13. How We Begin
13.1 Building Consensus
The ideas presented in the last two chapters, for ways of thinking and for living together, are obviously feasible when an individual or a small group wants to put them into practice. But how could one of the futurities presented in Chapters 5 to 10 of this book become reality, whether culturepoints or the state system? These futurities can only be implemented if an entire society reaches an understanding that it wants to try.
If you found the ideas in this book merely amusing, but have no interest at all in seeing any of them become reality, you can stop reading here. This chapter introduces no further new concepts. Instead, it is about what you can do to make the realization of one of the presented futurities more likely.
The path to realization, if it succeeds, consists of the following steps:
1. Existence of the futurity
2. Awareness of the futurity
3. Building consensus
4. Adaptation
5. Implementation
The first step, then, is simply that the futurity exists as an idea in the first place. This book has taken that step.
The second step is awareness of the futurity. It is not enough for an idea to exist. Many people need to know about it before its realization even enters the realm of possibility. The good thing is that this second step is fundamentally achievable. It will succeed if this book is good, engaging, and different enough to be recommended often. If not, it will simply remain one of the hundreds of thousands of books published each year. The path ends here, without any broader effects beyond increasing that counter by 1.
Awareness of this book can only spread through its readers, as an exponential process of word of mouth. The classic act of recommending the book to friends and acquaintances (or giving the book to someone as a gift) is therefore an obvious contribution you can make to help this book and its ideas become better known. We looked in detail at such exponential functions in Chapter 2.1. Awareness through this path will be achieved if, on average, the book is recommended often enough.
To make that easier, a freely accessible online version of the book can be found at https://futurities.net . So when people are debating the problems of our education system online, someone can post a direct link to Chapter 7 of this book.
If you read this book on the website instead of buying or borrowing it, I would appreciate a thank-you via https://buymeacoffee.com/futurities .
The book text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license111, the same license Wikipedia uses. The text can therefore be freely shared and (with the same license and a note of the source) modified.
The third step is the formation of a consensus about what people want to achieve in a given area, what their shared vision for a social system looks like. I am not a prophet, and this book is not holy scripture. So this consensus absolutely does not have to correspond one-to-one with the futurities presented in this book. Rather, the futurities presented here can serve as starting points and points of comparison in the discussion about how a system can best be structured.
That is why I spent so much time explaining the conditions the presented futurities are trying to meet. First in Chapter 4, “Preface”, then in the table at the end of each futurity, which reviews the requirements set out in Chapter 4.2, and finally in Chapter 11.5, “Self-development”, in which I introduced the value that all my futurities are trying to optimize.
So take these conditions and, abiding by the same rules, improve the futurities I have presented! Or set alternatives against them that, in your view, would work even better. Above all, do not keep these ideas to yourselves, but discuss them with others!
My great hope is that I am not the only one who enjoys thinking through such scenarios. If many people combine their knowledge to rid a single futurity of problems and mistakes, improving it further and further, the result will certainly be better than anything I managed to create alone.
I am convinced that if the second step succeeds and this book and its ideas achieve sufficient awareness, there will also be enough people who discuss these futurities and suggest improvements.
For all the problems with internet filter bubbles, one of the internet’s great strengths is its ability to bring together people who are interested in a niche topic. And at least in the beginning, wanting to realize the futurities from this book will definitely be a niche topic!
If we do get this far, if the book becomes known and readers discuss improvements to the presented futurities online, then the book website (https://futurities.net) will serve as a springboard with links to such forums (insofar as I know of them), blog posts by me about relevant developments, and anything else I can think of to help with that. If, instead, some other website gradually emerges as the organizational hub: all the better!
If I receive feedback, whether from emails, forum discussions, or personal conversations, that points out errors or improves the futurities, I will incorporate that into the book text and publish a new edition.112 A book text that steadily continues to improve should help the book become better known. Which in turn makes the second step, awareness of the book and its ideas, easier to achieve.
Outside this book, completely different versions of these futurities might emerge, and that is okay! But with this approach I hope to take on a role similar to that of a maintainer of open-source software (such as Linux), in order to prevent the discussion from fragmenting too much (at least for the futurities presented in this book).113
A crucial prerequisite for making this step of building consensus work is the rule that these futurities are conceived and described starting from a blank slate. Without regard for what the existing social system looks like. I am convinced that it is extremely important to design futurities outside that context. That way, it becomes possible to discover solutions that would never have been found through incremental improvements alone (I will explain this in more detail in a moment). In addition, this approach creates a common basis for all proposals, since they do not differ based on the current state of things, and it reduces their complexity enormously (a blank slate is much easier to describe than an existing system).
This condition makes it possible for everyone to discuss things online on the same shared foundation. It does not matter in the slightest whether they live in Germany, the United States, or Uganda—and therefore currently have completely different social systems (such as in education).
Something else that can start happening in parallel with the later steps is translating these futurities into art—into stories, images, songs. The internet has already produced such incredible things through fans and independent artists. They may not have had a large budget, but did have tremendous passion for what inspired them—for example, a fictional universe. Precisely because copyright cannot be enforced in fan fiction (stories) and fan art (images), constant variations and continuations give rise to works of art that no one person could have created alone.114
This book, too, could theoretically become the basis for such an effect. To anyone who wants to use their art to increase awareness of futurities that had their starting point in this book: Try to distribute your works under as open a license as possible! Allow mashups115 and fan fiction based on your works! It massively increases the chance that, over several steps, something truly compelling will emerge that can inspire people for these futurities far better than this nonfiction book can.
Up to this point, the step of building consensus, all of this is still largely abstract and theoretical. It amounts to no more than an online filter bubble agreeing on a shared idea. And it is not even clear how broad that consensus actually is. Everything so far has happened online, and no one can credibly estimate the approval for it in an existing society or state—after all, the vast majority of people will never concern themselves with whatever a nerd culture on the internet is doing.
Before we move on to the fourth step, we should realize how incredibly much we have already achieved if we successfully take this third step: We have opened up a new, positive view of the future, something that has not existed in this form since communism!
It may so far exist only on the internet, but it is no longer the fantasy of one person. It is the shared worldview of a large group. Futurities like these, improved by many hands and checked for errors by many eyes, can then become the driving forces of real change. And they would be far stronger foundations for a movement than a mere “we are against nuclear power”. They would be a positive vision of the future that people want to reach, rather than just the image of a terrible dystopia that must absolutely be prevented.