Mapping the Emerging Ecosystem
Areas of Expertise, Categories & Roles on the Society 4.0 Map
What the little colored dots on the Society 4.0 Map mean
Navigation
(This is a long reference piece. Click on any link below to skip directly to that section.)
Background
Intro to Areas of Expertise
1. Energy & Transportation
2. Indigenous Values
3. Commons, Communities & Governance
4. Education & Collective Intelligence
5. Economics & Currencies
6. Countering Anthropogenic Mindsets
7. New Narratives
8. Cleansing the Biosphere
9. Countering Identity Politics
10. Global Integral Health
11. Food & Water
12. Emergent Other
13. Systemic Approaches
Intro to Project Roles
Advisor
Creator
Educator
Reporter
Researcher
Intro to Societal Roles
Innovators
Contributors
Denizens
Followers
Society 3.0 Citizens
Background
If you’ve had a chance to explore the Society 4.0 Interactive Map, you will have seen that there are hundreds of colored dots on the map. Each dot represents one of the inaugural Society 4.0 Innovators and Early Denizens. Hovering over each dot will give a little more detail on each person, including their Role and Area of Expertise.
This article explains what is meant by each categorisation. But first a little background.
Over the past 10 years I’ve been interested in ‘regenerativeness.’ Very simply, that’s a space in which many thousands are working on various forms of new societal forms. One of the challenges in the space (that many have been grappling with for years) is what we call nomenclature. Very simply this means how we devise or choose names for things, especially in a science or other discipline.
What I’ve noticed is that it is real easy to say that a project, product, or business is ‘regenerative’. It is much harder to define what that means; evaluate how it fits in with other aligned projects; and map the meta-outcome of all regenerative projects. This is particularly true of projects that don’t have websites, published papers or books describing what they aim to accomplish.
This task of making the emergent visible is made even more challenging by the linear, algorithmic, logocentric and (overly) simplistic language structures we’ve built our existing economic and social systems on top of. And that’s without considering the added complexities of multi-language and multi-culture.
Despite the challenges, we must find a way of making the emergent visible, so that we can collectively help usher in Society 4.0, the Regenerative Renaissance. My preferred way of doing this (because I’m a technologist) is to look at data, rather than personal opinions. So, the categories listed below are the result of a 9-month analysis of 300 regenerative individuals that were at least somewhat known to me and a further 200 I was not (yet) familiar with. (The focus was on people rather than projects and the reason for this is the subject of an upcoming post.) The categories were somewhat inspired by Barbara Marx-Hubbard’s Wheel of Co-Creation, Le Ciel Foundation’s Holistic Visions and other similar models. Mainly, the categories were inspired by actual work currently underway.
This was no simple task. In fact, it was fiendishly complex. There is no doubt in my mind that you will have reasons to question the results. Please do! This is merely an attempt to get the ball rolling as far as regenerative nomenclature is concerned. If you have any suggestions/additions/deletions, please comment below.
With that out the way, here are the Society 4.0 Areas of Expertise, which relate to the colored dots on the Society 4.0 Map.
Areas of Expertise
1. Energy & Transportation
A transformation in the way humankind produces and uses energy is one of the most important endeavors of our lifetimes. Numerous inexhaustible energy sources seethe in our Universe and yet our Industrial Society (Society 3.0) has focussed exclusively on fossil fuels. This category includes the individuals and initiatives striving to make New Energy widely understood and available.
Examples:
- https://www.newenergymovement.org/
- https://www.alphaenergyholding.com/
- https://www.discovercoldfusion.com/
- https://www.hybridairvehicles.com/
2. Indigenous Values
Indigenous values, practices, cultures, and more importantly worldviews offer pointers for the deep cultural and relational changes needed to realize our collective healing. Some of these practices include food cultivation, environmental awareness and re-connection to the land, plant education and integration, survival skills, healthy self expression through music, art and cultural activities, and building techniques in harmony with Nature. This category includes the individuals and initiatives striving to make Indigenous Values widely understood and adopted.
Examples:
- https://watershedregenerativeventures.com/
- https://indigenousregeneration.org/
- https://covenantpathways.org/
- https://regenerativeearth.org/
3. Commons, Communities & Governance
The notion of the collective and of being together is the basis for positive actions within a society. Initiatives in this space work to address the realities of how land is owned, tenure and equity are conveyed, land stewardship is carried out, resources are shared, labor is allocated and rewarded. These initiatives are answering the question, “From global to local to individual, how can community life be reorganised?”
Examples:
- https://ecovillage.org/
- https://www.findhorn.org/
- http://www.damanhur.org/
- https://agrariantrust.org/agrariancommons/
- http://seedthecommons.org/
- https://commonstransition.org/
- https://p2pfoundation.net/
4. Education & Collective Intelligence
Learning is part of everything and necessary to everyone, at all ages. This category, though, looks beyond traditional methods of learning to help perceive the micro, mezzo and macro levels, leading to more interconnected ways of learning. The initiatives in this category also consider learning beyond the individual, to include the emergence of collective intelligence.
Examples:
- https://www.consciouslearningtribe.com/
- https://lecticalive.org/about/vip
- https://www.recapturetherapture.com/
- https://consilienceproject.org/
5. Economics & Currencies
Fair trading in a new world economy is the focus of many initiatives who are looking at social currencies, specifically for the purpose of incentivizing regenerative actions. Concepts explored include cryptocurrencies, circular economics, community currencies and Universal Earned Income (as distinctly different from Universal Basic Income).
Examples:
- https://bloomnetwork.org/social-currencies-bloom-network/
- https://climatejusticealliance.org/regenerativeeconomy/
- https://metacurrency.org/
- https://joinseeds.earth/
6. Countering Anthropogenic Mindsets
Anthropogenic effects, which are created by people or caused by human activity, were first recognized by Suess in 1954. The effects were largely caused by the onset of the industrial revolution. Projects in this category are addressing the mental shifts required for individuals to cope with the coming changes. For projects that are reversing actual damage to the biosphere, see #8, Cleansing the Biosphere.
Examples:
- https://deepadaptation.ning.com/
- https://www.ama-project.org/
- https://spiritualecology.org/
- https://www.silencespace.net/
- http://resonanceproject.org/
- https://www.heartmath.org/
7. New Narratives
Many of our day to day actions are taken because of our belief in a particular worldview. That worldview is dictated by the narratives we tell ourselves about the nature of reality. Initiatives in this category are exploring the fringes of reality to come up with new stories about the human purpose. These narratives are universal and transcend traditional divisions based on nationalities, race, gender, and religion.
Examples:
- http://mythologyofhumanity.com/
- https://thenewnarrative.org/
- https://thenextsystem.org/
- https://quantumgravityresearch.org/
- http://www.david-bohm.net/
- https://civilsocietyfutures.org
8. Cleansing the Biosphere
Everywhere, the biosphere — the parts of Earth where life exists — is dying. Projects in this category are addressing large-scale reversal of damage to the biosphere in the areas of ocean acidification, pollution, deforestation, climate change, ozone, rain, energy sources and more. Rather than addressing microcosms, these projects are guided by their respect for the sanctity of all life and for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Examples:
- http://www.biospheresoundscapes.org/
- https://anthropocenes.org/projects
- https://www.coralvita.co/
- https://www.plasticoceanproject.org/
- https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/LBA
- https://www.heartmath.org/gci/research/global-coherence/
9. Countering Identity Politics
Identity politics artificially creates separation and disunity among groups of people, when the evolutionary, natural drive of the human species is towards unification and collaboration. Disunity can be created based on gender, religion, race, social background, class or other identifying factors. Initiatives in this category work hard at transcending the artificial differences played on by proponents of identity politics.
Examples:
- https://thebusinessplanforpeace.org/
- http://www.theoracleinstitute.org/
- https://circlinginstitute.com/
- https://www.cnvc.org/
10. Global Integral Health
Western medicine has become based purely on the physical. The interconnectivity between mind, body and spirit in diagnostics, treatments and methodologies is almost non-existent. As COVID-19 has shown us, the Germ Theory has completely obliterated the Terrain Theory. Initiatives in this category work to understand illnesses in their full dimension so that they may be healed in the physical dimension, the spiritual dimensions and the dimension of memories.
Examples:
- https://www.themclinic.com
- https://childrenshealthdefense.org/
- https://wellnessforumhealth.com/
- https://www.drnorthrup.com/
11. Food & Water
Global food production needs to return to biodynamic, high-yield and regenerative methods of farming that respects the biosphere as well as the health of individuals and other living creatures consuming the food.
Water is synonymous with life. Every being on Earth needs it and is made up of it. Water holds memories within its cells and its structure reacts to its environment and how it is treated. And yet our water is treated with little respect.
Initiatives in this category work holistically as they explore how we can collaborate with life rather than exploit it solely for our immediate benefit.
Examples:
- https://foodtank.com/news/2018/05/organizations-feeding-healing-world-regenerative-agriculture-2/
- https://www.lebensgarten.de/
- https://enlarge-nexus.org/
- https://applewoodcourses.com
- https://www.tierrademonte.com/
- https://www.water-technology.net/
12. Emergent Other
Emergence refers to properties or behaviors which emerge only when the parts of a system interact in a wider whole. It is expected that as Society 4.0 emerges and takes form, other emergent categories and areas of specialty will appear. We use this catch-all category until an emergent theme becomes dominant, at which time it will receive its own category.
13. Systemic Approaches
We avoid calling this category Systemic Solutions, because problem-solution is a mechanistic, binary concept. Rather, we see Approaches as never complete or perfected, since they will always unfold deeper, evolve higher, expand further. Instead of a fixed Solution, an Approach allows modification, because the world is constantly changing. Initiatives in this category tackle the most complex, interconnected challenges in a holistic, flexible fashion.
Examples:
- https://batesoninstitute.org/
- http://www.transformativecapital.com/
- https://www.metaintegral.com/
- https://www.r3-0.org/
- http://www.capracourse.net/
- https://www.systemsinnovation.io/
Project Roles
In addition to the Areas of Specialty described above, each individual on the Society 4.0 Map is categorised according to the role they play within their specialty. Each role is defined below.
Advisor
An Advisor is typically someone who has spent a lifetime focussed on a particular area of specialty. They generally are no longer involved in the activities that took up most of their time previously, but are available for short term periods to provide advice and guidance.
Outputs: Telephonic or in-person consultations.
Creator
A creator is someone who brings something original into existence; especially, one who produces something out of nothing.
Outputs: Anything tangible (clear and definite). Examples include art, technology, a garden or building, etc.
Educator
An Educator is someone whose primary work is teaching others, or one who is an authority on methods or theories of teaching.
Outputs: Online learning experiences, lectures, experiential learning experiences, coaching, etc.
Reporter
A Reporter is a person whose primary work is to discover information about a particular topic and describe them for their audience. Their role is different to an Educator in that they typically have little interest in whether the audience remembers their reporting.
Outputs: Books, podcasts, videos, blogs, etc.
Researcher
A Researcher is someone whose primary work is to study a subject carefully, especially in order to discover new information or understand the subject better.
Outputs: Peer-reviewed research papers, dissertations, theses, etc.
Societal Roles
As in any society, there are 4 distinct roles played by anyone who participates in Society 4.0.
Innovators
Innovators are those who develop a new design, concept, etc. or who have new ideas about how to do something. Innovators are categorized into one of the Areas of Specialty discussed above.
Contributors
Contributors are those who give something (like time, expertise or money) to an organization independently to help support its goals and mission. They sometimes report to someone within the organization, but an individual contributor is not responsible for managing anyone except for themselves.
Denizens
Denizen is the transcendent notion of a citizen. A Society 4.0 Denizen is a previous Industrial Society citizen who has been granted rights of residence in the emerging meta-society, based on their support or expression of interest (etymology).
Followers
Followers are those who have a strong interest or pay close attention to the emergence of Society 4.0, but who don’t necessarily want to become involved in the building of Society 4.0.
Society 3.0 Citizens
Society 3.0 Citizens are those who are satisfied in an Industrial Society and have no interest in any other form of society.
