Introduction E9F5FC

Questions FFFFC0

• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

See: Talk

The Orchard of Thoughts: An Alternative Culture of Growing in Not Knowing

Post-Truth makes sense in a culture which focuses on what we know. An alternative is to focus on what we don't know. Minciu Sodas was an online laboratory for independent thinkers which from 1998 to 2010 developed such an alternative culture. (Minciu Sodas means "The Orchard of Thoughts" in Lithuanian.)

The business model of Minciu Sodas was to encourage independent thinkers to think out loud, to work openly on their own projects, and to help others, all in the Public Domain, and thereby be ready to work as teams for paid work as it arose. Leadership was organized around personal growth. Twenty working groups were organized around the most active participants' deepest values in life. They were encouraged to lead their groups by investigating questions they didn't know the answer to, but wished to answer. The resulting culture of integrity made it possible for participants in the West to sponsor small research projects in Africa of typically 100 euros, and ultimately, for Minciu Sodas's global team to create the My Food Story wiki for a Silicon Valley client.

Most spectacularly, Minciu Sodas organized the Pyramid of Peace to avert genocide in Kenya in 2008. 100 online assistants helped 100 on-the-ground peacemakers to constructively engage hostile youth by "looking at everything from their point of view". Seven practical principles (such as "be vulnerable") leveraged not-knowing by way of theoretical counterquestions (such as "Would it make any difference?") Such empathetic principles would be effective with Putin or Trump.

Individuals in mainstream culture can thus invest themselves in an alternative, distributed culture by investigating their own questions, working with friends to foster a shared culture of not knowing, and engaging enemies by imagining their point of view.