The Sweet Spot

I'm interested in the overlap between three relatively obscure but vital areas which we can refer to as Permaculture, the Techno-Singularity, and work on our internal being or "Success Metaphysics".

• The term Permaculture (permanent agriculture) refers to a form of applied ecology that develops agricultural yields in harmony with the physics of Nature.
• The Techno-Singularity is the idea that our accelerating knowledge and technology are approaching a mathematical limit beyond which lies a totally new world.
• By Success Metaphysics I mean to indicate all the various methods and systems (The Silva Method, "The Secret", etc.., there are hundreds of paths and modes) that exist to help people with self-transformation.

Each of these areas has a huge and potent following, but (strangely to my mind) there seems to be very little going on in the sweet spot where they overlap.

I want to expand that little triangle in the middle. I think it's really great down in there. Let's talk a little more about each area and then about what we might find in the middle.

Applied Ecology

I've been a fan of Permaculture ever since I first heard about it. The founder Bill Mollison is an ecologist and the discipline itself has its origins firmly in the scientific paradigm.

By observing Nature and using the natural patterns we elucidate we can develop agriculturally productive ecosystems that take care of our needs while they improve the health of the land.

The ecosystem (what most people mean when they say "the environment") is the only context we have for health and sanity. Without grounding ourselves (both figuratively and literally) in Nature we risk our technological power running away with us as we approach the...

Techno-Singularity

Bucky Fuller was among the first to point out that our accelerating ability to "do more with less", solving all our physical problems ever more cheaply and easily, would catapult us into a strange new (possible) future by the mid-1970's.

Bucky was an engineer and a student of humanity's progress and he calculated that, if we used our resources and technology sensibly, by sometime in the 70's we would be able to work only about two years and then retire, having paid for all our future expenses for the rest of our lives by dint of the effort we expended in those two years.

Work two years and then retire. That's the future we should expect to have (or have had since about thirty or forty years ago.)

The new book "Abundance" by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, which my sister recently bought thinking it was a "success metaphysics" book (see below), does a marvelous job of bringing Bucky's message up to date and showing that we really are on the cusp of a fantastic world transformation.

All we have to do is get over our baggage, which brings us to...

Success Metaphysics

For me the current best example of the kind of thing I mean here is the great FinerMinds blog & site (which is where my sister heard about the "Abundance" book.)

There is far too much to describe in a brief few sentences, but the crucial point here is that there exist myriad methods to work on oneself to heal and grow and, eventually, transform yourself.

Some techniques are as simple as adjusting your internal "self-talk" or repeating positive affirmations, others are more involved or require (professional, responsible) guidance.

Some things are fairly conventional, such as hypnosis and prayer. Others are still unusual in some places but are growing in acceptance: meditation, EFT, and Reiki are good examples.

Some things are totally off the charts of consensus reality. Things like past-life regression, telepathy, communication with "higher beings" (the list goes on and on) are considered fiction in some circles and commonplace in others.

There are even books like "The Charisma Myth" by Olivia Fox Cabane. It purports to be a perfectly nondescript manual for increasing your charisma but, if you read between the lines just a little, it's obviously a manual of spiritual practice.

The Sweet Spot

The place where these three general areas overlap is the sweet spot I want to expand and dwell within.

The science and technology of the Singularity "call off" the Horsemen of the Apocalypse if we can get our collective act together.

The [scientific but non-reductionist] study of and interplay with Nature will prevent us spinning off into our own artificial constructs.  True health and happiness involve participation in the greater systems within which we are embedded and no matter how powerful our technology makes us we are still beholden to the whole.

The spiritual journey that we are all inevitably on is both the means and the meaning.

Infinite Income, Throughput, How much is Enough for You?

With the unlocking of Nature's secrets, mapping math to phenomenon in a way that allows us to develop clever technology, we have come upon a strange and new world: A world of infinite resources.

Your infinite gifts come to me through these small hands of mine. Ages pass and still you pour, and still there is room to fill.

The "hard science" limits for effectively infinite resources come from nanotech and fusion power. There may be some crazy free-energy generator out there but it doesn't matter, fusion is good enough.

(Consider the Sun. That's a fusion power puddle nearly a hundred million miles away and if you look at it too long the energy it emanates will destroy your retinas permanently. Respect.)

In personal terms, imagine that you could write a check and in the space for "amount" put "∞" (that's the infinity symbol) and hand it to people and they would give you whatever.

Sounds like a crazy dream world, right?

Well get used to it. It's coming.

There is a catch though: everyone else can do the same thing.

So the question becomes, "What does that world look like?" How would we operate in a land where anyone has access to tremendous power (in the scientific, physical sense) and resources?

Not everything would be abundant, to be sure.

Time is one limit that never goes away. Our friend the Reaper gathers us all to her strange purpose one day, never forget that.

The surface of the Earth is another "resource" that's not getting any bigger ("Seasteads" notwithstanding.)

When I was a kid I thought that if we could just create a good enough system the people in it would be happy and content.

I read something that Gandhi said that stopped me in my tracks, to the effect that "you can't create a system so good that it relieves the people in it from the effort of striving to be good themselves."

Whether your backyard is an alley full of trash or the whole solar system this fundamental challenge remains: What are you for?

In the face of the on-rushing techno-Singularity the whiz-bang factor is something of a "red herring".

The deeper story concerns us confronting ourselves inescapably and deciding once and for all: Shall we destroy ourselves or transcend our limited self images together as one family?

Let's assume you are on "Team Love".

You can have anything you want, so how much is enough?

Here's my list:

• Most of the time I'm perfectly happy with a very small studio apartment, as long as I get a lot of sunlight and it has a large garden. I also want to be within walking distance of a nice cafe and a large wild forest.
• Sometimes I'd like to visit places like Hawaii and Antarctica, and every once in awhile I'd like to stay in something like a luxury condo or hotel suite.
• I want to visit the Moon, and I want to visit Jupiter and hang-glide in the clouds there.

Not so much, eh? Not going to "break the bank" is it?

The simple fact of the matter is that desire operates like a fire: the more you feed it the more it consumes, leaving nothing.

No technology in the Universe can change the fact that you will die and happiness doesn't flow from things nor impermanent fleeting experience.

Your real challenge is not acquiring things or running around chasing whatever. Your real challenge is sitting down and learning who you really are.

(And for meeting that challenge you can have whatever you want, just ask for it.)

So What Is This "Dendrite Network" Anyway?

The basic idea is pretty simple, but the ramifications are pretty intense.

It's a little bit like an MLM business and a little bit like an Affiliate Network, but it's also a little bit like Twitter, or Stumbleupon.

Let me start by pointing out some aspects that are important but not part of the main thrust of the network:

First, the entire system will be run on an "open books" basis, meaning that all income and expenses of the business will be open to the users and the public.

You'll be able to watch us operate.

Second, I am not running this business to make a profit (although I have no doubt that it will make a lot of money.) I'm running this business to help people, so after all expenses and payroll are met any excess profit will be disbursed back to the network in creative ways. (Grants, zero-interest loans, scholarships, gifts, etc...)

Third, although there is a strong financial component to the network, it is intended primarily as a means of information exchange and collaborative thought. I originally called it the "Automatic Single-In Many-Out Propagation Network". (Now "Dendrite Network" doesn't sound so unwieldy, does it?)

Okay, now let me describe a few important ways that this Dendrite Network differs from an MLM program:

There is no central product or product line. This is a service to help you promote and sell your product or service.

There is no centralized hierarchy. (In MLM terms, your "upline" is also your "downline" and vice-versa.) Sales and information travel from node to node (that's you bub) in all directions. There's no center to the network. The company administers the system but does not sell a product "into" it.

Put another way, I don't give myself a privileged position in the network. If I want to profit from it I will simply sell my own services (I'm a computer programmer) to the network.

You're not expected to rack up "recruits". I expect most people using it to communicate with, on average, around twelve to twenty-five other people, and for that group to remain relatively stable.

There is no cost to participate and no required purchases. You can join the network as a vendor or just participant and not make any purchases. It's perfectly alright to earn money from the network simply for facilitating other peoples' connections to each other.

It's too soon to know how well the network will function to provide income to non-vendor participants but it is part of my dream for this that people will be able to make significant changes in their lives through participating.

So, how does it work?

Let's break it down by the three different "roles" a user can play: vendor, customer, and participant.

Everyone is a participant. You receive "packets" of information from your immediate group of contacts. These packets talk about some offer or other (hopefully not too spammy) news about interesting things on the internet. The packets could be tweets, SMS text messages, emails, etc...

You, as a participant, take a moment to review each packet (like reading your Twitter feed or something) and you have the option of:

• Rejecting it. If you don't like it for any reason you can tell both the person who forwarded it to you and the original vendor who created the offer.
• Forwarding it. This is the default action. If you find nothing objectionable in the message, you pass it along to the other members of your immediate group of contacts who haven't seen it yet.
• Accepting it. It turns out this message was for YOU! You engage with the offer. Make a purchase, sign a petition, donate to find a cure for breast cancer, whatever worthy cause or pleasure you have found.  "HOORAY! The system works!"

So that's the "cycle" for a normal user or "Participant". You get interesting offers (and if they're not interesting you can belly-ache about it!) and you pass them along to your immediate group of contacts.

When you see something you like you purchase it (or otherwise engage with it) and become a customer. Nothing shocking there.

Now let's examine what happens for a vendor.

In order to be a vendor you have to first agree to live up to certain simple standards, mostly involving promising to operate in good faith and not abuse the system. (I'll write up those standards in another blog post soon.)

Next, to create an offer, you need a product and you need to pick a retail price and a margin for that product. We'll have to see how it goes, but I expect margins of between 5% and 50% to be common.

When a sale is made through the Dendrite Network, you take the retail price minus the margin amount.  The margin is divided between the (up to) six participants in the chain of connections between you and your new customer.

If there are more than six people connecting you to your customer then the six "closest" to the customer get the margin.  If there are less than six people connecting you to your customer then the Dendrite Network keeps the extra portions, which is the only way that we (the company that administers the network) make money. (And remember, any extra money over operating costs are "recycled" back into the system.)

That's the core concept: everyone passes information back and forth; up to six people who facilitate a sale collect a portion of the retail price of the sale.

There are a ton of implications!

Service First, Profit as a Side-Effect

My primary goal in business is service, and that takes two forms.

First, you take good care of your customers, treat them fairly and well, and you "go the extra mile" to make sure their experience with you is a good one.

Second, I believe that you should be in business to provide value to your customers.

I know there are a lot of businesses and even whole industries we could talk about that are exploitative, that make a buck on some sort of gradient or scarcity rather than providing value, but I don't really feel that those are worthy of my time and energy to pursue personally.

In my mind, in order to deserve to be in business and be successful, you should be concerned first and foremost with providing value to your customers.

A long time ago, when I was a young man and trying to figure out my path in life, I read something in the Whole Earth Catalog by J. Baldwin about Bucky Fuller and how he had dedicated his live to "advantaging all World-around humanity while disadvantaging no one" that really stuck with me.

Baldwin said something to the effect of (I'm paraphrasing here): "Look around for that important, valuable task that all the world needs doing and that only you can do, and do it, and you'll never have to worry about 'earning a living'."

It struck me as a truly wise way to operate (of course I was just a dumb teenager, so I could have been naive...)

The interesting thing about that plan was that even if you fail completely, you'll still have had a better time of it than someone who picks the straight-and-narrow path.

And, in my life at least, it has been a good way to operate.

There are so many ways to make a buck in this world, but there is only one YOU and your deepest, most personal dream is also the most profound way to contribute back to the whole world.

Be brave and stay awake!

"Truth is One, though the sages know it variously."

You know how an orchestra sounds when they're tuning up?

The different sections and players are tuning their instruments and the overall sound is unmelodious and confused.  It's not quite unpleasant but it's not music.

Eventually they settle down and prepare to play together and when they begin each section and player has their own part to play that contributes to the whole.

I view the different religions as the various sections in an orchestra.

So far in history everyone has been tuning up and the resulting cacophony has assaulted our reason and feelings for centuries.

I think very soon the younger folk (and the more open-of-heart older folk) of all the religions will begin to reject the mutual exclusivity of their traditions and live up to the universal love and peace expressed in and central to all of them.

What a wonderful music that would be.

Honest Business and Open Books

One of my favorite business books is "Honest Business" by Michael Phillips and Salli Rasberry. It's an oldie-but-goodie from the hippy days here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In it the authors espouse a radical idea of open and transparent business that sets economic activity into a healthy and integrated harmony with the greater social and natural systems within which it operates.

I've always wanted to found a company that would include the Honest Business philosophy as part of its core "DNA".

With the Dendrite Network I have my chance. All of our own books will be open to our members, customers and vendors both, and even to the public and our competitors. Experiment and feedback will determine the limits, but I also want users' transactions to be public (or quasi-public) as well, to build openness, trust, and honesty.

Time to Make a Meta-Brain

I've sort-of launched my old/new project, the Dendrite Network (http://dendritenetwork.com/) which is partially a huge neural network with people as the nodes.  The other part is a get-rich-quick scheme.

No, not really.

The idea is complex and doesn't fit into an "elevator pitch" but it is meant to help the transition to a "Star-Trek"-style golden age happen smoothly.