Reports from the Knowledge Labs about our recent findings, research topics, and interviews with lifestyle leaders who are creating their own futures.
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How to stimulate your own powers of foresight. Consider the following thought provokers. Ask yourself, in these categories what are the brand new trends and forces? Which are the ones growing in importance? Which current forces are loosing their steam? Which have peaked or are reversing themselves? Which are the "wildcards" about to disrupt us in the future? POLITICAL AND TECHNICAL thought for food: Electronics, Materials, Energy, Fossil, Nuclear, Alternative, Other, Manufacturing (techniques), Agriculture, Machinery and Equipment, Distribution, Transportation (Urban, Mass, Personal, Surface, Sea, Subsurface, Space), Communication (Printed, Spoken, Interactive, Media), Computers (Information, Knowledge, Storage & Retrieval, Design, Network Resources), Post-Cold War, Third World, Conflict (Local, Regional, Global), Arms Limitation, Undeclared Wars, Terrorism, Nuclear Proliferation, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Governments (More/Less Power and Larger or Smaller Scale), Taxes, Isms: Nationalism, Regionalism, Protectionism, Populism, Cartels, Multinational Corporations, Balance of Trade, Third Party Payments, Regulations (OSHA, etc.) Environmental Impact, U.S. Prestige Abroad. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC Food for thought:
Labor Movements, Unemployment / Employment Cycles, Recession, Employment Patterns, Work Hours / Schedules, Fringe Benefits, Management Approaches, Accounting Policies, Productivity, Energy Costs, Balance of Payments, Inflation, Taxes, Rates of Real Growth, Distribution of Wealth, Capital Availability and Costs, Reliability of Forecasts, Raw Materials, Availability and Costs, Global versus National Economy, Market versus Planned Economies, Generations: Y, X, Boomers, Elderly, Urban vs. Rural Lifestyles, Affluent vs. Poor, Neighborhoods and Communities, Planned or Organic Growth.
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The Journal of 2020 Foresight
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Saturday, December 31, 2005
A Path of Original Experience: Where Only Fools and Heroes Dare to Tread
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
“Earl Green is a painter so he painted the sign, he added two lines. It’s like a cow brand y’know, how they have brands on ranches. The Double L like that and Earl and Edith moved into the place and they were very clever; you know, Earl just added two lines. We talked about how Edith and Earl renamed the Double E and they almost made history. The locals rose up. They were mad as hell ’cause it used to be the Double L. Change comes slowly in the country. I told you that a long time ago.”
Neil Young & Crazy Horse “Greendale”
DOUBLE NICKEL RANCH. Is it only me or is the world making less and less sense? Mixing politics and religion always seems to devolve into never-ending life-draining arguments.
Journal of 2020 Foresight: Isn’t all this talk about religion and myths dangerous today?
Pathfinder: It certainly seems that way. But, you know throughout the history of the world we’ve tried to grapple with the origin of life and our existence in an infinite period of time and space.
J2020F: I know. But, I mean dangerous in the sense that fundamentalism and terrorism and extreme notions about what awaits us in an after life -- as terrorist martyrs or ordinary citizens --seems more urgent.
Pathfinder: Oh, you mean the extreme “us versus them.” Religion against religion -- “Pre-emptive Christianity” taking on all comers major and minor -- against science -- creationism, intelligent design vs. evolution, against humanists and athiests and so on.
J2020F: Exactly. Kind of like the deadly crisis created in the late 1800’s by the Fish-Eating Messiah and the Ghost Dancing Horse?
Pathfinder: Good point. But, at The Rendezvous we chose to focus on the inner dialog and imagery we all – Homo sapiens – experience at an emotional, life-changing or spiritual crossroads
J2020F: When we set out to follow our dreams but fall unprepared into the realm of original experience?
Pathfinder: What, are you reading cue cards or something?
J2020F: My own. What’s the difference between our own dreams and myths?
Pathfinder: My personal hero, Joseph Campbell said dreams are the personal canvas – the background to our conscious lives. Myths are like society’s dreams.
J2020F: So as long as your personal dreams synch with society’s you’re normal, right?
Pathfinder: But, when they aren’t you’re in for what Campbell called an “adventure in the dark forest.” And, if you can’t live outside of that society – as artists, visionaries, leaders and heroes do – you’ll become neurotic.
J2020F: Why?
Pathfinder: Because, the path of original experience hasn’t been interpreted for you.
J2020F: So, you’ve got to work it out all by yourself?
Pathfinder: You bet, over and over again throughout your own life span on this planet.
J2020F: And yet, we are not alone.
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Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.
7:48 AM
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Sedona to Manhattan, Same 30,000 Year Old Play Performed in Local Costumes
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
“The term ‘rancho’ is Spanish…. ‘El Rancho’ kind of thing. It’s a funny thing in America. Spanish was there a long time ago, but still every once in awhile somebody writes down ‘rancho’ just because it sounds cool. So that’s what they did…. It used to be called the Double L, but now it’s called the Double E. It was a relatively easy change to make.”
Neil Young & Crazy Horse “Greendale”
DOUBLE NICKEL RANCH. During both of Pathfinder’s workshops some very fundamental questions about our life – our personal life story, and everything that has happened before we took our first breath -- commanded center stage in the Joseph Campbell and Geronimo Conference Rooms.
Journal of 2020 Foresight: As a result of your campfire discussions and your workshop dialogues, it sounds like everybody wanted to contribute to something bigger than themselves, to some kind of “Big Picture.”
Pathfinder: Well, once you begin considering the major events in the development of life on planet Earth, you branch off into an almost infinite number of paths.
J2020F: Like?
Pathfinder: Time scale, to begin with – millions of years ago and thousands of years ago. How many years ago did each of the known species of life entered the scene? When were the continents fused into one? Roughly 300 millions of years ago.
J2020F: You knew I was going to ask.
Pathfinder: Well, we were just marveling at the implications of the migration paths, fossilized footprints and land bridges.
J2020F: I imagine the Double Nickel Rendezvous conversations grew heated when some of those with vested interests in opposite worldviews exchanged their opinions.
Pathfinder: Not really. I don’t believe everyday people have polarized themselves into one extreme position or another, as the radical fundamental zealots would have us believe. Anyway, we set the ground rules early on and took a more historical view.
J2020F: For instance?
Pathfinder: We could all pretty much agree that biological evolution was even supported in ancient times. As early as 400 BC the Greeks taught that the sun, earth, life, humans, civilization, and society emerged over eons.
J2020F: So, is it fair to say the spirit of the events had more to do with respecting rather than rejecting each other’s belief system rather than obnoxiously arguing for a specific point of view?
Pathfinder: Yes. In fact, almost everyone agreed we need more venues to explore these kinds of discussions, if for no other reason than to better anticipate paradigm shifts.
J2020F: Well considering that we each only have one life to lead, and as you make one choice, you rule out another – you can’t have and do everything.
Pathfinder: So, it’s good to consider everyone else’s life story for commonalities and opportunities to explore something outside your own base of experience or limited point of view.
J2020F: As you said in Basecamp, since beginningless time people have wanted to know where life will take them.
Pathfinder: Exactly. One of my favorite quotes begins with, “The story of a human life grips us very directly because it is a case history of the condition we all share.”
J2020F: Even as we appear very conventional on the outside to the world.
Pathfinder: Yes. The history of the world, the different flavors of religion, all the scientific schools of thought each help us in one way or another to understand that we have much more in common than we know.
J2020F: And, what it means to be human.
Pathfinder: And, more importantly, to answer their own unique calling -- as an adventure. If I may, I’d like to quote Joseph Campbell from his “The Power of Myth” series of interviews with Bill Moyers:
“CAMBPELL: You've got the same body, with the same organs and energies, that Cro-Magnon man had thirty thousand years ago.
Living a human life in New York City or living a human life in the caves, you go through the same stages of childhood, coming to sexual maturity, transformation of the dependency of childhood into the responsibility of manhood or womanhood, marriage, then failure of the body, gradual loss of its powers, and death.
You have the same body, the same bodily experiences and so you respond to the same images. For example, a constant image is that of the conflict of the eagle and the serpent. The serpent bound to the earth, the eagle in spiritual flight -- isn't that conflict something we all experience?
And then, when the two amalgamate, we get a wonderful dragon, a serpent with wings. All over the earth people recognize these images. Whether I'm reading Polynesian or Iroquois or Egyptian myths, the images are the same and they are talking about the same problems.
MOYERS: They just wear different costumes when they appear at different times?
CAMPBELL: Yes. It's as though the same play were taken from one place to another, and at each place the local players put on local costumes and enact the same old play.
MOYERS: And these mythic images are carried forward from generation to generation, almost unconsciously."
J2020F: So, you’ve got to work it out all by yourself over and over again throughout your own life span.
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Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.
7:19 AM
Friday, December 09, 2005
Migration Road Trips: 40,000 Year Old Footprints in Mexican Volcano Ash
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
“Falling From Above. I’m doing some new songs that I wrote a while ago and this is chapter one. Just didn’t want to confuse you right out of the gate. Gonna see how far I can take you here with this new material, just see what happens. I still remember my old songs…. These songs are about a family that lives in a place called the Double E Rancho, outside of Greendale, just a few miles down a little road up in the hills.“
Neil Young & Crazy Horse “Greendale”
DOUBLE NICKEL RANCH. A few months post- rendezvous. Kicking around mortality, meaning, perspective and road trips. Or, more to the point, reflecting on paths taken or not.
Journal of 2020 Foresight: So, the “double nickel-ers” remembered road trips they had taken when they were just pups – “quarter-ers,” as it were.
Pathfinder: Sure. During one “cross-generation” conversation, the “Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced?” popped into my head. The “quarter-ers” (25 year-olds) want to become experienced in their own way, the “double nickel-ers” (55 year olds) have been there and done that – but now it’s time for something else. You’ve even talked about it when you described some of the conversations you’ve had recently with the executives you coach.
J2020F: Now, that would be a concert – Jimi Hendrix and Mick Jagger?
Pathfinder: Some things are better left undone. Still if Hendix had survived his youthful excesses you can’t help but wonder what he’d be like in concert today?
J2020F: But, he didn’t. And, we’re back to our mortality – what almost every “double nickel-er” has experienced all too often – parents, spouses, brothers, or sisters – what baby boomer hasn’t lost someone recently?
Pathfinder: The trick, I suppose is to keep that certainty – that we will, in fact all die – in the forefront of our minds as a source of vitality and passion, instead of as a depressing long slide into oblivion.
J2020F: Most of “my execs” find themselves in midlife transition – but with a long severance package. They can take the time to find meaning in their lives, unlike other victims of downsizing, mergers and acquisitions or outsourcing.
Pathfinder: I believe life stories, the ones our members continue to share -- stories of transition and transformation – have always been with us – at least since the time we homo sapiens realized we all had lit fuses leading to the end of our lives.
J2020F: Speaking of which, I heard a newscast that reported a scientific controversy – 40,000 year old footprints were discovered in Mexico. Or not.
Pathfinder: Or not?
J2020F: They may have been 1 million years older – that’s the controversy.
Pathfinder: Just think, though. If they are indeed footprints and they can be verified to be 40,000 years old, that’s almost 28,000 years earlier than the accepted time frame for when humans crossed the northern land bridge from Asia.
J2020F: And that’s what I find fascinating – the core ancestors from which all of our ancestral tribes descended and migrated out of Africa can now be verified by DNA studies. We’re all one big happy family!
Pathfinder: Talk about road trips – our ancestors made their way through the harshest of conditions across continents -- which were much closer together than they are today, and geographical sub-regions as if they were navigating major migration rivers.
J2020F: On the map you can see how they branched out into their own tribal territories.
Pathfinder: And eventually, they slogged their way here, into the North American Continent as we know it today.
Pathfinder: Hardly anyone lived long enough to experience a midlife crisis. And, yet today a death or another significant disruption in our life bursts our status quo bubble. A significant emotional event opens us up to some very fundamental questions about our life – and for many -- rekindles a fascination with everything that has happened before.
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Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.
6:49 AM
Saturday, December 03, 2005
The Big Blue Marble Going Up in Smoke While We Eye-Ball a Milky Way
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
“There’s a lot going on in Greendale that I don’t know about either. Can you imagine? I mean, I made it up and I don’t know what the hell is goin’ on. So don’t feel bad if you feel a little out of it with this. No one really knows…. “
Neil Young & Crazy Horse “Greendale”
DOUBLE NICKEL RANCH. Somewhere up in the hills on the outskirts of Greendale. We know it’s in the known Universe spinning around on the Big Blue Marble, but exactly where? Those weren’t the only questions on Pathfinder’s mind.
Journal of 2020 Foresight: You described the big picture nature to the story-swapping around the Double Nickel campfires – cross-generational even conversations.
Pathfinder: Letting your eyes follow the trail of smoke and sparks shooting out and up from the bonfires will do that. Looking up to the stars your mind wanders to things like multiverses, the big bang, cosmology and astrophysics, string theory – lot’s of stuff the “double nickel-ers” found interesting coming out of the mouths of the “quarter” generation – having been forced to study the topics in college.
J2020F: I tried to comprehend Brian Greene’s “The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory” one time while laying on my back in a beach chair gazing up at the milky way and witnessing a shooting star extravaganza one camping trip in Big Sur.
Pathfinder: And?
J2020F: And, my mind hurt at first trying to grock the 11-dimensions of M-theory. But, as I let the Milky Way pull me into the night, I felt expansive – I underwent an expansive religious experience.
Pathfinder: I felt the same thing when we visited Bryce and Zion National Parks at the end of our road trip. I’d been reading about the geologic time scale before tripping out while gazing at the hoodoos.
J2020F: Awe inspiring, but I also felt very small and insignificant.
Pathfinder: I believe we all felt the same way around the Double Nickel campfires – especially during lulls in the conversation. You come to appreciate that you’re just a particle of sand in the great expanse of time on planet earth.
J2020F: Stories of transition and transformation – have always been with us and continued.
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Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.
6:41 PM
Friday, December 02, 2005
What’s It All About? Two Bits for an Adventure on the Way to Greendale
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
“If there is a huge map, which there is, that just shows Greendale, very little over here, there’s mountains and farms, over there, there’s an ocean…. Well, Greendale is a nice town, but it has its quirks….“
Neil Young & Crazy Horse “Greendale”
DOUBLE NICKEL RANCH. Closed to all but members and past participants, the first ever 55 Rendezvous continues online. For a brief time the ranch became home to explorers from all walks of life -- and from almost all stages of life.
Journal of 2020 Foresight: I’m going to ask each of you – the road trip members of the Corps of Re-discovery -- the same opening question. Why the Double Nickel Ranch and what do you take away from the experience?
Pathfinder: Well first of all, to me, the Double Nickel represented both the speed limit we never obeyed – this isn't being recorded is it? And, it signifies an age – extended mid-life – pre-retirement, if you will -- when you’ve got enough of life’s experience under your belt that you’ve been there and done just about everything there is to do.
J2020F: So it’s the draw of the open road – the age-old path to finding yourself with no guides or maps telling you or showing you a way. And it marks a time for a generation of 78 million at a crossroads in their life, right?
Pathfinder: Yes, but don’t forget we hosted quite a few from the other huge demographic – “the twenty-somethings” – the 80 million that fit the target demographic for “Road Trip Nation” on PBS.
J2020F: For the “double-nickel” generation, it’s about re-discovering passions buried beneath layers of work and family responsibilities.
Pathfinder: And, for the “quarter” generation, it’s about “discovering their distinct talents, passions, and idiosyncrasies” – and enjoying the freedom of not knowing where life will take them for the time being.
J2020F: So, both are in a life transition. The “quarter” generation experiences life in the prolonged school to work transition, while the “double nickel” generation comes to grip with their own mortality.
Pathfinder: One generation stretched it’s wings to leave the nest and to fly on it’s own and start another nest – renting at first with other “Friends.” The other’s figuring out just what to do about their empty-nest.
J2020F: You know, what I found fascinating was how they traded life stories without resorting to parent-teacher roles. Maybe it was the whole Mountain Man Rendezvous theme – spinning yarns and trying to top one and another?
Pathfinder: Yeah. What struck me – and is my answer to the second part of your question – the conversations turned to big picture topics and I realized a good number of double-nickel-ers wouldn’t mind returning to a university campus experience – while the “quarter-ers” wanted to get out of town ripe for new adventures.
J2020F: Big picture?
Pathfinder: Sure, the-- What’s-It-All-About? -- questions
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Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved
4:56 PM
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