3DN Introduction

This is the story of "How Humans came to Live in Peace and Plenty". It begins . . . There was a time when humans did unspeakable things to one another, and that led to scarcity and privation, that led to more cruelty, in an unending cycle . . . Of course, we do not know the details of the story, but it involves coming to understand and honor the gift of the least among us . . .

Ending poverty will require systems of production in which everyone can participate added to the existing market systems. Healing nature will require systems of production that cooperate with natural processes to increase biological diversity rather than diminish it. I think those systems of production will look like Community Investment Enterprises which can employ citizens who do not currently possess marketable skills in ways that make use of local biological potential. See also Self-help Corporations.

So, where do we begin:

Working back from the implementation of these new systems, we would first need a group of people who agree to cooperate in the implementation. Working back from a group of people reaching that agreement, we would first need to engage those persons living within the relevant locality in a conversation about how the proposed systems will benefit them. Working back from engaging people in that conversation, we need the cooperation of those already interested in changing the relationships in the system - as opposed to creating a new "organization" that competes for attention and funding with all those existing organizations.

That is the idea behind Local Organizing and the Planetary Mind. We propose a local network weaver empowered to bring together, in each locality, representatives of nonprofits, businesses, governments, and educational institutions, to engage each of their members, clients, customers, constituents, and students in the conversation about "What can we do to make our community a better place to live?". In that process some localities will discover new ways to arrange the relationships so that they better feed value back into the total set of relationships (connection, bridges) within the locality, and put together the resources to implement that new structure. As new structures are implemented, the information generated through implementation can be made available to all other localities - and we would begin to think as a species - improving the cognitive function of the planetary mind.

Breaking the cycle of conflict and scarcity will require understanding how each of us can contribute to the function of the whole system. The understanding comes from changing our point of view from that in which objects compete for space to a point of view where we can see how each thing is connected to all other things.

There are three dimensions to Networking. In the first dimension, we all search out those connections necessary to our individual wellbeing. When we become involved with an organization, we search out those connections necessary for the organization's continued existence. When we look at things from three dimensions we come to understand our essential unity. This is not about good and evil or faith based belief. It is about the flow of value through the whole system and we need to develop a new vocabulary to talk about changing the set of connections (bridges, relationships, bonds) that constitute the reality in which we live.

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