social systems of the future and how to get there

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An Observation: The Most Successful and Accomplished People In The World Are Those Who Can Get Others To Move In The Same Direction In Which They Are Aiming To Go Themselves … And When This Direction Becomes Socially Organized They Are Also The Ones Who Contribute The Most To Others.

Few things seem so self evident as the...(more) idea that we are foremost and fundamentally social beings, designed and destined to communicate and connect with one another. The fabric of human experience therefore can be said to be woven in relation to and with others.

This space has been designed to create an opening to exploring how we create our shared realities and how we influence and are in turn influenced by others as we jointly move together through our lives. In addition the intention in exploring these ideas has a practical, applied orientation … becoming better at constructing futures that work.

Gaining and refining the skills of social interaction begins with the classic philosopher’s rant:

“Know Thy Self.”

Knowing ourselves always requires us knowing ourselves in context. Then once we’ve begun to know ourselves it becomes possible to recognize what is about ourselves and what is about others - and maybe even what is about both ourselves and others. Becoming self-aware includes becoming aware of the skills we currently possess and those skills we currently lack, and the possibility of building massive new skills of social influence …

Since the beginning of barter and trade, and the subsequent rise of a merchant class, the domain of business has come to the forefront of moving the human social experience forward. Now we are again on the edge of a new and emergent wave - a movement beyond the local orientation to a non-local orientation. We are beginning to see a movement away from self interest being replaced by a movement towards a larger, broader, more encompassing, more aware social interest … a larger, broader, more emcompassing, more aware and conscious approach to doing business.

A conscious approach is a non-local approach … a social approach … an approach that extends in space and time beyond the individual or simple individual interest. Taking a conscious approach opens the way for creating futures that work for everyone … and demands the skills of social influence to make them happen.

“Simply, we cannot avoid influencing and being influenced by others … the essence of human experience is social.”

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The way we organize ourselves seems to many to be largely made up ... invented ... constructed ... and we call these social structures and systems things like culture and/or society. This board is dedicated to examining our social structures...(more)

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skillsurfers said Sep 19, 2008, 2:15 PM:

Hey all of you
we are a group of around 10 young people doin a project called “skillsurfers”
we will be travellin round in our 3 busses this winter and spring in france, spain and portugal
to exchange ideas and experiences and discuss with different people about a better world ;-)

our main topics will be
education networks, fairtrade and solidarity economy, lohas, open source and other… (see our profile)
so why it fits in here: we want to examine together how social systems of the future could look like…

we thought using the internet and cool social networks would be a good chance to meet interesting people from these countries who might be interested in our tour and help us on our way
- so here we are on gaia :-)

if you are interested we would be happy to meet you on our way!

have a look at our profile and our website www.skillsurfers.eu
as well as www.couchsurfing.com/people/skillsurfers

thanks guys
love&peace :-)

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social systems of the future and how to get there

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