“It begins with a choice. A choice between pretense or honesty. Between fabricated scarcity or the abundance of reality. A choice that is ours to make.”
Creating a global & organized culture of flow
The culture of flow serves as a compass, a guiding principle for operation of individuals and a global society as a whole. Flow culture is a concept based on a flow philosophy and aims to influence every aspect of global culture. It’s concept aims to extend to every social group or structure (both governmental as NGO), creating a cultural basis for societal flow manifestation.
Flow culture serves the purpose of facilitating and maintaining both individual and group flow, while directly supporting the creation and maintenance of flow by influencing on development of flow personality (societal influence on flow personality behavior within individual).
To understand why this is so important, we need to take into account the major steps in evolution. Both biological, and cultural, are system transitions of a large scale.
For example, here is the sequence of system transitions which led, starting from the appearance of organs of motion, to the appearance of human thought and human society:
– control of position = movement
– control of movement = irritability (simple reflex)
– control of irritability = (complex) reflex
– control of reflex = associating (conditional reflex)
– control of associating = human thinking
– control of human thinking = culture
– control of culture = Social superorganism (global brain)
Social superorganism (global brain)
We are at the point where society can intuitively be considered as a multicellular organism, with individuals in the role of the cells.
The network of communication channels connecting individuals then plays the role of a nervous system for this superorganism, i.e. a “global brain.
Many thinkers have noticed the similarity between the roles played by different organizations in society and the functions of organs, systems and circuits in the body. For example, industrial plants extract energy and building blocks from raw materials, just like the digestive system.
Roads, railways and waterways transport these products from one part of the system to another one, just like the arteries and veins. Garbage dumps and sewage systems collect waste products, just like the colon and the bladder.
The army and police protect the society against invaders and rogue elements, just like the immune system.
Such initially vague analogies become more precise as the understanding of organisms increases. The fact that complex organisms, like our own bodies, are built up from individual cells, led to the concept of superorganism. If cells aggregate to form a multicellular organism, then organisms might aggregate to form an organism of organisms: a superorganism.
Biologists agree that social insect colonies, such as ant nests or beehives, are best seen as such superorganisms. The activities of a single ant, bee or termite are meaningless unless they are understood in function of the survival of the colony.
Individual humans may seem similar to the cells of a social superorganism, but they are still much more independent than ants or cells (Heylighen & Campbell, 1995). This is especially clear if we look at the remaining competition, conflicts and misunderstandings between individuals and groups.
Thus human society is still an ambivalent system, balancing between individual selfishness and collective responsibility. However, there is a continuing trend towards global integration. As technological and social systems develop into a more closely knit tissue of interactions, transcending the old boundaries between countries and cultures, the social superorganism seems to turn from a metaphor into a reality.
Most recently, the technological revolution has produced a global communication network (internet, world wide web), which can be seen as a nervous system for this planetary being. As the computer network becomes more intelligent it starts to look more like a global brain or super-brain, with capabilities far surpassing those of individual people.
This is part of an evolutionary transition to a higher level of complexity. We are already experiencing this phenomena, since the global brain is increasing in it’s complexity by the minute.
It is obvious that the “global brain” is here and now. There is no way around this. And the global brain functions just the same way as the building blocks from which it was spawned, us.
Therefore it needs to operate by the same flow principles that individuals do. If we are to say that flow (transient hypofrontality) is the only known way for transpersonal unity to be felt by the individual, the same analog principle must apply to the “global brain”, the superorganismal structure that now exists.
The optimal way for creating a global flow culture is by working from both ends of the hierarchy. Working from bottom up, where individuals in flow contribute by normal “peer pressure”, creating an ever growing flow societal environment that promotes flow.
At the same time flow culture must also be incorporated into structure of the “global brain” by applying rules of conduct and unequivocally promoting universal values on the web itself. It must be determined in an larger outline and agreed on internationally, what promotes flow and what promotes Unity. In this way we can enjoy a feedback loop from top down, creating a worldwide unity in a fast paced increments.
This emergent, deliberate and almost sentient property of a world wide web “global brain” can be achieved through simple understanding that it needs to develop same structures as individual brain. The “global brain’s” intention to the universal principles of unity emerges as the need to add new layers or new dimensions to it’s existence. It’s a tool to be used.
And again, we stand in awe to realize this too is happening already. It exists in the form of international charter of human rights and principles for the internet, and this is where the principles of unity must be included and enforced.
In essence it means incorporation of flow principles and universal values that are created out of it, into the web itself. If this proves as an impossible task, the search engines like Google, Facebook, Bing or Yahoo might be the likely candidates to promote.
Flow culture means any type of human activity that abides the laws of flow or is alligned with it’s principles. That can be anything from music, sports, art, education, corporate environment, language expression. Principles of flow can be applied to just about every manifestation in the culture at hand. In this way we create another qualitative system leap forward.
Project Unity acts as a support, funding & overall societal promotion of flow philosophy. One of the most important tasks is funding development and product placement while creating a worldwide campaign of flow philosophy integration into every branch of society.
This is our vision of a world in flow and our contribution to people and planet.