Upcoming events across the web:

• Saturday, Sept 5: Play Rx Imagination Break
• Sunday, Sept 6: IS Community Call 23.8
• Friday, Sept 11: Open IS Connection Call
• Saturday, Sept 12: Being With It All
• Sunday, Sept 13: IS Web Quarterly Convening

The previous newsletter was "Coordination is still hard" and our Community Call last Sunday was titled "No-Lose Moves".

collapse is coming.

abundance is coming.

change is coming.

What are we to do?

Well, at our last Community Call we took a look at potential futures of crisis and abundance:

Crisis: disruption that subtracts from baseline way of life (natural disasters, violence, loss of infrastructure, social or political breakdown) Abundance: innovation that adds new possibilities to life (cheap energy, powerful aligned AI, life extension, universal income)

If we knew, with 100% certainty, that predominantly one or the other would define our future circumstances, then that would shape what we do now, right? Here are some representative samples of what we came up with.

If crisis is coming:

• Inner: Psychological preparation for hard choices, build mental resiliency and emotional regulation. Consider: what do I value preserving/surviving?
• Outer: Prepper stuff, go bags, cash on hand. Stockpile cigarettes and alcohol for bartering after financial system collapse, or land and ammunition
• Inter: Fortify bottom up mutual aid networks, become part of a neighborhood, build a history of trust and mutual support

If abundance is coming:

• Inner: Believe (and live) in abundance, undo the blocks to trust, focus on quality over quantity, take piano lessons (pursue beauty)
• Outer: Save less money and give more now, don't die before immortality is discovered, quit any job I hate
• Inter: Worry less about being cheated or about what other people are doing, stop trying to save the world, explore a new story for what it means to be human

Now, we don't know with high confidence what or when things are going to happen. Nor will our experience of the future be completely one or the other; things are usually not so binary, and the spiral of complexity could keep teetering on indefinitely. But... that doesn't mean that "business as usual" is then the best course.

On the contrary, we found some moves that pay off rewardingly in both crisis and abundance conditions, with no big downside in the meantime either. Solve for both extremes, and you may dramatically improve the center as well! These are the "no-lose" moves that, once we see them, once we feel them in our bones, how could we not bet on them?

Our "no-lose moves" list has things like:

• Invest in friendship, have lots of friends
• Grow mutual aid networks
• Laugh, have fun, find humor
• Build capacity (in many dimensions)
• Live in gratitude, present in each moment
• Cultivate joy independent of conditions
• Stay in touch with what it means to be human
• Access flow states, make meaningful creative and artistic expressions
• Don't reduce the world to "is getting better/worse", see
• Zoom out: Play your part in the evolutionary movement of the universe
• Stay together, learn the flowers, go light

And there may be other no-lose moves for you personally, having to do with who you live with, how you handle money, what kinds of skills or capabilities you cultivate.

I won't claim that this is a sufficient approach, "just do every and only things that are no-lose in all cases", that solves all of life for all possible futures. Risk is also a part of life, and avoiding risk can sometimes be its own path to losing even more important things.

But to see the no-regrets options, the win-win-wins? Find them where you can, take them when you see them, and you'll have clarity and direction that can weather many circumstances.

Cheers,
James