AndriusKulikauskas January 18, 2009 16:22 CET I want to send out my thoughts on a Worknets Charter for a culture of independent thinkers, which might in ten or twenty years have 100,000 active and 1,000,000 supportive participants. My thought is that I author such a charter so as to express my vision and then to evolve that charter over the years with our help. Here are the parts...

Preamble

We aspire to bring forth a culture of, by and for thoughtful people.

We ever consider, affirm and fulfill our expectations of ourselves to share this dream.

We seek to know the truth and share it completely. We are hurt that those who cherish the truth, those who wish to agree slowly, soundly, truly and deeply, are often left aside. They are marginalized and isolated. Whereas those who agree quickly, easily, carelessly or thoughtlessly, end up in the center of society, the focus of its attention and power. We take heart to organize our own culture which turns our attention to those who are thoughtful.

Thoughtful people are ready to take up any perspective, empathize and respond. We grow ever more thoughtful how we might "love our neighbors as ourselves". A focus on independent perspectives, and reaching out to original sources, leads to peer-to-peer relationships.

What do we mean by a culture of, by and for thoughtful people? We are learning to be family, to be brothers and sisters, to fall in love and be true in love, to marry and raise children, to appreciate our elders, to comfort the sick, to include all and accept each of us in turn as the center of the universe. We are ever ready to give up ourselves to center around another. We enjoy inspiration from others that we might indeed go beyond ourselves.

We believe that our culture is the foundation that might be shared or leveraged by the many collaborative movements of people who are remaking their lives and our world.

This charter supports this culture by defining our expectations.

We want everybody to use their own best judgment.

Practical Rules

Our culture is one where, for each of us, "What you believe is what happens". Together we foster a commons where each participant works according to their own judgement, their own motivations and their own criteria. This makes for our practical rules:

• Venues are Public Domain by default. (We want each person to use their own best judgement.)
• Money can bring people together, but you can't pay people to care. (We want each person to draw from their own deepest motivations.)
• We want all individuals to succeed. (We want each person to satisfy their own personal criteria.)

How people benefit

In who we are:

• Love: Moral support
• Values: Personal growth by clarifying one's values.

• Investigations: Asking harder questions by including more minds.
• Dreams: Integrating one's hopes into a society for making one's dreams real.

• Endeavors: Attracting response and building momentum for one's endeavors.
• Relationships: Discovering resources for making a living and one's projects

The growth of the independent thinker.

We grow in the sense of "love your neighbor as your self". We can be ever more sensitive and responsive to ourselves and others. We thus grow as leaders and in appreciation of leadership and by exercising leadership.

We allow that everyone is the same, and that everyone grows, so it's natural that we are at various levels of maturity.

People may think that things happen on their own, but as we mature we become more aware of the leadership involved.

We accept each person growing by their own will at their own pace.

We grow along with each person who grows.

Everybody has a capacity for independent thinking, but not everbody has to exercise that, and we all have the same rights as human beings regardless.

Everybody thinks, but not everybody cares about thinking.

We support people by fostering their leadership at the stage of growth they identify with:

• Understanding oneself as an independent thinker. What does that mean? Learning to think out loud.
• Learning about oneself by doing projects.
• Integrating oneself, being well rounded, resolving one's tensions, "knowing oneself" by clarifying one's own deepest value. Leading a working group. Linking of social and individual.
• Leading by what we don't know rather than what we know. Investigating.
• Wishing for others to challenge us to grow. Inviting others likewise. Checking one's selfish influence with a vantage point (one's God) that's greater than one's self. Fostering a sensitivity to that vantage point.
• ...learning to grow and live forever...

Where is God relevant or not?

We are open to where God is relevant, both as a concept and as a participant.

God is ultimately relevant as a shared reference point for all of the potential of all for conscious growth.

God may or may not exist.

• Caring about God is ok
• Loving one's enemy
• Checking one's self, distinguishing between God and one's self
• Reaching out to the hard to reach
• the hope that God is everyone
• God wants us to live forever

We learn about God as a participant.

Layers of a culture for independent thinkers.

Leadership is dangerous and should be cultured so that it is of the proper size, and people don't lead others more than themselves.

Levels of unity for "we".

• God - who is alone - as an independent thinker. Supposing that our totality is supportive of independent thinking.
• Independent thinkers -
• Global village centers
• Self-learner thematic paths
• Festivals
• Interest groups
• Concords

We can ultimately be an ethos of about 100,000,000 active and 1,000,000,000 supportive like Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Science, etc.

Why today? Historical relevance

• Acknowledgement that even if there is one to follow, but not everybody will follow, if they are true to what they believe. So it must be enough to care.
• Everyone being original, authentic, no use in being a copy. End of a culture of following and not taking responsibility.
• Worknets is open to all cultures, beliefs, movements, acknowledges lovely endeavors and seeks to learn and merge where possible although that is difficult
• Worknets is a practical attempt at "the kingdom of heaven" as sketched by Jesus
• Many of his teachings which were unthinkable (love your enemy, give everything away, ...) are now thinkable
• We truly are able to reach out to everybody
• We affect our entire planet
• We have explored our surroundings, and so now what is general, universal is no longer to be discovered beyond, outside ourselves, but within and amongst us, inside ourselves.
• We have the opportunity, the need and the responsibility to have maturity on behalf of all
• We can make tangible all knowledge, truth

Activity - creating a world for learning

We are learning to be family, learning to share, and sharing our learning. We are building a commons where possible. A conceptual commons.

Ways to participate - personal leadership at different levels.

We openly grow.

We are thinking out loud.

We share our life experience.

We look for patterns, condensed life experience.

We check for the truth of patterns, ever tested, ever intuited, in terms of real life.

We are willing to let go to learn the truth.

Ethical lessons as the core of self-learning in that ethics is the thinking that we can all share, and the aspiration of our culture.

Economic principles

Challenge of why private interests might support a public commons. Will truly work when we discover why.

• Working for free and for pay
• Meeting each other halfway
• Being careful with the poor
• Learning to share

Participating and showing that one is a participant

• Accepting the charter means that one will abide the "practical rules" and clarify where one has differences with the vision so far
• Accepting the charter, adding one's comments and clarifications
• Posting at one's website the Worknets feeds and/or widgets with our Meet with us! Shop with us! Network with us! Chat with us! latest news.
• Being active through these channels
• Sharing one's deepest value, investigatory question, etc.
• Accepting by-words (words as currency)

Applying and shaping the charter

Key role for working group leaders

• defining subcultures based on their own priorities regarding various needs and values
• to agree on specific policies, interpretations and expectations
• to have their own charters for their own venues
• ultimately, to be the authority for the charter

Evolving governance

• Worknets Charter is authored by Andrius Kulikauskas as a practical consequence of his quest to know everything and apply that usefully
• Worknets - a healthy organization has a wider movement
• Worknets is initiated and organized by Minciu Sodas, a base for independent thinkers which Andrius owns and leads
• Worknets needs to evolve beyond that as a complete culture with a governance structure that includes all as leaders to the fullness of their ambition
• Worknets evolves through our learning in practice how to work together on projects, share resources, organize content, help each other grow.
• Worknets Charter is rewritten yearly or more frequently to embrace this evolution.

Acknowledgements

JanetFeldman, FranzNahrada, BenoitCouture, ..., God

Related Values and Patterns

Subcultures

Franz Nahrada's Principles

"The general features of this new culture that is emerging and finally might be captured in a Worknets charter seem to be the following for me:

1. All our work is based and focused on the work of creative, dedicated individuals who follow their deepest values and strive to share their work with others who do the same. We arrive at a point in history where finally the individual is really in focus, not as abstract being, but as a special contributor to a wealth of contributions.

2. We seek the voluntary collaboration and community with those who encourage us and make us grow in the perseverance of our goals, as much as we seek to encourage others. This is true in the global and the local scale, although at the beginning it might be much easier to find such resonance in the Internet than in our physical surrounding. Without this resonance we cannot work.

3. We deeply miss in the current educational system a sensitivity for such individual "calling" and a system of encouragement to reach our highest possibities and attain answers for our actual questions.

4. We want therefore decide to create a mutual support system to challenge each other and hold us accountable for what we have declared as our central personal values - rather than follow abstract belief systems. We wish everybody to succeed. We think that this will lead us to the "best of all possible worlds".

5. We value science and competence as elements that are indispensible steps of mastering our goal. We feel that every goalsetting unveils questions that we cannot currently answer and things that we cannot yet do. Knowing and artfulness are universal goals. We want everybody to learn and know more. We already know that we live far below our possibilities.

6. Our contribution as "Worknets" to the emerging world of peer production and commons is a network of "embedded mentoring" and constant productive dialogue. We see the personal relations that help us grow as necessary contribution; as well as individual responsibility and leadership. We want everybody to grow into leadership.

7. Our goal is also to reach out to the ones that are hard to reach. The proof of our concept is a world where nobody is left out.

8. We do not limit ourselves to any particular culture, ideology or religion, but we appreciate the sense of transcendence that is the base to all these phenomena: that the human nature is by its very nature bound to seeking durabilty and meaning beyond our limited individual vanishing lives. God is no delusion, but a form in which this search for our true self appears.

9. We want to build an infrastructure to facilitate not only the communicative process, but the process of living out or goals. The infrastructure will be informational, but it will also be physical. An important part of this infrastructure will be Global Villages."

Discussion

The PublicDomain relates to the idea that "the owner of all fruit is God" - thank you, Benoit!

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