Genie 101
Our Mission and "Mighty Plan"
Group Genie's mission is to pretend to create and execute a plan to stabilize Earth's
life-support systems and dramatically reduce all preventable suffering a
hundredfold before the end of this century. Although our strategies and
methods are actually designed to work, we have learned that claiming to
actually be designing a plan to stabilize the planet seems arrogant or
unbelievable to many people. It often provokes instant contempt or
ridicule. So, in order not to offend people, we have decided to pretend
to be the most powerful think tank on Earth. It's more fun this way.
No one's ego gets bruised. And we can actually do our work without
getting attacked by critical people or people with some expertise.
To many people this "simulation" will seem grandiose or
impossible. But those who have read and understood parts of our plan
will understand how our high-leverage strategies can lead to
dramatic, unexpected changes. What we do is a lot like inventing major
new inventions.
Before an invention comes along, something seems impossible to do.
Later, it becomes commonplace. Talking to someone on the other side of the
world was unimaginable two hundred years ago. Reducing suffering a
hundredfold by the end of the century seems unimaginable today. Yet,
through a series of about a dozen easy-to-understand upgrades (our
"inventions") we at Group Genie
can and do imagine it.
Our plan, Mighty Plan, is book-length, and the current version of it can be found at
MightyPlan.Org.
By the way, would anyone who was really serious about stabilizing the
planet and saving billions of lives name their plan "Mighty Plan"? We don't think so!
Benefits You Can Get -- Why Participate?
* We are doing very high-leverage good. -- Why do something to
help five or ten people when you can be part of something that will ultimately
help millions or hundreds of millions of people? Participation is
something you can be proud of.
* You can use some of our tools to improve your own life -- We've
developed over 20 life-enhancing tools. You can also help us field test
tools in development, such as Wide Wealth or parts of Proof Through the Night.
* Optimism. By learning about our major upgrades, and by passing
them on to others, you will have solid reasons to feel more optimistic about
the world.
* Small amounts of your time go a long way. People who join the
FARN can help us with short five or ten minute projects. (Surveys,
networking requests, proofreading, etc.)
* You will be a star in our real-life adventure drama. Each week
we plan to make an Action Signal video to highlight volunteer efforts and
progress on our projects. Each will be a new episode in our unfolding
drama.
The Ai Sakai
Reducing all preventable suffering on Earth a hundredfold before the end of
the century is a primary goal of ours. We have a more detailed version of this goal that we call
the Ai Sakai. ('Ai' is a Japanese word that means harmony or love. 'Sakai' is a Japanese word that means frontier, limit,
boundary.) The Ai Sakai is itself one of our seven greatest upgrades.
It's an upgrade over the goal of "world peace." World peace
is fine as a vision, but as a goal it has several major shortcomings:
1) It's too utopian, absolute and perfect. It's too all-or-nothing.
2) It has no time-frame. (By when are we to achieve world
peace?) 3) It's also ambiguous.
Do we mean just no war, or all-around peace, including economic and environmental
balance? 4) One of its biggest short-comings, however, is that
"world peace" can lead to
endless philosophical and religious arguments and speculation. Compared
to this, the Ai Sakai is refreshingly clear. We can look up the numbers,
the amount of forms of suffering that took place in the year 2000, looking at the top
twenty sources of major suffering. We simply divide this by 100, and we
have the goals for minimizing hunger, war, major communicable diseases and
other forms of suffering. This leads
to practical discussions and experimentation, not endless talk. Unlike
"World Peace" the Ai Sakai has a timeframe (the year 2100). It is
achievable, (because we are talking about preventable
suffering and premature death.) It is a goal that would tend to produce
widespread agreement, since no one likes suffering. It's a goal for
which progress can be measured, and celebrated all along the way.
It's easy to believe that the vague, perfectionistic, and conflict-causing
concept of "world peace" has done a huge disservice to
humanity. By creating an impossibly high standard for humanity, it
probably de-motivates many people. It's also causes many people to ridicule as
idealistic anyone holding a vision of a peaceful world. You could even
say that it has contributed to humanity's self-esteem problem because we are
continually failing to achieve world peace. But if the Ai Sakai were embraced, it would give
people a new standard, one toward which progress could be measured.
Of course, the Ai Sakai seems about as impossible as world peace--that is, until
you understand how we figured out how to increase the pool of donations and
volunteers to charities and their supporters by about $500
Billion a Year. And when you understand
how our superprograms can accelerate human learning and lifestyle change, then
suddenly the Sakai no longer seems so idealistic. These two upgrades
alone bring the Sakai into the realm of plausibility. Our
Proof Through the Night idea, the Golden
Rule 2.0, The Two
Tables Model, Supercharity
and the rest of our upgrades brings it even closer.
Besides the goal of a hundredfold reduction in suffering before the end of the
century, the Ai Sakai has two other components. One is at least a 90%
re-balancing or "new-balancing" of Earth's life-support systems by
2100. For example, eliminating 90% of the pollution in rivers or oceans,
relative to their worst levels of contamination. A third component is a
regular annual increase in personal happiness for those who participate in the
plan. (We expect this to happen when participants use superprograms to
learn a skill or habit that increases person happiness.) These two additional components make the Ai Sakai a
more well-rounded goal: In addition to the focus on humans and human
suffering, there is also the focus on the rest of the planet. And in
addition to a person's focus on the entire world, there is a focus on one's
own happiness and fulfillment.
Our Pretend Script and the Real-Life Drama
The upgrades we mentioned are logical upgrades, or "hard"
upgrades. Like hard science or logic, they are clearly better approaches
or methods than what most people of good will are currently doing. But
we also make use of some soft upgrades, things that won't appeal to everyone,
but are useful to many. One soft upgrade is using drama to motivate
people. Most people love drama and story. Billions of dollars are
spent on movies, books and TV dramas. Billions more on all sorts of
sports dramas. So, to stimulate engagement, we use stories in two
different ways. First, we use stories and parables to illustrate many of
the concepts in Mighty Plan. Second, we are writing a script for
humanity, and have cast ourselves in the role as 'the good guys.'
In our script we plan to create imaginary crises, and deadlines to stimulate
action. In a sense, we are creating a large game, a simulation. One
value of this simulation is that it can stimulate action and also prepare
people for real crises and challenges. Another value is that many or
perhaps most people already think in terms of scripts and roles.
Psychologically, for instance, some family members take on the role of "black sheep," other play the martyr or "the good
son or daughter." And at the same time, people have life scripts for
themselves, such as the typical "get a job, get married and have
children." What is dangerous or unfortunate is that these scripts and
roles limit people's creativity and self-expression and often lower their
self-esteem. On a greater scale, what is dangerous is that many people
assume a script for humanity. Many people believe that since humans are
basically flawed that we will necessarily destroy ourselves. This script
can help create a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the expectation of failure
helps create the failure. To counter these destructive scripts, we are
creating a script in which Group Genie generates
solutions that will turn the global situation around. Primarily our script revolves
around the spread of a chain reaction of empowerment, but many subplots
will involve preventing various economic, political and environmental
collapses that could prevent the chain reaction's spread. Another part
of the power of the pretend story is that probably more people would be
willing to act in a movie or or participate in game simulation about a chain reaction of empowerment and peace than
would be actively interested in joining such a peace movement.
At the same time, of course, there's the real-life dramas of this century and
how humanity will fare, but also there's individual dramas of billions of
lives. Right now, there are almost one billion people struggling and in
need of rescue. Millions of them will not survive dire environmental disasters, due
to almost non-existent economic and political infrastructures. It is
already too late to help them. But there are many people who will be at
risk in 10, 20 or 30 years. Using our strategies, you may be able to
play a real rescuer role. (Or, if people fail to use or strategies
or similar ones, we or our children may join the victims.) But our
vision and our expectation is this: Because of the firepower of the real
ideas and methods we have created, skilled and caring people will join us, so
as to communicate the methods to the world, and make the programs available
worldwide. The genies, artisans and FARN of Group Genie will face and overcome many
obstacles, sometimes through great leaps of imagination, but other times through
simple actions that add up. We imagine that some of the people who
use our superprograms will go on to create other programs that dramatically increase people's ability to make lifestyle changes
that promote security, health, self-expression and solidarity with those in
need. -- That's our story, and we're sticking to it!
For a key article, one that gives a more in-depth assessment of our work,
comparing it to another approach, see Lester
Brown's Plan B 3.0 versus Group Genie's Mighty Plan. We highly recommend this article to those wanting to an
introduction to our work.
For the organizational structure of Group Genie, see "Join
Us'."