Why do we need to build an equity story movement for a flourishing future?
Rick Botelho
Unite Equity Muses | Ask ethical questions about co-designing a fair-free-flourishing future
#EquityMuses are Socratic sherpas who ask #BHAQs (big hairy audacious questions) about how to collaborate and work on this #EquityMoonshot question.
- How might we, as equity muses, open, inspire and align our mindsets to co-design and build an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future?
Without concerted ethical efforts to develop the fairness doctrine of equity governance, the focus on regeneration and sustainability will only make inequities and human misery much worse given the increased stresses of global warming along with the repeated threats of pandemics.
Equity muses ask leaders and people questions about what key words, such as equity and equitable, in a #BHAQ means to them. Asking self-reflective questions clarify the different assumptions that underlying the interpretations of key words in #BHAQs. Such self-reflection is essential to develop a shared understanding about the implications of any #BHAQ even before discussing it.
The virtue of equity has different meanings across the spectrum of political philosophies. Consequently, equity has positive and negative connotations depending on the political interpretation of the word, equity.
From an extreme right-wing perspective, equity connotes equal treatments and outcomes. This premise violates the ideal of individual freedom for the economic elites. The elites rig the system with unfair advantages to favor themselves at the expense of hard-working people and the poor.
Metaphorically, right-wing extremists tar and feather the word equity. They pejoratively labelled and associate equity with socialism, communism and Marxism. In effect, they tarnish and banish equity. Equity is tarred and feathered.
This unthinking anti-left-wing reflex offensively promotes unfair advantages and dismisses the virtuous merits of equity. This oxymoronic distortions maintains an unfair system that is designed to amplify inequities. In short, equity is about providing fair opportunities for all people to reach their highest potential,
Political fundamentalism along either/or thinking gives rise to dysfunctional polarizations across the chasm between right-wing and left-wing perspectives. These toxic polarizations miss out on negotiating about what does the fairness of equity and the unfairness of inequities means.
Equity muses ask #BHAQs to inspire people in telling and discussing their stories about unfairness and fairness. The iterative process of self-reflection, slow thinking and writing helps to co-create generative dialogues that facilitate the collaborative learning and co-creativity needed to solve complex problems.
#BHAQs challenge the old story tellers' formulas, like the hero's journal. In this way, equity muses inspire new ethical narrative structures to co-create living story movements that do good for the commons and for the common good.
In living story movements, the reverence for the story teller expands to include reverence for the story listeners. All story listeners are invited to become story tellers of their own truth-seeking learning journeys about about how to redress unfairness and promote fairness.
Story telling is no longer the privilege of the media elites on their pedicles but a birth right of creativity for all. Story movements call for seismic media mindset shifts from broadcasting and marketing content to co-casting and co-creative ethical marketing that co-elevates ethical stories about virtues.
- How can we orchestrate the harmonies of the Greek chorus, inclusive of all solo voices, to sing ethical stories about equity?
#UniteEquityMuses is a change agent learning movement to synergistically transform mindsets and re-design systems based on the premise of fair advantages for all. But the ideal of this virtue is so far removed from our current trajectory of a dystopian future.
Is our dystopian predestination inevitable?
Overall, our neoliberal, linear, extractive growth economy based on hyper-consumerism and waste proliferation is designed to perpetrate, perpetuate and exacerbate unfair advantages, inequities, wealth inequalities and the demise of planetary health. We are on a dystopian trajectory toward an ever-increasing fragile, vulnerable and traumatic future: the slippery downward spiral into the amoral abyss.
Equity governance refers the ethical process of how we systemically operationalize fairness across the political, private and public sectors. This inclusive, collaborative and egalitarian system of shared decision-making and sense-making sets up collaborative partnerships within and across all sectors to solve our complex web of wicked problems in the 21st-century.
Equity governance is about developing systemic stewardship and networks of dynamic distributive leadership that bend our dystopian trajectory toward a favorable, fair and flourishing future to benefit all.
This vision calls for cultivating cultures and co-designing systems needed to co-elevate more level playing fields without the sink holes of unfair disadvantages. This lifelong intergenerational learning process calls for investing in creating an abundance of human resources for human development, as opposed to human destruction. This investment enables all people to cultivate their highest levels of healthy well-being, virtues, character strengths and collaborative meaningful relationships to do good for all. The design of equity governance moves beyond social safety nets, redistributive wealth and basic income to foster human flourishing for all.
- How might equity muses ask the BHAQs to ignite leadership dialogues about exponentiating our noble spirit to launch #EquityMoonshot?
To dialogue about the deep implications of #BHAQs, take time for slow thinking, self-reflection and deep learning in communion with kindred spirits and with people who have different points of view.
This learning strategy calls for shifting our mindset metaphors from "spotlighting" leaders, mavericks, gurus and saviors to "showcasing" ethical causes. This mindset shifts put the ethical cause above the individual focus on cult leaders or influencers. The equity mission is the cause that focuses on the collaborative spirit to co-create generative dialogues, the improvisation of open innovation and the flourishing of social entrepreneurship for the greater good.
Deep collaborative partnership are needed to co-elevate social cohesion, co-develop social capital and enhance social impact for the benefit of all. These strategies are essential if we are to have any real chance of solving our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century.
Why do we need ethical stories about equity?
Such ethical stories are sense-making, purpose-clarifying and meaning-enhancing narratives that guide how we collaborate on moral quests. #BHAQs drive these storylines of how we can ethically manage and navigate the complex polarities between social virtues (equity and equality) and individual values (liberty and freedom) to serve we, the people.
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Ethical stories about equity promote salutogenesis (well-being), regenerative agriculture and practices, sustainability, biodiversity and planetary health needed to cultivate a fair and flourishing future for all. These stories pose BHAQs that enable people to dialogue about how to discern the upsides and downsides of our virtues, values, biases, metaphors, frames and allegories that are embedded in our stories and fables.
The learning process of sharing ethical stories evokes curiosity in co-creating additional #BHAQs about the real life challenges of addressing "wicked" problems, such as health inequities and escalating wealth inequalities. Discussing #BHAQs can enhance our self-awareness about our own biases, the biases of questioners and the biases of the recipient' respondents.
The preparatory process sets the stage to co-create generative dialogues and deep learning opportunities about how to address complex problems.
- How can we #UniteEquityMuses to ask BHAQs about launching the #EquityMoonshot story movement?
Not everyone can get to the top of Mount Equity, but we can enable all people to ascend to their highest base camp.
#BHAQs present challenges that call for developing an ethical story movements that enable us all to work on #EquityMoonshot. Technological metaphors have strengths, limitations and constraints. These constraints call for using a dynamic network of collaborating metaphors to address complex challenges of promoting the fairness of equity and redressing the unfairness of inequities.
The stories of individual superheroes and the hero's journey are broken narratives for solving the complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century. The hegemonies of Hollywood, Disney and associated metaphors are cultural monopolies that disable our collective innovative abilities to imagineer new future scenarios of harmony and flourishing to benefit all.
- How might we disrupt and usurp the mono-culture monopoly of the elite to replace the formulaic story-telling with narrative structure?
The threads of a living story movement about equity intertwine with no beginnings, middles nor endings. They co-create social tapestries of virtuous sense-making, cohesive purpose, shared meaning and a sense of belonging beyond tribalism: a feeling of being part of something much greater than ourselves and our tribes.
Living stories are mycelium networks of interconnected narratives that co-create the social cohesion needed for deep learning about how to solve complex problems.
What we can learn goes well beyond the story. With living story movements, ascensions and successions of transformational leadership become one, whereas charismatic leaders assume roles of being indispensable. Charismatic leaders cling to their power, leaving succession planning as an afterthought. In so doing, they sabotage and jeopardize their legacy, diluting the impact of their causes.
- How can our virtuous spirits inspire each other to liberate ourselves from the cult constraints of charismatic leaders and cultivate a healthy flourishing commons to do for the commons and the common good?
Ethical stories ask #BHAQs about how we can use virtues to guide our values in co-creating synergistic narratives between the "We" and "I" stories that inform our the "we" and "i" stories. "We" stories are about global vision thinking, where as "we" stories are about local action and pragmatic "doing". "I" stories are about spiritual and transcendent perspectives that provide ethical guidance on the psychology of "i" personal development stories.
Ethical stories help us to understand our biases and clarify our confusions about the distinctions between virtues and values in order to co-create the living #EquityMoonshot" story movement.
We have a positive bias in elevating "i/we" stories of rugged individualism and tribalism and a negative bias against reporting "I/We" stories of transcendence and global thinking. Compare the documentary movies, the Alpinist and 14 peaks, that provide contrasting stories between a solo Canadian climber and a Nepalese team climber.
How can we the people:
- Cultivate an unlimited abundance of fair opportunities for all?
- Co-create ethical stories that address why our leadership models are ethically naive and incompetent in solving the complex web of wicked problems in the 21st century?
- Use metaphors in creative, dynamic and emergent ways to co-elevate the living #EquityMoonshot story movement?
- Engage in the never-ending challenges of solving the wicked problems that involve the conflicting themes between light and darkness, between virtues and character flaws and between good and evil?
A living story movement is a constant flow of media coverage and not a single event: compare the annual CNN heroes event to the documentary story series: such as Earthwise on Al Jazeer.
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Candor, feedback and contributions in the comment section are greatly appreciated. This is a never-ending, open and collaborative work-in-progress of catalyzing transformations at intra-personal, inter-personal and systemic levels.
If you can find the time to enjoy musing and slow thinking, share a few words of your wisdom and your work (resources/urls/etc).
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The next blog explores why incompetent leaders are ethically naive about designing equitable systems.
The subsequent blog will address what the fairness of equity and the unfairness of inequities means.
Impact Investing and Regenerative Economic Development Innovation, Sustainable Wealth Management and Strategy
3 年Thanks Rick - I found this article and the wiring of Noema magazine to be very insightful ! https://www.noemamag.com/the-pandemic-exposes-inequality-endemic-to-the-digital-economy/
Community Health | Community Improvement | Community Building
3 年These are all great questions! You would likely be surprised of how many answers have been given in the positive structures found in the Catholic revolution that pulled Greco-Roman culture from its debasement.
Unite Equity Muses | Ask ethical questions about co-designing a fair-free-flourishing future
3 年#BHAQ: What if we replaced the C-suite with an E-suite (e=equity)? C symbolizes the hierarchal position of commanding authority wheres E symbolizes the egalitarian position of fulfilling responsibilities. Isn't time to debunk of elite corporate language of neoliberalism that is designed to perpetrate and perpetuate inequities? Food for thought about the constraints and liberation of framing. David Schull Bill Frist, M.D. Bruce BroussardDr Sanjay Gupta Tomás León, MBA Harris Lygidakis Gareth Presch Wasim Ahmed Aletha Maybank, MD, MPH Daniel Dawes Arthur C. Evans, Ph.D. James C. Puffer, MD Jamie Metzl Gareth Presch Charles Kilo Don Berwick Gregory Makoul Scott Pope Jeff Thompson, MD Ron Barshop Ronald Paulus Jon Belsher MD George M. David Becker Jesse Thomas John Robitscher, MPH Marva Sadler Manik Bhat Patrick Conway Jan Berger Jeffrey R. Lewis Steve Lawler David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, FACLM Dr. Kedar MateArmato Eugene Woods David Entwistle Abhinav Shashank Bob McCann Ram R. Sanda Ojiambo John Ryan Susan Dentzer Jeff Selberg Tom Evans Brian Forrest Bruce Ettinger Niall Brennan Bradford Cooper, PhD Christopher Chen, M.D. Rishi Manchanda MD MPH Jeffrey Hayzlett Teri Cochrane Tom Cassels
Adult Care Management, Benefits Design, Speaker
3 年Equity requires that we spend time listening to people who come from different backgrounds and experiences so we can understand equitable treatment of others versus an equal "one size fits all" approach. It requires respect, civility and knowing we can all learn from each other. It requires seeing the humanness in everyone we meet, even when we disagree.
Advocate : seeding the ground we stand on
3 年Because the right question at the right moment is under appreciated ????????