Since 2016, Elon Musk has been foreseeing the need for UBI when robots and AI take many jobs. You have long advocated for UBI for a different reason- the fairness of it and the getting people able to focus on more than survival. I think it will have to come eventually, but fear it won't be for a long time. Thank you, Suzanne, for your leadership on this. I couldn't agree more with your listing it as Goal #1.
I have that reason too for my advocacy, where not having enough jobs is an even a more immediate reason for UBI. Yet, as we're headed for that crisis, our head-in-the-sand government has the creation of jobs as an objective. This is testimony to how valuable that Wisdom Council could be to get attention focused on vital issues like this. Instead of just gadflies poking at problems, we'd have a powerful voice to take them on.
Hi Suzanne, I've been slowly reading your substack and today I read this page. This jumped out:
"A Wisdom Council would give us a voice. Here’s a way to select members. Say MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’s ex, who is giving billions to life-giving causes, volunteers to start it. She picks #2, say Bill Moyers. Then MacKenzie and Bill pick #3. Etc. With a Council made up of illustrious members, everyone would listen to what it had to say."
The only think that worries me about it is that, despite being very true that it would give ideas a boost and a "voice", it would probably still give voice to whatever these people would deep valuable. I'll explain. Most successful people (not all, of course) have had to play by the rules of a system that is blind in many ways. Of course we all have our blindspots. No doubt! The issue I have is that, as you said at another post, culture has been rewarding narcissism, intolerance, greed, selfishness...its super tricky to get values that go against the values of capitalism to be even "picked up" by the mainstream. They would sound too utopian, or hippie, or New Age. I think the work has - as it has mostly been done before - to start in the fringes. Various fringes. Once it gets traction with "the right people" you are nurturing a seedling that might be still too fragile to "make it" in the outside world. Once the seedling is robust enough then it can endure the "weeds". So, I guess what I am saying is that before trying to "get traction" with the larger collective it would be god to get solid traction within smaller contexts. Then...slowly, move out. This would be a robust "plant/tree" by then and I believe no bad twitter post could take it down. ;-)
The players would be the exception to the current capitalist norm. That's the idea. Another idea is to assemble the council and teach them the new creation story for them to teach it to the world!!! All food for thought that I look for conversation about, so good to hear from you. What I keep looking for is what can happen fast enough to change things before some cataclysm, so slow and steady isn't my bag.
This response made me laugh Suzanne. ‘ slow and steady isn’t my bag’ 😆. All right…I’ll have a think. Are there specific issues you feel passionate about tackling? The good news these days ( and the bad news) is that many people can get traction with the right strategy…
If I ran the world, the two primary things I'd do would be to teach the new creation story I keep writing about to where humanity adopts it, which would come from our camp, and give some sort of UBI to everyone in the civilized world, which would have to come from governments that I'd have our Wisdom Council press on them to do. Then you'd have a humanity that can engage with thinking rather than struggling with survival, and a context to think from. And I always am looking for that right strategy!
This all makes sense to me Suzanne. I like your vision. I am wondering, though, what is the feasible part of it. By that I mean that it is not realistic (or even desired?) to have one person "running the world". So, with that in mind, what is the second best thing that you could, with your agency do and that I - with my agency - might be able to support? We could end up getting to the UBI but through the back door :-)
So many good ideas, and if the world wasn’t so mired in the drama of the soap
Opera of “politics” maybe some of this could get done. It’s like we have to forget the past and start over with a new foundation, a new declaration of our independence.
That idea is out there as a "declaration of interdependence." If we decided to get ourselves organized, we'd put out something like that. And it's not to forget the past since what we are contains where we came from, but to improve on it. And it's better or bust now!
Well, it's the #1 thing in the suggestion box. Meanwhile, I would far rather see an enlightened citizenry than dependence upon a bunch of self-selected "leaders," no matter how decent they may appear to be. All power corrupts as the saying goes...
Good question. It has to begin with individuals themselves waking up by whatever means available, as in the bumper sticker: "If you're not appalled, you haven't been paying attention." We are a world in crisis and the resolution in not in handing over control to Big Government or any corporate elite, and least of all AI. We need to tap into our own innate sense of right and wrong, kindness, goodness, individuality, freedom of expression, tolerance and acceptance; all with a sense of collective responsibility. That Wisdom already pre-exists and we don't need any outside body supposing or suggesting it upon us. It needs to become like a mental-spiritual Covid that infects us all, yet not weakening our natural immune system but strengthening it, particularly against cunning yet sinister plots and plans by hidden elites. Rant over...
"we need to" "It needs to become." Right. No argument with what should happen, but how to realize those objectives is my subject. I would let go of my ideas in favor of better ones, but I cant find anyone even looking for what we can do now.
Warm greetings! I was a strong advocate of UBI but I think one has to be very careful about one's wishes. I have come to believe, strongly, that it portends to a Trojan horse from which there is no escape, and which defines the awful slogan: "You will own nothing and you will be happy." The downside is that, as individuals we will be owned by a global elite who command every aspect of our lives. It would be the very opposite of the Wisdom Council which you are advocating.
Yes and, where just today there's a shocking piece about how unsuccessful Portland's housing-the-homeless project has been: https://tinyurl.com/3yc6d2fk. It's an even bigger challenge to deal with homelessness than the essential of providing shelter, where society needs to bite deeper bullets so psyches are tended to for people to turn their lives around.
There are a few programs I've come across for little kids, tuning them into kindness, where they evolve into being kinder people. Get little ones turned in the right direction and they will become different sort of adults. Things like this are so doable!!!!
Let’s put on a show. Every great movement has music!
You know that's up my alley. Come stay at my house to make one up!!!!
Since 2016, Elon Musk has been foreseeing the need for UBI when robots and AI take many jobs. You have long advocated for UBI for a different reason- the fairness of it and the getting people able to focus on more than survival. I think it will have to come eventually, but fear it won't be for a long time. Thank you, Suzanne, for your leadership on this. I couldn't agree more with your listing it as Goal #1.
I have that reason too for my advocacy, where not having enough jobs is an even a more immediate reason for UBI. Yet, as we're headed for that crisis, our head-in-the-sand government has the creation of jobs as an objective. This is testimony to how valuable that Wisdom Council could be to get attention focused on vital issues like this. Instead of just gadflies poking at problems, we'd have a powerful voice to take them on.
Hi Suzanne, I've been slowly reading your substack and today I read this page. This jumped out:
"A Wisdom Council would give us a voice. Here’s a way to select members. Say MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’s ex, who is giving billions to life-giving causes, volunteers to start it. She picks #2, say Bill Moyers. Then MacKenzie and Bill pick #3. Etc. With a Council made up of illustrious members, everyone would listen to what it had to say."
The only think that worries me about it is that, despite being very true that it would give ideas a boost and a "voice", it would probably still give voice to whatever these people would deep valuable. I'll explain. Most successful people (not all, of course) have had to play by the rules of a system that is blind in many ways. Of course we all have our blindspots. No doubt! The issue I have is that, as you said at another post, culture has been rewarding narcissism, intolerance, greed, selfishness...its super tricky to get values that go against the values of capitalism to be even "picked up" by the mainstream. They would sound too utopian, or hippie, or New Age. I think the work has - as it has mostly been done before - to start in the fringes. Various fringes. Once it gets traction with "the right people" you are nurturing a seedling that might be still too fragile to "make it" in the outside world. Once the seedling is robust enough then it can endure the "weeds". So, I guess what I am saying is that before trying to "get traction" with the larger collective it would be god to get solid traction within smaller contexts. Then...slowly, move out. This would be a robust "plant/tree" by then and I believe no bad twitter post could take it down. ;-)
The players would be the exception to the current capitalist norm. That's the idea. Another idea is to assemble the council and teach them the new creation story for them to teach it to the world!!! All food for thought that I look for conversation about, so good to hear from you. What I keep looking for is what can happen fast enough to change things before some cataclysm, so slow and steady isn't my bag.
This response made me laugh Suzanne. ‘ slow and steady isn’t my bag’ 😆. All right…I’ll have a think. Are there specific issues you feel passionate about tackling? The good news these days ( and the bad news) is that many people can get traction with the right strategy…
If I ran the world, the two primary things I'd do would be to teach the new creation story I keep writing about to where humanity adopts it, which would come from our camp, and give some sort of UBI to everyone in the civilized world, which would have to come from governments that I'd have our Wisdom Council press on them to do. Then you'd have a humanity that can engage with thinking rather than struggling with survival, and a context to think from. And I always am looking for that right strategy!
This all makes sense to me Suzanne. I like your vision. I am wondering, though, what is the feasible part of it. By that I mean that it is not realistic (or even desired?) to have one person "running the world". So, with that in mind, what is the second best thing that you could, with your agency do and that I - with my agency - might be able to support? We could end up getting to the UBI but through the back door :-)
Hello :)
Look at the Factors in Poland this interesting too,
And for every UBI interesting
https://youtu.be/XEX_UbqNrdU?si=aUSSJa6t-8F0L2GR
So many good ideas, and if the world wasn’t so mired in the drama of the soap
Opera of “politics” maybe some of this could get done. It’s like we have to forget the past and start over with a new foundation, a new declaration of our independence.
That idea is out there as a "declaration of interdependence." If we decided to get ourselves organized, we'd put out something like that. And it's not to forget the past since what we are contains where we came from, but to improve on it. And it's better or bust now!
Well, it's the #1 thing in the suggestion box. Meanwhile, I would far rather see an enlightened citizenry than dependence upon a bunch of self-selected "leaders," no matter how decent they may appear to be. All power corrupts as the saying goes...
How would you go about creating an enlightened citizenry?
Good question. It has to begin with individuals themselves waking up by whatever means available, as in the bumper sticker: "If you're not appalled, you haven't been paying attention." We are a world in crisis and the resolution in not in handing over control to Big Government or any corporate elite, and least of all AI. We need to tap into our own innate sense of right and wrong, kindness, goodness, individuality, freedom of expression, tolerance and acceptance; all with a sense of collective responsibility. That Wisdom already pre-exists and we don't need any outside body supposing or suggesting it upon us. It needs to become like a mental-spiritual Covid that infects us all, yet not weakening our natural immune system but strengthening it, particularly against cunning yet sinister plots and plans by hidden elites. Rant over...
"we need to" "It needs to become." Right. No argument with what should happen, but how to realize those objectives is my subject. I would let go of my ideas in favor of better ones, but I cant find anyone even looking for what we can do now.
Warm greetings! I was a strong advocate of UBI but I think one has to be very careful about one's wishes. I have come to believe, strongly, that it portends to a Trojan horse from which there is no escape, and which defines the awful slogan: "You will own nothing and you will be happy." The downside is that, as individuals we will be owned by a global elite who command every aspect of our lives. It would be the very opposite of the Wisdom Council which you are advocating.
Hmmm. I don't follow that reasoning. Did you watch the video? If so, can you say more?
Girlfriend! Get some sleep!
I am overdue for a visit. Staying in your trees makes LA a great experience. Like home. Pennell and beau and all our mutual friends
Helping the homeless with shelter and homes and insurance is long over do!!
Yes and, where just today there's a shocking piece about how unsuccessful Portland's housing-the-homeless project has been: https://tinyurl.com/3yc6d2fk. It's an even bigger challenge to deal with homelessness than the essential of providing shelter, where society needs to bite deeper bullets so psyches are tended to for people to turn their lives around.
Educate for humanness would be a great investment in our future
There are a few programs I've come across for little kids, tuning them into kindness, where they evolve into being kinder people. Get little ones turned in the right direction and they will become different sort of adults. Things like this are so doable!!!!