Launch #EquityMoonshot: which archetypes work for and against a fair and flourishing future?

• Which archetypes are the main drivers for our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century?
• How can we cultivate equity governance as antidotes to our immoral archetypes and corrupt systems?
• What makes up our wicked problems?

Using reductionism to address wicked problems is the original sin.

(Scroll down to the blog section if you have read this introduction before. See definition of equity governance in the orientation section at the end. If curious about this learning journey, subscribe to, and share this newsletter,)

The problem list is long. Our complex inter-connected web of self-inflicted wicked problems include: the lack of virtues, integrity and authenticity: the ethical hypocrisies between professed values and moral actions; the irresponsible use of freedom and free speech by cult personalities, false prophets, media mavericks, marketing savants and immoral saviors; the instant, attention-grabbing marvels of fame, spectacles, the "wow" factor and the naive hopes of false dreams; the strong man rise of asocial leadership personality disorders (pathological megalomania, narcissism, sociopathy and authoritarianism); the tribal trances of hero-worshiping follower-ship with their blind unconditional loyalty; dysfunctional polarizations driven by divisive fundamentalism and different priorities in value systems; the injustices of isms and inequities; the plagues of unfair advantages; the power abuses of autocracies, plutocracies, oligarchies, kleptocracy and corrupt political systems; the unconscious capitalism of neoliberalism and amoral corporations; unethical marketing and the propaganda machines of neo-terrorism (the war of words without regards to truth and transparent accountability); the epidemics of misinformation, fake news and dis-information; and terrorism and wars.

Neoliberalism, unconscious capitalism and unethical marketing live in the shadows of short-term profits and fail the two marshmallow test.

The systemic determinants of isms and inequities are a formidable foe.

No wonder why we fail to rectify our rigged systems that escalate wealth for the elites, income shrinkages for middle classes and poverty for the poor.

We need a mass movement to co-develop equity muses who ask the right questions about how to launch #EquityMoonshot. 

• How can we open, inspire and align our mindsets to co-design and build an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future?

Muse and learn about this idealistic cause. Reflect about this virtuous question.

• How can we lead with Love, truth-seeking and the pursuit of equity?

This intergenerational lifelong learning journey with never-ending aspirations inspire people to take glocal (global-local) actions for the common good and the health of the planet. This vision of long-termism extends beyond seven generations and is a monumental educational endeavor for humanity.

How can we co-create the learning organizations, communities, networks and networks of networks needed to:

• Become open-minded, truth-seeking and free-thinkers in communion with kindred spirits and with people of different perspectives?
• Scale up transformational network power for a fair and flourishing future for all?

Ecological regenerative economics, conscious capitalism and ethical marketing live in the light of virtues and long-termism.

These newsletters are open peer-reviewed drafts, based on feedback and dialogue at #UniteEquityMuses Clubhouse sessions.

Take time for a slow read

Enjoy slow thinking, self-reflection and musing about the meaning of questions in this blog series. This preparation sets the stage to co-create generative dialogues about how to solve complex problems. These dialogues deepen our learning capabilities and thinking capacities about how we can co-elevate equity governance to redress the injustices of isms, power abuse and inequities.

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What are upsides and downsides of archetypes?

Archetypes are common, timeless patterns of ingrained thoughts, instincts and behaviors. They are embedded in our psyches across cultures and time, like stylized universal caricatures. Moral, amoral and immoral archetypes provide useful heuristics to understand the best and worst of human nature.

Carl Jung described archetypes as a part of our collective unconscious: ruler (king), creator (artist), sage, innocent, explorer, rebel, hero, wizard, jester, everyman, lover and caregiver. There are many other archetypes. These individualistic stereotypes have sense-making utility but also limitations, particularly from a social perspective.

Writers and journalists use a mix of archetypes, metaphors and themes to tell their stories. Old archetypes and metaphors constrain and stagnate our frames about the possibilities of creating new caricatures with different story narrative structures.

Like archetypes, metaphors pre-determine the way we see, interpret and make sense of the world. They provide varying degree of explanations, usefulness and reassurances which may not help in solving the complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century.

• How can we live, thrive and flourish more effectively in our VVUCA world (vulnerability, volatility, uncertain, complexity and ambiguity)?

The seductive deception of reductionism is its over-simplistic beliefs in archetypes, metaphors, heuristics and explanations. These unexamined belief systems exacerbate wicked problems when people fail to take into account contrary evidence.

Examples include the appointed czars and self-anointed ones who wage war on drugs and cancer. Military metaphors and their archetypes undervalue the powers of love, compassion and empathy to unravel the complexities of wicked problems. They hijack our critical slow thinking and our self-awareness needed to co-create generative dialogues needed to collaborate in seeking truth and solving these problems.

Which archetypes work against a fair and flourishing future?

Caricatures exist along a continuum between good and evil archetypes, depending their profile of virtues, character strengths and flaws.

Ignoble kings and warriors are the main drivers for corrupting our systems. In short, their character flaws far outweigh their virtues. They rig systems to serve their power elites. In modern parlance, the neoliberal, ego-centric and self-serving mantra is "greed is good."

These ignoble kings and warriors suffer with this immoral archetype: the asocial leadership personality disorder (#ALPD). This immoral archetype is riddled with the pathological character flaws of megalomania, narcissism, sociopathy and authoritarianism. The #ALPD archetype perpetrates and perpetuates the abuse of power.

Together, they cultivate divisive toxic politics to maintain their dominance and control over people. In so doing, they paradoxically induce people to act against their own self-interest.

In short, the people are conned to serve the power elites: a sophisticated form of economic and psychological enslavement. They enable the complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems. Furthermore, these problems predominantly afflict women and children, indigenous, minority and marginalized people, the middle classes and the poor.

How can we:

• Stop history repeating itself with the destructive legacies of re-occurring ALPD archetypes?
• Prevent and disable the ascent of #ALPD leaders?

How can we cultivate the moral archetypes of ethical liberation to co-create equity governance?

Moral archetypes use liberating metaphors and build equity story movements to deconstruct the corrupt systems of failing-failed democracies and autocracies.

How can we, as men, become better allies to woman and:

• Redress sexism (gender inequalities), racism and all isms?
• Co-develop moral archetypes to co-elevate co-archy for equity?
• Shine ethical lights on the metaphor of diamonds to co-create multiple perspectives of clarity?
• Use the light of ethical clarity to cast the smallest shadows and illuminate the dark side with transparent accountability?

Moral archetypes inspire the highest callings of human virtues.

What we need is a coordinated and integrated web of moral archetypes (listed below) to co-design an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future. Moral archetypes shift us beyond the limitations of military and sports metaphors to ecological, peace and music metaphors. This metaphorical shift enables us to move beyond the uncivil futility of zero-sum, win-lose debates to the enriching experiences of generative dialogues and fulfilling civil debates.

• Equity muses (holy fools)
• Equity thought leaders
• Equity governance co-designers, constitutional-makers, builders and sustainers
• Equity co-designers of distributive leadership and cultivators of empowerment
• Equity peace-makers
• Equity networks of social innovators for social entrepreneurship, cohesion, collaboration and impact
• Equity education designers of lifelong learning to cultivate virtues, social and emotional learning, brain health development, consciousness-raising and self-awareness, media literacy, citizenship, and open-minded, truth-seeking free-thinker
• Equity change agents, change makers and peer mentoring systems

These moral archetypes work in concert to ethically orchestrate and co-elevate equity governance, tri-polarity stewardship and distributive leadership networks of empowerment needed to build a fair and flourishing future for all.

The next blog will elaborate on describing the interactional roles of these complementary archetypes for equity governance.

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Subscribe to Newsletter

This newsletter orientation addresses this virtuous question.

• How can the liberation ethos of equity governance decimate the imperial perils of neoliberalism?

This calls for contrasting plutocracy and neoliberalism with equity governance and ecological regenerative economics.

Why is neoliberalism an imperial plutocratic peril?

Overall, our neoliberal, linear, extractive growth economies are based on unconscious capitalism, hyper-consumerism and waste proliferation, without regard to stakeholders vested in the commons nor our shared destiny.

Neoliberalism atomizes humanity.

Neoliberalism is designed to perpetrate, perpetuate and exacerbate unfair advantages, inequities, wealth inequalities and the demise of planetary health.

Neoliberalism is the one marshmellow world.

Technocratic neoliberalism feeds political and corporate megalomania of controlling the mainstream media, social media and the mindsets of people. Our ADD (attention deficit disorder) manipulative marketing world of hooks, pitches, addictive distractions and shiny objects psychologically enslaves our mindsets within the superficial realms of consciousness and relationships. We become puppets, pawns, parrots and zombies to the malicious propaganda machines of malfeasance.

We are on a dystopian trajectory toward an ever-increasing fragile, vulnerable and traumatic future: the downward spirals into the amoral abyss of political, social and psychological toxicities.

Neoliberalism is de-civilization.

Why does equity governance liberate freedom?

Equity governance is based on liberty for all and the responsible use of freedom with transparent accountability to truth-seeking and long-termism. This aspiration involves the development of virtues, critical thinking, discernment, verification and cross validation of claims to knowledge with triangulated use of reputable sources.

Never depend on one resource, guru, thought leader, marketing maverick, cult personality or propaganda media outlet.

This mission of truth-seeking depends on cultivating reliable advancements in trustful information and knowledge generation. This is essential for mitigating against the epidemics of mis-information, fake news and dis-information.

Equity governance is an inclusive, collaborative and egalitarian system of shared decision-making, sense-making, systemic stewardship, ecological (regenerative) economics and dynamic distributive leadership.

Equity governance provides a foundation to cross pollinate ideas for co-creativity, open innovation, and generative dialogues. This collaborative learning process is essential to foster humanitarian harmony and political cohesiveness needed to exponentiate social impact entrepreneurship.

How can we:

• Cultivate cultures and co-design systems to bend our dystopian trajectory toward a favorable, fair and flourishing future to benefit all?

Equity governance moves us beyond social safety nets, redistributive wealth and basic income. This calls for re-imagineering the future of work, life and living to unleash the vast swaths of untapped human potential.

The mission of equity governance is about engaging all people to become open-minded, truth-seeking, free-thinkers. This involves working collaboratively within learning organizations, communities and organizations to co-evolve human civilizations with higher levels of consciousness. This lifelong evolving process of enhancing our brain functioning and developing our virtues is essential to exponentiate human flourishing needed to launch #EquityMoonshot.

Working toward the #EquityMoonshot vision is stymied by the elephant in the room. Our dysfunctional systems and their political abuses of power sabotage our capabilities to build an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future.

We fail to call out the moral timidity and the ethical hypocrisies of redressing the discrepancies between our far-sighted, higher "We" aspirations of our co-operative neocortical brains versus our short-sighted, tribal ("we") responses of our amygdala brains and our short-sighted reactivity of our reptilian brains: the competitive survival of the fittest.

We are blind to what we can see.

Why do we:

• Fail to see how our complicity in creating our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems?
• Allow our political, educational, religious and spiritual leaders to fail us in co-creating a fair and flourishing future?

Let's #UniteEquityMuses in asking the right questions to cultivate global mindsets for an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future.

• How can we launch #EquityMoonshot with the same priorities given to advances in technology, such as IOT (the internet of things) and space exploration?

Social technologies, AI, cryptocurrencies, NFTs and tokens cannot make up for the inhumanities of our shadows and the dark sides of human nature. But with the ethical guidance of equity, they work for the common good.