The Dream. Finding Hope in Transformation.

The House of Beautiful Business: A Transformative Experience

Thoughts about the Summer 2023 Event "The Dream"

Yes, we talked about Rockström's Planetary Boundaries and how we are exceeding the resources in 6 out of 9 planetary boundaries, areas of human activities destabilizing Earth’s systemic ability to regenerate. Yes, we spoke about the advent of conscious AI, consciousness itself, and how we expect our species, homo sapiens, to survive this crisis. 

We are overwhelmed by a cognitive barrage of information. Each bit of it representing a world of its own, again filled with data and interdependencies. We have information on sea level rises, glaciers melting, temperatures climbing, ppm of carbon dioxide rising... And each bit of data comes with its own complex history of cause and effect, systemic intersections, impact scenarios, and a plethora of mitigation strategies.

We are left with monstrous tipping points, as Andri Snær Magnason eloquently points out with one of the most abstract words in climate change: ocean acidification. We have no idea that the drop towards acidity by an innocent few points from 8.2 to 7.7 pH will be catastrophic. This is our current trajectory by the end of this century. This seemingly minute change in decimals represents a climate change not seen since the last 56 million years – at the so-called Paleocene-Elocene boundary when ocean temperatures rose over 5°C, correlating with a major extinction event.

We have no idea, what logarithmic scaling really means. Global tipping points hidden in details. It all appears so incomprehensible.

We are overwhelmed – again – by this cognitive avalanche of must-do messages. Constant calls for action, moral obligations, behavior commands. You must not pollute. You must not consume. You must not exploit. From how many liters of water for your morning showers to every single kilometer of mobility measured up in grams of CO2. From farm verified organic to veganism. For every heart beat in our lives there is a red light going off, an alarm to change, adhere, and function. Collecting moral goodie points and damned if you don't. A mere hopeless endeavor.

Yes, we spoke about these alarms ringing everywhere around us. Diverting our attention. Fragmenting our energy. Eroding our abilities to react.

And then we dug a bit deeper. Into our fears. Into the space where we have lost ourselves, helplessly watching the world around us slowly change on a fundamental level. The faster we tread in this rising water, the higher the wave is that is about to crush us. The wave of developing countries reaching industrial levels of production, the wave of a rising demand for decisive transitional measures – that themselves negatively impact our climate and our habitat.

Example: We can't have electric mobility without a surge in mining, we can't deploy sustainable technologies in developing regions without building extensive infrastructures. Which pristine forests or underwater habitats are we willing to destroy to extract the rare earths we need for our technological advancement? Olivia Lazard , fellow at Carnegie Europe, delivered a powerful talk together with TED's Bruno Giussani , taking us on a journey through the ecological, economic, and geopolitical complexities of resource exploitation. Nothing is as simple as it appears. Yet it is so clear: While securing and protecting our delicate ecology requires de-growth strategies, our global energy transition hungers for innovation and technological growth.

Amazing, we are reverting back 10,000 years to mining as the driver for future progress. But opening another 300-400 mines by 2030 to enable our energy transition is an impossible undertaking. Ecologically and economically. Go figure.

But progress is inevitable. With ever-new iterations of GPT, PaLM, and many more exceedingly powerful AI models rolling out, emulating a semi-conscious conversational behavior, playing with our minds that a self-aware AI breakthrough is imminent – we haven't figured out our own human consciousness yet. A deep conversation with David Chalmers (https://consc.net/), finely moderated by Dr. Miriam Meckel , exploring the limits of our cognition. I'm reminded by my own journey since the 90s, inspired by the neuroscience research of Daniel Dennett to early musings of Hans Moravec, as we are consumed by our ambition to crack the code of our own intelligence. And once we have, we will only be limited by our own technologies to replicate it. Our Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel moment of touching our creation in our own image, and bringing something to life that will be as strange to us as ever before. What is a thinking machine?

But why then are we doing all of this? The beautiful mind of Minna Salami , taking us through meaningful questions of what makes us human. What is our heritage, what will be our legacy? We have evolved through a system of civilizational exploitation built over centuries on the backs of slaves. Over millennia on the backs of women. Of countless cultures eradicated and absorbed by conquering nations. A history written by men. And written by privilege. The era of Western, white, male privilege. Let's be honest. To ourselves, to our cultural legacy, to nature, to our children.

Our society and economy is primed for optimization. Extracting profits and margins along value chains. Where there are profits, there are losses. And those losses we have offloaded onto nature. Offloaded onto the socially disenfranchised, onto women, onto the former colonies still aching under post-colonial generational PTSD. Exploitation and patriarchal dominance is woven into the very fabric of our society. It has become our DNA. And all technologies we develop, all economic progress we hope to achieve, is built on this.

We have gamed the system. And we still believe that our growth is limitless. When will be able to open up our minds and our hearts, a gentle feminist reminder towards equality and inclusion? A gentle reminder, that is slowly turning into anger. Into rage. A loud scream from the abyss of our civilizational future if we are not to wake up from this ecological and societal nightmare.

It becomes so obvious that we all hunger for hope. And for connection. Being singled out as individuals hasn't been in our favor, as BP's "Carbon Footprint" originally was set out to be a campaign to distract attention from systemic issues and corporate responsibility. But luckily it had an unintended flip side of actually creating overall awareness for industrial CO2 contributions and the need for systemic change.

“The Dream” was a festival of senses, thoughts, and meaningful conversations. Workshops and collective explorations were too plenty to attend and to mention here. Like the “New Climate Conscience” by Indeed Innovation and Gryphon Agency , where Renee Lertzman PhD helped us uncover and reactivate our agency for change. A wake-up call from paralysis.

The single most valuable takeaway from "The Dream," curated, designed, and wonderfully orchestrated by the House of Beautiful Business ? HOPE.

One can only have hope, if we allow ourselves to dream.

I promise and I pledge to continue to dream "the dream" that has been sparked in me and so many others.

Thank you so much to all the people I had the chance to speak with. I have learned immensely through our conversations and gracious sharings. Look forward to taking this to the next level. ✨

#hope #future #society #transformation #innovation