Hearthstone - Statement of Purpose.

Mr. Jan Hearthstone.

BA - Anthropology (UHH May, 2002)
P.O.B. 2182
Sebastopol, CA 95473, USA
modelearth at gmail - com

My "Curriculum Vitae":
http://www.modelearth.org/cv.html

Major interest: Ecological and Social

Sustainability, Collaborative Modeling of the
Future.

I feel that any of the remedies that either are

being currently pursued, or such that still might
be in consideration, meant to address the many,
with time rapidly increasing environmental and
social problems of this planet, do not keep pace
with the proliferation of those problems. In my
opinion, the only certain thing about our
collective global future is that whatever problems
the world might have had in the past and is facing
presently, the future will have those problems
also, but multiplied and greatly amplified.
Although technical and scientific knowledge is
increasing astoundingly, the more so are
increasing the world's problems. The more
computers we have (to put it simplistically), the
proportionally more homeless, hungry, abjectly
poor, socially dissatisfied, and the more beings
that are afflicted by armed conflicts there are in
the world, the more natural resources get
irrevocably exhausted, the less clean water, clean
air, plants, and less animals are there left to
rejoice in. Obviously our knowledge doesn't serve
us as well.

It is only a tiny fraction of humanity who could

expect their future to be better than their past,
with more choices and less worries. This tiny
fraction of humanity is also the portion of
humanity that is responsible for the greatest
exploitation of resources both--"natural"
(including very many other than human species)
and human.

Many people feel a great concern about the state

of the world, many people are trying to find a
venue for meaningful actions, but despite of a
growing awareness of the need to do something
to provide a decent future for this world, the
overall situation is not improving. This, I feel,
might be due to the fact that most actions that are
being done, or contemplated for improving of the
situation in the world are based on methods, on
ways of thinking that we have inherited from our
forebears, methods that might be even
considered adequate by the majority of people,
but those methods can never result in any
significant help in the world's plight, because they
mostly have not worked in the past--something
that becomes evident when we see the difficulties
that we are being faced with today! What I am
saying might sound sacrilegious, but, if we look at
the record that our ancestors left behind, we
should note that despite teaching the future
generations the best they knew, their legacy has
been increasingly more problem-some and lethal
with every new generation (on the whole, seen as
a general trend over the ages). This is undeniable:
Warfare gets "improved" with each generation
(meaning that weapons can kill more people more
effectively), the exploitation of resources gets
more sophisticated and escalated, the general
quality of life worsens--not measured by any
subjective standards, but noting that with each
generation there are proportionally more people
in prison, more people homeless and hungry, and
more refugees. That there is less and less clean
potable water and less "natural" nature to enjoy
(all this taken over larger spans of time--there
were periods of time when things improved
somewhat, only to get much worse than before
afterward). All the foregoing is well founded on
statistics and on available records, whereas any
optimism about the possibility of the future
happiness of the majority of beings on this planet
is not so well founded.

I suggest that perhaps a significant betterment,

and also healing of the persistent wrongs, could
be obtained if we would stop patterning remedies
meant to cure the world's ills on models from the
past, and turn instead to an ideal projected into
the future. I would suggest that we, collectively
and globally, consciously design an ideal future
that would accommodate all life on Earth most
optimally.

It is imperative that all humanity unites in a

common purpose, in sharing of our common
ground--the Earth, and in sharing of our common
future. It only makes sense that we resolve any
and all differences that there exist among people
in a model, rather than in real life. Resolving our
differences in a model is not only more expedient,
but it prevents suffering real damages in real life.
The cost of not caring, of holding any intolerant
views can be well demonstrated in a model; in
real life these "demonstrations" mean an ongoing
and escalating misery for all. What a real, lasting
Peace on Earth should be must acceptable by all
concerned, or else there is no end to wars ever.

Consider this: Most of life on Earth is planning for

the future, most people do. Those various plans
of a multitude of beings entail visions of a place
to live, nourishment to be procured, and leisure to
be experienced. The trouble is that most of these
plans are done by individuals for themselves
alone mainly, and that the majority of those plans
for future usually disregards plans for future that
other people and other forms of life might have.
When it comes to realizing of those plans, it is no
wonder that all those individual plans for future
clash with most other plans for future that others
might have, more often than not, and because of
that most of the individual plans for future are not
possible to be brought into being entirely at all.

What is needed is to synchronize all the plans for

future of all the individuals that there might be by
making it possible for virtually anyone on Earth to
input their ideas into a process that would
compare those individual plans for future with
each other, match them with all the knowledge we
have about the Earth and about human society,
and thus create a model of Life on Earth that
would be available for inspection and critique by
virtually anyone on Earth. Naturally enough, such
a model could never be really finished. It would
keep dynamically adjusting itself to the ongoing
input of all concerned, and to the ever-increasing
knowledge of the Earth and human society. The
scope of such a model (or rather, a social design
tool) could be as large as the Earth, or as small as
an individual family. Creating of such a model
would be certainly technically possible, the
technology for accomplishing of this exists
already, and is not complicated--already
individual PC's are being harnessed together for a
variety of tasks ("distributed computing"), and
their capacity together is often greater than a
supercomputer's--but it is not the technology that
matters here as much as the principle of
consciously designing the future collectively.

Ideally, our common future should be designed

on all fronts--it would mean to create a space, a
space that could be as much mental as physical.
An object of meditation--desiring, praying that all
differences that there are among people resolve
before those differences manifest unfavorably in
reality, and physically making this possible to do
by resolving of those differences in a model--
again, before those differences cause damage in
reality.
It could be argued that since time immemorial
there exist ideologies that advocate peace and
non-violent pursuit of happiness. I think that the
reason that we still do not have a Heaven on Earth
is that most praying and meditations that have as
object an ideal state of Life on Earth do not have a
common perception of what the prayed for
Heaven on Earth should look like. Neighbors and
enemies do not have the same position of
importance as ourselves in our vision of our
future.
The unified idea of what an ideal Earth should
look like should be commonly shared for any
efficient actions to happen. In this an actual
modeling would help to make the common vision
commonly perceived by all, whether they pray, or
not.

In contrast to any methods of organizing the

world's future known to me, the designing of the
future from at the grass-root level by virtually
anyone who would be interested in doing so
would have the advantage of not leaving anyone
behind; any- and every-body's future would be
designed on valid grounds, taking into account
the wishes of all the participants, the availability
of resources, and all the knowledge pertinent to
which-ever problem. This cannot be said of most
processes that, to a lesser or a greater extend,
control the creation of our collective future
currently.
Modeling our future collaboratively would put
anyone's contemplated future into a right
perspective - the model would "teach" any
individual what might, and what might not be
possible, realistic, and what complications might
ensue should such an advice be disregarded.

The crises that we are heading into globally is an

emergency, and any science contributed towards
the construction of this model of the future could
be the best instance of an applied science. The
model could serve as a basis of unifying of all
scientific knowledge to be applied to, to deal with
problems that humankind experiences, and those
problems that are to emerge yet by modeling the
ideal state of a sustainable Earth.

This model of our collective global future would

serve as a gigantic "round-table", always in
session, ready to advice in any matters
concerning anybody's future design, always
ready to deal with any emergencies as they arise.
I would like to point out that although there have
been many global models already created--the
many "Utopias" and, perhaps, the many
"socialist" and "communist" systems (extant
ones and all those that are still being
contemplated)--all of them, as far as I know, were
a creation of just a few people, incorporating only
certain aspects of possible futures, and most of
these models are/were limited by partisan
interests and purposes. If the energy and all the
intentions to improve the state of the world of all
the myriad of individuals and organizations that
strive to better our collective lot, and indeed of
anyone at all who wants to have a hand in
creating of their own future were coherently
brought together to co-operate together on a
realistic global future on the basis of all available
knowledge, creating together a realistic goal to
strive towards, this combined energy and
knowledge might give our global future a viable
hope.

One of the advantages of the social modeling tool

that is described above would be that it could be
wholly non-partisan, the input would be
anonymous--only ideas would compete on the
basis of current knowledge of Earth. This social
modeling tool would take into account any- and
every-one's wellbeing, which as it ought to be,
because it is the non-represented members' of
any society discontent (caused by non-
representation in the future making process) that
the most violent social changes do arise sooner,
or later.

Currently very much hope is being invested in

humanity's becoming "sustainable". However, a
very few people have a clear idea what a
"sustainable humanity" should be. And even
among those people who do have a clear idea
what a "sustainable humanity" should be, there is
no straightforward consensus on the subject. The
differences that there exist in the definition of
what "sustainability" ought to be are being
resolved in real life with a tremendous waste of
time, resources, and with a very little, if indeed
any, progress towards "sustainability". This is
due to the fact that most people who are striving
towards "sustainability" have actually no mental
picture of what "sustainability" should be like. If
one observes carefully, most actions that
professedly aim for "sustainability" are actually
aimed against aspects of our lives that are
considered non-sustainable, and not for
sustainability itself. Pursuing this course might
never result in establishing of true sustainability,
since there never, ever will be a time when there
will be nothing that we do not like having in our
lives. Once we collectively have a clear picture
what should constitute "sustainability", only then
we can proceed towards it, since we can never
get something that we do not know what it
actually is, and which is collectively,
consensually not agreed upon.

Modeling collaboratively the meaning, the

definition of what "sustainability" ought to be
would make it possible to achieve
"sustainability". Not arriving at a collectively
acceptable definition of "sustainability" would
mean resolution of the meaning of the term in real
life would be very difficult and protracted, beset
with pointless trials and errors--we do not have
the leisure to allow this to happen. What is
happening in the world today is a dire emergency
requiring expedient actions. Modeling of the ideal,
"sustainable" existence of Life on Earth would
allow for "expedient actions" to achieve the ideal
existence to happen.

During my graduate years I hope to elaborate and

substantiate on all the above. I know that already
there exist paradigms and ideologies that might
provide grounds for creating of such a model. It
will be left to show that our present barbaric
Homo SAPIENS ("sapiens" is mis-defined, surely
) could yet become a Homo INTELLIGENTES. Else
- the possible scenarios based on the trends
currently observable could result in realities that
no one would be able to really relate to at all. If we
really care about our children's future, we should
make sure that we don't hand them over an Earth
that would be less perfect than the one we got
from our parents. We should start healing the
Earth and sustain our efforts, till the Earth
becomes an ideal, most optimal home for all the
beings that share her.

The idea of modeling our common future owes its

existence to Mahayana philosophy and to The
Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz--both
that I have been interested in and have been
practicing for at least two decades now.

Originally I wanted to live self-sufficiently on the

land, somewhere, independent of a system that I
considered oppressive and repressive. I started
going to college in order that I would learn all that
I would need to become "independent" and "self-
sufficient". I started with horticulture, pottery, and
weaving, and when I realized that to live
independently, self-sufficiently is not possible
unless the whole humanity becomes so,
"ecologically and socially sustainable humanity"
became my interest.
I studied Ecological Anthropology, took
Sociology introduction course, and before I
graduated I started developing the concept of
creating the future collaboratively.
I graduated with a BA - Anthropology (U of Hawai'i
at Hilo, May 2002).
My CV is at http://www.modelearth.org/cv.html .

I have been trying to popularize the concept for a

several years now with no success. I, therefore,
am looking for an institution of higher learning in
hope to improve my communicational and
intellectual abilities and thus be able to present
the idea better. Saybrook, so far, is the only
graduate school that expressed interest in the
idea of modeling humankind's future collectively.

N. B. I would gladly debate any points of what is

written above with anyone to our mutual
edification.
References.

Fritz, Robert
The Path of Least Resistance, Salem, MA, DMA,
Inc., 1984, ISBN: 0-930641-00-0

Mahayana and Sustainability:

http://www.modelearth.org/mahaecosoc.html

MAHAYANA and ECOLOGICAL and SOCIAL

SUSTAINABILITY.
(The following reflects author's own personal
understanding of the terms "Mahayana" and
"Bodhisattva").

Mahayana is a view that acknowledges the

interconnectedness of all phenomena across all
time and space, and that any one being's well-
being depends on the well-being of every other
being across all time and all space.

A Bodhisattva is one who strives to realize the

ideal of Mahayana, and therefore regards the well-
being of all other beings as important as one's
own.

To live ecologically and socially sustainably

means to acknowledge the need of all other
beings to live well also.

The need for living ecologically and socially

sustainably is implicit in Mahayana.

Therefore an aspiring Bodhisattva would help all

beings to be mentally and physically optimally
well, and therefore an aspiring Bodhisattva would
promote the way of living ecologically and
socially sustainably in all places and in all times.

Please dedicate your practice to the optimal

benefit of all beings of all three times and ten
directions of space, starting here and now on
Earth.

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