Upcoming events:

• Sunday May 17: Community Call 22.6
• Friday May 22 (open): IS Connection Call
• Saturday May 30 (open): Being With It All @Relational Dojo (2 of 5)
• Sunday June 21: Quarterly Convening of the IS Web

The previous newsletter was Quarterly Convening & Designer Search and last Sunday's Community Call was "Passion Cards".

When modern society seems doomed and collapse seems likely and the hollowed-out institutions of power teeter in the face of accelerating change and complexity that seems intractable... what should you do?

(begin character mode) I don't know, but I'll tell you what to do anyway!

First of all, give up! What I mean by that is, give up on "solving" and the assumption that if you were just smarter, just more determined, then you could find the solution that would save the world and fix everything. You're not that smart — and if you secretly still think you are, you're even farther away, because there is no amount of thinking you can do or pushing harder with effort that will pull that rabbit out of any hat. You can't "save" the world, for any reasonable definition of "world".

Then, grieve! You've got to grieve that you may have lost, may have always been lost, may fail to protect all you love and have worked for, may be powerless when various constructs tumble down. Accept that, face it, mourn it, welcome it, embrace it, and then you can begin to work with what really is, freed from clinging to the ought.

Then, maximize! What I mean by that is, the EAs and utilitarians had a good idea but just didn't go far enough with it — the only good maximization is to maximize the maximizing including the maximizer! Seriously, you just can't subdivide the world and then optimize one piece. To do so is a hallucination of separation, one which lessens total utility and throws it further out of balance. You must be with it all, every bit of it, to succeed.

Ah, but how can you maximally-maximize if the smartest galaxy-brains can't? Here's the trick: you have a wisdom-growing system that is bigger than your reasoning brain! However, it doesn't work if it's stuck: rusted up and frozen inside protective patters triggered by past traumas. So you've got to feel your feelings and pay back most of that debt pile before your system can sensitize enough to listen in with fidelity on the embodied frequency of wisdom.

From that point on, just do good! No joke, just do the right thing, whatever the right thing is, in every situation. When you've shattered your cozy delusions, made ongoing contact with reality, and come into right relationship with listening... simply abide in truth, follow beauty, and do the good at every moment at every scale.

This is hard to do consistently, maybe impossible to do all the time, but you need to trust that you can do this! It is only by doing it, and practicing, that we increase our capacity do more and climb the ladder of scopes to hold more power wisely. Stay soft, supple, pierceable, accepting, so that your failures become learning and your forgiving love exceeds your ever-present inadequacy.

Take note: Doing good will not save the world! Sorry, no backdoor allowed — even if you trick yourself, you can't pretend your way through this in a way that will let you save the world after all. But then you will discover that there was nothing you needed to save in the first place, even if that sounded like the absolute stupidest pablum cliché in the world to your former self.

You'll know you're really getting the hang of it when your head serves your heart in animating your hands, and good flows through you without constriction. Do good at the scale that you know, can feel and sense and touch, the good that fits you. You are no longer maximizing the good that you do, for you no longer care about "you" now that you sense your kinship in the whole. Let it flow in, overflow your cup, flow out as "source", both receptive and active in softness and strength that radiates out to resonate in hearts around you at a level that all the achieving in the world can't touch.

That is what you should do.