Mr. Ben van Beurden, I write to you to say I deeply appreciate the reflection and actions that you are taking on as CEO of Shell regarding the #RussianInvasion of #Ukraine.

Like you and I, it appears ever more humans are awakening to the appaling sight of fire and destruction. It is in this spirit appreciation that you share in your LinkedIn post that i ask you to please take the warning of UN #SecretaryGeneral #AntonioGuterres, UN Staff like Roberta Boscolo, and the vast movement of millions of citizens, scientists, and leaders of all sectors who are increasingly appalled by the inability or unwillingness of the #OilMajors such as Shell, #Petrobras, #ARAMCO, #Total, and all others to awaken to the fact that the suffering we are seeing TODAY in Ukraine is, sadly, nothing in comparison to the suffering that tens, hundreds, and possibly even thousands of millions of humans (and trillions of other sentient beings) will face in the decades ahead if we do not transition immediately away from #FossilFuels and into a #Renewables based world.

Mr. van Beurden. I have lost my relationship with my daughter, my immediate and extended family, have not married, have lived on under a dollar or two a day for months, even years at a time, and have worked on my own for over 20 years to try and change a system that is morally, ecologically, and psychologically bankrupt. Yet others have suffered far more — insanity, persecution, torture, even death — for trying to speak truth to power.

How long will it take for you and your fellow CEOs and the hundreds of thousands of oil executives and professionals — and of politicians and political leaders who subsidize the oil industry — to fully understand that it is literally becoming a matter of life or death for humanity, nature, and civilization as we know it, to harness the incredible wealth and power that you all control to rapidly transition into non-renewables?

Perhaps the courage of Mr. and Mrs. Zelensky and their children can inspire you and your loved ones (and other #HydrocarbonCEOs) to make a truly bold, radical, and dramatically necessary change.

Mr. Van Beurden — is your decision regarding #Gazprom and #Nordstream not the perfect opportunity to take an even bolder move to accelerate a complete transition, in the briefest period of time possible, away from #FossilFuels? Is it not possible for the well-paid, talented, intelligent staff of Shell to find the creativity and capacity to lead such a transition? Tens of millions of professionals have had to re-skill to survive… can’t you and your colleagues re-skill rapidly to ensure the survival of humanity?

Frankly, in at least one way, the blind, unreflexive actions of the leaders of the worlds biggest oil companies are seen by millions of us common citizens, to be as increasingly lethal, destructive, callous, #ecocidal, and #genocidal as those of #Putin and his generals in #Ukraine … with the only difference that the insanity being unleashed by the #RussianMilitary can be seen in a very short period of time by billions of humans, whereas #ClimateCollapse (and the biocide, ecocide, and genocide that is being unleashed by this foreseeable and preventable tragedy) is moving at a slower pace. Albeit not that slow either — as vast evidence provided over decades, increasingly precise scientific studies, and the devastating images and realities of suffering by the millions already affected by #ExtremeWeather already show.

Mr. van Beurden, i write to you openly, with the deepest feeling of kindness and love for the entire human race and for all living beings. I am not angry, nor am i trying to assign blame, to rant or to make you or anyone feel bad. I condemn no one. I simply ask you, and your fellow CEOs and colleagues from the #OilIndustry to look deeply into the facts, trends, and realities that millions of world leaders, scientists, and citizens (and your own experts) know to be true.

Your moment of vulnerability and openess regarding the fire, brutality, and death we are all witnessing in #Ukraine perhaps can provide us both — as two ultimately simple human beings — with this brief chance to communicate directly. Perhaps this little opening can also reach the hearts of your colleagues at #Shell, Petrobras, aramco, Saudi Aramco Total Refining and Petrochemical Company (SATORP), and others across the oil industry.

If you truly are appalled at what is happening in Ukraine, please look deeply into your heart and into the realities of the #ClimateCrisis, #EcosystemCollapse, #BiodiversityLoss, #PlasticPollutionCrisis, #RunawayAuthoritarianism, #GovernanceDeficits, — and other #hydrocarbon-related tragedies.

We humans have been given a miraculous, blessed home to live in and to care for. Let’s awaken our individual and collective consciousness to take better care of our only home.

Cochabamba, March 2, 2022

The complexity of reality, of current human affairs from a planetary level right down to the level of each one of our own lives and families, and of the massive, and increasing convergence of serious #ExistentialRisks has led me into a prolonged #LockDown over many months and years at a time over the past 30+ years.

While i saw many dystopian scenarios unfolding in my mind 20+ and even 30+ years ago (for example during #Eco92 in Rio de Janeiro where i have returned to for inspiration), i honestly did not believe it would all unravel so fast.

Here i share a very brief introduction on how we can transform species-level #ExistentialThreats including the #ClimateCrisis, #BiodiversityCrisis, #ExtinctionCrisis, #EcosystemsCrisis, #NuclearThreats, #RunawayAI, #RUnawayBiotech, and others into #ExistentialSolutions.

The 3 pillars of metta #RealityGenerationSolutions are:

1. A Reality Generation Framework encouraging people of all backgrounds to more easily explore and understand the essence, nature, and structure of reality; how cosmic, natural, and human laws align; how we co-create reality; and how to do so in a more conscious, moral, regenerative, sustainable, and positive manner. All in ways that create greater wellbeing for all human and sentient beings;
2. A Reality Generation Protocol, a set of deep principles, concepts, and toolboxes for building and/or interweaving existing experiential, analog, and also digital tools, processes, methods, platforms, and communities with and through the Internet;
3. A metta Reality Generation Compass: A Whole-Systems Solution and Reality Generation Process Management App designed to enable individuals, societies, and collectives to more easily explore and navigate reality. How? Through #RealityProcessManagement — ie. By being able to more efficiently and effectively map, model, measure, monitor, manifest, and modify reality in ways that benefit oneself, one’s family, organizations, interests and others, minimizing harm and maximizing wellbeing for all.

Together, these solutions seek to provide deep moral, conceptual, and technical foundations to support the work that you, your allies, and others around the world are doing to accelerate and optimize the transition to a saner, safer, better reality — and do so with more ease and less pain.

If you are a #ChangeMaker,#ParadigmShifter, #WholeSystemsSolutioneer, #ImapctEntrepreneur, #SocialEntrepreenur, #Ecopreneur, or anyone else working on making the world a better place, would love to connect and invite you to consider joining this next phase of the nascent metta Reality Generation initiative.

Final note: Though metta can help solve #Planetary and #SpeciesLevel #ExistentialChallenges, it is also designed to solve simple to complex and superficial to existential personal, family, community, business, organization, and network challenges — i.e., challenges faced by anyone, anywhere.

More following soon through my different social media — especially LinkedIn and Twitter, and occassionaly here too. Do connect if you find this interesting.

ECOCIDE & BIOCIDE

Poly Higgins lived a meaningful life. She has proven Margaret Mead’s famous dictum once again: “Never doubt that a powerful group of people can change the world. Indeed, nothing else ever has.”

Nature itself is slapping ever broader human populations in the face with a clear message: Playing with the forces of nature, unleashing extreme weather, wantonly proceeding with the mass destruction of ecosystems, and driving untold numbers of species towards and into extinction, has consequences. Grave consequences.

We cannot place human law, let alone human behavior — especially unnatural, anti-natural, and organically immoral laws and behavior — over the laws of nature.

For the simple reason that the laws of nature supersede our own laws — whether we like this fact, see this fact, and respect this fact or not.

***

If human beings are no longer routinely skinning, boiling, and eating one another nor conquering, plundering, castrating, raping, and even enslaving one another on a massive scale — or committing other horrendous barbarities such as those committed by those who came before us (possibly many of our own ancestors included) it is in part thanks to laws and judicial progress.

We cannot and must not underestimate the power of the law.

We cannot and must not hesitate a minute longer to root and seed law not only in human tradition, Roman, Common, Indian, Mahometan… but in fact, in science, in nature — in reality itself.

From the Codes of Hammurabi, the Eightfold Noble Path of the Buddha, the Ten Commandments of Moses and the Christian Bible, the Vedas and Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, passing through Roman and Common Law, the Koran and Sharia Law, up through the Constitutions of contemporary nations and of our still infant United Nations, the evolution of jurisprudence has been and is central to our ability to not only thrive and live but quite literally, to even survive.

And to survive not as abstract entities, and not only as a species, nor only as collectives living within and under the umbrellas of shared ethnic, cultural, national, religious, and more recently, professional and preferential identities — but to survive, to live, and to thrive as individuals with hearts, minds, and spirits that need wilderness, beauty, truth, dignity, justice, freedom, solidarity, compassion, decency, and virtue as much as with bodies that need healthy air, water, soils, flora, and fauna.

***

From Alberto Gentili and Hugo Grotius to Emmerich de Vattel to Samuel von Pufendorf, from Thomas Jefferson and other drafters of the U.S. Constitution to all those who contributed to the increasingly broad-based global legislation that is increasingly clear and specific about what we must and must not do, judicial progress has laid quite robust foundations that, properly respected and observed, would enable billions of humans and sentients and the ecosystems and biomes we all inhabit to flourish.

But the egos, greed, and fabricated needs of far too many are so vast while the consiousness, hearts, and lovingkindness of far too few so small that we once again need brutal, raw force — weather imposed by nature in the form of ravaging fires, floods, storms, pandemics,plagues and so on or by our “fellow” humans in the form of oppression, persecution, mass incarceration, starvation, murder and war to react in a more timely manner to the value and need to not just write laws and speak rhetorically about them — but to actually embody the virtues, principles, and wisdom in them.

***

Without law, without order, without a minimum of understanding of and respect for the patterns, principles, standards, norms, rules, and laws of reality we can only expect one outcome: Exposure to distrust, disorder, and sooner than later, viciousness, violence, destruction, chaos, pain, suffering, untimely death — or worse.

We cannot pretend we respect the law if we and our organizations — our malls and supermarkets, our corporations, unions, governments, universities, and even our religions — are all too often actively, aggressively, and blatantly violating (or allowing & encouraging others to violate) the fundamental laws of reality — of the universe, solar system, and planet; of physics, chemistry, hydrology, and biology; of the air we breathe, the rivers and oceans that give us drink, the soils, flora, and fauna that feed us, the communities and societies that provide us with so very much.

Some of us have so little, but many of us — including all those that can read this — live in societies that provide us with so very much, with everything we need to not only survive but to live and even thrive.

***

We must consider how our ancestors lived. Deeply, truly.

We must consider how those who come after us will live — if they will be able to survive or even live at all.

We must even consider how we ourselves will live in the decades ahead if we expect to live much longer.

Or if our imagination fails us, every single one of us should go camping, ideally for at least 3 nights with as little equipment and food as possible and as deep into nature as we can — to appreciate how damned spoilt, selfish, and arrogant we have become not “as a species” — but as the individual members of said species. We have become woefully detached from reality, from nature, and from the laws of nature.

***

It is high time to accelerate the adoption of laws at every level of legislative and political organization, global to local and back, sanctioning all humans who want to continue ignoring, hurting, harming, and all-too-often viciously raping, violating, desecrating, and destroying our fellow sentient beings and the living systems that so generously gift us not with “ecosystem services” but with the vital treasures that give us nothing short of life itself.

**********
Written from the bottom of my heart and soul, with fury and love to honor Polly Higgins whom i was preparing to reach out to not so long ago — an impulse that i failed to act upon in a timely manner. May her legacy and the seeds she and others have helped plant live on in the hearts of those who understand the raw power and urgency of aligning human and natural law.

May those seeds blossom into vast flourishing ethical, moral, legal, and judicial ecosystems and bear powerful fruits in legislatures, courtrooms, clerk offices, constituent assemblies, and all other spaces in which virtue, value, truth, goodness, and justice are expected too, and need to flourish if humanity, other sentient beings, and the living systems that sustain all life on earth are to have a fighting chance to bounce back from the wanton violence we have unleashed and are still too aggressively unleashing against all of nature, our very own nature.

Thank you Jojo Mehta.

…..
with metta
Rio de Janeiro,
July 6, 2021

Years of increasing polarization, governance failures & a normalization of hate speech have benefitted terrorist groups. More resources are needed to counter hate speech, address the grievances that terrorists exploit & discredit their narratives. — António Guterres, Secretary General, United Nations.

. . . . .

Mr. Guterres: True love is the direct opposite of terror & the only genuine, generative solution. Building on your declaration today: Please use your position to launch “LOVISM” on a planetary-scale to prevent, counter & heal terrorism. Billions of good humans will respond.

Practical strategies:

1. Encourage governments & their citizens to invest at least a fraction of their security budgets into peace technologies over “thanatech” (technologies of death). Logical, just, and economical.

2. Create a UNBody dedicated to harmonization, peacemaking & integral human development;

3. Convene an Annual Summit on Peacemaking, Sensemaking & Love, generating a proactive, positive, uplifting vision for humanity & driving core skills to upskill & employ millions in related fields;

4. Harness Digital-Tech, Psy-Tech & Love Tech to engage billions in PeaceMaking;

5. Make LOVISM, Love for humanity, love for life, love for nature, for our One Planet, the core-unifying theme connecting all Planetary Movements focused on doing good: Earth Rights, Human Rights, Animal Rights, Climate, Youth, Interfaith Dialogue Tech4Good, Development, SDGs, etc.

6. Encourage historians, intellectuals, artists, storytellers & more to harness the unprecedented Planetary Convergence of thousands of years of Ancient Wisdom, Perrennial Philosophy, Folk Wisdom, etc. to use digital & analog tools to challenge people everywhere to write a New Story for Humanity;

7. Invite the world’s greatest leaders, of all sectors, nations, ethnicities, ideologies, religions to engage in Common Dialogue, building on existing Moral Leadership & expertise from interfaith movement, The Elders, Union of Concerned Scientists, Medecins Sans Frontiers, Scouts, SOS Children Villages, Global Ecovillage Networks, etc.

8. Encourage @UN bodies, bilaterals, multilaterals to take love seriously, elevating LOVE — caring, compassion, respect, generosity, kindness, decency, dignity, loyalty, goodness, etc. — as a unifying message & force behind United Nations events, speeches, programs, policies;

Love is the best solution to prevent, overcome, and heal terror, terrorism, and their root causes. We are 8 billion strong, so many of us with good hearts.

We can all do our part & join our United Nations in co-Creating security, peace, goodness, healing, hope, and wellbeing for all.

Leon Galindo Stenutz
June 28, 2021

. . . . . . . . . . .

Related Resources

Responding to Secretary-General’s remarks at the Second High-Level Conference of Heads of Counter-Terrorism Agencies of Member States

Please add your comments & feedback here or on the original twitter thread: LOVE OVER TERROR.

Tags: #TrueLove; #LOVISM; #NoToTerrorism; #LoveIsTheAnswer; #LettersToUnitedNations; #LettersToHumanity; 28Jun21;

Hello and Happy Valentine. This is an open invitation to join hearts in a labor of love, light, life, and abundance — exploring how we can co-create solutions to our most pressing personal, social, and shared existential problems and together make our one world a saner, safer, and happier place for all.

WHY: Humanity and our one planet are truly at a crossroads. We live in incredibly exciting, marvelous — and challenging times.

On the one hand, those of us alive today (and coming onboard ‘spaceship earth’) face pressing personal[i] as well as species-level existential threats[ii] that can gravely affect our own quality of life in the immediate and near future if they are not adequately attended to, and resolved.

On the other hand, vast opportunities to create & co-create healthier, happier, saner, safer & better lives for ourselves, our loved ones, and for others are all around us. We all have access to vast, amazing resources, tools, ideas, and possibilities for co-creating a better world and reality for ourselves — and to do so in ways that help reduce suffering and increase wellbeing for all.[iii]

WHAT: Be an active part of the production of Reality & Wellbeing — a manuscript that strives to serve as the blueprint for a book, a film, an annual conference, a new & transformational social media platform, a living & evolving curriculum, an emergent worldwide community, and more.

The time has come to share 25 years of work in an open & methodical way. I’ve been working (mostly silently)[iv] since 1996 to lay the foundations for a conscious, ethical, loving, and positive set of solutions to our most pressing existential problems — individual to collective, local to global, simple & complex, inner & outer, actual & emergent — and others.

Reality & Wellbeing is emerging as the foundation for a wholesome[v] philosophy, technology, and platform to help further empower people of all backgrounds (including you if you so wish) to become active co-creators of a better life for themselves and their loved ones — and for all those whose lives your life[vi] directly or indirectly has an impact upon.

HOW: Through Reality & Wellbeing, we are laying foundations for the emergent metta Reality Generation Framework (mRGF) that has five main parts: Philosophy, Life Model, Technology, Community, and Organization — all focused on the co-creation of a sustainable, participatory, sane, safe, and conscious approach to a higher quality of life for all.

Brilliant people publish books, PhD dissertations, scientific articles, and more every day. The world is awash in brilliant books, movies, and other content that no single human could ever digest alone. Yet paradoxically, our lives are in many ways more stressful, unhealthy, and unstable than ever (and then that of many of our ancestors) — and if all the facts are right, as a species, and as a planet, we are in trouble, and face more and greater problems than ever before.

Two decades ago, well before the social media revolution started, I realized that more than another book, what the world really needed (and now needs more than ever) is a whole new worldview, a new paradigm, a new way of perceiving, understanding, and interacting with reality — and a whole new set of tools to do so.

Back in the late 1990s, at least ten years before the social media revolution took off, it became evident for anyone looking carefully at the Internet that a revolution was about to happen. After three partially successful releases, and for over 20 years now, I have been meticulously crafting and perfecting a whole new form of transformational media — a technological, philosophical, and moral framework that from the very beginning, was really designed as something far more integral, wholesome, and life-changing than ‘social media’.

At the break of the millennium (1996–2002) I led several pioneering Information & Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) initiatives at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), the Organization of American States (OAS), and at the World Bank — including at the latter’s ICT Division’s main Portal. Since the mid-1990s, I began to envision, design, fundraise, and develop digital platforms and technological solutions to improve life for millions.

Working 25+ years at both micro- and macro-scopic levels on the unique challenges of creating integrated digital solutions to empower people everywhere to harness the Internet and emergent social media technologies has made it increasingly clear to me just how dangerous this potent new technology is. Way before the current Internet-enabled storms hit, it became increasingly obvious that it is urgently vital to create deep, loving, and conscious moral, psychosomatic, philosophical, and scientific foundations to better harness technology for good.

Travelling & living between the United States, Europe, and Latin America, it became ever more evident that the digital revolution and “social media” were about to radically alter all aspects of all of our lives. It became clear that a truly well-thought out solution, grounded in the deepest and noblest aspirations, needs, ideals, values, capabilities, and behaviors of the best human beings to have ever lived, and that currently live, would need to be created.

Writing just another book would not cut it. What humanity[vii] and our planet needed — in order to lay foundations for the co-creation of a better paradigm and reality — was not just another book.

Even if a single book could help, no single human being, no matter how smart, could be informed, smart, and connected enough to provide adequate, timely, effective answers.

Rather, what was (and is) ever more urgently needed is a living, organic, growing, and evolving medium, a living interface and hub enabling millions, even billions, to more effectively connect, collaborate, and co-create a better world together. Something like a Wikipedia mixed with a holistic, ethically-grounded project, content, knowledge, relationship, and ecommerce management solution for transforming our most pressing personal, social, and shared planetary existential threats into “existential opportunities” (‘ExOpps’) — and real solutions.

As a species, we have learned how to transform reality in vastly beneficial ways in agriculture, architecture, transportation, medicine, and myriad other fields. But we haven’t really quite figured out yet:

> how to apply the art, craft, discipline, ethic, philosophy, practice, technology, and science of reality generation within and across all domains;

> in ways that create more solutions than problems;

> that minimize and transform suffering into genuine wellbeing;

> that generate win/win solutions for all beings (as oppose to some being wildly successful and ever more powerful at the cost of the suffering and often demise off others);

> And, most importantly — in ways that empower us all to truly live harmoniously and at peace with ourselves, one another, and all other living beings and the living systems that sustain all life on earth.

That’s what Reality & Wellbeing is all about. It is an emerging book, but more than a book. In a single book, written by a single person, it is literally impossible to tackle vast problems from myriad perspectives and in ways that enable all participating to not only communicate, but to harness language and communication to collaborate and co-create appropriate and localized solutions to diverse situations, contexts, and realities, — and on any scale.

So in addition to writing thousands of pages, I’ve quietly been designing thousands of diagrams, models, templates, and pages of requirements to model a “Reality Generation System” — including a Reality Generation Platform, a system to Map, Model, Manifest, Modify, Monitor, and iMprove reality, a Dynamic Reality Navigation and Positioning System. Kind of like a “Street-Maps” or “Google-Maps” but to navigate from one existing state of reality to a better one. As efficiently and quickly as possible, avoiding congestions, and without crashing.

We’ve landed on the moon, are planning on colonizing mars, mobilizing trillions to create mind-boggling technologies in all domains... why don’t we harness our creativity, spirit, capabilities, resources, and technologies, including the Internet that is connecting us all, truly, to help reduce, and where possible, eliminate the suffering of billions of impoverished, ailing, broken human and living beings (and of all-too-many broken communities, cities, and ecosystems)? And why not go one step further, and use all this technology, imagination, and power to transform the energy of suffering into the energy of compassionate, proactive, overarching, wholesome, holistic, goal-and outcome-oriented loving-kindness (‘metta’), and into solutions that make life safer, saner, and happier for billions — and for us all?

Clearly, despite the vast benefits that current social media platforms and big tech have given us, a different approach was (and is) needed. It has taken 25+ years — but I believe to have built a detailed roadmap & blueprint for a complement, and perhaps in some areas and ways, an alternative to the ‘Big Tech Paradigm’ and current social media — from filter bubbles, fake news, and cyberwarfare, to increased anxiety, depression, suicide, and more.

In short, we do not need yet another app or platform, but something more organic, vital, empowering, uplifting, and life-affirming:

A conscious and transformational social medium, an Internet of Life, a living bridge enabling & empowering people of all backgrounds to consciously and lovingly imagine, envision, align, and collaborate to make the world safer, saner, and better and designed openly, cooperatively, consciously, and ethically to ensure that humans and living beings everywhere are able to better survive, life, and thrive.

…

In a sense, that was the original spirit, vision, and drive behind the early Internet — but then, for reasons that we can explore, understand and discover together through Reality & Wellbeing — many of the lower & more primitive drives in the human psyche took over: Greed, lust, selfishness, ignorance, and others… Bam! Now the Internet and technology, along with AI, seems at times to be as much part of our shared global existential problems — and a major force contributing to the acceleration of other personal, social, and planetary existential threats.

So we needed, and still need, to come up with a better social medium, one that is designed from the start to minimize & where possible eliminate negative, destructive, and life-denying motivations and behaviors, and to enhance positive, generative, and life-affirming ones.

Which is what Reality & Wellbeing strives to do: Create the philosophical (moral, logical, epistemological, ontological, metaphysical) foundations for a humanized and human-centric medium that will, if all goes well, enable many people to rapidly, transparently, and effectively work together to co-create the code, user interfaces, core software platforms and apps, content, communities, social, economic & governance structures, and more …

… to enable the largest possible of human beings to genuinely and lovingly connect, co-ordinate, co-operate, co-elaborate, and co-create a transformational social medium that harnesses cutting-edge sciences and technologies (digital & others) along with timeless wisdom, faith, traditions, and experiences to empower billions to co-exist in a harmonious, peaceful manner.

Join us. Roll up your sleeves, write to me if you want to get involved with whatever skill, passion, and capability you have, subscribe, pass it on, and follow us on existing social media as we get our own transformational medium in place.

. . .

ABOUT: REALITY & WELLBEING is a weekly email summarizing ongoing posts, publications, research, and more striving to provide a broad-based foundation to enable people across the world to join a growing planetary movement to co-create solutions to our most pressing problems as individuals, families, communities, nations, as a species, and as co-residents of our one planet. Our bodies, brains, families, communities, and planet are under pressure — but we at R&W (‘RaW’) and at metta believe we can transform negative ‘stress’ into eustress — positive, stress & life-affirming emotions, thoughts, and actions. This mailing focuses on how to transform any ‘existential problem’, no matter how private, personal or small — or shared, complex, and planetary — into an ‘existential opportunity’ — alone or with others.

ABOUT YOU: You are seeing this post and/or receiving this weekly email because 1) I care about you and your loved ones — and ensuring a greater quality of life for all human & living beings and the living systems that sustain us all. 2) You are a trusted friend, relative, follower, sponsor, investor or ally who has believed in, and backed my work (metta, NetOrganiX, BD, others). 3) You are an actual or potential ally[viii] that finds life-affirming, uplifting, and empowering value in the information, tools, & philosophy that I am sharing online, in this email or in person through meetings, forums, networks, or other common spaces we share. 4) We have not met yet, but like myself & good people worldwide, you dedicate your life to co-create solutions to one or more of life’s most wicked & pressing problems, and know deep in your heart that together we can, and must, co-create a better world together.

ABOUT METTA: metta is an emergent initiative designed to enable & empower people everywhere to harness the human spirit, philosophy, and technology to co-create solutions for a better world.

…

Let’s connect on Twitter, LinkedIn or Skype
@leongalindo | Leon Galindo Stenutz

* * * * * * * * *

[i] What challenges are you currently facing? Every single person on earth has one or multiple problems to solve, and in some cases, to learn to live with — relationship, health, financial, work-related, or any others. Since we all have diverse personal issues to deal with, most of us have little if any extra energy, time or resources left to deal with even broader social, economic, political, environmental or other large-scale problems that eventually can (and usually do) end up also affecting us. Through R&WB we explore how we can “have our piece of cake and eat it too”, i.e., how we can optimize for a higher quality of life for ourselves, overcoming our own personal, familial, organizational in ways that not only increase our own quality of life but also allow us to better contribute to solving greater challenges. In short, we explore how we can transform existential problems, on any scale or level of complexity, into realistic, viable solutions.

[ii] We already are living in the midst of the sixth massive extinction; the climate crisis is a reality; the dangers of runaway artificial intelligence, biotech, social media… Ever more experts are warning us that we have to work together to co-create solutions to our most pressing problems in record time.

[iii] What is the point of thriving if personal success & wellbeing are inter-related (no matter how indirectly) to the suffering of others — whose suffering eventually may undermine our own wellbeing?

[iv] I’ve worked silently in order to (1) create solid foundations; (2) ensure coherence, integrity & integrality; (3) reduce the possibility of negative and unintended consequences

[v] In order to create a better reality it helps to study, define, and use words and language as precision tools. By “wholesome” we mean that which is whole, holistic, hale, healthy, integrative, integral, ethical, moral, values-based & value-generating, consilient, conscious, conscientious, aware, sensitive, life-affirming & -enhancing, good …

[vi] You, like I, and everyone on earth today, are no longer simply ‘just’ another human being. In reality, every single human has always been a unique individual and a powerful being, a member of the most powerful family, tribe, and species on earth today: Homo sapiens. The difference today is that we are now officially deep into the Anthropocene, an era in which we humans have become a force of nature on par with stray asteroids, massive volcanoes, and other natural phenomena. The impact that we collectively have, and that each of us can have on many other human & living beings today is ever vaster. As living beings, as social, economic & political beings, as mammals, primates & vertebrates, as consumers, producers, homemakers, professionals, citizens, and decision-makers (at least in our own families & in our own lives), our individual actions matter, and they matter greatly …

[vii] … and all living beings, billions of which are under severe environmental pressure due to man-made activities …

[viii] Ally: Potential or actual acquaintance, user, member, follower, client, volunteer, investor, colleague, partner, friend, or

SUMMARY: The current state of affairs on earth urgently demands the design of a new form of “doing business” — one that places LIFE ITSELF at the very center of all ‘business’. Beyond ‘business models’ for the private sector, ‘change models’ for the non-profit sectors, and ‘programs’ for the public sector we need integrable, wholesome, conscious, and ethical models of organization that enhance life-affirming collaboration within and across sectors, placing the BUSINESS OF LIFE at the very center of all private enterprise, activism, changemaking, and all policymaking, politics, and governance.

* * *

Symptoms of systemic failure increase and accelerate the urgency for rapidly, deeply, and ethically connecting, further empowering, and enabling businesses everywhere to speed up loving, conscious, and wholesome leadership towards whole-systems transformation.

28 years after Eco’92 i have returned to Rio de Janeiro to consolidate 30+ years of work designing the deep groundwork for this transformation.

Key to this effort has been imagining & designing a new form of “doing business” — one that places LIFE ITSELF at the very center of all business.

What would happen if a critical mass of employees and decision-makers within a majority of corporations and businesses on earth genuinely and consciously understood the value of always prioritizing life over profit ? What would our one planet and home look like if a critical mass of business leaders fully understood that profit cannot and should not come at the expense of destroying the life force that courses through you and I and all other human and sentient beings?

All conscious, ethical, intelligent people on earth know that “business as usual” is simply not viable any more. “Business as usual” has been, and is, killing us all.

Existing business, and existing business models, not only impact a given business. We all now know that every single enterprise also impacts other humans and, often, other sentient beings. All too often, the direct or indirect impact of any given business venture is negative, an impact that often occurs without the knowledge or consent of those affected: Workers somewhere along the supply chain; families breathing the air or drinking the water polluted by the company’s production facilities or transportation; animals and ecosystems affected by the destruction of habitats from which primary materials are extracted…

As an ingreasingly interwoven human family, we need to better. We can do better. We must do better. Too many people and sentient beings are suffering unnecessarily and dying prematurely (and all too often, in great pain).

We can, and must embrace a holistic, integral, conscious and deeply moral understanding of business, commerce, enterprise, finance and industry.

We will all benefit by taking a big step away from the prevailing logic of ‘business’ which, for all too many, has become a word synonymous with profit at any cost, extractivism, carelessness, abuse, and worse.

We can reverse many of the existential threats and risks and the dire situation that billions of humans and living beings and vast ecosystems currently are in by taking one simple action: Placing life, and the love of life, back at the center of business, of all business.

We can create much greater value, abundance, and happiness by co-designing a whole new form of doing business by placing vitality and life itself at the center of every business, commercial, financial, and industrial process.

Imagine if every business on earth today took a holistic, wholesome, and deeply ethical look into the full-spectrum impact of their activities. Imagine this became the standard — not because consumers demanded ethically made products and governments punished businesses who failed to prioritize decency, dignity, goodness, and life — but because all business leaders became conscious, ethical, and humane enough to realize that good business and wholesome profit cannot come at the expense of harming others.

It is 2021. Whether we like it and accept it or not “business as usual” is no longer merely unsustainable, it is unviable. To take business to the next level, we need to go beyond “business models as usual.” We need a new and better model to replace “business models.”

One obvious solution set: Bio-Business Models (BBM), Living Business Models (LBM), and Business of Life Models (BLMs) which place life, all of life, at the center of all business, commerce, economics, finance, and industry.

Imagine a world in which entrepreneurs, enterprise, and the private sector design all business to recognize, honor, and care for the vital life force at the center of each and every living being. Of every consumer, employee, and stakeholder. Of each and every one of us — of you and I and our loved ones, of our families, friends, colleagues.

Imagine if every business on earth designed its business model as a ‘Business of Life Model’ by taking into account the impact of its activities on all human and sentient beings and the ecosystems that sustain life and that are the first and ultimate source of value sustaining all business and all people.

Beyond ‘business models’ for the private sector, ‘change models’ for the non-profit sectors, and ‘programs’ for the public sector we need integrable, synergistic, wholesome, conscious, vital, life-affirming, positive, value-adding, creative, generative, win/win/win, love-, light-, and truth-based personal, relational, familial, communal, social, composite, and whole-systems models of organization that place the “BUSINESS OF LIFE” — of protecting, uplifting, and enhancing life itself — at the very center of all business, finance, industry, and commerce, of all activism and changemaking, of all policymaking, politics, and governance.

Many around the world are currently working on developing new tools and toolkits — accounting, conceptual, moral, digital — that will allow us all to better imagine, refine, and envision new forms of business that are life-affirming.

In sum, to slow down, reverse, and transform massive existential threats and risks into genuine existential opportunities, we need to rapidly design living business models and life models that prioritize life itself and incorporate the business of protecting, sustaining, and improving life itself at the center of business, policy, activism, and all other activities pertaining to ensuring our continued, healthy, and viable existence.

Rio de Janeiro
January 15, 2021

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(cc) Leon Galindo Stenutz 2021
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@leongalindo | Skype: leongalindo
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A special thankyou to Alma Galindo for 2+ decades of inspiration and the image used in this column.
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While thousands of corrupt politicians stash away tens to hundreds of millions, even billions, of bills of their favorite currency and a few thousand corporate CEOs and young digital entrepreneurs accumulate more wealth than the queens and kings of vast empires could have ever imagined possesing, billions around the world sink into ever deeper poverty.

Which demands us to question and reframe poverty itself. Is poverty the lack of access to opportunity? The absence of cash, capital, or access to cash flow? The curse of sleeping with pangs of hunger in your stomach, in a ditch or a park without a roof over your head, or the experience of seeing your life — or the life of someone you love most — fading as you stand in front of a hospital or pharmacy knowing that you simply cannot afford the products or services that could save your life or the life of one you love?

Or is poverty actually a dark corner of the human spirit, a famished and groaning portal in the heart and conscience of an abusive, authoritarian unconscious leader who chooses to steal from the public that she or he is supposed to serve?

Is poverty primarily a financial problem? A symbolic problem? A matter of trust? A moral — or even a spiritual — problem?

In a world where over 240 million are facing hunger, literal hunger, and others own dozens of mansions, millions in assets and property, and billlions in equity can we, must we, continue to think of poverty as a logistical and material problem, first and foremost?

Or has the time come, once again, to understand that poverty is perhaps, above all, a social, political, psychosomatic, psychological, moral, and spiritual problem?

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(cc) Leon Galindo Stenutz 2020
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v.lgs.001.20May20

Reality Generation in the face of the CV19 Pandemic

This guidebook is for you. Whatever language you speak, no matter where you live, whether you are a woman, a man, an adult or still a child, in good health, sick or even dying, this is for you. A gift from my heart, from our hearts, to yours.

Though billions of us sort of already knew this before the COVID19 virus exploded, today all reasonable humans on earth know well that we all, every one of us, face formidable challenges.

In at least some senses, COVID19 is the least of our challenges.

This virus is, quite literally, the smallest threat we face when compared to other existential threats and global challenges that also threaten to transform, and even end, life on earth as we know it: Climate and environmental disruption; the proliferation of biological, nuclear, and conventional weapons of mass destruction; rising inequality, widespread poverty, forced mass migration, disease, and armed conflict; authoritarianism, populism, and other political viruses; global criminal networks that traffic in organs, humans, land, water, and lives at any cost; corruption and dysfunctional local, national, and global institutions…

These and other such complex, multi-dimensional threats form only a small part of vast global existential challenges that can and do negatively threaten the lives of billions of us humans (and other living beings), directly or indirectly,

And yet COVID19 is currently demanding our focus. While billions of us take refuge at home doing all we can do by observing social distancing and quarantine to avoid an even greater disaster, our shared hope and faith is that the best and brightest among us will soon discover a cure to take away the deadly sting of this microscopic virus and a vaccine to prevent it from spreading.

Once this happens billions hope and trust that we will sooner than later be able to go back to our “normal” lives. That is, for billions of us, we will jump back onto our bikes or into our cars, trains, metros, and planes; rush back to our campus, school, office, factory, store, mall, school, building, or wherever it is we work or study; leave our children, families, pets or homes behind for 8 to 10 hours or more a day; work to earn our living so we can buy this or that at the end of the day or month; and continue on with life as it always was — and for all too many of us, as it “should” be.

Or not.

Maybe things will transform so profoundly before we are able to “get back to normal” that COVID19 will have literally become the reset button or trigger that fully unleashes an entirely new reality, ushering in a vastly new and different era in human and planetary affairs.

Or something in between.

Whatever happens — unless you or I die (and even if we both and many others die) — whatever happens, the future that eventually unfolds does depend on our actions. Your actions, and mine.

So this is what this handbook is about: How we reinvent the future. How we push one, or multiple reset buttons to reengineer reality. How we reimagine, redesign, and reinvent our lives, our families, homes, careers, work, communities, cities, and societies, our relationships to ourselves and to our loved ones, with one another, and with other living and sentient beings.

Let’s explore this together. Let’s co-create a better, safer, saner, happier world. We have been gifted a unique challenge and a massive opportunity to reimagine, redesign, and reinvent our world. Let’s to this together.

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COVIDA20: WHY, WHAT, AND WHO

‘Vida’ in Spanish means LIFE. It comes from the latin “vīta” and is the heart of the words vitality, vital, and curriculum vitae. Life is everything. Life is inseparable from reality. Life is. If we are not alive, we are by definition, dead. So life is not just a word, a concept or an idea. It is the very essence of who and what we are and why we exist. A reality, a value, a “some-thing” that is everything to us as long if we are to survive, live, and thrive. A common treasure worth protecting and caring for.

‘Co’ means TOGETHER. It is a beautiful little two-letter word that is at the heart of so many other lovely words: Community, Communication, Cooperation, Collaboration, Co-Creation — and related terms that are vital and essential today as billions of us are gifted the opportunity to stop, pause, and imagine if and how we can Co-Design, Co-Operate, Co-Elaborate, and Co-Create better conditions, tools, process, and systems that will increase chances that our loves ones, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and even strangers half a world away can all survive, live, and thrive.

COVID19 has gifted us with the awareness that we are all in this together, whether we like it or not. If one of us catches the virus, all of us are at risk.

So it is not enough to think about ourselves, about our own safety, health, and survival. Paradoxically, to survive, live, and thrive, every single one of us, every conscious human on earth needs to literally think about what each and every one of us can do to: (1) Avoid becoming a host and conveyor of this lethal virus; (2) Help other to do the same; (3) Help the families, communities, hospitals, and other social organizations or organisms where others have already been infected and affected to deal with, minimize, and eventually eliminate the presence of the virus in their vital space.

Whether we help make or donate resources so others have access to accurate information, face masks, personal protective equipment (PPE), oxygen bottles, respirators, permanent or temporary beds or hospitals or whatever else is needed, each and every one of us can help make a difference not only to protect our own lives and the lives of those we love and depend on directly for our livelihood — but to also protect the lives of hundreds, even thousands of strangers who might just happen to be a person whose work has contributed to allowing us to access enjoy the coffee, grains or fruits we enjoy in our meals or the phone, tools, pens or paper we use at work.

We are all subtly connected to and dependent on the work of so many others that only now, as the entire global economy is practically shut down, can we realize just how vitally important these interconnections are and just how important the wellbeing and lives of others, even of distant strangers whom we will never meet, are to our own lives. And not merely because someone far away may be one link in a human conveyor belt that could eventually transmit the virus our way, but because that same person, through her or his work, has and does make our lives, or the lives of others around us, just a little bit better through their efforts just as we, through our existence and lives, indirectly touch thousands to millions of others.

So because we are all in this together, to shift the current reality, to tackle and overcome COVID19, we propose CO-VIDA 20 as a shared local to global (“lobal”) and global to local (“glocal”) initiative that co-empowers thousands to millions of us to CO-CREATE BETTER CONDITIONS FOR AS MANY OF US AS POSSIBLE TO SURVIVE THE COVID19 PANDEMIC AND TO LIVE AND THRIVE IN AND BEYOND 2020.

We propose to do this by working together on three core pillars:

1. A SHARED ROADMAP: Designing, refining, and shaping a shared roadmap including a plan of action, vision statement, manifesto or charter, and psychological, moral, and philosophical framework;

2. BUILDING COMMUNITY: Aligning around, and striving for communion, that is a Common-Union, common effort through intentional, meaningful, loving, hopeful, positive, conscious, ethical communication, cooperation, collaboration, and community, aligning our many different energies and synergies around a common intentions, goals, and outcomes;

3. A PRACTICAL PLATFORM: Co-Creating a shared digital, technological, psychological, conceptual, social, moral, economic, political, scientific, and multidimensional platform of platforms to more easily connect, collaborate, and cooperate to co-design and co-create solutions to each and every threat, risk, and problem arising from COVID19, transforming every single threat, risk, or problem into a challenge, an opportunity, and a solution until we have completely stopped, solved, and moved beyond this pandemic, harnessing its threat and fury to co-create new tools, processes, structures, attitudes, values, ways of acting and inter-acting, and of being, inter-being, and becoming better humans and a better kinder, more considerate, compassionate, loving, and caring human family.

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metta Global Solutions
León Galindo Stenutz
April 15, 2020

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COVIDA20 | April 9, 2020 | v.lgs.15Apr20*

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If you wish, share this text as is, or even better use it to co-create or create your own version and #shareback

This is the seed for co-creating a collaborative, shared guidebook — an invitation to read, reflect, and to join in the process of co-creating positive, actionable, uplifting reflections & responses to COVID19 . Together we can co-create a better world despite and thanks to this virus that has shaken our lives and world to its very core.

Throughout the ages, sages and wise people have pointed out variations of a same melodic theme: “Every cloud has a silver lining”; “There is no such thing as a problem without a gift”; “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking maketh it so”; and so on.

If you are someone who is struggling to breathe because the virus is actually in you, or a fellow human who has recently lost someone you deeply love to the virus, or someone living in hellish conditions trying to escape from the virus in a horrid or even downright dangerous situation, you may feel these words are trivial, superficial, even meaningless.

Yet these are not merely words nor a superficial self-help checklist. This is the seed for co-creating a manual for survival and a handbook to move beyond survival. And only by recognizing the precious gifts that this virus brings will we be able to move through and beyond the damage and havoc it is causing — even if it is taking our own life or that of someone we love dearly, destroying our businesses, homes, and economies, threatening us with homelessness, depression, despair or in any other ways.

We’ve got this. We can beat this virus and move beyond it. Even if it takes some of us with it, as a species and an emergent global family we can, and will certainly survive, live, and thrive not despite COVID19 but because of it.

Whatever language you speak, no matter where you live, whether you are a woman, a man, an adult or still a child, in good health or not, may this invitation to co-create a manual, guidebook, and shared platform to tackle the virus and its myriad challenges serve not only reassurance but as an invitation for many of us to join forces to work together to dream, imagine, and co-create a better world together, a world that better serves all human & sentient beings and the biomes and ecosystems that give us clean air, water, beauty, joy, and life.

León Galindo Stenutz
April 15, 2020

COVIDA20 | April 9, 2020 | v.lgs.15Apr20*

(cc) Creative Commons 4.2 | Please Share | Please Cite Source & Author (Attribution) | Non-Commercial (Don’t steal.)

If you wish, share this text as is, or even better use it to co-create or create your own version and #shareback
…