Triggering a Cascade of Uplift

Vision Paper

Presented to:

 Visions of a Better World Foundation

Board of Trustees Meeting

Tom Munnecke

July 12, 2003

            This paper presents a vision for triggering a global cascade of uplift, in which people, families, communities, nations, and humanity as a whole make the world a better place for themselves, and in so doing, make the world a better place for the others.  This cascade is a self-organizing, self-propagating process triggered by and facilitated by our common desire for a better world and the global connectivity of the Internet and other media.

            This process can be likened to snow which has accumulated on the side of a mountain may be poised for an avalanche.  A dropping leaf may trigger a tiny flow of snow, or it may trigger a massive avalanche, as the tiny flow triggers more flows, until the entire snow mass falls.  For each massive avalanche, there may be thousands or millions of tiny flows.  Which specific event triggers the avalanche is unpredictable.  The potential energy of the snow perched on the mountainside is converted to the kinetic energy of the snow rushing down the mountain.

            The “Cascade of Uplift” model views the world to be poised for an avalanche of positive, world-improving thoughts and actions.  There is great potential energy stored up for this cascade; the desire to make the world a better place is common to all cultures, religions, and people.  Events which may appear to be tragedies and hardships may serve to increase this potential energy. For example, the events of September 11 triggered an outpouring of $2.3 billion in charitable donations and the involvement of 175,000 volunteers.[1]

            The challenge is finding ways of converting this “potential energy” into “kinetic energy” –  from global “good intentions” to “good actions.”  It is not clear that our current systems and institutions are doing an effective job of this.  For example, six months after the Sep 11 events, public trust in charity fell to a 25-year low.  The public acted out of compassion and generosity on a massive scale, but the net effect was a vicious circle of increased distrust and cynicism.[2]

            The goal of the Cascade of Uplift is to “flip” this vicious circle to a “virtuous circle.” Positive thoughts and actions are eagerly sought; successful ones are replicated and adapted to new contexts.  These thoughts and actions stimulate more positive thoughts and actions, triggering an “avalanche” as the potential is turned into the kinetic.

            The cascade can be triggered by the tiniest of stimuli.  As Jonas Salk said, “Only a few are needed to visualize and to initiate a process which would become self-organizing, self-propelling, and self-propagating, as is characteristic of evolutionary processes.”[3]  What is critical is to provide an environment in which positive, uplifting thoughts and actions are discovered and amplified.

            The theory behind the cascade does not presuppose which thoughts or actions are most uplifting or which will “lift off’ to trigger the cascade.  It expects surprises – complex systems such as this exist in a state of “perpetual novelty.”  Good ideas will continually emerge, evolve, and propagate; the dynamics of the cascade do not allow for predictable timelines.

Getting Small in a Big Way

            The greater the number of participants, thoughts and actions, the more likely we are to find trigger events which “lift off’ to become self-organizing, self-propagating, and self-propelling.  The greater the number of participants, the richer the environment for testing and experimenting new ideas, and for building reputations for that which is successful.  The smaller scale the thought or action, the easier it is to test from an optimistic perspective.  “Let’s try this and see if it works,” is the approach, rather than “This is an expensive idea, we need to analyze it.” 

It does not matter if a forest fire is started by a tiny spark or a flame-thrower, the net effect is the same.  Similarly, uplift cascades can be triggered by tiny sparks; what is critical is to provide the environment within which the good things can flourish.

The most fertile thoughts and actions for triggering the cascade can be characterized as Scalable Small Things – things which are simple, easy to communicate, and scalable using today’s technology of the media and the Internet.  As Martin Seligman points out, it is most reasonable to be optimistic about smaller, less risky activities.  It is rational to hope that smiling at a stranger will evoke a positive response, if the downside is a cold response.  However, it is not rational for an airline pilot to “hope” that he can take off with an overloaded airplane, if the risk is catastrophic loss of life.

The cascade encourages a massive “swarm” of positive, uplifting scalable small things.  Those which work are elevated and evolve to propagate even more so.  If they are not uplifting, they wither away, perhaps to be used as a learning experience for more.

Scale-Free Thinking

We can think of uplift as working at many different scales simultaneously, for example, at the personal, family, community, nation, and humanity-wide scales.[4]  This can be diagrammed as follows:

Common to each level of scale is the notion of Uplift.  We can speak about personal uplift, family uplift, community uplift, national uplift, and humanity-wide uplift.  While they differ in specifics, they also share a great many commonalities. 

Uplift activities interact between scales.  A scalable small thing at the individual level could trigger uplift at the humanity-wide scale.  Suppose, for example, that someone figured out a way to get everyone in the world to smile at each other (in the cultures where this is a positive form of interaction.)  This scalable small thing could trigger changes at other levels in the cascade.  Similarly, imagine some event occurred winning the World Cup soccer match, for example, which uplifted a large group of individuals.

The Cascade of Uplift would be scale-free – uplift activities would freely flow between the scales.

Intrinsics of Uplift

Those properties which are common between scale – the scale-free properties - we will call the intrinsics of uplift.  The most powerful forms of uplift are the ones which deal with these intrinsics, able to span multiple scales of interaction simultaneously.  One of the goals of the Cascade is to understand and amplify these intrinsics. 

One intrinsic which may be looked at is the notion of identity.  We can speak of the identity of an individual, a family, a community, a nation, and humanity.  Identity is closely related to the sense of self.  If we are going to have self-organizing, self-propagating, self-propelling things happening, we need to have a sense of self.  The scientific method, which has worked so well within certain domains, did so by dealing with ‘objective’ observations.  It did not matter who was measuring the mass of a billiard ball, or what they thought.  Mass was an objective property of the billiard ball.  However, there are many aspects of uplift which require a sense of self.  For example, a woman in a poor village in Nepal needs to develop a sense of autonomy and self-reliance, rather than an expectation that an aid worker will be around to give her what she needs.  Similarly, a family expecting the community to support it, a community expecting a nation to support it, or a nation expecting that humanity will support it will diminish, rather than enhance, their ability to lift themselves up.

Discovering and developing these intrinsics of uplift is a key aspect of the cascade.  One way of doing this is to look for patterns of uplift, independent of specific projects, programs or organizations.

 Specific Activities

 Some of the activities and ideas in which I am active or planning are:

 1.      Hold a workshop on Creating an Uplift Pattern Language July 21-22, 2003.  This workshop will look at ways of creating a formal pattern language to describe ways of discovering patterns of uplift.  This will be lead by Richard Gabriel, a leading expert in both computer science and pattern languages.   Details can be found at http://www.givingspace.org/patterns/announcement.htm  (Status: in progress)

2.      Hold a workshop on technologies for pattern languages, Stanford University, August-September, 2003.  This workshop will explore formal technologies for managing, storing, merging, and visualizing patterns of uplift. (Status: in planning stage)

3.      Prepare a vision paper describing the cascade of uplift.  This will be presented at the "New Designs in Transformative Cooperation" conference, Sept. 17-20, 2003, at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University.  It will also be published as a chapter in a book prepared as part of the “Business as an Agent of a Better World” initiative at Case Western, to be published by Stanford University Press. (status: In progress, working with CWRU people now)

4.      Create an “e-mail blitz” to mark September 12, 2003 as a day of uplifting news and stories.  A simple email message would be composed asking recipients to contact media outlets, asking them to cover “things that work” stories on September 12.  The message would also ask to be passed on to others, so that there could be a global initiative to request positive stories that day.  The goal of this effort would be to show the media the public demand for positive stories, and to demonstrate an enlarged audience for this positive coverage.  If the media sees increased viewership and readership for this kind of material, they will shift their programming agenda accordingly.  A prototype of a simple web site, www.september12.org has been set up to facilitate this.  This effort is modeled after www.moveon.org, which emerged after a single message about a political issue sent to 100 recipients cascaded into 200,000 letters to Congress within just a few weeks.  This effort could be facilitated through the Images and Voices of Hope network as well as others. (status: mockup of web site available; needs support)

5.      Create an “Uplift Academy” as an overarching organization to seek out and amplify uplift patterns.  A prototype of this is available at www.upspace.org.  This academy would identify people, communities, and patterns of uplift and serve as a repository, directory, or focal point for discovering and replicating patterns.  It would also manage the “uplift scholars” around the world.  The academy would sponsor regular meetings and workshops, particularly inclusive of those from the less developed countries. (Status: under discussion now; topic of July 23 meeting)

6.      Designate and connect “Uplift Scholars” around the world.  In any community, there are those who have a particular passion to make the world a better place.  They may not fit into the existing power structures, and feel isolated and powerless.  Yet these are the very people who have the greatest potential for triggering the cascade of uplift.  Giving these people an identity as “Uplift Scholars” as well as connectivity via the Internet or other social networks will provide a fertile environment for discovering and replicating patterns of uplift.  Suppose that we are able to identify the one-in-a-thousand most generous, community-minded, compassionate people.  If we are able to reach these people among the “other 4 billion’ living outside the more developed countries, we would have a pool of 4 million uplift scholars, thinking and acting in ways of making the world a better place.  As staggering as this number may seem, it is only about one tenth the size of the eBay community. It is from this pool of scholars that we would look to find uplifting thoughts and actions. Uplift scholars would be part of a gift economy – they would be given an opportunity to give.  Perhaps a complimentary currency mechanism could be established, in which they would earn the ability to travel to the international symposia, etc. or redeem their complimentary currency in “hard” money or access to donations.  (status: “Starter Kit”prototype in draft stages by Mac Odell, topic under discussion, needs support)

7.      Hold a symposium or presentation at the World Parliament on Religion, Barcelona, Spain, July, 2004.  This would provide a convenient location for connecting with other parliament participants, as well as bringing in Uplift Scholars from around the world.  http://www.cpwr.org/what/programs/2004announce.htm (Status: under discussion, expect to file proposal by end of July)

8.      Hold a World Uplift Forum in September, 2004.  This would be the inauguration of a recurring event, collecting uplift scholars from around the world.  Unlike the power-oriented World Economic Forum or State of the World Forum, this forum would be open to “grass roots” organizers and those from less developed countries who would not ever be able to attend an international event on their own.  The forum would be coupled with a musical concert, which publicizes the event on a global scale, as well as attracts funding to pay for the event and expenses for uplift scholars.  This would be a recurring event, perhaps every two years, which would provide continuity of participants to end one event with the expectation of following up two years later. (Status: under discussion.  Rick Lukens, one of the original producers of LiveAid, is interested in producing such an event.  We estimate about $750,000 - $1,000,000 of corporate underwriting required to support it.)