CCC—Communication of Commitment to Collaborate 

Dino Karabeg to Alexander Laszlo

Draft date

Moved by what I saw and experienced at the conference Curating the Conditions for a Thrivable Planet, which you curated, I herewith express my readiness to commit a large part of my creative time and energy (“90%”) to developing the work that you and your collaborators began or manifested there. 

This does not mean that I am abandoning whatever I am and have been doing, on the contrary—I make this commitment and offer in full awareness that an alignment of our energies and projects might vastly augment the prospects and impact of the projects I am involved in (“by an order of magnitude or more”); and in belief that those projects may have a similar impact on your work.

How I see what you have done, and demonstrated?

Essence: Curating. Creating a space for something new. Already happening. Social entrepreneurs. CIEL and GEL. The stage perfectly set.

What is it that we may do together? To what exactly am I making this commitment?

“If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you don’t know what you are going to find,” wrote Gore Vidal. If I would answer the above questions in any fixed and concrete way, I would be unduly limiting what we may accomplish together before we even began working.

At the same time, we would unduly limit our action space, even risk making it impotent, if we would refrain from taking concrete action in it, and from making plans. My commitment is to a creative space, where we make bold, creative moves freely[1]! To that end, I am making a concrete proposal. I formulated it in terms of a community of impact called Hermes. Although Hermes is concrete and spelled out in quite a bit of detail, I offer it as a castle in a sandbox, knowing that we may either continue building on it, or rearrange or destroy and build from scratch, as playful inspiration moves us.

The key point Hermes adds is - shift of perspective. We see ourselves as a piece in a larger whole. Our point is no longer just to make systems science better; we create a strategy to impact the systems. It's alignment for impact. We create a paradigm within the systems science, or systems movement. 

Hermes is a shift to a thriving world. Simply — we chg. the systems. Already the shift from taking systems for granted to learning how to change them is the decisive, key step into the new paradigm. 

Another key step is collaboration between systems sciences and (information) technology development, and entrepreneurship. IT is potentially an enabler; this is where most of its benefit and impact resides. But without the awareness of systems, we only use it to power old systems (metaphor: rocket-powered trike, in my talk). We begin Information Age where good information (about systems) powers the systemic change—through deployment and development of information technology. 

To that end we align a number of other actors, notably the CoI, the PFTF, the GSM/DG and the KF.

In what way may you—or should you—respond to this CCC? What do I expect of you in return?

This CCC too is a ‘castle’ in our ‘sandbox’, or a prototype in Hermes, as we may more formally call it. We are already experimenting, and playing. The purpose of a community of impact is to help us align; and by aligning, to augment each other’s positive impact; and to create new structures together, and ultimately a whole new world. The purpose is to unite our conscious, positive strivings into a powerful field, potent enough to outperform the stale attraction created by existing power interests and professional and other habits. 

This commitment is unilateral and unconditional. I am making this commitment I put it into the public sphere; this is what I am ready to do; here is what I’m about; here is how I want to act. I make myself accountable — I make it transparent to yourself and others what I am ready to do. Please feel you can count on me, hold me accountable and call me to action, publicly, if I fail to respond. 

If you chose to build on the ‘sand castle’ provided, you are welcome to respond by writing another CCC to me — and say what you want, and how you want to respond. Then put it into public, space provided. We are building a prototype, a community of impact.

At the same time it has no strings attached. It empowers you, and gives you complete freedom to do whatever may feel moved to do. 

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1. Sartre’s Orest, this paradoxical dance between freedom and commitment, philosophy and action: Educated by a philosopher, goes to revenge his father and restore order. He says: “xxx”.  http://wordscascade.com/no_exit.pdf