. It's something much deeper. But I think that if we really want to talk about essentially evolving our game a that is, as I said, essentially fated to collapse into something that is what we could call a game be, that is more regenerative and is completely different, we need to accept this challenge.

So I'm hearing hesitation and I understand, I perceive on my end an understanding of why. So I'm going to ask you the question, do you believe humans will transition to this place?

Well, that's a very, very deep question.

And yeah, I know. Did you think I was going to ask you an easy question?

But I mean, I totally take.

It's you.

I take this question with enthusiasm. Because, for example, if we rely on some kind of knowledge that may be worth in this age of identity collapse and episteme failure, for example, I may look into Buddha's teachings. And one of Buddha's most important teachings is that the future doesn't exist. So really this question is about the future. And this is a question that we can only answer in the present because the future just doesn't exist. Once Einstein said, only fools can think about present, past and future as being different things. And yeah, I think one Issue that brought us here is our Western civilization, Western identity. I would say inclination to think in terms of the future, to think in terms of, okay, I'm doing this now because in the future I would be more safe and so on, for example. And instead, if we really start to think in terms of presence and, you know, I'm. I'm developing this idea of mindful organizations. So, you know, we are living into the mindfulness age. You know, everybody's doing mindfulness meditation and so on. And.

And there's so much now being written about how it. Mindfulness does not come with any philosophies behind it. Mindfulness does not come with Buddhism and Tao, any of these. This historical lessons that typically mindfulness brought with them, and that we're not making the progress. We just have people trying to believe that if they calm down, if they rest a little bit, if they become more one with themselves, that the world will change without the understanding that without action there is no change.

Exactly. And if you look instead to the Buddhist tradition, for example, it gives you this framing of mindfulness as a transformative experience that transforms your salience landscape, as John Verbecki said recently in a podcast. So essentially, what we need to do now is probably to change our salience landscape. We need to change what we value in the world. We need to change what is salient to us in the world. And we can do that through again, changing or, you know, I would say opening to new cosmologies, new ways of thinking, new ways of perceiving the world. Part of it is for sure also, you know, the process of being more mindful and present and meditative, you know, I'm sure. But somehow, I think for us as enlightened people as I wish, we really are, it's a moment to acknowledge that we have a responsibility, and we have the responsibility to rethink our processes of organizing in a way that is, let's say, de exceptionalized, that is much more present and connected with landscape and communities. And if we can really, really do this, if we can overcome our idea of Western individual exceptionalism, maybe we have a chance to, I would say, trace a direction of progress, of transformation, of.

Fisher, I love your answer because. Because we're kind of. It's a beating around the bush answer. It's a tough one, the beating around the bush, not direct. It's that when I play this out in my mind and I can hear your wrestling with these concepts of how to make the change, I have a few things that. That influence my thinking. Number one, whenever I think, and you'll. Whenever I strategize, whenever I go anywhere, I always use the number 7.5. 7.5 is the number of people on this planet. And I have worked in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Indonesia. I've worked in South Africa, parts of Africa. I've worked in the Central America. When you see the numbers, when you see the scale, when you see the size and you see how they've transformed into consumers based upon a, as you're saying, colonialism, a ownership mentality we have to have in order to be happy, it's a huge obstacle. The second is, I don't know if you looked me up a little bit. I have this project, Moon Hut foundation, and there are six areas that we're concentrating on, and these are four that I think that influence what you're talking about. We have mass extinction. I use 12 to 24 species dying every day. But the United nations came back and said 200. Some people say there's eight and a half million, some people say there's 50 million. But still 200 species a day, including large ones, disappearing, are going to have massive infection influences on people who are just sitting and meditating. There's social displacement. Combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, 3D printing, synthetic engineering, sensor tech, all coming together at a rapid speed we've never seen. We have resource depletion, we've destroyed. China has 25 years left of topsoil, they say United states has about 65 years left of topsoil and other countries are worse. There is the last one is the climate change component and how rapidly the oceans are changing, the water temperatures changing, and everything that goes along with it. So I use that as a secondary. And the third one, which really influences all the thinking that I want your comment on these three tied together of how to do this, because I'm actually looking for answers. Not as many questions as answers is. When we talk of the world word collapse, when that's the reason I wanted this program with you, when sometimes I don't do interviews because I can't find something with the person but use the word collapse. And in my mind I have recently looked up the word biosphere or ecosystem collapsing. And it was surprising for me to learn how fast that happens. And there have been ecological collapses. It takes seven to 10 days from the moment in which the critical number, critical mass, the critical elimination of a species, a water, whatever it may be. It takes seven to 10 days for the collapse to happen. It is, if you look it up, you'll see it has happened in Australia. It is, they don't have written but I, I know people have said it's happened in China. So there are parts of the world that seven to ten days. So if we're losing what I just mentioned above, we have these changes happening from resources and mass extinction and overfishing and whatever you want to call our oceans changing. The timeline that I use, and I'm not going to go into it, is much shorter. So my question is in you said, what is the meaning doing this? To do this at scale, how do we organize? How do we also do this with speed? Mm, speed. I mean we don't have, we do have. We're going to survive in one way, shape or form. It just matters who, how and why, what we'll do. But what's the speed? What do you think? How do we do this fast?

Well, two things that come to my mind. The first thing to do it is to acknowledge that as you said, it's true that systems normally, especially ecological systems, they collapse quite fast. But in general this is a property of all complex systems. So complex systems tend to go through state transitions. So if you think about, for example, the earth climate, you know, we are thinking in terms of these linear things. But many, many indicators tell us that there may be a state transition happening in the background. And when it happens, it's fast. So it may well be that at some point in the future we have a rapid transition towards a hotter health system and that's going to be very complicated for us to manage. So one thing is for sure, these systems are transitioning very fast. One thing we need to acknowledge, I think to be fast and responding, to stop telling ourselves stories and try to start grounding ourselves in the collapse. So acknowledging that as I said before, collapse is just, I would say it's a consequence of our way of thinking and our identities and our systems. So, so it's not that it's possibly not happening, it's essentially surely happening and is most likely already happening. So once we acknowledge this, we can be fast in changing our approach, mindset and process and whatever we do. So for example, each of the people that I'm talking with, or you know, the professionals I'm in touch with.

Even.

If they see the collapse, they don't. They're not most likely not changing their priorities, they're not changing their salience landscape, as I said before.

Exactly.

So one thing that we really need to do is sit down and say, okay, how do I stop self deceiving myself into believing that the system is Healthy and I can plan for the next 20 or 30 years in this system. How do I stop self deceiving myself about this and how do I restructure my salient landscape so that I can start to do the work that needs to be done or the work that is morally just and the work that is needed now to have a transition towards a wiser organization system, a wiser way of living in community landscape. So that's one thing, and this is about speed because it's about the speed of starting to think in new terms. So as fast as possible we got to do this transition in our thinking and in our salience landscape. So that's one thing. And another thing is, and I'm quoting here, one guy that is called Bio Acomolafe that you may know and he says one thing that is very, very interesting. He says. Basically the times are serious, the times are challenging, let's slow down. So it's not about speeding up. What I said before, I said we need to de exceptionalize our lives. We need to start thinking that we are not exceptional, we are not godlike, we are not superhuman. For example, I see a lot of climate scientists that are flying all over the place all the time. So for me it's a bit awkward because if you still think that you are important, your impact in the world is important, you don't understand what's going on. Because as long as we are going to think in terms of my ego, my individual capabilities are so important that I need to do more, I need to do faster, I need to reach more people, I need to bring my message. That's not going to work. Because what we need to develop is a ways to create new narratives that are more into the interdependence and in the conversation between us where nobody is exceptional. Once we stop focusing on our identities and our ego, we start focusing on the systems. We start focusing on what we can do so that the system can grow, so that the system can learn what is our contribution to our learning system. And I think this is somehow where networks and where highly scalable technologies like the ones that we are trying to master platform design and platform thinking and ecosystems is going to to help us. It's going to be about the small things that we can do in designing these organizations that can put big things in motion, like John Hagel said. So if I design for example, a new kind of organization that can treat locally and as a model can be replicated in a distributed way where we can have flows of exchanges between distributed nodes and you know, I design it in a way that is essentially resonating with people's new priorities and new salience landscape. This can be faster to grow because there is this resonance, this pull between the communities and the users and the systems and so on. But it's not something that I'm going to push and say, okay, I'm going to change the world now just by speeding up my egocentric message to the world.

I like the. It's making me think and I'm trying to come up with or trying to frame. What I'm thinking in my mind is I'm in London right now and not in Luxembourg and I want sitting with someone last night or two nights ago in one of the terminals. And while I was there, the guy said, ask me something about why aren't people changing, why aren't they in the present? And I said, there's a big challenge is how do you keep up with the things that we've created around our lives. The pressures to pay bills, to take care of the health of our family or our friends, to be able to do, to pay the ticket, to get home at the end of the night, to have food on the table. And they're so locked in that mindset that waking them up is that they're somewhat aware that there's a change that needs to happen, but the pull from, from the other side is so strong that the damage that they do every day is 10 times more than they understand. And he looked at me one point, I said, let me give you a simple. I read and I can't remember the guy's name. One of the guys who was involved in the creation of Siri, he says that every time you take a photograph on your camera, on your phone and you post it to Facebook, the energy consumption of that one photo to post is the equivalent of three 20 watt light bulbs running for an hour. So while we say we're taking, we're not using plastic bags or we're not eating meat, and yet you posted 35 photos yesterday, three today, 10 tomorrow. You've done more damage to the system than doing the others. And it's a challenge to what we are supposed to wake up to. And I understand what you're saying. My fear is the speed. And I know that the platforms have capabilities, you and I both work in them. But I'm still afraid in my mind, and maybe I'm wrong, of the speed of transition going back to the 7.5 billion, going back to the 200 species per day, going back to the seven to 10 days. And not that I want to solve it. I don't think I can solve it. I think that we have to solve it. And just being mindful is a start. It needs to have a kickstart. We can't just build a fire. We have to build a bonfire. Very bad analogy. I know, because it's pollutioning the environment, but it's almost as if we have to build this huge fire very quickly so that we can get some type of transformation. And I. I'm still struggling, Simone. I'm struggling. I don't. I'm not. I hear people talk about it in first World. I hear people, some talk about it in third World, but my other home is Hong Kong and the U.S. i mean, these are places where two 12 billion gallons of solid waste, runoff or runoff into the oceans goes every day. And other countries are larger. India and China. 12 billion is 300 million bathtubs. And that's not including radioactive waste and waste from insecticides and waste from all other types of runoff. These are massive numbers. And I understand the platform has leverage ability. Simone, I'm looking for something, and maybe you're not the answer. I'm not looking for you to be the answer. I'm just trying to push a little bit. How do we take the platform and really make it do something?

Well, that's the point. But, I mean, there's a lot of talking, for example, online in the web about this transition from. From Game A to Game B. That's what you're talking about. How do we transition to Game B fast enough so that we are not screwed? So, unfortunately, nobody knows what Game B is. So nobody knows it because it may be out of our epistemic framing. So maybe we don't know that because we cannot know that with our current episteme. So one thing that I think is very important for us as individuals is to try to immerse ourselves into higher states of consciousness that can really transform the way we perceive the world and can let us, for example, go beyond the fear and the attachment to our existing identities and lives. Because most of our tendency to continue on what we are without any change is due to the fear. It's due to the fear that we have of change. It's due to the attachment that we have to the present things that we have that we own. So these experiences are of higher states of consciousness that can come, for example, through deep meditation practice, are highly transformative, and can really be the bridge between ourselves becoming part of the problem into becoming. I would Say one of the characters that tell the story of the solution. Let's say, on the other hand, we need to also acknowledge complexity. We need to acknowledge that we live in nature. And, you know, our present experience on this planet comes through a universe that for, you know, more or less billions of years ago, you know, pieces of metals cooled down and built and made up a planet. And then this planet got the very fortunate chance of developing life on it. And then at some point, there were millions of dinosaurs on this planet. And this, you know, this big rock from the space hit the planet. And, you know, that sometimes I reflect that the heating window for this meteor that essentially made the dinosaurs extinct was eight minutes. So maybe it's not possible to turn a complex system fast enough so that we don't create any harm. So, you know, we don't really know what's going on in the future. We don't really know how much suffering or we don't really know how much, how much what kind of world we are going to deal with in the next centuries or decades. It may be a very different world. It may be that we cannot turn things on their own fast enough to prevent widespread suffering and death and war. We don't know. We don't know. I think we need to, to really become part of a process of systems change. We need to acknowledge that systems change altogether. It's not about us. It's about change that starts everywhere and that you cannot really control. So there is some kind of unknown in the future. And this is based on us accepting complexity, I think. And accepting complexity is the first step to starting to regain meaning in our lives. You know, because we have been taught, we have been, you know, our epistemology has been built by a system that refuses unpredictability and complexity and told us lies for centuries, that we can control everything with our, with our minds, with our rationality. And that's the first step, I think. I think somehow, somehow accepting that we don't have an answer to this question is one of the first steps we need to do to really start to transition into something new.

Yeah, thank you. I do want to say, and even though it's on the program, that's fine with me. I would like you to take a look at a document that I've put together and I'd like to get your opinion on it. It's. I've. I've got what's called Project Moonheart foundation, but one of the things that I've been writing about is called the Age of Infinite, that we're not going into the fourth Industrial revolution. We're not going to the fourth series. That we have the potential to step into the age of infinite possibilities. Possibilities. And that age of possibilities can only happen if we have these systemic changes that you're talking about and you, and you're referencing and not that we have one shot because we're not saving the planet. We're just trying to make sure that humans survive in our own egocentric way. This was, it took a spin. I wasn't sure where we were going to go on the, on the program. So I very much appreciate, Simone, what you have said and shared. I, I love it. It got me thinking in, in different directions and that's exactly what I was hoping. So thank you very much.

Well, thank you. It was great to talk and, you know, I think that we only learn and, and develop our sense making in interaction. So I really, really welcome this conversation. It's been fantastic to make sense of my thinking as well. So thanks very much.

It's amazing. I don't pick interviews that easily. And for some reason, even though we've had some challenges, I wanted to get you on the program and I am very, very, very, very, very, very grateful that you and I were able to keep on working through the challenges to make sure we were here today. So fantastic. Thank you.

Thanks very much.

So I want to thank all of you who are listening. I hope you've learned something today to make a difference in your life and the lives of others and the planet in which we live. Always remember, you can't fix yesterday. You can only create tomorrow. So, so don't worry about what's happened. Take today and move forward. Love to connect with you. Davidavidgoldsmith.com Instagram. Mr. DavidGoldsmith, you can connect on Twitter @DavidGoldsmith, LinkedIn, Facebook, we're all out there. And would you like your email? What would you like to give Simone? Simone?

Well, maybe a good one is hello at Platform Design. That's our, you know, website, platformdesigntoolkit.com. you can write me there.

Perfect. And again, I'd love to connect with you, anybody who's interested. I appreciate the time. So to everybody, I'm David Goldsmith and thank you for listening.