The Gaia Vedas : Preface

The 30,000-Foot View …

Image generated by the author in Omnigraffle.

[Author’s Note: This essay is a working draft. It may be subject to future revisions as I tie the various pieces of TGV together more tightly.]

What I Am Attempting Here …

“How to build a world that works?”

This book is my answer to that question.

Why It Matters

Things in my world are breaking apart … failing … being crushed. There is a pervasive air of despondency … a feeling of malaise … among many people. People just don’t need to feel better … they need to have a tangible experience that things … are getting better. And their connection to — and awareness of — their own agency needs to be renewed.

People need hope. And they need a tangible — credible — reason to hope. They need a new, inspiring narrative of — and for — the future … a vision of what is possible.

My Thumbnail Bio

When I was a kid growing up in the ’70s, respected experts in key fields were saying the same thing … a top-to-bottom deep analysis and rethinking was needed in critical, intersecting, and complex knowledge domains … knowledge domains that were central to the continued existence of our civilization. Our collective understanding of these domains … needed a profound reworking … & drastic improvement … if dire, almost certain, predictable consequences were to be avoided. Some of these knowledge domains included … economics, wealth distribution, energy consumption, education, medical, national / global security, environment / ecology, civil rights, privacy, journalism, science & science oversight.

I watched and waited … eager to see what the top minds would come up with … when this daunting challenge was tackled. But over the years and decades which followed … no one undertook such a messy, convoluted, and gargantuan endeavor. No one rose to the challenge. No one wanted to undertake such a tedious — and potentially hopelessly complex — challenge. We slowly slouched and bumbled our way forward through the years … and those ‘top experts’ eventually grew silent … aging, and then retiring, or dying.

The “ball” kept getting kicked down the field. Everyone seemed to be waiting for a “grownup” to show up … and ‘take care of business.’

That need for a deep rethinking — across the board — that those august experts had identified was real and profound. Eventually, largely in exasperation, I gave up waiting … and started in on this incredibly lengthy — and for one person — hopelessly complex undertaking … hoping to make a [useful] dent in our existential to-do pile / mountain.

I ended up getting much further than I expected.

This work — the Gaia Vedas — is the fruit of those labors. I have analyzed and reworked core models and maps in 15+ essential and deeply interconnected knowledge domains … that I consider foundational for human life to flourish.

The Gaia Vedas represent a set of the models I see as critical to the foundation — and long-term sustainability — of Gaia Pacifica. Gaia Pacifica is my vision of what a global sustainable utopia can look like.

“The book I needed when I was 14.”

This … this is the book I needed when I was 14. I needed to know who we humans were … how to be a fully present, connected, contributing adult … and how to shape and contribute to our collective journey.

It is the task of every teenager … to poke at and challenge the instructions, the templates, the worldview … that adults are attempting to pass on to them.

Before we ‘build’ our own worlds — as kids — we should learn [how] to question / assemble them.

The Gaia Vedas are the work I would have liked to have been given when I reached 14 years of age … a map of the world … incomplete, but daring to dream of wholeness.

My hope is that my legacy … for future kids … is that they will have available the tools to create a connected, empowering relationship … with their own soma [body], their neighboring humans, their extended familes / communities / tribes, and [their local physical reality] the matterstream.

A Continuation of The Great Conversation

The Gaia Vedas represent an extension of The Great Conversation (TGC).

The Great Conversation is basically the millennia-old discussion … about what it means to be human, what the world is like, and how we can best make our way in that world … and live our lives.

The Great Conversation … is usually associated with the Great Books of the Western World … and is often said to occur between their authors (and to a lesser degree, their readers).

But really the western canon represents simply the most heavily represented / sanctioned and discussed surviving works … in the west. Western canon is skewed … identifying itself as … paramount.

The Great Conversation is really the purview of all humans and all human cultures … throughout time.

The Gaia Vedas (TGV) represent a return to that core set of conversations … and includes a series of fundamental reexaminations of our assumptions, beliefs, blindspots, ritualized thinking, and actual lived choices …at the level of the individual, at the level of families & community, and at the level of species. It, in particular, challenges — and upgrades — the core assumptions and mythos of the West.

This work should challenge you. In the course of going through it … expect to …

• Have thought-provoking conversations … grounded in real-world data (and yes, science).
• Question long-held assumptions.
• Wrestle with how to raise / change the status quo.
• Question authority.
• Use — and deepen — your intelligence & discernment.
• Aim for heroic goals …
• … While setting specific measurable results.
• Invest in hope.
• Double down on compassion & kindness.
• Create a space — in your life & community — for brand-free wonder, mystery, & grace.

This is the book I needed when I was 14.

When Is a Book Not a Book

The Gaia Vedas are already a bit … different. I am releasing it … first, a series of blog posts … and then later, in ebook (Kindle format) and paperback formats.

This means that they are — right out of gate — a part of our rich hyperlinked world … our global networked conversation.

In addition, they are …

• a conversation … between seemingly divergent beliefs, assumptions, & agreements …
• a new OS for humanity …
• a blueprint … [for world-building] …
• a set of instructions … [for a new social game / culture] …
• a self-powered augmented-reality (AR) script … allowing you to see the world through my eyes …
• a challenge … to expectations, traditions, and corporate spreadsheets …
• a plea … for noble action & inspired aims …

In the end, we have to choose … choose the elements that will serve as a foundation for the worldview that we are going to build. Choose what we give preeminence to … and, as a result, choose what is conditional on those foundational choices. It’s a crapshoot. Reason alone — within the matrix we are enmeshed in — will never let us ‘derive’ with perfect confidence … the perfect set of starting assumptions.

​So we have to choose … in the dark. I have made my best guess here today. My starting / core assumptions aren’t “right” … they are simply the best I have to offer. I pass them on to you … to toy with, examine, poke at, use, improve upon, riff on, and / or discard … as humans do.

Good luck to us all.

My name is Alutha Zatoichi Jamancar … and I am completely accountable and responsible for the future we are living into. I am at work building Gaia Pacifica … a global sustainable utopia.

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