Rampant crime and corruption. Wealth inequality. Ecological disasters. Political polarization. War and conflict. Homelessness. Stagnant wages and inflation. Isolation and Alienation.
Do you feel it? Most people do these days.
Many thought leaders such as Daniel Schmactenberger, Jordan Hall, and Jamie Wheal, have made the case that a primary cause of the issues with our civilization today is a breakdown in sensemaking. Sensemaking refers to the dynamic process of collectively finding meaning and orientation within a complex, ever-changing world.
It goes beyond mere information processing, encompassing our values, experiences, and relationships, ultimately shaping our choices, and fostering systems that thrive in the face of uncertainty.
Sensemaking is the means by which people communicate effectively, by agreeing on a clear and coherent way of representing our shared experiences. The degradation of sensemaking we are experiencing these days, threatens to disrupt those systems on which we depend, and dissolve the bonds that hold our communities together.
As the definitions of words and concepts morph in an increasingly fragmented society, the meaning of what people are trying to communicate gets blurred and distorted. The most clearly articulated point can easily be misinterpreted and misunderstood due to the different perspectives of senders and receivers.
The story of the Tower of Babel told in the Book of Genesis is a perfect allegory for the crisis in sensemaking we face today.
In the old testament story, God said: “Look. They are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
We can only speculate as to why an all-powerful God would not want people to be able to communicate effectively and be capable of accomplishing things. Perhaps this ‘God’ was just a representation of the ‘powers-that-be’ at the time, who feared coherent communication and coordinated effort among the masses, which might have threatened their godlike dominance of civilization.
It could be that dispersing people and confounding their communication was a divide-and-conquer technique utilized by this ‘God’, similar to those we see playing out in our politics, business, religion, media, and society today.
What is clear from this story, is that from ‘God’s’ perspective, if people can just communicate effectively with a common tongue, there is nothing we can’t accomplish.
The ISIT Awareness system — ISITAS — will allow us to establish such a ‘common tongue’ by collaboratively developing a shared semantic framework to enable consensus about the meaning of words and concepts.
But it goes much deeper than that. The ontology and epistemology established through ISITAS will reveal the true nature of reality in terms so clear that virtually anyone can appreciate it.
Beginning with First Principles, we will develop an extensive set of axioms on which rational people can agree. This foundation will serve as a platform for defining a comprehensive, coherent taxonomy of words, concepts, objects, and events — ranging from the highest levels of abstraction to deep derivative details — representing the whole of reality.
This consensus-based sensemaking will be accomplished through a simple game called ISIT, in which each individual can absorb and contribute to this coherent model on their own experiential journey.
So what are these fundamental and elementary concepts that izit toss will help establish? We cover that in the next video on the ISIT Construct.
