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Book Review: Norberg (2025) “Peak Human”
Book Review: Summary, Chapter Learnings, Select Quotes, Additional Materials
Summary: Why I Read This Book
If you are fascinated by a story that has a surprising beginning, glorious middle, and tragic ending, this book has six (and maybe seven) such stories to tell. Whether we are talking about the stories of individual people, historic civilizations, or perhaps even biological species, the ends can be heartbreaking. Johan Norberg is an entertaining and informative storyteller of the rise and falls of golden ages of seven civilizations and a handful of their most famous individual characters.
Here is a summary of some quick chapter highlights for me:
Chapter 1: Athens – From the well-told stories of the birth of philosophy, democracy, wars, plagues, as well as the story of the exiled Athenian general Thucydides (460-400 BC) who is considered the father of scientific history that provides down to earth explanations, rather than appealing to the gods
Chapter 2: Rome – From a city of refugees to a machine for coercive expansion, and then the story of Cato the Younger (95-46 BC) and his writings on liberty.
Chapter 3: The Abbasid Caliphate – From the stories of the birth of religion(s), to merchants more powerful than viziers, to the houses of wisdom, as well as the story of the seventh Abbasid caliph, al-Mamun (786-833) who made Greek-to-Arabic translation project a priority of his reign.
Chapter 4: Song China – From exploding commerce with canals connecting two rivers, multi-mast giant (for the time) ships, moveable type printing, as well as the story of Zhu Xi (1130-1200) whose neo-Confucian philosophy placed a premium on individuals cultivating their character through education and a metaphysics to explain the world without recourse to supernatural.
Chapter 5: Renaissance Italy – The inspiring stories of China and the Mongol Empire told by Marco Polo (1254 – 1324) arrived at just the right time, as legal battles for authority between royalty and religious leaders advanced property rights for merchants (the influencers courted by both) in Italian city-states, and rediscovered ancients texts on philosophy, medicine, astronomy, mathematics and more fueled humanists and intellectual openness.
Chapter 6: The Dutch Republic – From a soggy, water-logged bog of a place using property rights to attract immigrants to become free farmers and then transitioning to become the Dutch Republic, a global power with military and merchant fleets, as well as the story of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) who developed internationals laws of the sea, property, contracts, and self-defense.
Chapter 7: The Anglo Sphere – William of Orange (1650-1702), who led the Dutch invasion of Britian and the Glorious Revolutions of 1688, which in turn led to putting limits to both royal and religious powers over free citizens with property rights, and advanced ideas of liberty and freedom that lead to the American Revolution, is the story of a golden age that seems now to exhibit the tell-tale signs of decline.
The introduction to this fascinating book lays the foundation for why it is important to study history, and the conclusion makes explicit the patterns from history while allowing that the future may very well be a surprising twist on these historical patterns.
David Gurteen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgurteen/) who is well-known in knowledge management, organizational learning, and leadership facilitation circles, recommended this book to me. David also studies better conversations, history, and the unfolding universe – topics of great interest to me. Larry Hiner (ISSIP Ambassador), whose interests include advancing human dignity, introduced me to David, and suggested David and I have periodic conversations about our mutual interests, especially the past, present, and future of better communications and positive sum conversations.
Chapter Learnings
Introduction
Seven of the world’s great civilizations are explored: Athens, Rome, Abbasid Caliphate, Song China, Renaissance Italy, Dutch Republic, and Anglosphere; and each of their “golden ages” combine cultural creativity, scientific discoveries, technological achievements, and economic growth. While other civilizations might have been chosen, these seven highlight the importance of the free flow of people, products, and perspectives across boundaries, with noteworthy periods of peace, secure property rights, and rule of law. The absence of orthodoxies imposed from the top is also noteworthy. Californian historian Jack Goldstone calls episodes of temporary growth ‘efflorescences’ – not quite reaching a golden age status. Patterns of decline are also explored – growing orthodoxies from political/military, economic, and intellectual elites – the self-interest of incumbents over group-freedom-interests (so-called ‘Caldwell’s Law’ by economic historian Joel Mokyr). Some cultures are better than others in providing positive-sum games instead of zero-sum, with far more freedom and far less coercion. The rise of golden ages throughout history is a source of hope for humanity, and their declines highlight multiple warning signs.
Chapter 1: Athens: Democrats, Dreamers, and other Deviants
Athens, Greece was often a target of domination by the Spartans from the near west and the Persians from the further east. Athenians and other seafaring Greeks, separated by rocky cliffs that made land-based invasions difficult, experimented with independent city-states, but interconnected by trade. The local infantries, when called upon to unite, were formidable for the innovation of the phalanx, tightly packed rows of men with shields, spears and short swords, often eight rows deep, and difficult to penetrate. The soldiers known as hoplites were mostly farmers, called into action when needed, but also demanding a say in political decisions – fight and stay independent, or surrender and pay tribute. The Ionian innovation of coinage allowed a flourishing of trade among city states. Attica, the land around Athens, had poor soil so trade was a must. Solon (630-560 BC) aimed for rule of law, isonomia, equally for rich or poor. While it is hard to summarize the many innovations and contributions (shipbuilding – trade, open cities – immigration, phalanx – warfare, the Assembly – democracy), periods of peace (including the birth of theatre and philosophy), battles and wars (with Sparta, with Persians, at Marathon, at Salamis, Peloponnesian), struggles between democratic principle and authoritarian regimes, the rise and high-point happened (recorded by Pericles (495-425 BC)), and the decline came (recorded by Thucydides (460-400 BC)). The Athenian golden age being replaced by the militaristic empire at the time of Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), sowing the seed for the Roman golden age to follow.
Chapter 2: Rome: Melting Pot of Marble
Around 753 BC, Rome started as a city of refugees – all were welcome to become citizens, be protected by laws, own property, engage in commerce, and marry another Roman. Foreigners were welcome to become Roman citizens, either by special service to Rome or serving in the auxiliary military for 25 years. In 212 BC, emperor Caracalla declared that all non-slaves through the whole republic, regardless of background or ethnicity were Roman citizens. Romans believed in integrating people and ideas, while replacing their own practices with better practices from others they conquered or absorbed. Cicero (106-143 BC) was a stateman and lawyer, and one of the greatest writers on the topic of liberty and justice for all. Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) set in motion the end of rule of law by declaring himself dictator for life. Cato the Younger (95-46 BC) was one of the last believers in Roman republicanism to battle with Caesar’s armies, and when defeated chose to take his own life than give in to the new order. The Roman Republic was transformed by ambitious generals into the Roman Empire. The long, slow decline included pandemics (165 AD, Antonine Plague), the end of the Pax Roma with the death of Marcus Aurelius – the last good emperor of Rome (180 AD), and the pandemic (249 AD, Plague of the Cyprian). Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) developed the modern Christian ideas and wrote ‘The City of God.’ In the end, openness and rule of law by the people with regional representatives were replaced by orthodoxy and the imperial emperors with vested interests, personal ambitions and greed. Later, in 476 AD, Germans (General Odoacer, client of the real emperor in the Eastern Roman Empire) deposed the last Western Roman emperor. The Eastern Roman Empire (and Byzantine culture) survived about another 1000 years before the invasion of the Ottoman Turks.
Chapter 3: The Abbasid Caliphate: At the Crossroads of the Universe
By 654, the Byzantine and Persian empires had fallen to Muslim Arabs, some thirty years after the Prophet Muhammad (570-632) migrated to Medina from Mecca to escape persecution. As Islam spread in the early days, the farmers and merchants conquered were allowed to keep their property and religious practices, by paying a special poll tax, and only government and military resources were confiscated and redirected. In 747, Abu Muslim (probably a Persian former slave) raised the black flag of the Abbasids. In 750, he won a decisive battle against the Umayyad army in Zab, northern Iraq, and al-Saffah (721-754) of the Abbasid family claimed the caliph, beginning the Abbasid Caliphate. The second caliph, al-Mansur (714-775) wasted no time killing Abu Muslim, and like Augustus in Rome was an infamous executioner and impressive stateman. Al-Mansur’s ‘City of Peace’ became known as Baghdad, and a Pax Islamica (like Pax Romana) followed. Baghdad (known as ‘the crossroads of the universe’) had over a million people, the largest city in the world, with vibrant markets trading goods from across the Abbasid Caliphate. Merchants were a privileged class, and even the Quran praised truthful and trustworthy merchants, encouraging trade by mutual consent. The Abbasid ‘Houses of Wisdom’ promoted intellectual flourishing building on worthy ideas from all previous cultures, as well as accelerating the economic flourishing. The Arab thinker al-Kindi (801-873) wrote more than 250 books on topics including mathematics, medicine, and philosophy, and proclaimed ‘appreciating the truth… even if it comes from races and nations different from us.’ A great scientific revolution happened powered by minds of Avicenna (980-1037), al-Khwarizmi (books on algebra and algorithms), Ibn al-Haytham (965-104) on optics and the scientific method. Nevertheless, by 1065, orthodoxy was replacing openness, and ‘houses of wisdom’ were replaced by ‘madrasas’ teaching orthodox versions of Islam, as Shia and Sunni battle lines were drawn. The theologian al-Ghazali (1058-1111) provided the philosophical and logical foundations for a ‘might makes right’ and orthodoxy cultural change away from openness and tolerance of other religions and beliefs; and like Augustine, al-Ghazali declared dangerous ideas and books should be banned to protect youthful minds. It was too late when the Andalusian Ibn Rushd (1126-1198, latinized name Averroes) refuted the teachings of al-Ghazali by showing Islam and Aristotelianism compatibility. Still, the intellectual works of Averroes would help later fire up the imaginations of the European Renaissance. The Mongol leader Genghis Khan (1162-1227) also contributed to the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate.
Chapter 4: Song China: On the Threshold of Modernity
A handscroll painting of a twelfth century Chinese city and bustling marketplace – some call the priceless work of art the “Mona Lisa of China” – is famously known as “Along the River During the Qingming Festiva” and this long, linear painting depicts 814 people engaged in a wide range of activities. In 960, Zhao Kuangyin (927-976) had his loyal troops insist he usurp the throne from the child ruler, and become emperor under the name of Taizu. Hailing from the Song Prefecture, the emperor Taizu insisted on civic over military rule, as military rule had led to civil wars and warlords. China demilitarized as old generals retired as regional governors, new generals were rotated to prevent power accumulation. Like the expansion of Rome and Arab, Taizu redirected conquered regional government and military, but left farmers and commerce largely unharmed. Taizu ordered any looters in his military to be beheaded. Taizu’s brother, Taizong (939-997) established rigorous education and examinations to become a government official, including the study of Confucian classics, history, law and mathematics. Names of students were hidden, and two examiners needed to score each student to ensure a meritocracy would replace blood lines in local government. Demilitarization, a volunteer army, highly skilled government officials, mobility for peasants willing to farm new lands, improved transportation systems as well as incentives and taxes on commerce, led to an explosion of opportunities, innovation, and wealth. Gunpowder, the compass, the printing press and more advancements were well ahead of European technologies. In fact, wealth was so abundant that foot binding of woman became the fashion in wealthy families, a practices that continued until 1912. The population, innovation and wealth explosion were unstoppable, until 1127 when invaders from the north (Manchurians – Jin dynasty) sacked Song’s capital city of Kaifeng. Still, Song China as a whole region remained rich until in 1227, Genghis Khan attacked the Jin, and by 1234 attacked the Song region; finally by 1268 Kublai Khan (the grandson of Genghis) was near completion of the conquest, and by 1279, the last remnants of the Song navy were destroyed. Many Song loyalists chose suicide for themselves and their families rather than submit to Mongol rule, despite Kublai Khan’s interest in keeping the Song wealth engine humming – with the help of Song leaders. Eventually the Ming dynasty was able to break free of Mongol occupation, but their authoritarian rule and runaway inflation prevented the reignition of the great Song wealth and prosperity engine.
Chapter 5: Renaissance Italy: The Rebirth of Law, Literature, and Libertas
The tug-of-war between Church (popes, bishops) and State (kings, princes) gave rise to both side documenting laws that ultimately led to the rebirth of the legal system in Europe. The Italian city-states like the Greek city-states before were perfectly situated to take advantage of seafaring trade, immigration, and wealth creation. Financial innovations including double-entry bookkeeping, joint stock companies, insurance, bills of exchange and systematized foreign exchange markets accelerated wealth creation. Europe was benefiting from an influx of trade and ideas from China and the Arab world, stronger systems of law and finance, as well as expanding cities with a wealthy middle-class, not part of the Church or royalty. While the Mongols had devastated the great cities of the Abbasid Caliphate (Baghdad) and Song China (Hangzhou), Europe lost Kiev to the Mongols in1241 and then Poland and Hungary were laid waste, but perhaps the real reason the Mongols turned back was the paltry takings in Medieval Europe – there was not great wealth easily at hand. Of course, by the 14th century, things were beginning to change more rapidly – thanks in part to the Venetian innovation of the glass mirrors replacing bronze mirrors, and individuals could see themselves clearly for the first time – perhaps changing human psychology. The Black Death also arrived, and suddenly a large part of the working populations was gone, and serfs demanded more rights and got them, by 1450 serfdom had been abolished in most of Western Europe. By 1527, wars were back, and the states aligned either Catholic or Protestant orthodoxy to purge and ban heretical ideas.
Chapter 6: The Dutch Republic: Trade, Tolerance, and Other Treasures of the Shore
Reclaiming land from the sea requires a people to master an “improve-weakest-link” mindset. The chain is only as strong as the weakest link, and the farmlands are only as safe as the weakest dyke. To attract people to harvest land from the sea, immigrants were given the right to their land. In the thirteen century, large scale reclamation with dykes, pumps, and windmills, and a system of signaling to bring emergency help to bear on any weak links at any time, night or day, fare or stormy. Better technologies, practices, and institutions co-evolved, providing a wealth creation flywheel that could afford importing goods, immigrating people, openness to new ideas, and international trade. Aristocratic outsiders often mocked the lowlands as a miserable place with no great history or accomplishments; merely ‘a collection of shit and mud’ or ‘the indigested vomit of the sea.’ Wealth led to urbanization, universities, publishing, and art flourishing. Timber imported from the Baltics led to a shipbuilding industry and expanded global exploration and trade. When the Habsburg ruler of most of Europe at that time – Philip II (1527-1598) – tried to tax the Dutch more to pay for his large Spanish military, and bring Catholic orthodoxy to the Dutch, who were diverse religiously but with significant Calvinist population, Philip needed to appoint a Habsburg royal to the role of stadtholder, the highest executive official the Dutch region, including Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht. Philip II appointed his father’s loyal advisor, the German-born William of Orange (not to be confused with his grandson, the William of Orange, who married his own cousin Mary I, and together William and Mary ruled England). The first William of Orange (1533-1584) became better known as William the Silent, given his inclinations to just let things be, and then later, before being assassinated, to actively oppose Philip, leading to the start of the Eighty Year War (1566/1568-1609) between Spain, the Dutch, and various allies. The main difference was that during the protracted war, Spain was going broke, and the Dutch were becoming wealthier – both sides losing their appetite for continued battles, they signed the Twelve-Year Truce in 1609. The emerging Dutch state had already proclaimed it “declaration of independence” in 1581. Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) was a noteworthy polymath whose political philosophy on natural rights (fundamental human rights, free of religious and royal domination) and social contracts had noteworthy impact on the better-known English and Swiss/French philosophers such as Hobbes (1588-1679). Locke (1632-1704), and Rosseau (1712-1788). Of the six founding philosophers of the Enlightenment (Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Bayle, and Leibniz) four lived in or spent time in the Dutch Republic. While international trade by a seafaring nation with colonies was clearly an essential component of growing Dutch wealth, Enlightenment historians also see tolerance under constant tensions which allowed commercial, intellectual, and artistic flourishing to take place raising the wages and living conditions of highly literate workers and merchants. The end came when England formed the Triple Alliance with Sweden and Netherlands, to go against the French and Spanish, but later all turned against the Dutch. In 1715, the Dutch Republic declared bankruptcy. However, well before the collapse of 1715, in 1689, the Dutch ideals were already being transplanted into England, as described in the next chapter.
Chapter 7: The Anglo Sphere: Industry, Individualism, Impertinence
In one of the strangest twists of history, King James II of England (1603-1701) , after converting to Catholicism and becoming increasingly unpopular for authoritarianism, was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. James II was thwarted in his attempts to align state and religious power and thereby overturn the institutions that protected life, liberty, and property of the common man. He was deposed by his nephew, William III of Orange (1650-1702) stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, who was invited to invade and become King, as well as to marry James’s daughter (a Protestant), and so began the rule of William and Mary. William III had distributed some 60,000 copies of a pamphlet to justify the invasion. The Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) was on the same ship that delivered Mary (soon to be queen) back on English shores in 1689. Locke’s goal was to set up a lasting constitution (“Declaration of Rights” and “Bill of Rights”) to secure civil rights ‘and the liberty and property of all the subjects of the nation’ and any new royalty would be subject to the law of the people as established by a bicameral parliament. Since taxes were primarily used to grow the navy and military, entrepreneurs leveraging financial markets built out the roads, bridges, canals, harbors, and rail systems that powered Great Britian and the British Empire. Colonies, global commerce, industrialization, urbanization, and voluntary associations took on local health, education, and security projects, fueled by wealth creation and population growth. Books, skills, and a growing culture of scientific and technological innovations were improving productivity and making entrepreneurs rich, Josiah Wedgewood (1730-1795) with pottery, Richard Arkrwight (1732-1792) with spinning frame, and James Watt (1736-1819) with steam engines. Life expectancy jumped from 35 years in 1700 to 46 years by 1800, and Edward Jenner (1749-1823) with smallpox vaccine contributing. Increasingly literate and skilled common people could afford cotton clothes, underwear, needles, thread, scissors, candles, glass, wood, nails, paper, newspapers, books, tea, and sugar. Great Britian had become the industrial engine of the world and acquired a global empire of colonies on which the sun never set (America, Australia and New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, and African Colonies). The hypocrisy of free men with property rights in Great Britian gaining wealth through the coercive “might makes right” slave trade and destruction of indigenous populations in the colonies led to anti-imperialism debates in parliament and civic associations. Slavery was abolished in Britian in 1823. The North American colonies were settled by individuals from Great Britian and Europe who sought even greater religious freedom and economic opportunity to own property, and found a land only sparsely populated by indigenous people with primitive weapons. The United States of America’s 1776 Declaration of Independence, following in the tradition of the 1688 Glorius Revolution, following in the tradition of the 1581 Dutch Act of Abjuration, following the school of Salamanca, and on and on back through the golden ages when religious and intellectual freedoms as well as markets, global commerce, and property rights of the common man flourished – no special privileges of law for an aristocracy as a common goal. The favorite play of George Washington (1732-1799) was “Cato: A Tragedy” – with themes of liberty, republicanism, and stoic virtue. Immigration to America boomed, and the 1862 Homestead Act giving newly arrived farmers property rights to lands they cultivated and demarked as their own. The Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog (1888–1993) revolutionized American retail as the “Wish Book,” bringing a vast array of goods to rural homes, including clothing, tools, and even mail-order homes. America’s industrial might help Britian and France defeat aggressors in two world wars, leading to a Pax Americana – where major military conflicts were largely proxy wars of two nuclear weapons powered superpowers – the USA and USSR. Now, many think, both at home and abroad, that the golden age of USA dominance and the Anglo Sphere is in rapid decline.
Conclusion: Further Rise or Inevitable Decline?
The rise and decline of the seven golden ages (Athens, Rome, Abbasid, Caliphate, Song China, Renaissance Italy, Dutch Republic, Anglo Sphere) followed some characteristic patterns. The rise required imitation and innovation to create an optimistic self-identity, and belief that the next generation would have the same or a better life. The falls required a wide range of natural and human-made crises to create pessimistic self-doubt, and belief that the next generation would have the same or a worsened life. First, the rise requires openness to the rest of the world for trade, migration, and intellectual exchange. Second, the rule of law supports free markets and free minds. Third, the openness and freedom fuel optimism and pride in a self-identity that continues attract immigrants, until “The Great Status Quo Filter” combines with crises to turn back the openness and freedom for more and more of the population until pessimism replaces optimism and the inevitable decline takes firm hold of the population. The rulers and elites abandon curiosity for controls.
The law of the land imposed by rulers and the elites becomes one of “might makes right,” “enough is never enough,” and “conform to my orthodoxy” or get out while you can. Free speech is replaces by orthodoxies and free markets by economic controls. International trade declines. And so the pressing questions is what about the Anglo Sphere and the USA? The backlash against globalization and immigration is apparent. Both the right and the left have their orthodoxies. The author suggests we stay open to surprises, and if the Anglo Sphere should continue in decline, we might be surprised by the next golden age from China, Turkey, Iran, Poland, Vietnam, India, or even Africa, with its large and young population and massive resources. However, given acceleration of digital technologies globally, perhaps what comes next is even more surprising than any lesson history has taught us to date.
Select Quotes
BiblioN2025 Norberg J (2025) Peak Human:
What We Can Learn From History’s Greatest Civilizations
Via: David_Gurteen
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Human-Historys-Greatest-Civilizations/dp/1838957294
Quotes:
“The battle between freedom and coercion, and between reason and superstition, is not a clash of civilizations. It is a clash within every civilization, and at some level within each of us…. By the way, I should emphasize the question ‘golden age for whom?’ is not just overly sensitive sloganeering. All of the civilizations I describe in this book practiced slavery, all of them denied women basic rights and all took great delight in exterminating neighbouring populations, to the last man, woman, and child.” (pg. 9, Introduction)
“The Assembly of Citizens, made up of all men who were not slaves for foreigners, was given supreme power over all issues… To make sure that the Assembly would not be taken over by a small clique that had conspired in advance, a Council of 500 was instituted, which set the agenda for the Assembly and sometimes prepared specific proposals. Members of the Council were selected by lot, served for a year and could only serve twice during a lifetime. This meant that almost every Athenian would serve at some point.” (p. 27, Ch. 1)
“There was no remorse in 421 BC though, when Athens ended a revolt in the city of Scione, executed the adult men and sold the women and children into slavery. When Athens did the same thing after having conquered the neutral island of Melos, Thucydides records that the Athenian emissary did not even try to justify the actions, but bluntly declared ‘the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.’” (pg. 58, Ch. 1)
“By 500 BC, the Roman Republic had already established itself as one of the strongest cities in central Italy… Tim Cornell has compared the Roman model to ‘a criminal operation that compensates it victims by enrolling them in the gang and inviting them to share the proceeds of future robberies.’ … Rome was the big bully you were best to have on your side.” (pp. 80-81 , Ch. 2)
“Educated Romans studied Plato and Aristotle, and debated and debated whether the Stoics or Epicureans were right. One of the most important works in the Stoic tradition was written by Marcus Aurelius…. Upper-class education in Rome was soon based on a Greek curriculum…” (pg. 89, Ch. 2)
“Where Athens and Rome had been ravaged by plagues, Baghdad suffered from political instability, revolts, and a drier climate. Separatists broke away parts of the empire, and the lack of tax revenue started a process that was similar to what we saw in Rome: rulers began to undermine private property with feudal systems. Military officials started to push out independent farmers. The role of the merchants and private capital was compromised. Abbasid rulers reacted more destructively when this separatism was combined with religious divisions. They felt they had to stamp out other interpretations of Islam, and also learned that a fight for one true interpretation could be used to mobilize supporters. In alliance with the Seljuk Turks, the Abbasid state tool control of religion and debate, and sabotaged its own tradition of tolerance and science. Religious oppression only caused more conflict, and so created more demand for the repression they thought would be conducive to stability. The traditions of science and philosophy rapidly decayed.” (pp. 170-171, Ch. 3)
“In 1620, the English philosopher Francis Bacon wrote there were three great inventions unknown to the ancients that ‘have changed the whole face and stage of things throughout the world’ gunpowder, the compass, and printing. According to Bacon, ‘no empire, no sect, no star, seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these three mechanical discoveries’. Karl Marx, in 1861, insisted that ‘these are the three major inventions that foretell the arrival of bourgeois society’, since they blew up the knight class, opened the world market, and created the scientific renaissance. But these three inventions, which Bacon called ‘recent’ and of ‘obscure’ origins, were already in use a thousand years ago by the Chinese along the river during the Qingming festival.” The Chinese printed books, navigated with a magnetic compass and, when they had to fight, they did it with gunpowder. Back then, China was ‘the most intellectually sophisticated country in the world, and the most technologically advanced’, writes Peter Watson in his work on ideas and innovations in history, and adds ‘China’s pre-eminence was probably greater during the Song dynasty (960-1279) than any other time.’” (pp. 177-178, Ch. 4)
“In 1274, Marco Polo, a young Venetian merchant and explorer, reached China after a long journey with his father and uncle. Kublai Khan took a great liking to him and used him as a foreign emissary throughout South East Asia. After seventeen years in Asia, Marco Polo returned to Europe. Venice was at war with Genoa at the time, and Marco Polo was imprisoned in Genoese. He started sharing his stories with a fellow inmate, who wrote them down and turned them into one of the few international bestsellers before the printing press. All over Europe, readers marveled at his descriptions of a magical empire with vast transport networks, money made of paper, and ‘black stones’ that they dug up and burned instead of firewood. Even in decline after the end of the Song dynasty, China seems so incredibly advanced and prosperous…. Visiting the old Song capital of Hangzhou, apparently fifteen times bigger than his native Venice, the thrilled Marco Polo described it as ‘the greatest city which may be found in the world, where so many pleasures may be found that one fancies oneself in paradise.’ And the Yangtzee had ‘a great number of vessels, and more wealth and merchandize than on all the rivers and all the seas of Christendom put together!’ Markets were ‘so well provided with every amenity that it is a veritable marvel.’ … The stories told by Marco Polo and other adventurers, and the exquisite silk, spices and porcelain imported, whetted the European appetite to set sail, to trade and to raid, but most of all to imitate. The insight that very large ships with multiple masts had been built, and could stay at sea for extended periods, spurred innovation. Medieval Europe suddenly stated building…. An even more stimulating import came from the Arabs, as their ideas began to seep into Christianity…. When Christian armies began to take Andalusian cities during the Crusades, the marveled at the wealth, the ordered cityscapes and majestic buildings. But, most importantly, in private and public libraries, they found all the books they had heard rumours of but were never entirely sure existed: almost mythical works by Euclid, Galen, Archimedes, Averroes and Aristotle.” (pp. 222-225, Ch. 5)
“The long controversy over the legacy of a Dominican priest from Sicily, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who quoted Averroes some 500 times, would eventually convince the Church that it was possible to be an Aristotelian without being cut off from Christ. Aquinas’s life’s work was to make Aristotelianism compatible with Christianity, just as Averroes had done for Islam. Aquinas put the Renaissance foot in the medieval door, leaving room for curiosity to slip through.” (pg. 226, Ch. 5)
“In 1075, pope Gregory VII (1020-1085) was ready to put a radical programme into effect. Sensationally, the pope suddenly declared his supremacy over the whole Church and the Church’s supremacy over secular matters, including kings and emperors.” (pg. 228 Ch. 5)
“Through an astonishing series of conquests, marriages, and dumb luck, the Habsburg dynasty, originally from the Tyrol [southern Austria, northern Italy, western Switzerland], had quickly expanded from its power base in Austria and Germany. In 1519, when Charles V was crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, he also inherited Spain… The Spanish army had become the best in Europe… The Habsburg dynasty was also a global empire. From the new colonies in America silver flowed into state coffers… It even had a colony in the Far East, the Philippines, named after Charles’ son Philip, soon to be King Philip II (1527-1598)… In 1554, Philip became King of England and Ireland after marrying Queen Mary I (1516-1558). The Habsburg ambition was nothing less than the establishing of a universal empire, something that would have made it possible to coordinate orthodoxy and repression all over the European continent, and so put an end to intellectual openness and economic experimentation, just like Ming China and the Islamic empires had… …universal ambitions would be frustrated, but not by a powerful, rival monarchy. Just as the Habsburgs were on the cusp of domination, one of the smallest and most unlikely parts of the empire rebelled: a group of maverick merchants and radical Calvinists in the waterlogged Low Countries on the north-western periphery, the strange place where banned books like Galileo’s were still published. The Dutch of all people! … At the end of the Eighty Year’s War between Spain and the United Provinces of the Netherlands, it was the Spanish empire that was depleted and impoverished, having declared state bankruptcy five times. The sodden Dutch periphery, on the other hand, had become a strong, independent country and a military superpower. The band of rebels had become the world’s richest people, and in just two generations they built a world empire… with word-leading artists like Vermeer and Rembrandt, merchants and financiers who created the world’s first modern economy, and printing houses, scientists and philosophers who kickstarted the Enlightenment.” (pp. 286-289, Ch. 6)
“Britian’s progress after 1700 was incredible…. Colonial offshoots that retained the English language and common law, like the United Sates, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, are some of the freest and richest countries on the planet. The Anglosphere (as Neal Stephenson called it in his 1995 science fiction novel ‘The Diamond Age’) is made up of half a billion people and is responsible for almost a third of the world’s production and military spending. And this of course underestimates its cultural influence elsewhere, since its democratic and market-based system has spread around the world. Bad English is the world’s most common language. But it is highly unlikely that Britian would ever have become the birthplace of this age of progress if it weren’t for the fact that in the laste seventeenth century it had been defeated and fundamentally transformed by a colossal Dutch invasion.” (pg. 346, Ch. 7)
“Ages become golden because they imitate and innovate…. Openness to the rest of the world gave these cultures access to power of other people’s brains, habits, and skills, and so broadened their ideas of what is possible. They all chose different strategies to achieve this. Athenian, Italian, and Dutch merchants picked up new ideas on business trips. Rome absorbed more methods and peoples by conquest than foreign trade, and the Abbasids actively sponsored a translation project to lay their hands on the world’s knowledge. But they were all heavily reliant on trade, migration, and intellectual exchange… But there is a limit to how far imitation can get you. To make this progress self-propelling and really usher in a golden age, these cultures had to combine these new ideas and inputs with their own thoughts and methods to create innovations, from higher agricultural yields to artistic rebellions. This takes inclusivity back home. People have to be allowed and encouraged o test their own ways of doing things, even when the elite or the majority finds it uncomfortable. You also need lots of people. All of these cultures were highly urbanized. One prerequisite for inclusivity is the rule of law, so that people are not governed by the whims of individual rulers, but by predictable rules, applied equally to the whole population. No civilization did this perfectly. They all practiced slavery and they did not treat women as citizens with equal rights, but, compared with other cultures, earlier and contemporary, they were much more inclusive, and that made a difference… The other requisites for inclusivity are free markets and free minds… The golden ages in this book… all provided a much higher degree of economic freedom and intellectual freedom than other contemporary civilizations…. They simply put more ideas and business models on the table, and therefore had a greater chance to find successful ones. The progress became self-sustaining because, at a certain point, it started transforming the self-identity of these civilizations. When more people started realizing what could be done, it encouraged a broader culture of optimism, energy, and vigour… However, eventually, the Great Status Quo Filter came for all these golden ages… A crisis often created an urge to retreat to something familiar, like some imagined good old days, fixed economic relationships and an unvarnished faith. All these golden ages experienced a death-to-Socrates moment, when they soured on their previous commitment to open intellectual exchange and abandoned curiosity for control… The new orthodoxies were often upheld by rulers who started centralizing societies and undermining the rule of law.” (pp. 431-435)
This book and review
First full skim of book was 20260123
Second detailed reread was from 20251123 to 20260319.
Started writing the review on 20260406 and finished on 20260504.
Additional Notes
Question? Comments?
Wish the author had started with a golden age story for Africa and out of Africa – the dawn of the human species perhaps. Of course, without ancient artifacts from that period, how could a golden age story be told? Still a bit more weaving stories of individuals, civilizations, and perhaps species would have been of interest to me.
ISSIP Distinguished Recognition in Service Innovation
Evidence
List of ISSIP Blog Posts with Awardees Name and LinkedIn Profile
2026-distinguished-recognition
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Description:
A badge awarded for Level 2 recognition in the annual ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award. This competitive, annual award recognizes exemplary innovation in the design and deployment of services. The judging criteria is based on the uniqueness, creativity, technical merit, value generation and impact of the innovative solution. Eligibility: Based on annual award committee decision, this badge is given to individuals who have submitted an application for the annual ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award on behalf of their organizations. The recipient must be listed as an author of the submission to the ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award Program. To learn more about the ISSIP Badges including how you can share you badge on social platform, click here:http://www.issip.org/
Earning Criteria
Recipients must complete the earning criteria to earn this badge
A badge awarded for Level 2 recognition in the annual ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award. This competitive, annual award recognizes exemplary innovation in the design and deployment of services. The judging criteria is based on the uniqueness, creativity, technical merit, value generation and impact of the innovative solution. Eligibility: Based on annual award committee decision, this badge is given to individuals who have submitted an application for the annual ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award on behalf of their organizations. The recipient must be listed as an author of the submission to the ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award Program.
To learn more about the ISSIP Badges including how you can share you badge on social platform, click here:http://www.issip.org/
Narrative
What the recipient did to earn this Digital Certification (DC)/Badge (B)
Thank-you for your significant contribution to the ISSIP community.
ISSIP Excellence In Service Innovation – Annual Winner
Evidence
List of ISSIP Blog Posts with Awardees Name and LinkedIn Profile
Description:
A badge awarded for Level 3 winners in the annual ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award. This competitive, annual award recognizes exemplary innovation in the design and deployment of services. The judging criteria is based on the uniqueness, creativity, technical merit, value generation and impact of the innovative solution. Eligibility: Based on annual award committee decision, this badge is given to individuals who have submitted an application for the annual ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award on behalf of their organizations. The recipient must be listed as an author of the submission to the ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award Program. The ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award is given once each year to a company or organization (and their individual representatives), that has deployed a new service that, in the judgment of the ISSIP Award Committee, is the most innovative of all of the submissions for that year with impact to business, society and innovation. To learn more about the ISSIP Badges including how you can share you badge on social platform, click here:http://www.issip.org/issip-digital-recognition-program/ A badge awarded for Level 3 winners in the annual ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award. This competitive, annual award recognizes exemplary innovation in the design and deployment of services. The judging criteria is based on the uniqueness, creativity, technical merit, value generation and impact of the innovative solution. Eligibility: Based on annual award committee decision, this badge is given to individuals who have submitted an application for the annual ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award on behalf of their organizations. The recipient must be listed as an author of the submission to the ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award Program. The ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award is given once each year to a company or organization (and their individual representatives), that has deployed a new service that, in the judgment of the ISSIP Award Committee, is the most innovative of all of the submissions for that year with impact to business, society and innovation. To learn more about the ISSIP Badges & Digital Certification including how you can share you badge on social platform, click here:http://www.issip.org/
Earning Criteria
Recipients must complete the earning criteria to earn this badge
Badge awarded for Level 3 winners in the annual ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award. This competitive, annual award recognizes exemplary innovation in the design and deployment of services. The judging criteria is based on the uniqueness, creativity, technical merit, value generation and impact of the innovative solution.
Eligibility: Based on annual award committee decision, this badge is given to individuals who have submitted an application for the annual ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award on behalf of their organizations. The recipient must be listed as an author of the submission to the ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award Program.
The ISSIP Excellence in Service Innovation Award is given once each year to a company or organization (and their individual representatives), that has deployed a new service that, in the judgment of the ISSIP Award Committee, is the most innovative of all of the submissions for that year with impact to business, society and innovation. To learn more about the ISSIP Badges and Digital Certifications including how you can share you badge on social platform, click here:http://www.issip.org/
Narrative
What the recipient did to earn this Digital Certification (DC)/Badge (B)
Thank-you for your significant contribution to the ISSIP community.
Book Review: Atkins, Wilson, Hayes (2022) Prosocial
Book Review & Study Guide Template: Summary (appearing first in the review, but written after chapter learnings), Chapter Learnings, Select Quotes, Additional Materials
Summary: Why I Read This Book
Cultural evolution – humanity collectively learning new capabilities, including learning to invest more in win-win games (markets) and less in lose-lose games (wars). Increasing capabilities to find better ways to benefit all stakeholders, including future generations, while avoiding harms, is a worthy pursuit. What has humanity learned about finding ways to avoid short-term benefits to individuals that create long-term harms to groups? How does multilevel evolution (from biology to cultural prosocial behaviors) sort through a wide-range of possibilities without getting stuck in traps? Better decision-making about resources (collaboration versus coercion) is key to win-win outcomes, but how should decision-making about resources be implemented – markets or hierarchies or something else? The commons which originate in small scale family and village life with shared resources, studied by Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, is the progenitor to both large scale markets and hierarchies. This book provides a concise and clear introduction to the multilevel prosocial evolution challenge. Next, the authors dive deep into the eight core design principles (8 CDP) that can in practice lead to high performance groups: purpose, distribution, fairness, monitoring, responding, conflicts, authority, relations. The “secret to success” (i.e., a culture that wisely practices the 8 CDP) seems to be groups in which individuals strongly develop the capability of cognitive flexibility to avoid being mentally harmed in the short-term (i.e., replacing knee-jerk anger and fear with curiosity and understanding).
Ray Fisk, the founder of ServCollab, recommended the book to me, which is the primary reason I read it. The book certainly delivered a wealth of insights about service interaction and change processes between entities applying resources to benefit others at all scales in business and society. I also recommend this book to anyone interested in a deeper understanding of human cultural evolution and the possibility of designing a human world without coercion based on the eight core design principles of successful commons.
Chapter Learnings
The “Contents, Foreword, Introduction” are concise and provide a well-designed useful quick overview of the journey ahead, and strategies for getting the most out of the book.
Part 1: Concepts and Principles
Chapter 1. Evolution at Multiple Levels and in Multiple Streams – Multilevel Selection (MLS) Theory (“big slice versus big pie”)
Darwin’s theory of evolution, based on populations with haracteristics of (1) variation, (2) fitness (selection), and (3) heritability (retention), is extended from biology to multiple levels including the social (individual, family, community groups, organizations, states, nations, world). What’s good at one level (selection) is often undermined by what’s good at lower levels. Can we understand and wisely manage multilevel evolution (MLS)?
Chapter 2. Elinor Ostrom and the Commons
This chapter compares the strengths and weaknesses of three forms of governance: laissez-faire (markets), hierarchies (centralized control), and commons (oldest). Ostrom studied the commons. She was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics (December 10, 2009), for her framing of the Core Design Principles (CDP) for common pool resources and polycentric governance ideas (multiple generations of people maintaining cooperation and avoiding “the tragedy of the commons” in which short-term-desires and/or coercion replaces what started out as cooperation). David Sloan (second authors) worked with Ostrom for three years before her death in 2012, to frame her CDP ideas more broadly in terms of multilevel selection (MLS) and evolution theory. Ostrom’s CPD work highlighted: clearly defined boundaries, proportional equivalence, collective choice, monitoring, graduated sanctions, conflict resolution, (at least a) minimal recognition of rights to organize (and self-manage), and polycentric governance. The challenges of the commons are scaling and multilevel selection. All three forms of governance deal with entities making decisions about applying resources for the benefit of self and others (the give-get-grow of service in the world).
Chapter 3. Core Design Principles, Version 2.0
Begins with Steven Covey quote about three constants of life – change, choice, and principles. My version is change, choice, and character. The chapter goes on to say that good principles for action, like good scientific theories, should have scope, precision, and depth. Table 3.1 on page 36 compares the eight Ostrom’s Principles to the Prosocial Version, and helps show they cluster into three function (first principle defines the group, next five ensure effective by balancing group and individual interest, the next support engagement, and the last allows scaling to entire system). Principles 7 and 8 are the trickiest from my perspective, because they depend on context outside the groups control. The eight Prosocial Principles are described in some detail in most of the remainder of the chapter: 1. Shared identify and purpose (replaces Clearly defined boundaries), 2. Equitable distribution of contributions and benefits (replaces Proportional equivalence between benefits and costs), 3. Fair and inclusive decision making (replaces Collective choice arrangement), 4. Monitoring agree behaviors (replaces Monitoring), 5. Graduated responding to helpful and unhelpful behavior (replaces Graduated sanctions), 6. Fast and fair conflict resolution (replaces Conflict resolution mechanism), 7. Authority to self-govern (according to principles 1-6) (replaces Minimal recognition of rights to organization), 8. Collaborative relationships with other groups (using principles 1-7) (replaces 8. Polycentric governance). The sections on multilevel framework (e.g., getting the ecosystem – multilevel nested and networked groups of groups – to value long-term cooperation over short-term competition is not easy), auxiliary design principles and exceptions to the rule (e.g., high turnover groups), and seeing the principles as a whole (e.g., doing some well at the expense of others, rather keeping them in balance, is a recipe for failure) are also quite useful. The chapter ends with a spider-diagram-exercise to rate one or more of your groups that you belong to according to the 8 CDP – low-medium-high capabilities/performance.
Chapter 4. Evolving Behavior: A Contextual Behavioral Approach
This chapter begins with insights about why learning to adopt the 8 CDP while avoiding coercion (e.g., “might makes right”) and other unhelpful behaviors is so difficult. A big challenge of day-to-day life is the ongoing social interaction dilemma that create anxiety and the need to learn to deal with these feelings and thoughts. The chapter covers human learning from an evolutionary perspective, and how people develop cognitive flexibility to deal with social dilemma. Following the path of evolution of species with neural systems, from habituation (600 million years ago – mya), classical conditioning and then operant conditioning (500 mya) with antecedent, behavior, consequence associative loops in memory, then social learning including mimicry or imitation, and contingency learning – all part of building a science of intentional change. The big advance that came next was symbolic learning processes which in human form includes the world of symbols, gestures, eye and attention tracking, language, narratives and rules, cognitive heuristics, problem-solving, a sense of self and perspective taking. The authors make the point that relational learning is a ‘two-way street’ – as entities in the external physical world and internal mental world are linked in relationships – a combinatorial explosion of possible relationships is theoretically possible. As a result people can imagine both positive and negative futures that have never existed and create plans to achieve or avoid those possibilities. Training our minds to be flexible in dealing with difficult thoughts and feelings, while moving in the direction of shared values has given rise to philosophies of life (e.g., Stoicism), religions, as well as the scientific process, including the study of psychology. As a psychological intervention, the Prosocial process builds on Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) to build cognitive and psychological flexibility in individuals and group members. Individual and group purpose is seen in terms of values (qualities displayed) and goals (to be achieved). These lead to patterns of actions within a variation, selection, and retention framework (multilevel evolutionary theory and cultural change). Key aspect of psychological flexibility to enhance collaboration are discussed, including trust, long-term thinking, social value orientation, along with exercises such as picking a guide or hero.
Part 2: Prosocial Methods
Chapter 5. Mapping Interests and Building Psychological Flexibility with the ACT Matrix
The Prosocial tool known as the ACT Matrix is introduced. The Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) described in the previous chapter based on psychological science of behavior change is the underpinning. The ACT Matric is a 2×2 type diagram that helps to integrate individual and collective interests, making often unspoken tacit knowledge explicit, and helping individuals develop psychological flexibility (a mindset of understanding and curiosity to cocreate positive futures versus anger and fear reactions to avoid possible negative futures). The matrix can be used by an individual or a (facilitated) group of people, to help map an individual’s interests or the collective’s interests. The dimensions of experience that are explored and mapped are “toward and away” as well as “outside and inside” – based on listing answers to questions that require introspection and openness to sharing, both of which can be difficult, which is why trained facilitators are suggested, and various “tricks” (tips and techniques) are shared in the book as roadblocks may be encountered using the simple Prosocial tool – the ACT Matrix. The toward-inside quadrant (lower right) question is “what matters most to you about the group?” The away-inside quadrant (lower left) question is “what difficult internal show up and get in the way of moving towards what is most important to you?” The away-outside quadrant (upper-left) question is “What can you be see to DO to avoid or control those difficult experiences?” The away-inside quadrant (upper-right) question is “What might you DO to move toward who or what is most important to you (even in the presence of difficult experiences)?” The first author illustrates with answers from his own personal experiences, which is helpful for getting a sense of the typical answers to these questions. Depending on which of the 8 CDP a group is trying to work on, after individual complete the matrix, they may pair up with a colleague to share individual perspectives, before the group discussion. The chapter contains many tips & tricks that help make the implicit explicit (speaking up), encourage listening and reflection, and develop psychological flexibility for individuals in the group. As I was reading this chapter, I was reminded in several places of the writings of Marcus Aurelius in “Meditations” on living a life according to Stoic philosophy.
Chapter 6. Modules and Pathways for the Prosocial Process
This chapter is important for facilitators of the Prosocial process. The Prosocial process for improving collaboration within and between groups has six interlocking modules: (1) Measurement for assessment and diagnosis, (2) The core design principles (8 CDP), (3) The collective matrix, (4) Goal setting, and (5) Measurements for evaluation and change. The three commonly used pathways through the modules are: (1) standard pathway with a focus on group strengths, (2) interpersonal pathway with a focus on relationships, and (3) strategic planning pathway with a focus on the future. The chapter is short, specific, and practical, and ends with some cautionary remarks, including acknowledging resistance to so-called “soft skill” development in some groups with defensive leadership, as well as the possible need for additional modules and processes in some circumstances. The authors have a website with additional tools and techniques, and they kept this chapter clear and concise. My interest in this chapter was from the perspective of thinking about additional modules and pathways for types of groups: (1) groups of people who see each other only in a work context, and who are being paid to do a narrow job (divide-and-conquer paid work), versus groups of people who may frequently see each other in day-to-day life locally and who are not being paid and improving communities or the world for family and friends (holistic unpaid work). In other words, the effects of scale matter to modules and pathways.
Chapter 7. Core Design Principle 1: Shared Identity and Purpose
The benefits of shared identity and purposes can be achieved by exploring: (1) using the individual matrix before the rest of the Prosocial process, (2) starting in small groups, (3) clarifying membership, (4) making space for the whole individual including their personal life, (5) improving communication skills, (6) ongoing sharing of reflections – not a one time and done event, (7) carefully design the ‘onboarding’ process, (8) finding ways to highlight similarity in the context of diversity, (9) understanding that shared purpose must connect both with values and goals. The benefits include increased cohesion, trust, motivation, decreased coercion, and personal benefits of less anxiety and stress. For groups struggling with identifying a shared purpose, and/or complete the collective matrix, it is often helpful to introduce perspective taking exercises, and think about: (1) the future of the group together, (2) think about the past or founding of the group, (3) think about important times or event, in then and now exercises, and (4) imaging other people from past members to anticipated future members.
Chapter 8. Core Design Principle 2: Equitable Distribution of Contributions and Benefits
Fairness is a hard topic to discuss in groups; people worry about sounding selfish, being unkind, or triggering conflicts. The first helpful insight for me reading this chapter was the two types of fairness studied in the research literature: (1) Distributional fairness (about resources) and (2) Procedural fairness (about inclusion, rules, and speed of conflict resolution). The second helpful insight dealt with the distinctions between three social norms related to fairness: (1) Equity (I earned it – equal to contribution), (2) Equality (My turn – equal opportunity), and (3) Emergency (I need it most – equal outcomes). The topic of fairness is easier to discuss sometimes when (1) improved communication and listening skills are practiced first on other topics, (2) perspective-taking skills are fostered, (3) increased cognitive-flexibility is encouraged, (4) ‘care labor’ is acknowledged and valued, (5) the focus is on roles and tasks and not on personalities and individuals, (6) after action reviews, (7) surveys, (8) involving more people in decision making.
Chapter 9. Core Design Principle 3: Fair and Inclusive Decision Making
The chapter is interesting because the case study is about the professional association associated with this book! The benefits of inclusive decision making include: (1) More developed, skillful group members, (2) Improved engagement, (3) Better decisions, (4) Improved cooperation and performance, (5) More resilient systems, (6) improved well-being and vitality. Nevertheless hierarchies (for decision making) persist. Follow-the-leader removes a lot of fear of conflict and retribution. Leaders can (1) provide direction, protection, and social order, (2) their self-interest maintains the hierarchy, (3) they fear losing power, (4) they convince followers of the downsides of consensus building, (5) they are less aware of risks, become more impulsive, and show less empathy. Models of inclusive decision making that can be explored include: (1) Autocratic decision making, (2) Consultative leadership, (3) Facilitative leadership (4) Consent-based decision making (agree, abstain, disagree, block), and (5) Consensus decision making. Decision making in traditional organizations connect to (1) personal/collective goal conflict and alignments, (2) delegation processes, (3) information transparency, (4) roles and stakeholder perspectives, (5) quality of meetings (encouraging ‘loyal dissent’, managing people who dominate, etc.), and (6) talking about power. When decisions are made, describing who made them and why is important shared understanding; anything less, breeds unaccountability.
Chapter 10. Core Design Principle 4: Monitoring Agreed Behaviors
The benefits of monitoring (transparency) include: (1) Increased prosociality, (2) Decreased cheating, (3) Increased motivation and shared identity, and (4) Improved coordination. However, monitoring can go wrong if done (1) to the wrong extent, either too much or too little, (2) ineffectively, gathering wrong information, and (3) coercively, not enhancing mutual learning but enforcing behavior. To implement monitoring well, a calendar-based approach may be helpful, so consider these suggestions: (1) Daily Check-in Meetings, (2) Weekly Reflections, (3) Monthly Goal Setting, (4) Quarterly Strategic Objective Setting, and (5) Annual Review & Strategic Brainstorming. Psychological flexibility (curious awareness rather than judgmental attitudes) can help support a culture of healthy monitoring and transparency.
Chapter 11. Core Design Principle 5: Graduated Responding to Helpful and Unhelpful Behavior
Groups that support self-control (cognitive flexibility) stimulate more cooperative behaviors, whereas groups that allow control of others (coercion) often encounter uncooperative behaviors. Sanctions (up to and including expulsion) can be helpful, but treated with care since: (1) threats can induce flight-or-fight responses, (2) diminish well-being and engagement, (3) diminish trust, (4) inefficient supervision tasks, and (5) backlash against role that administers sanctions. Healthy patterns encourage (1) positive social interactions first and foremost, (2) work to acknowledge and meet individual needs and interests, (3) and avoid destructive in-group competition. Effective responding begins with (1) reorienting to purpose, (2) getting prepared personally, (3) stepping into the shoes of the other, and (4) choosing a response matched to the seriousness of the situation (not over or under), and (5) implementing the response (consequences).
Chapter 12. Core Design Principle 6: Fast and Fair Conflict Resolution
Understanding the differences between healthy and unhealthy conflict in groups, as well as task conflict and relationship conflicts provide the opening foundation for this chapter. The integrative approach to conflict resolutions as a generate-test-and-debug pattern that starts with separating the people from the problem, focusing on the shared interest of the roles, developing many options, and evaluating the options with objective criteria – perhaps creating additional options as evaluation reveals new insights. The tools for effectively shifting perspectives were especially interesting – engaging imagination, questioning others, listening and reflecting, and reversing roles to explore and take other perspectives. Guidelines for effective conflict management should include both principles (e.g., close to the source) and processes (e.g., escalation).
Chapter 13, Core Design Principle 7: Authority to Self-Govern
By my estimation, the most challenging prosocial concern is avoiding excessive outside interference (to other groups) and proving responsible at self-control (to your own group and other groups). The three examples presented in this chapter deal with healthcare, business and international aid, and the military.
Chapter 14. Core Design Principle 8: Collaborative Relations with Other Groups
Polycentric governance (part of the Prosocial approach) aspires to scale independence, working for small groups and larger groups of groups. Michel Polanyi identified science (truth – data-driven), art (beauty), religion (transcendent truth – elder wisdom), and law (justice) as polycentric in nature with different drivers.
Chapter 15. Goal Setting for Action
The important distinction between performance goals with a focus on the outcomes in routine systems and learning goals with a focus on experimentation in complex systems is introduced. Characteristics of good performance goals are that they are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound). Characteristics of good learning goals may also include a group voting on a prioritization of possible experiments and a review process for interpreting the results. For learning goals, the idea of failing fast and forward to maintain a positive momentum may also come into play in certain circumstances.
Conclusion: The More Beautiful World That Our Hearts Know Is Possible
Imagining a better, more collaborative world using an understanding of Ostrom’s Design Principles (updated in the Prosocial process informed by the variation-selection-and-retention mechanism of multiscale evolution), and then to nudge humanity in that hopeful direction, is what the authors have aspired to help readers to strive for in groups small and large.
Endnotes
Hardin’s (1968) article in Science on the tragedy of the commons stood out as an important follow-up read, especially Hardin’s views on coercion as regulation. Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche (2001) book on RFT (Relational Frame Theory) and the notion of motivational augments seemed quite interesting as well.
References
Bartlett’s (2016) medium post about bootstrapping a bossless organization in 3 easy steps looks like an interesting read. Guinote (2017) journal article on how power affects people might shed some light on when power corrupts and when it does not.
About the Authors
Dr. Atkins (Australian Catholic University – ACU) does research and practice as director of the Prosocial Institute. Dr. Wilson (Binghamton University) is president of The Evolution Institute and he worked with Elinor Ostrom. Dr. Hayes (University of Nevada, Reno) is past president and lifetime achievement award winner from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT). Dr. Ryan (ACU) wrote the foreword is co-developer of self-determination theory (SDT).
Select Quotes
BiblioA2019 Atkins WB, Wilson DS, Hayes SC (2019) Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Prosocial-Evolutionary-Productive-Equitable-Collaborative/dp/1684030242
Via_Ray_Fisk
Quotes:
“Prosocial behavior is generally understood as the act of getting along and cooperating with others.” (pg. 4, Ch. 1).
“What’s good for your nation can be bad for the world. The general rule is this: adaptation at any level of a multilevel hierarchy requires a process of selection at that level – and it tends to be undermined by selection at lower levels. Or, as David, once of the book’s authors, concluded in an article written with Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, ‘Selfishness beats altruism within group. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.’”(pg. 13, Ch. 1)
“Polycentric governance [of commons]: Beyond [hierarchies] regulation and markets…. There are two major forms of large scale-governance that violate the principles of polycentric governance and are also diametrically opposed to each other: laissez-faire (consisting of privatized resources controlled within markets) and centralized planning (consisting of top-down regulation, say by government or a group of experts)…. Both approaches have strengths that an improved form of governance should retain but also have grave weaknesses that need to be corrected… Markets privilege [short-term] desires over long-term interests… Hierarchies of power all ultimately rest upon coercive powers… But one of the most fundamental needs of human beings is to be able to endorse one’s own actions as volitional. And literally thousands of empirical studies have shown that vitality and creativity dampen when people’s behavior is controlled by fear… Both of these views have taken attention away from a much older form of governance, that of the commons. Ostrom’s work has brought the attention of many to the commons… ” (pp. 28-29, Ch. 2);
“Stephen Covey once said, ‘There are three constants in life… change, choice, and principles.’” (pg. 35, Ch. 3);
“Day-to-day life is an ongoing ‘social dilemma’ – a creative tension between our own interests and the interests of others…. We live inside multilevel selection.” (pg. 50, Ch. 4);
“The oldest (600 million years old or more) form of learning (that is, behavior change) is habituation, in which repeated irrelevant sensory stimulation leads to a reduction in responding.” (pg. 51, Ch. 4);
“Imagining positive futures that have never been and mentally comparing the steps that might give rise to them is enormously supportive of human progress. But people also use the exact same skills to imagine frightening worlds that also have never been, and feel overwhelmed or incapacitated as a result.” (pg. 55, Ch. 4);
“In summary, symbolic learning is a very recent form of learning that has completely transformed the lived experiences of human beings. Once we become verbal, we spend the rest of our life evaluating, comparing, naming, wishing, and imagining. Technologies from the printing press to the Internet and smartphone have put this form of behavioral and cultural evolution into overdrive so that our lives are increasingly “virtual” and disconnected from the direct physical contingencies of existence. Psychological Flexibility. Because symbolic (that is relational) learning is key to our development as humans but leads to both positive and negative effects everywhere we look, a primary task is to put this kind of learning on a leash so that it can be used in a more thoughtful fashion in a program of behavior change…. Learning how to do this is central to cognitive flexibility, which involves consciously moving in the direction of values even in the presence of difficult thoughts and feelings. Psychological flexibility is improved by several methods of psychological intervention, but it was first deliberately targeted by acceptance and commitment training (or ACT, said as a single work, not initials). The Prosocial process includes several ACT methods that are meant to help motivate individual members to participate and learn to cooperate…” (pg. 56, Ch. 4);
“…the matrix… allows you to integrate individual and collective interests within and between groups, work out what needs to be done, and become aware of all the often unspoken ways the group might hijack its noble goals and undermine its chances of achieving them,” (pg. 73, Ch. 5);
“Outside/Inside: Human beings care about, and worry about, a lot more than animals thanks to our capacity to imagine and tell inspiring and terrifying stories about the past, present, and future. As we explored in the last chapter, humans live in two worlds simultaneously: the world of actual physical contacts and causes, and the world of language and the mind. We can transform the meaning of any situation through the way we relate to our experience. Winning the lottery can become painful when it causes strife with relatives, and having a leg blown off by a landmine or experiencing cancer can become a source of meaning and joy when the processes of survival and recovery awaken one to the beauty of life. These are not hyperbole – these are actual examples.” (pp. 75-76, Ch. 5);
“Even though the individual matrix is an excellent icebreaker in its own right, sometimes groups need to first engage in other trust-building exercises, such as shared projects and social events, before they can even begin to work with the individual matrix.” (pg. 101, Ch. 6);
“Enlightened leaders have long appreciated that understanding and endorsing a shared purpose empowers group members to act without being explicitly told what to do. When purpose becomes the boss, there is a shift from coercive ‘power-over’ relationships to cooperative ‘power-with’ relationships, and the team is pulled, not pushed, toward the future.” (pg. 101, Ch. 7)
“Fairness, like health, is an emergent property of well-functioning system. That said we decided to keep it as a separate principle for two reasons. First, fairness is so important that we’ve found it is useful to have a placeholder in the Prosocial process for discussing fairness in groups when doing so is really needed. Second, fairness is a much more common issue at the level og groups of groups, where it is easier to fall into competitive, judgmental relationships that seek to exploit [monetize] others rather than cooperate with them. In this chapter we reviewed some key distinctions that help shift one’s understanding of fairness as a fuzzy, emotion-laden term to a more precise and workable issue within and between groups.” (pp. 133-134, Ch. 8)
“The Association for Contextual Behavioral Sciences (ACBS) peer-reviewed acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) trainers community was formed in 2003 as a means to disseminate findings from the science of behavior change to the world.” (pg. 135, Ch. 9)
“Specifically, we’ve drawn upon insights from sociocracy, Holocracy, and Laloux’s work on reinventing organizations ; resources such as Tim Hartnett’s book Consensus-Oriented Decision Making, and Sam Kaner’s Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision Making; and organizations such as Enspiral and Gini that make use of inclusive decision-making practices in organizational contexts.” (pg. 142, Ch. 9)
“As with all the principles, monitoring agreed behaviors can be done in a way that is more or less flexible and helpful…. Earlier we explored how psychological flexibility involves a kind of open, receptive, and curious awareness of one’s own experiences. Instead of getting angry, depressed, or anxious about one’s own behavior, mindfulness-based therapies encourage people to focus more on simply noticing experiences and then acting wisely to change that which can be changed while accepting that which cannot be changed… This move toward mindful awareness of one’s own experience can just as easily be applied to awareness of others. And in groups it’s possible to build a culture of open curiosity rather than judgmental awareness of behavior…. Instead of coercive monitoring that seeks to judge, criticize, and control, noticing behavior is more functional… [helpful, thank-you or less helpful, so what to try next] ” (pg. 158, Ch. 10).
“Sanctions are much more effective in groups that have effective approaches to conflict management (core design principle 6) in place. Responding to unhelpful behavior is often emotionally challenging. In our work with groups, we’ve found that fear of conflict often drives either excessively harsh or excessively avoidant responses to unhelpful behaviors. Having good skills and social practices in place to manage conflict is critical for a group to effectively respond to unhelpful behavior… Finally, psychological flexibility supports all the core design principles. When we can absorb the emotional challenge of growth and direct attention toward how to create value-based habits, group members are more likely to engage in all the principles, and this synergistic effect can become self-amplifying pattern of evolutionary development.” (pg. 168, Ch. 11).
“If a group is to find its way through conflicts, it needs to ensure it has effective capacity at three levels: (1) Interpersonal skills such as listening well and speaking assertively, not aggressively, (2) Personal skills such as emotional regulation and perspective taking, and (3) Group-level agreements on principles and processes to manage conflict efficiently and effectively.” (pg. 177, Ch. 12)
“When Elinor Ostrom studied common-pool resource groups, the need for local authority emerged as so important that she made it a core design principal in its own right. By her reckoning, it was essential that external authorities not challenge the right of a group to form its own rules and impose its own sanctions, as long as they don’t violate basic human rights. She encountered many examples of groups that were capable of managing their own common-pool resources but failed for lack of sufficient autonomy. Core design principle 7 (CPD 7), authority to self-govern, is about the group not the individuals within the group. Specifically, it is about the group’s capacity to manage its own affairs without excessive interference from outside. ‘Authority’ can mean the power or right to give orders, make decision, and enforce obedience. But it can also mean the capacity and power to author one’s own experience. We mean it in this latter way.” (pg. 190, Ch. 13)
“The principles we’ve covered so far help solve thee ‘me versus us’ problem within groups, but if we’re to scale this approach to enhance whole systems of cooperation, we need to address how ‘us versus them’ can be reconciled.” (pg. 199, Ch. 14)
“Why Goals Matter: Performance and Learning Goals… Goals are important for groups because they help them coordinate action in a shared direction, and because they motivate people to initiative and sustain effort, even when the going gets tough. But, done well, goals can also serve another critical purpose: they can help people learn and adapt over time. It’s usually helpful to talk about the distinction between performance goals and learning goals with groups. Performance goals are focused on the outcomes to be achieved… Such goals are perfectly reasonable and helpful when everybody in the system knows exactly what to do and can predict how every other part of the system will react… But we have repeatedly emphasized through this book how human systems are complex adaptive systems, evolving on multiple levels, with nonlinear cause and effect between agents and levels. As we become increasingly densely interconnected with one another the extent of complexity also increases. Whereas twenty or thirty years ago solving problems of coordination and cooperation might have required simple problem-solving and goal setting, now it more often than not requires a more learning-oriented approach, experimenting with trying out things to see how they work, and remaining open to flexible changing directions in the face of feedback from the system… A learning goal is focused less on what must be achieved and more on learning how to get to that outcome. In the context of the Prosocial process, learning goals often mean experimenting with different approaches to putting the principles into action…” (pg. 209, Ch. 15)
“Our work is about both thinking globally and acting locally. Participants are uplifted not just by the toolkit, but by a new shared story about the nature of humanity — a story that provides realistic hope that we can do something about our challenges, locally and globally, by cultivating shared purpose while also managing the inevitability of self-interest in cooperative situations… In this new story, human beings can develop and sustain shared commitments to improving the quality of our relationships, conversations, and agreements so as to ensure that self-interest is protected but cannot dominate collective interest. If we had to summarize in a sentence the journey we’ve taken in this book, we’d say it this way: Complex adaptive systems of cooperation can grow out of more psychologically flexible people and environments, in which small groups, and groups of groups, create shared and principled agreements that establish trust and satisfy individual and group interests. Or, perhaps more poetically, we can foster cooperation within and cooperation without, by restraining selfishness within and without, in the service of human values at all scales…. The World Our Hearts Imagine… Imagine for a moment your ideal world, restrained only by the finite reality of organisms that live and die as part of the natural world.” (pg. 222, Conclusion);
This book and review
First full skim of book was 20220124.
Second detailed reread was from 20251123 to 200260220.
Started writing the review on 20260322 and finished on 20260405.
Additional Notes
How long did it take me to read the book?
It took four years (2022-2026) for me to carefully read Atkins, Wilson, Hayes (2022) “Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science To Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups.”
After skimming Part 1 in 2022, I thought of what aspects of the groups that I was part of that I would most like to improve, and dove into the chapter on the specific Core Design Principle of most interest (“Fair and Inclusive Decision Making”) to see what was there. The lens provided was useful for understanding situations from new perspectives. Next, I spent a few years studying individual chapters (design principles) while thinking about the groups that I belonged to and how they might be improved.
Only after reading a great book about building a non-coercive society (Deming & Hamel (2025) “Blueprint for a Spacefaring Civilization: The Science of Volition”) did I feel motivated and ready read “Prosocial” from start to finish in detail in 2025, which I then did, extracting useful information about the commons (as different from markets and hierarchies), multilevel evolution (as a more foundational view of cultural evolutional), and more described briefly below.
A bit expensive, a long and hard read, but definitely what the world needs now to improve individual and collective cognition for collaboration and multi-scale cultural evolution, in hierarchy, market, and commons…
Getting rid of coercion and becoming more “prosocial” will require some innovations for sure – markets, institutions, commons – all have lessons to share.
How do I read books?
My style of reading a book is to skim a whole book on the day that I receive it. A typical book is around 250 pages, requires a careful reading of any foreword, authors biography, acknowledgements, and table of contents to think about why am I reading this book, what do I hope to learn (what are my learning goals), what is likely to be most challenging and difficult for me to learn, what is going to be easiest to understand. I also look at endnotes, references, index, and any closing comments, refining what I expect to learn, and what might be new, interesting, and related to my purpose in reading the book. All this can take from 15 minutes to 30 minutes, depending on the amount of material to skim and study. I also make notes if needed, in the margins, and in the back of the books with the date, page, and keywords.
Next, starting at chapter one and going to the last chapter, I look at every page briefly, reading the first sentence of each paragraph, and briefly scanning the page for interesting words, including words I may not know, as well as names of people, places, and things I do not know. Sometimes I will take the time to make a note in the margins, and sometimes a note at the end of the book.
Turning every page of a 250 page book, takes me on average 2-4 seconds per page, so anywhere from 500 to 1000 seconds, or roughly between 10 and 20 minutes.
My first read (skim) of any book takes typically well under an hour, and establishes my learning goals and basic familiarity with the author(s), their reason for writing the book, and my reason for reading it.
My approach to reading books is based on a book my grandmother Roberta Lade Spohrer Belgard gave me when I was in high school, called “How To Read A Book” (Adler MJ, Van Doren C (1972) “How to Read a Book”). My love of books goes back to my earliest childhood, and my parents (and grandmother Roberta) had lots of books. Lots of story books, but also I recall books on drafting (precise drawings), the arts, science, technology, history, biographies of famous people, and more. My parents bought us kids three encyclopedia sets as well – The Book of Knowledge series was my favorite (red and white bindings) and covered most everything including the natural and human made worlds, but there was also two concise sets one a pale blue that had a lot on science (“The Book of Science”), and one a dark blue (Groliers) which had a lot on history, people and places. I recall when my high school guidance counselor (Mr. Arsenault?) called me to his office (out of an advanced biology class (Ms. Jane Kimball), and maybe my math teacher Mr. Gary Tibbets was in that office as well) to tell my about my SAT scores. He then asked where I plan to apply to college. I said maybe the University of Maine at Orono. Then he handed me an application to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and suggested I should apply. As soon as I got home, I ran to the encyclopedias bookcase near the stairs in our den and looked up MIT. I read “top science and technology university in the world” and thought, “that sounds pretty good to me.” I needed a letter of reference from a teacher and a someone from the community. I was afraid to ask for adults outside my family for help, but the instructions said no family members could write the recommendation, so I mustered the courage. Not sure it if was Mr. Tibbets or Ms. Kimball, or both for the teacher, but my mother Arlene’s good friend and neighbor, Joyce Getchell, wrote a short recommendation on a piece of scrap paper in her kitchen – “Jimmy is a good boy. He goes to church. He studies and works hard. He gets good grades in school. He is a Boy Scout. He is working on his Eagle badge. We will miss him a lot when he goes to college.” My student essay was on “Parsimony in Nature.”
Including my attempts to learn from history….
Ng (2025) The Great Sleepwalk: The Markets That Program Us
Norberg J (2025) Peak Human: What We Can Learn From History’s Greatest Civilizations
Aurelius M (180) Meditations. 2023, Editor Hays G, Foreword Holiday R.
Daston L (2022) Rules: A Short History of What We Live By
Deacon TW (1998) The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain
Hoffman PM (2012) Life’s Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos
Stauss W, Howe N (1997) The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy – What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny
Fleming M (2023) Breakthrough: A Growth Revolution
Bregman R (2020) Humankind: A Hopeful History
Ridley M (2011) The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
Davies D (2024) The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How The World Lost its Mind
Lowney C (2010) Heroic Leadership: Best Practices From A 450-Year-Old Company That Changed The World.
(still need to add all the Harari books to the list – though I disagree as much as I agree with his perspective and insights on history)
… In order to imagine and build a better future.
Deming J & Hamel M (2025) Blueprint for a Spacefaring Civilization: The Science of Volition
Sanders B (2025) Fighting Oligarchy
Wright R (1999) NonZero: The Logic of Human Destiny.
Toyama K (2015) Geek Heresy: Rescuing social change from the cult of technology.
Arbesman S (2025) The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created And Connects Our World
Atkins WB, Wilson DS, Hayes SC (2019) “Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups”
Heath S (1957) “Citadel, Market, and Altar: Emerging Society”
Lem S (1976) Cyberiad: Fables from the Cybernetic Age.
Gada K (2019) The ATOM (or Third Millenium Economics)
Taleb NN (2014) Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Johansen B, Kirshbaum J, Cervantes G (2024) Leaders Make the Future, Third Edition: 10 New Skills to Humanize Leadership with Generative AI.
More comments below about the books…
BiblioN2025 Ng I (2025)) The Great Sleepwalk: The Markets That Program Us
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Sleepwalk-markets-that-program-ebook/dp/B0G3LYM9MJ/
Via_Irene_Ng
Quotes: “This was the earliest form of programming – not digital, but behavioral. When repeated reward shapes repeated action, action becomes habit.” (pg. 8);
Imagine living in a world with no coercion
BiblioD2025 Deming J & Hamel M (2025) Blueprint for a Spacefaring Civilization: The Science of Volition (By John Deming, with Mike Hamel)
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Blueprint-Spacefaring-Civilization-Science-Volition/dp/B0DV4HB4R5
Via Joseph_Hentz
Quotes: “Cultural evolution is open-ended, yet, like physical and biological evolution, it is subject to underlying universal constraints. Once we understand those constraints, we can apply them to induce cultural evolution that becomes stabilized and impervious to systemic failure.”;
BiblioN2025 Norberg J (2025) Peak Human:
What We Can Learn From History’s Greatest Civilizations
Via: David_Gurteen
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Human-Historys-Greatest-Civilizations/dp/1838957294
Quotes:
“
All golden ages are marked by periods of spectacular cultural flourishing, scientific exploration, technological achievement and economic growth; yet no two are the same. Their beliefs, societies and place in the wider world all vary. Despite this, all previous golden ages have ended, whether it be because of external pressures or internal fracturing; too much hubris or too little wariness. Looking at seven of humanity’s greatest civilizations – ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, Abbasid Baghdad, Song China, Renaissance Italy, the Dutch Republic and the Anglosphere – historian and commentator Johan Norberg seeks to distil their strengths and shortcomings in answering the question: how do we ensure that our current golden age doesn’t end? As insightful as it is riveting, Peak Human is at once a paean to our incredible progress and a warning that we cannot afford to be complacent.
“;
“
One of the most important works in the Stoic tradition was written by Marcus Aurelius. (pg. 89)
“;
A short, small, inexpensive book that packs a hell of a punch
BiblioS2025 Sanders B (2025) Fighting Oligarchy
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Fight-Oligarchy-Senator-Bernie-Sanders/dp/B0FLTLP4WK/
Via_Bernie_Sanders
Quotes: “The most powerful tool that the ruling class has to protect their interests is to make ordinary people feel powerless. Their message: You are alone, and there is nothing you, or anyone else, can do to stop us. We have wealth. We have power. Just shut up and get out of the way.” (pg. 88);
Sam makes a subject I know well come alive with new insights in his latest book ‘The Magic of Code’Sam writes a nice blog too and writes things like: “the world is combinatorially weird and fractally interesting. And therefore, omnivorous curiosity is the only proper response.”
BiblioA2025 Arbesman S (2025) The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created And Connects Our World.
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Code-Language-Connects-World_and/dp/1541704487/
Via_Sam_Arbesman
Quotes: “Another aspect of magic and ritual is that of sacrifice: something of value must be given in order for the spell to work…
The realm of artificial intelligence and machine learning provides an example. Do you want a powerful system that can generate text, or code, or images? Then you must place a large corpus of humanities creations upon the altar. These systems are greedy demons, insatiably consuming vast quantities of data….
Many creators are disturbed – rightly so – by what is required for these AI systems to work, the sacrifices that are incinerated by these massive data-processing centers in order to give us the wonders of artificial intelligence. But these systems only work with sacrifice….
So the power of AI comes at a price. There are vast resources that must be consumed to train these systems (computational power and electricity) and these systems stand upon a heap of creative work of human beings…
AI aside, computing is not free… computation is a very real and physical system.” (pp. 58-60);
A bit expensive, a long and hard read, but definitely what the world needs now to improve individual and collective cognition for collaboration and multi-scale cultural evolution, in hierarchy, market, and commons…
BiblioA2019 Atkins WB, Wilson DS, Hayes SC (2019) “Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups”
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Prosocial-Evolutionary-Productive-Equitable-Collaborative/dp/1684030242
Via_Ray_Fisk
Quotes:
“Polycentric governance [of commons]: Beyond [hierarchies] regulation and markets.” (pg. 28);
“The oldest (600 million years old or more) form of learning (that is, behavior change) is habituation, in which repeated irrelevant sensory stimulation leads to a reduction in responding.” (pg. 51);
“Outside/Inside: Human beings care about, and worry about, a lot more than animals thanks to our capacity to imagine and tell inspiring and terrifying stories about the past, present, and future. As we explored in the last chapter, humans live in two worlds simultaneously: the world of actual physical contacts and causes, and the world of language and the mind. We can transform the meaning of any situation through the way we relate to our experience. Winning the lottery can become painful when it causes strife with relatives, and having a leg blown off by a landmine or experiencing cancer can become a source of meaning and joy when the processes of survival and recovery awaken one to the beauty of life. These are not hyperbole – these are actual examples.” (pp. 75-76);
“Our work is about both thinking globally and acting locally. Participants are uplifted not just by the toolkit, but by a new shared story about the nature of humanity — a story that provides realistic hope that we can do something about our challenges, locally and globally, by cultivating shared purpose while also managing the inevitability of self-interest in cooperative situations.
In this new story, human beings can develop and sustain shared commitments to improving the quality of our relationships, conversations, and agreements so as to ensure that self-interest is protected but cannot dominate collective interest. If we had to summarize in a sentence the journey we’ve taken in this book, we’d say it this way: Complex adaptive systems of cooperation can grow out of more psychologically flexible people and environments, in which small groups, and groups of groups, create shared and principled agreements that establish trust and satisfy individual and group interests. Or, perhaps more poetically, we can foster cooperation within and cooperation without, by restraining selfishness within and without, in the service of human values at all scales.
The World Our Hearts Imagine
Imagine for a moment your ideal world, restrained only by the finite reality of organisms that live and die as part of the natural world.
” (pg. 222);
This book is hard to recommend because it has many archaic ideas from the 1940s and 1950s USA mixed in as well. Still I like how he rolls up his sleeves and gets to work on building understanding about the social world from an engineer’s perspective. A sharp mind at work.
Heath S (1957) “Citadel, Market, and Altar: Emerging Society”
URL: https://archive.org/details/citadelmarket00heatguat
Quotes: from Chapter 20, pages 111-113.
“Science describes things and events in terms of their magnitudes and ratios or relationships. It is thus an abstraction from but still a part of the cosmic reality. It differs from ordinary knowledge in that it is generalized over a wide range. Scientific knowledge is thus realizable forward; it can be projected into particular objects and experiences in ways that realize desired ends and dreams. The science of society is no exception. Its discoveries, its descriptions, are motivated by intimations and apprehensions of the beauty it reveals; its application resolves beauty into use and, where the application is high, creates beauty anew.”
The Jesuits explored many cultures, first contributing to the culture they joined, before sharing their own culture with others – nice!
BiblioL2010 Lowney C (2010) Heroic Leadership: Best Practices From A 450-Year-Old Company That Changed The World.
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Heroic-Leadership-Practices-450-Year-Old-Company/dp/0829421157
About the author Chris Lowney
URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lowney
For fiction that was ahead of its time related to robots and AI and generative AI making poems, seeking Truth, etc….
BiblioL1976 Lem S (1976) Cyberiad: Fables from the Cybernetic Age. Author Stanislaw Lem. Translated from Polish by Michael Kandel. Illustrated by Daniel Mroz. Originally published in 1967. Avon.
Quotes: “JCS: My best guess is that in the 1960’s that Stanislaw Lem was inspired by Joseph Weizenbaum (MIT) Eliza program, and or he was a time traveler. I also think Doug Engelbart was a time traveler.
JCS: URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_Lem
Lem was the author of the fundamental philosophical work Summa Technologiae, in which he anticipated the creation of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and also developed the ideas of human autoevolution, the creation of artificial worlds, and many others. Lem’s science fiction works explore philosophical themes through speculations on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of communication with and understanding of alien intelligence, despair about human limitations, and humanity’s place in the universe. His essays and philosophical books cover these and many other topics. Translating his works is difficult due to Lem’s elaborate neologisms and idiomatic wordplay.
The Sejm (the lower house of the Polish Parliament) declared 2021 Stanisław Lem Year.[6]
JCS: Avon did romance fiction. As of 2010, Avon is an imprint of HarperCollins. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avon_(publisher)
“;
Some books I like to recommend for people who want to be more optimistic about the future, but find reality a bit shocking at the moment:
BiblioD1998 Deacon TW (1998) The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Symbolic-Species-Co-evolution-Language-Brain/dp/0393317544/
Quotes:
“
“A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts.”―New York Times Book Review
This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man’s newfound access to other people’s thoughts and emotions.
Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain’s development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.
“;
BiblioD2024 Daston L (2022) Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (The Lawrence Stone Lectures).
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Short-History-Lawrence-Lectures/dp/0691156980
Via_Ray_Fisk
Quotes:
“
A panoramic history of rules in the Western world
Rules order almost every aspect of our lives. They set our work hours, dictate how we drive and set the table, tell us whether to offer an extended hand or cheek in greeting, and organize the rites of life, from birth through death. We may chafe under the rules we have, and yearn for ones we don’t, yet no culture could do without them. In Rules, historian Lorraine Daston traces their development in the Western tradition and shows how rules have evolved from ancient to modern times. Drawing on a rich trove of examples, including legal treatises, cookbooks, military manuals, traffic regulations, and game handbooks, Daston demonstrates that while the content of rules is dazzlingly diverse, the forms that they take are surprisingly few and long-lived.
Daston uncovers three enduring kinds of rules: the algorithms that calculate and measure, the laws that govern, and the models that teach. She vividly illustrates how rules can change―how supple rules stiffen, or vice versa, and how once bothersome regulations become everyday norms. Rules have been devised for almost every imaginable activity and range from meticulous regulations to the laws of nature. Daston probes beneath this variety to investigate when rules work and when they don’t, and why some philosophical problems about rules are as ancient as philosophy itself while others are as modern as calculating machines.
Rules offers a wide-angle view on the history of the constraints that guide us―whether we know it or not.
“;
BiblioS1997 Stauss W, Howe N (1997) The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy – What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny
Via: Scott_Sampson?
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Turning-American-Prophecy-Rendezvous/dp/0767900464/
Quotes:
“
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play—now with a new preface by Neil Howe.
First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history.
William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict what comes next.
Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four twenty-year eras—or “turnings”—that comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post–World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny.
“;
BiblioW1999 Wright R (1999) NonZero: The Logic of Human Destiny. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonzero:_The_Logic_of_Human_Destiny Quotes: “Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny is a 1999 book by Robert Wright, in which the author argues that biological evolution and cultural evolution are shaped and directed first and foremost by “non-zero-sumness” i.e., the prospect of creating new interactions that are not zero-sum.”;
JCS: Related:
GameTheory – Best Interaction & Change Strategy
What Game Theory Reveals About Life, The Universe, and Everything
URL: https://youtu.be/mScpHTIi-kM
Success Qualities – Nice, Forgive, Retaliatory (Don’t Be A Pushover), Clear
BiblioF2023 Fleming M (2023) Breakthrough: A Growth Revolution. URL: https://www.amazon.com/Breakthrough-Growth-Revolution-Martin-Fleming/dp/1637423098 Quotes: “This book examines the economic logic of the significant variation in growth over long periods. What’s necessary for the U.S. and other developed nations to realize stronger growth and more equal incomes? What’s necessary for families to feel vacations, college educations, and retirements are possible? Will artificial intelligence (AI) automate or augment workers’ jobs? Will the 2020-2021 global pandemic be sufficiently disruptive to deliver fundamental transformation? Economic success in the decades ahead will depend on the willingness of households, businesses, and governments to innovate and change ways of living and working. To explore these questions, the 4th Industrial Revolution is a unique frame to assess global economic transformation, providing a point-in-time reference for placing current events in the context of sustained, multi-decade periods of faster and slower growth. Political, social, and economic metamorphoses have accompanied each revolution. This book examines the economic logic of the significant variation in growth over long periods. Climate change and the global warming consequences of fossil-fuel technologies will need to bring about a new energy technology and, if successful, result in renewable energy sources, reducing energy expense. The success of the 4th Industrial Revolution is not assured. While the future is uncertain, history suggests success requires that barriers are addressed, workers and businesses engage in the necessary change, and a positive policy response provides the needed leadership. The book proposes a Growth and Fairness Agenda and a New Social Contract through which stronger economic growth and more equally distributed incomes can be possible. Recognize traditional policy actions may be insufficient to achieve stronger long-term growth.
Promote improved confidence and a positive outlook among small and medium enterprises.
Encourage advances in AI technology while addressing risks and fairness issues.
Support deeper worker engagement between business leaders and workers.
Seek a new social contract among workers, businesses, and governments.”;
BiblioG2019 (2019) Gada K (2019) The ATOM (or Third Millenium Economics)
URL: https://www.amazon.com/ATOM-Second-Time-Upgrade-Economy/dp/1953349501/ Quotes: “In this book, we will explore how the accelerating pace and diffusion of technological change has taken control of an ever-growing fraction of the world economy.
This fraction is being assimilated into a different set of economic fundamentals, such as the rapid and exponential price deflation inherent to technology. The effect of this was insignificant until recently, but is now beginning to create conspicuous distortions in many economic metrics, and is just years from being the dominant force across the entire economy.
In response to technological deflation, the central banks of the world will have to create new money in perpetuity, increasing the stream at an exponentially rising rate much higher than is currently assumed. This now-permanent need for monetary expansion, if embraced, can fund government spending more directly. This in turn creates a very robust, dynamic, and efficient safety net for citizens, while simultaneously reducing and even eliminating most forms of taxation by 2025-30.
Failure to recognize that technological deflation mandates permanent and ever-rising central bank monetary expansion that can and should gradually become the primary source of government spending could result in countries falling behind more enlightened countries in a very short time.
The nature of current worldwide technology is to link various disruptions with each other, consume monetary liquidity to generate deflation, and lower the effective prices of most goods and services over time. Therefore, the entirety of worldwide technology has to be seen as a holistic economic entity, and can be defined as the ‘Accelerating TechnOnomic Medium’, or ‘ATOM’ “;
BiblioB2020 Bregman R (2020) Humankind: A Hopeful History. URL: https://www.amazon.com/Humankind-Hopeful-History-Rutger-Bregman/dp/0316418528/ Quotes: “If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It’s a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest. But what if it isn’t true? International bestseller Rutger Bregman provides new perspective on the past 200,000 years of human history, setting out to prove that we are hardwired for kindness, geared toward cooperation rather than competition, and more inclined to trust rather than distrust one another. In fact this instinct has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the solidarity in the aftermath of the Blitz, the hidden flaws in the Stanford prison experiment to the true story of twin brothers on opposite sides who helped Mandela end apartheid, Bregman shows us that believing in human generosity and collaboration isn’t merely optimistic—it’s realistic. Moreover, it has huge implications for how society functions. When we think the worst of people, it brings out the worst in our politics and economics. But if we believe in the reality of humanity’s kindness and altruism, it will form the foundation for achieving true change in society, a case that Bregman makes convincingly with his signature wit, refreshing frankness, and memorable storytelling.”;
BiblioR2011 Ridley M (2011) The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. URL: https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Optimist-Prosperity-Evolves-P-s/dp/0061452068/ Quotes: “n a bold and provocative interpretation of economic history, Matt Ridley, the New York Times-bestselling author of Genome and The Red Queen, makes the case for an economics of hope, arguing that the benefits of commerce, technology, innovation, and change—what Ridley calls cultural evolution—will inevitably increase human prosperity. Fans of the works of Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel), Niall Ferguson (The Ascent of Money), and Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat) will find much to ponder and enjoy in The Rational Optimist. For two hundred years the pessimists have dominated public discourse, insisting that things will soon be getting much worse. But in fact, life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people’s lives as never before. An astute, refreshing, and revelatory work that covers the entire sweep of human history—from the Stone Age to the Internet—The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better.”:
… and for those who want to roll up their sleeves and work hard, I recommend these additional books….
BiblioD2024 Davies D (2024) The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How The World Lost its Mind. Hardcover – 18 April 2024. by Dan Davies (Author).
Via_Ted_Kahn
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Unaccountability-Machine-Dan-Davies/dp/1788169549/
Quote: “
When we avoid taking a decision, what happens to it? In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies examines why markets, institutions and even governments systematically generate outcomes that everyone involved claims not to want. He casts new light on the writing of Stafford Beer, a legendary economist who argued in the 1950s that we should regard organisations as artificial intelligences, capable of taking decisions that are distinct from the intentions of their members.
Management cybernetics was Beer’s science of applying self-regulation in organisational settings, but it was largely ignored – with the result being the political and economic crises that that we see today. With his signature blend of cynicism and journalistic rigour, Davies looks at what’s gone wrong, and what might have been, had the world listened to Stafford Beer when it had the chance.
“;
BiblioT2015 Toyama K (2015) Geek Heresy: Rescuing social change from the cult of technology. By Kentaro Toyama. Perseus Book Group: Public Affairs.
Via_Ted_Selker.
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Geek-Heresy-Rescuing-Social-Technology/dp/161039528X Quotes: “(Pp. 159-160) He [Patrick Awuah] enrolled in UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where he focused every class project on the question of how to start the university [Ashei University, Ghana]. In 2002, spurred by a quotation attributed to Goethe – “Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!” … “Ashei” means “beginning” in Fanti, the language of Awuah’s ancestors…”;
BiblioT2014. Taleb NN (2014) Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto)
Paperback – January 28, 2014. by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Author)
Via_YouTube
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto/dp/0812979680
Quotes: “
Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world.
Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish.
In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better.
Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call “efficient” not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear.
Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world.
Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb’s message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it.
Praise for Antifragile
“Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining.”—The Economist
“A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our lives.”—Newsweek
“;
BiblioH2012 Hoffman PM (2012) Life’s Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos (by Peter M Hoffmann (Author), Hardcover – October 30, 2012)
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Lifes-Ratchet-Molecular-Machines-Extract/dp/0465022537
Quotes: “
Life is an enduring mystery. Yet, science tells us that living beings are merely sophisticated structures of lifeless molecules. If this view is correct, where do the seemingly purposeful motions of cells and organisms originate? In Life’s Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale.
Below the calm, ordered exterior of a living organism lies microscopic chaos, or what Hoffmann calls the molecular storm — specialized molecules immersed in a whirlwind of colliding water molecules. Our cells are filled with molecular machines, which, like tiny ratchets, transform random motion into ordered activity, and create the “purpose” that is the hallmark of life. Tiny electrical motors turn electrical voltage into motion, nanoscale factories custom-build other molecular machines, and mechanical machines twist, untwist, separate and package strands of DNA. The cell is like a city — an unfathomable, complex collection of molecular workers working together to create something greater than themselves.
Life, Hoffman argues, emerges from the random motions of atoms filtered through these sophisticated structures of our evolved machinery. We are agglomerations of interacting nanoscale machines more amazing than anything in science fiction. Rather than relying on some mysterious “life force” to drive them — as people believed for centuries — life’s ratchets harness instead the second law of thermodynamics and the disorder of the molecular storm.
Grounded in Hoffmann’s own cutting-edge research, Life’s Ratchet reveals the incredible findings of modern nanotechnology to tell the story of how the noisy world of atoms gives rise to life itself.
“;
BiblioJ2025 Johansen B, Kirshbaum J, Cervantes G (2024) Leaders Make the Future, Third Edition: 10 New Skills to Humanize Leadership with Generative AI.
Via: Bob_Johansen
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Leaders-Make-Future-Third-Leadership/dp/B0D66H9BF1/
Hardcover – March 4, 2025
by Bob Johansen (Author), Jeremy Kirshbaum (Author), Gabe Cervantes (Author)
BiblioH2002 Hays G (2002) Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: Translation by Geoffrey Hays, with Foreword by Ryan Holiday.
Via_YouTube
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-New-Translation-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/0812968255/
Quotes: “
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Timeless insights into what it takes to lead a meaningful life—still profoundly relevant nearly two thousand years later.
Now featuring a brand-new foreword from Ryan Holiday, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Obstacle Is the Way!”;
===
Thanks, -Jim
—
Jim Spohrer, PhD
Board of Directors, ISSIP (International Society of Service Innovation Professionals)
Board of Directors, ServCollab (“Serving Humanity Through Collaboration”)
Senior Fellow, UIDP (“Strengthening University-Industry Partnerships”)
Retired Industry Executive (Apple, IBM)
Please let’s get better introduced (6 questions)
Ask my AI: https://answersfrom.me/jimtwin
Or via email at JimTwin <jimtwin@agent.answersfrom.me>
Regular mail: Jim Spohrer, ISSIP #431, 3561 Homestead Rd, Santa Clara, CA 95051
spohrer@gmail.com, 1-408-829-3112https://www.linkedin.com/in/spohrer/
*
*
Summary of Meditations (imperfect start) Hays Translation. Red Raven Edition.URL: https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-New-Translation-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/0812968255/
(1) Grateful to exist.
“Page 5; Book One: Debts & Lessons; 1. My Grandfather Verus: Character and Self-Control.”
(2) Separated from Truth.
“Page. 95; Book Seven: 63. ‘Against our will, our souls are cut off from truth.’ Truth, yes, justice, self-control, kindness… Important to keep this in mind. It will make you more patient with other people.”
(3) Perception beyond Appearance.
“Page 165; Book Twelve: 18. At all times, look at the thing itself – the thing behind the appearance – and unpack it by analysis: cause, substance, purpose, and the length of time it exists.”
(4) Worlds with minds.
“Page 164; Book Twelve: 13-14. The foolishness of people who are surprised by anything that happens. Like travelers amazed at foreign customs. Fatal necessity, and inescapable order. Or benevolent Providence. Or confusion – random and undirected. If it’s an inescapable necessity, why resist it? If it’s Providence, and admits of being worshipped, then try to be worthy of God’s aid. If it’s confusion and anarchy, then be grateful that on this raging sea you have a mind to guide you. And if the storm should carry you away, let it carry off flesh, breath and all the rest, but not the mind. Which can’t be swept away.”
(5) Epithets for yourself.
“Page 134; Book Ten: 8. Epithets for yourself: Upright, Modest. Straightforward. Sane. Cooperative. Disinterested. Try not to exchange them for others. and if you should forfeit them, set about getting them back. Keep in mind that ‘sanity’ means understanding things – each individual thing – for what they are. And not losing the thread. And ‘cooperation’ means accepting what nature assigns you – accepting it willingly. And ‘disinterest’ means that the intelligence should rise above the movements of the flesh – the rough and the smooth alike. Should rise above fame, above death, and everything like them. If you maintain your claim to these epithets – without caring if others apply them to you or not – you’ll become a new person. [GOES ON LONGER].”
(6) Tranquility, do less.
“Pages 42-43; Book Four: 24. ‘If you seek tranquility, do less.’ Or (more accurately) do what’s essential – what the ‘logos’ of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. What brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better. Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’ But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.”
(7) Choose no harm.
“Page 39; Book Four: 7-9. Choose not to be harmed – and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harm – and you haven’t been. It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you – inside or out. It was for the best. So Nature had no choice but to do it.”
(8) Prediction of others.
“Page 104; Book Eight: 14. When you have to deal with someone, ask yourself: What does he mean by good and bad? If he thinks x or y about pleasure and pain (and what produces them), about fame and disgrace, about death and life, then it shouldn’t shock you when he does x or y.”
(9) Perception of others.
“Pages 152-154; Book Eleven: 18. i. My relationship to them. [LONGER]. ii. What they’re like [LONGER]. iii. That if they’re right to do this, then you have no right to complain. [LONGER]. iv. That you’ve made enough mistakes yourself. [LONGER]. v. That you don’t know for sure that it ‘is’ a mistake. A lot of things are means to some other end. You have to know an awful lot before you can judge other people’s actions with real understanding. vi. When you lose your temper, or even feel irritated: that human life is very short. Before long all of us will be laid out side by side. vii. That it is not what they ‘do’ that bothers us: that’s a problem for their minds, not ours. It’s our own misperceptions. Discard them. Be willing to give up thinking of this as a catastrophe… and your anger is gone. [LONGER]. viii. How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that caused them. ix That kindness is invincible, provided it is sincere – and not ironic or an act. [LONGER]. Keep these nine points in mind, like gifts from the nine Muses, and start becoming a human being. Now and for the rest of your life. And along with not getting angry at others, try not to pander either. Both of them are forms of selfishness; both will do you harm. When you are to lose your temper, remember: There’s nothing manly about rage. It’s courtesy and kindness that define a human being – and a man. That’s who possesses strength and nerves and guts, not the angry whiners.[LONGER]. … and one more thought, from Apollo: x. That to expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It’s to ask the impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant – the act of a tyrant.”
(10) Death will come.
“Page 164; Book Twelve: 15. The lamp shines until it is put out, without losing its gleam, and yet in you it all gutters out early – truth, justice, self-control.”
“Do not pray for an easy life, pray to be a strong person.”
– Nadia Comăneci
URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Comăneci
“A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others.”
– Jimmy Carter
URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter
Be grateful for hardship and challenge, it builds your character.
– Roberta Lade Spohrer Belgard, Jim’s Grandmother
*
How do I read books?
My style of reading a book is to skim a whole book on the day that I receive it. A typical book is around 250 pages, requires a careful reading of any foreword, authors biography, acknowledgements, and table of contents to think about why am I reading this book, what do I hope to learn (what are my learning goals), what is likely to be most challenging and difficult for me to learn, what is going to be easiest to understand. I also look at endnotes, references, index, and any closing comments, refining what I expect to learn, and what might be new, interesting, and related to my purpose in reading the book. All this can take from 15 minutes to 30 minutes, depending on the amount of material to skim and study. I also make notes if needed, in the margins, and in the back of the books with the date, page, and keywords.
Next, starting at chapter one and going to the last chapter, I look at every page briefly, reading the first sentence of each paragraph, and briefly scanning the page for interesting words, including words I may not know, as well as names of people, places, and things I do not know. Sometimes I will take the time to make a note in the margins, and sometimes a note at the end of the book.
Turning every page of a 250 page book, takes me on average 2-4 seconds per page, so anywhere from 500 to 1000 seconds, or roughly between 10 and 20 minutes.
My first read (skim) of any book takes typically well under an hour, and establishes my learning goals and basic familiarity with the author(s), their reason for writing the book, and my reason for reading it.
My approach to reading books is based on a book my grandmother Roberta Lade Spohrer Belgard gave me when I was in high school, called “How To Read A Book” (Adler MJ, Van Doren C (1972) “How to Read a Book”). My love of books goes back to my earliest childhood, and my parents (and grandmother Roberta) had lots of books. Lots of story books, but also I recall books on drafting (precise drawings), the arts, science, technology, history, biographies of famous people, and more. My parents bought us kids three encyclopedia sets as well – The Book of Knowledge series was my favorite (red and white bindings) and covered most everything including the natural and human made worlds, but there was also two concise sets one a pale blue that had a lot on science (“The Book of Science”), and one a dark blue (Groliers) which had a lot on history, people and places. I recall when my high school guidance counselor (Mr. Arsenault?) called me to his office (out of an advanced biology class (Ms. Jane Kimball), and maybe my math teacher Mr. Gary Tibbets was in that office as well) to tell my about my SAT scores. He then asked where I plan to apply to college. I said maybe the University of Maine at Orono. Then he handed me an application to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and suggested I should apply. As soon as I got home, I ran to the encyclopedias bookcase near the stairs in our den and looked up MIT. I read “top science and technology university in the world” and thought, “that sounds pretty good to me.” I needed a letter of reference from a teacher and a someone from the community. I was afraid to ask for adults outside my family for help, but the instructions said no family members could write the recommendation, so I mustered the courage. Not sure it if was Mr. Tibbets or Ms. Kimball, or both for the teacher, but my mother Arlene’s good friend and neighbor, Joyce Getchell, wrote a short recommendation on a piece of scrap paper in her kitchen – “Jimmy is a good boy. He goes to church. He studies and works hard. He gets good grades in school. He is a Boy Scout. He is working on his Eagle badge. We will miss him a lot when he goes to college.” My student essay was on “Parsimony in Nature.”
ISSIP Knowledge Sharing – Eminence
Evidence
List of ISSIP Blog Posts with Awardee Names and LinkedIn Profiles
2026 Spring AICollab Student Recognition – Student CEOs in the AI Era Exploration
2025 Conference – ISM Service Innovation Best Papers Recognition
2026 Ambassadors – Connector Role Recognition
2025 Fall AICollab Student Recognition – Synthetic Data Exploration
2025 Conference – AHFE HSSE Human-Side of Service Engineering Best Paper Awards
2025 Spring AI Collab Student Recognitions – Onboarding Course
2025 Ambassadors – Connector Role Recognition
2024 Volunteers – Outstanding Contributions to the ISSIP Community-of-Practice
2024 Conference – HICSS Practitioner Insights
2024 Fall AICollab Student Recognition – Guidebook for Service Roles
2024 Conference – ISM Service Innovation Best Papers Recognition
2024 Conference – AHFE HSSE Human-Side of Service Engineering Best Paper Awards
2024 Discovery Series – Speaker Recognition for AI’s Impact on Global Democracy Insights
2024 Spring AICollab Student Recognition – AI Digital Twins of Speakers
2024 Discovery Series – Speaker Recognition for Industry Transformation for 21st Century Economy
2024 Ambassadors – Connector Role Recognition
2023 Fall AICollab Student Recognition – Historic Service Innovations
2023 Conference – ICServ Best Papers
2023 Conference – AHFE HSSE Human-Side of Service Engineering Best Paper Awards
2023 Ambassadors – Connector Role Recognition
2023 Panel – Speaker Recognition for Service System Sustainability
2022 Conference – AHFE HSSE Human-Side of Service Engineering Best Paper Awards
2022 Ambassadors – Connector Role Recognition
2021 Discovery Series – ISSIP-NSF Industry Perspective on STEM Education Workshops
2022 Conference – HICSS Practitioner Insights
2021 Ambassadors – Connector Role Recognition
2021 Discovery Cafe Series – Speaker Recognition
2013-2020 Ambassadors – Connector Role Recognition
2020-2021 Recognitions – Launch of ISSIP Badge (B) and Digital Credential (DC) Program
Description:
A badge awarded to an individual participant for exemplary service to the service innovation community-of-practice through collaborations, presentations, and publications.
Earning Criteria
Recipients must complete the earning criteria to earn this badge
For contribution of deep professional expertise to the service innovation community through any of the following activities or events: i. Level 1: Explorer Knowledge Sharer. Participation in an ISSIP Discovery Summit, ISSIP Progress/BOD call, ISSIP-sponsored conference, ISSIP SIG, ISSIP Collaboration, etc. and/or creating content for the ISSIP website, ISSIP Newsletter interview, etc. ii. Level 2: Thought Leader Knowledge Sharer. Design and advocacy of an ISSIP Discovery Summit, ISSIP-sponsored conference, ISSIP SIG, content for the ISSIP website. iii. Level 3: Eminence Knowledge Sharer. Conducting continuing education/management development training program. Publishing a book related to the subject of service innovation. Significant collaboration in an ongoing ISSIP program, platform, of non-profit activity as deemed by ISSIP leadership, for example ISSIP Ambassador connector role.
Narrative
What the recipient did to earn this Digital Certification (DC)/Badge (B)
Thank-you for your significant contribution to the ISSIP community.
There has never been a more challenging and opportunity-rich time than right now for service innovation professionals with a focus on mutually beneficial (and harmful!) interactions and change processes! Arguably, value cocreation (technology-driven market wealth) as well as trust and value codestruction (unchecked coercion) are rampant. Industry, academia, government, and non-profit leaders as well as all responsible actors see business and society transforming before their very eyes. Economists and computer scientists who typically use a narrow productivity and automation lens on service innovation see the rise of Artificial Intelligence, Humanoid Robots, and more as improving productivity in the service sector as previous technological advances did for agriculture and manufacturing in the past two centuries. Meanwhile policymakers, safety engineers, schools of management, and social scientists who typically use a broader governance, risk compliance, leadership, and ethical norms lens on service innovation see individuals and groups augmented with unchecked and imperfect new powers and capabilities, who are not only creating benefits but harms, especially to the already underserved stakeholders in society.
What should an ISSIP certified service innovation professional know? To find out more, please attend and/or register for the upcoming ISSIP Progress Update With Board (All Welcome!) zoom event. Even if you cannot attend the live event, if you register here, then you will be emailed the recording and final slides. Several surprise slides will be including in the final deck, that are not in the first draft deck here.
If you are interested in multiple perspectives on service innovation, be sure to subscribe to these ISSIP platform communication channels:
ISSIP Executive Committee Favorite Service Innovation Topics
If not already registered to attend, be sure to register here to get reminder email with zoom link 30 minutes before the meeting starts, and also the post-event link to meeting recording and final slides (with several surprise slides to be added).
Recent past events:
GGG July 10, 2024: Quarterly Welcome Event – Give-Get-Grow (GGG)
Recording: https://youtu.be/-Je88GI-Nf8
BoD July 31, 2024: President’s Progress Update with Board: All Welcome!
Recording: https://youtu.be/mXrszuekm7M
Upcoming events & nomination deadlines:
AI & Democracy August 21, 2024
Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfl222iSrkmLu-uQwBic9nSE08Jtie2f-oJU_DPzZorJuveTw/viewform
Digital Transformation – Education, August 28, 2024
Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScRNe1pz1tjbE3qixkSTZgAStDH5-fsmKYn3UXTN4XncRmMSg/viewform
VP Nominations Deadline August 31, 2024: ISSIP VP 2025 Nominations
Nominations here: https://issip.org/2024/08/08/call-for-issip-vp-2025-nominations/
MyT-Me – T-shaped Skills Development Platform: September 18, 2024
Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfkPqw5BmeTIFlQpXGj38nrp0KMXAvRqumwdzqRTW_sWBC5tw/viewform
AI & Democracy #3: Defining Next Steps, September 25, 2024
Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfl222iSrkmLu-uQwBic9nSE08Jtie2f-oJU_DPzZorJuveTw/viewform
GGG October 9, 2024: Next Quarterly Welcome Event – Give-Get-Grow (GGG)
Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdmWs-b6ZwRR3whRTc5ha_d8_iYZRhu4ffZIhNKrKicjkBI3A/viewform
PSU Digital Transformation Series – Retail & Hospitality, October 30, 2024
Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdbyV9954MsUPStSg1KtB3IIIw6idgEceWgVGVipBKY-6y7tw/viewform
PSU Digital Transformation Series – Supply Chain & Logistics, November 20, 2024
Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdfCw1wWjti9Qy3Pga05JED2afdMGjP9umzG0QX0sxEngsgjQ/viewform
PSU Digital Transformation Series – Energy & IT, December 11, 2024
Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdB2DwMaXYiCzI133LnFAdLBO1xJAJ-bKHRJUNRtON9XUCKAA/viewform
2024 Ongoing AI Collab Industry Mentor Self-Nominations
Nominate Yourself here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScVeEizrczeG9PTw4ikg-fzLpRUrQ-WDbXLp_CESr6uwFd47A/viewform
2025 Excellence Award Deadline December 31, 2024: Excellence in Service Innovation Award nominations
Nominations here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdYEuEykcYnIEUL9gASo1amkpDqYMXa8hIkKCQem3yG83iIMA/viewform
2025 President’s Progress Update with Board: All Welcome, January 29, 2025
Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc2uVcQpp6kKQ5UW9T3yWcr3Cv3Zb2GZgdWZKV2gtOF3zYL3A/viewform
Call for Nominations
Vice President, ISSIP
Nomination Deadline: August 31
Start Date: Following January
Term: One year as VP, followed by one year as President, followed by one year as Chair of Nomination/Election committee
Consistent with ISSIP Bylaws, ISSIP Handbook, and Policies, ISSIP Nominating Committee is seeking nominations for candidates to serve as the Vice President of ISSIP in 2025. We invite all members of ISSIP to participate in this process.
Qualifications for this position include:
This position is highly visible, working directly with ISSIP leadership and members. These include senior industry and academic leaders, entrepreneurs, students, and future leaders. The position requires ~ 2-3 hours/week. Responsibilities include:
The role provides well-qualified individuals with significant opportunities to advance Service Innovation globally and provides a unique career development opportunity. Please submit nominations by August 31. Nominating statements should consist of a summary of the nominee’s qualifications and experience. Self-nominations are welcome. Please register nominations here.
Historical Note: Last year’s call for nominations and list of candidates/nominees. List of ISSIP Presidents 2012 to Present.
AHFE HSSE 2024 in Nice, France announced the following finalists for best paper award. See additional presentation here.
From Generative AI to Generative Organizations: A Service Lens on Organizational Learning and Development
Markus Warg (LI) (DC)
Eric Schott (LI) (DC)
Markus Frosch (LI) (DC)
“Unintended Consequences” of ICT System Introduction in Organizations and Operations: A case study on efficiency improvement of transportation operations in four daycare facilities
Maya Kondo (LI) (DC)
Yasunobu Ito (LI) (DC)
Environmental Impact of Video Streaming from Users’ Perspectives
Dam Thien (LI) (DC)
Margarita Chuloy (LI) (DC)
Leonhard Glomann (LI) (DC)
Co-Creation of “Value-in-Context” in High-Quality Service: A Case Study
Miwa Nishinaka (LI) (DC)
Hisashi Masuda (LI) (DC)
Exploring regulatory frameworks for AI/ML through different lenses: A comparative approach
Stephen Kwan (LI) (DC)
Christian Stiefmueller (LI) (DC)
Christine Leitner (LI) (DC)
On behalf of the ISSIP community, this is to thank you for contributing your time, expertise and insights to the AHFE HSSE Conference. Above is your ISSIP digital credential (DC) or Knowledge Sharing Eminence, which can be added to the Licenses & Certifications section of your LinkedIn Profile by following these instructions.