Symbols Of Lives Well Lived, episode 1: Give

John Kellden
4 min readFeb 3, 2018

“In a network, signs of life, symbols of lives well lived.”
@johnkellden

We are waiting to come alive.
We are spending almost every
waking moment, resisting
coming alive.
This creative
tension is our individual
consciousness. Our unique
shard of human awareness.

Jonas: It was like a memory, but Fiona was there.
The Giver: You had a dream.
Jonas: A what?
The Giver: A dream. A combination of reality, fantasy, emotions and what you had for dinner. You have stopped taking your injections, haven’t you?
Jonas: The emotion was so strong. And the wedding, everyone all together, laughing and dancing. The old with the young, the bride and the groom; there was something there. But different from what we have.
The Giver: Yes. We don’t have that any more.
Jonas: What do you mean by “that”?
The Giver: Well. I’m talking about what you feel for someone else. And the mind can’t explain it, and you can’t make it go away.
Jonas: What is it?
The Giver: Love. It’s called love.

A New Understanding Of Life

“The reality of the genetic code and the existence of other organic codes imply that life is based on two fundamental processes — copying and coding — and this in turn implies that evolution took place by two distinct mechanisms, i.e., by natural selection (based on copying) and by natural conventions (based on coding).”
Marcello Barbieri

Corner of Collapse & Actionable Insight

2015 Mar 9:

2014–2016
The lost rabbit hole years, the last imploding stage of old, ersatz, 20C media.

2017–2019
Networks designed to enable (knowledge) logistics, rather than advertising.

2020–2022
Humanity rising to the occasion (or not) depending on how much resonance and resilience we’ve managed to broker through our new distributed, distributive platforms.

signs of life

2023–2025
Data and Narratives. Uncovering the options we need, rather than using data to reinforce what we’ve already got.

2026–2028
Demise (and possible partial rebirth) of institutions on all levels. Core dynamic behind the transformation: awkward procedures, too much lag time between cognition and action. The insufficiency of Davos.

2029–2031
Understanding. Experiential understanding. A proliferation of grassroots movements. Most of which will fail. Some of which will succeed, turning societal imaginal cells, depending how quickly the institutions realize they need to remove themselves.

symbols of lives well lived

2032–2035
Last hours of ancient beliefs. All kinds of weird shit — tribes, reactionary movements, conspicuous consumption bordering on Elysium-levels. Out of which a deep unlearning of obsolete beliefs. Birth pains of sustainable regions, some which will make it, some which will not.

2036–2038
Equity and ecology co-evolving. Achieving decent livelihoods for all the human beings that remain. Regions increasingly coordinating needed efforts.

2039 and beyond…
The second half of the 21C will be characterised by our collective, collaborative, cocreative capabilities for stewarding autopoietic shift.
There’s three main scenarios:

- Slow Crash (default & devil take the hindmost)
- Elysium (crash & entitlement separate)
- Long Boom (equity & ecology)

Corner of Fear & Choice
All three scenarios remain a choice. How do we choose? First, we create a space inside ourselves where we are not utterly conditioned by

behavior, attention, will and performance.

If these four are in control, we don’t choose, we merely react.

There Was A Child Went Forth…
If we find ourselves present within a small space inside our minds, there’s two and only two different ways to make a choice:

making a choice based on fear

making a choice based on love

Fear then gives rise to one gazillion modifications of mind. You can visit twitter for one gazillion and one examples of these modifications, every single one making perfect sense for the twitter emitter.

“The worse part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”
Lois Lowry

Moving beyond our seeming separate selves
Now and zen, you find yourself transceiving, rather than emitting, extending love rather than reinforcing your baseline fear and your modified mind. By choice, minds less modified, minds increasingly able to transceive, where we receive and transmit something more inclusive and more generative, moving us beyond our seeming separate selves.

“They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them.”
Lois Lowry

Provisions
Over time, you grow less angry. In time, you find others. Givers. Transceivers. As soon as you find the others, you start making provisions.

slightly more equitable blockchains

slightly more human AI

slightly more perma culture

The nature and extent of these provisions in accordance with your essential character and evolutionary purpose.

Ivan Bandura

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John Kellden

Cards catalyzing stories, Conversations that mind and matter, Digital communities and collaborative narratives