Training Wheels for Conscious Evolution

What the name signals

• This is developmental, not fixed.
• We will make mistakes (that’s the point).
• We’re learning to do something unprecedented.
• The training wheels will come off when we’ve developed genuine capacity.

Why admit this at all? Appendix B answers: “Because pretending competence when learning something genuinely new is how most grand initiatives fail.” The frame “gives psychological permission to make mistakes, creates structural flexibility, attracts pioneers rather than those seeking established certainty, and acknowledges that capacity must be grown, not assumed.”

The Public Learning Ledger

All decisions, dissents, outcomes, and lessons will be documented in a transparent public archive. The initiative seeks to model learning in the open.

A Holistic Pathway in Space, The Public Learning Ledger

It serves “accountability, learning, generational wisdom, and humility.” In the decision cycle’s Reflections stage, the question “Where were we wrong?” becomes an Incompetence Ledger entry.

Learning Guides: who we must become

“Learning Guides are leaders and pioneers willing to enter uncertainty, learn publicly from mistakes, model vulnerability, and facilitate the generative conversations that birth entirely new ways of solving problems we ourselves created.”

The paper’s sixth footnote goes further: they are “the pioneers who go out into the wilderness and try new things so that both they and others might benefit in the longer term. They make mistakes and learn from them. They reflect upon their learning in public so that they can detect the errors in their thinking.”

They recognize that making mistakes and admitting them is showing vulnerability and that being vulnerable requires courage. They model a new way of being.

A Holistic Pathway in Space, footnote 6

“This is not a role or title. It is a practice, a commitment, a way of showing-up in the world.”

Appendix A: the Ethos

The ethos is “a deep, solid foundation to which we can always turn when we encounter the inevitable wicked challenges and problems.” (A wicked problem, a footnote explains, “defies solution. It is unique, super complex and multi-faceted.”) It “embraces love and trust as the supreme attributes required for addressing the instability in human affairs.”

Nested in love and trust: openness, honesty, transparency, accountability, and integrity, “consistently doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” The paper offers these principles as “a starting platform to be evolved over time,” adapted from principles Ian Browde formulated earlier:

1. Religion is a private matter. The community will represent a diverse array of personal beliefs and religions; members respect each other’s observances.
2. Ideological independence. Controversial issues get “balanced, unbiased, and fair representation.”
3. Science, in its widest sense. “Science, including quantum physics and other disciplines like inter-dimensionality, remote viewing, somatic energetics, inter-species communication and elements communication, clairvoyance, morphic resonance, indigenous wisdom, inform our efforts.” Two footnotes on this principle: one is “a placeholder for practices like Tai Chi, Yoga and many others that not only help human bodies stay healthy but have relevance far beyond exercise”; the other is “about communicating with and through elements like water, forests (Mycorrhizal networks), etc.”
4. Cultural awareness. Always trying to expand inclusivity and diversity, and acknowledging “neurodiversity as reality and see it as contributing to our breakthroughs.”
5. Bias is inevitable. “We will always work to identify our blind spots and to eliminate bias and prejudice as much as possible.”
6. Exceptional is our standard. “Everyone is exceptional and that it, not average, is normal.” Exceptional standards are the floor of conduct: actions, thoughts, and words.
7. Model the High Road. “Actions speak louder than words.” Rather than only saying they commit to ethical, fair, positive, generous, compassionate and kind conduct, members model it.
8. Empathy in all its variations. Sympathy is good; empathy, “walking in another’s shoes so to speak, cognitively, emotionally and in practice i.e. taking action to support others, is fundamental.”
9. Stewardship and service. Selfless service to others, to nature, and to life, “whether we are leaders or participants,” is “the surest way to ensure the right results from our efforts.”
10. Feedback and criticism. Feedback is information. “We consider constructive criticism, based on careful review and delivered kindly, as positive. We discourage finding fault with no guidance as to alternatives or options.”
11. Negotiating and resolving conflicts. Using “principled negotiation” or similar approaches: “maintain respect and dignity while arriving at resolution so our work and life can proceed.”

Chief Seattle, adapted

Under stewardship and service, the paper recalls, “in the words of Chief Seattle (circa December 1854),” “The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.” And then it widens them:

Earth, the moon, indeed the Universe itself does not belong to humanity, rather we belong to it.

A Holistic Pathway in Space, Appendix A