Talk:Wisdom Research

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Find a better crystal ball image

Find a crystal ball image that is more recognizable. Thanks! --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 13:00, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Government Roles

Perhaps the role of government is to:

• Increase Public safety.
  • Provide protection from threats where government is uniquely qualified to do so.
• Internalize externalities.
• Allow us to implement the simple policy expressed by the phrase: "your freedom ends where mine begins".
• Protect human rights.
• Enable fair exchange of goods and services.
• Act as steward of the commons.
  • Solve the tragedy of the commons.
• Protect the most vulnerable (sentient beings?) among us.
• Promote justice.

Research and understand the concept of "A state of nature".

What other ideas are there? Thanks! --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 21:05, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Review of Content of Wisdom Research Page

I am reviewing the content and organization of the site and will be providing feedback which I will share with the Wisdom Page and Center for Future Consciousness Advisory Board members. The Wisdom and the Future Research Project Page will be providing a new forum for research and writing for contributors to the Wisdom Page and Wisdom and the Future newsletter. Thomas Lombardo (discuss • contribs) 18:06, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

The Future of Marriage

Consider adding a section on the future of marriage.

Marriage is a popular social agreement that is difficult to sustain. While most people do get married, the divorce rate is high, maintaining a vibrant relationship over several decades can become difficult, and overall satisfaction with marriage is often disappointing. The concept of an ideal marriage requires many difficult conditions to be met and sustained over several decades of a person’s life encompassing many varied stages of life.

Marriage requires meeting and living with a partner who:

• Remains sexually attractive,
• Remains a best friend,
• Shares common interests,
• Remains a reliable business partner for managing finances and running a household,
• Aligns with your goals and preferences about having and raising children, and
• Acts as a reliable parent.

Perhaps in the future these expectations can become decoupled, so that more flexible agreements will allow more than one person to assume these various roles over time. The goal is improved well-being for the couple, their children, and perhaps other family members and friends throughout each lifetime. Thanks. --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 12:48, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

The Future of Bureaucracies

Consider adding a section on the future of bureaucracies.

The administrative systems of large institutions are often organized as bureaucracies. Unfortunately, bureaucracies are often criticized as being inefficient, convoluted, inflexible to individuals, and dehumanizing. How can we best scale up individual contributions, so the collective effort is effective for those served and rewarding for those serving? Thanks. --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 12:50, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Stopping Extinction

Here are a list of resources arguing the importance of stopping extinction.

I have been doing what has turned into a rather extensive search on the various ways in which we humans have been degrading and destroying Nature, and depressing as it is, I have found some hopeful signs of the needed paradigm shift coming about, at least insofar as beginning to overcome our denial and the taboos that have surrounded important topics for so long. I sent the following list of hope-inspiring articles to The Conversation (on Hope and Mourning in the Anthropocene: https://theconversation.com/hope-and-mourning-in-the-anthropocene-understanding-ecological-grief-88630) just this morning--it might be of interest to Friends of Wisdom as well:

We do indeed need to STOP EXTINCTION, and I think we can if we get a lot more honest with ourselves and start making changes now. Toward this end, we’re a global society now, so we have to acknowledge the fact that all human cultures have now been so influenced by the anthropocentrism of “western culture” that ALL HUMAN CULTURES WILL HAVE TO CHANGE, so we should not be afraid of "offending" anyone by getting all the ways they need to change out on the table. Here are some important ones.

So here’s my list of “change” articles—most of them should be accessible with a click or two:

First, here’s Eileen Crist on the deep paradigm shift we have to make: Reimagining the human | Science science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6420/124

14 Dec 2018 ... Earth is in the throes of a mass extinction event and climate change upheaval, risking a planetary shift into conditions that will be extremely …

(other articles by Eileen Crist are equally inspiring—check out her website: http://eileencrist.com/index.php/articles)

Now here’s a biggie for those of us in the “developed” world who are being fed by the big industrial machine. Putting together the facts about climate change and the GHG contribution of the livestock industry, the inefficiency of transforming a plant-based diet into a meat-based diet (the absurdity of us large primates trying to eat like apex predators when that’s not our appropriate ecological niche), and the “planetary boundaries” we face on arable land and reactive nitrogen, here’s William Ripple et al.:

(PDF) COMMENTARY: Ruminants, climate change and climate policy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259466565_COMMENTARY_Ruminants_climate_change_and_climate_policy
1 Aug 2018 ... COMMENTARY: Ruminants, climate change and climate policy. Article (PDF Available) in Nature Climate Change 4(1):2-5 · December 2013 ...


So in the very near future, we’re going to have to shift, as a species, to largely plant-based diets. Notice that this includes “developing” countries like China, too—so much for enjoying the “prestige” of eating meat just because you’ve gotten more “affluent”—instead of bleeding-heart rationalizations about “inequities” among different subgrouping of humans, let’s remind ourselves about the massive “inequity” our species has been enjoying over and above all the other beings on this planet!

And on that topic, let’s consider a really painful one. Many of the countries in SubSaharn Africa are continuing to increase their populations massively as we hurtle into the Anthropocene, and many of their human populations are feeding themselves largely by consuming as many of the wild animals around them as they can get their hands on—as other “developing” countries are also doing, especially in the tropics. If we are serious about stopping extinction, THIS MUST STOP, everywhere. Here’s William Ripple et al on this problem too:

Bushmeat hunting and extinction risk to the world's mammals | Royal ...
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsos.160498 Terrestrial mammals are experiencing a massive collapse in their population sizes and geographical ranges around the world, but many of the drivers, patterns ...


We also must wake up the destructiveness of the current economic paradigm, which has so many of us mindlessly trying to “make money”—whatever that means—with little though to what our collective human activities are actually doing in the real world. We must realize that what we think of as “economics” is a completely socially constructed system, a game played with abstract symbols that we call “money”—and that, since we created it, WE CAN CHANGE IT. Here’s a philosopher on the subject:

Taming Growth and Articulating a Sustainable Future: The Way Forward for Environmental Ethics (pp. 1-23) Philip Cafaro DOI: 10.2979/ethicsenviro.16.1.1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/ethicsenviro.16.1.1

And here’s a good website for ongoing conversations about economic change:

Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy https://steadystate.org/driving-the-growth-of-local-economies-farming-or-financing/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DalyNews+%28Daly+News%29

Let’s do it—let’s STOP EXTINCTION!!! (Received via email and copied here by --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 22:16, 16 January 2019 (UTC) )

Reading List Suggestion -- Healing Earth

Am suggesting you include the new book: Healing Earth: An Ecologist’s Journey Of Innovation And Environmental Stewardship, John Todd, North Atlantic Books, 2019, into your list of recommended readings. From TQuistarc via email. Thanks! --Lbeaumont (discuss • contribs) 11:00, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Recommended reading suggestion: Hubbard, Barbara Marx (January 1998). Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential. New World Library. p 279. ISBN 1-57731-016-0