Generic is worthless–focus on real specific threats and opportunities. Do the collection rather than just speculating without data. Do not extrapolate from the past — instead intuit and shape the future.
Within human social and economic systems, pathogenic behavior is spreading. This is particularly true among powerful, successful, and wealthy people (finance, economics, politics, etc.) in the developed world. What specifically do I mean by pathogenic? An ever greater number of these people are adopting behaviors that are actively hostile to the human systems we rely upon. They actually think it is OK to put these systems at risk for personal benefit. This is very dangerous. Given the massive amounts of network, technological, and financial leverage that's currently available to these people, even a single bad actor can wreak global havoc like never before (as in, they could cause an economic collapse that's so severe that it could kill more people than every war we've ever had to date, combined).
So, why is this happening and how can we prevent it? This has been a tough section of the book I'm currently writing. Fortunately, I think I'm starting to unravel it. Here we go. In order to understand why some bad actors are willing to do grievous harm to the complex systems they rely upon, we need to visit the cutting edge of microbiology. Let's start that exploration with a look at an amazing article by Brett Finlay in the Scientific American called, “Stopping Infections: The Art of Bacteriological Warfare.”
Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities — that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can be deduced from a single number: the city's population.
In this mind-bending talk from TEDGlobal he shows how it works and how similar laws hold for organisms and corporations.
In Search of My Father CIA Spymaster William Colby
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Tell us about your experience with the CIA and other Intelligence Agencies either as an operative OR a civilian affected by an operative. Unclassified Only.
Found this while browing, in comments to Robert Ringer's Triumph of the Lie, itself worth reading.
Doug Casey .. Douglas “Doug” Casey is an American-born free market economist, best-selling financial author, and international investor and entrepreneur.
Gerald Celente .. Gerald Celente is an American trend forecaster, publisher of the Trends Journal, business consultant and author who makes predictions about the global financial markets and other events of historical importance.
Bob Chapman .. Bob Chapman publishes International Forecaster, and brings to bear a lifetime of trading experience in gold and silver.
Bill Fleckenstein .. William A. Fleckenstein is president of Fleckenstein Capital, a money management firm based in Seattle. He writes a daily Market Rap column for his Web site, Fleckensteincapital.com, as well as the popular column Contrarian Chronicles for MSN Money.
WHO PARTICIPATES IN “WHOLE SYSTEM” CONVERSATIONS? – PARTISANS, STAKEHOLDERS, DOMAINS, AND CITIZENS
by Tom Atlee
Consciously convened conversations have many functions. Many seek simply to get people talking with each other. Others try to bring together what they call “the whole system” to address that system's collective issues or dreams. Who is involved in these “whole system” conversations?
A “whole system”, in this case, involves all the parties who play – or could play – roles in some social unit or situation. The social unit could be a family or relationship, a group or organization, a community or a whole society. A situation might be, on the one hand, an issue, a problem, or a conflict – or, on the other hand, an inquiry, an opportunity, a shift, or simply a periodic reflection about what's happening. We can convene conversations around any of these things.
So how do we decide who the parties or players are? How do we “cut the pie” of the whole system? And, if we're ambitious, how do we elicit a “voice of the whole”?
I see four different approaches to defining who “a whole system” includes. Each approach has its own rationale and appropriate usages. They are not mutually exclusive, but are usually used more or less separately. Perhaps being aware of them and building synergies between them would enhance the power and wisdom of our conversations. These approaches include:
Phi Beta Iota: Tom Atlee is in our view the living founding father of Epoch B–there have been others before him, and there are other now, but for us, he is the spiritual center of gravity for doing the right thing now, here, in America. Please support his work on behalf of all of us.
