How can we best re-kindle the Martin Luther King spirit to co-create a fair- free-flourishing-future to benefit all?

To Love, truth-seeking and the pursuit of equity

Enjoy slow thinking if you can take the time to muse over big hairy audacious questions (BHAQ) about equity moonshot: how to co-design and build an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future for the benefit of all.

BHAQ evoke and inspire new way of thinking about understanding so-called "wicked" problems, such as systemic isms and inequities. Such self-reflection and contemplation set the stage to co-create generative dialogues about how to solve so-called "wicked" problems.

These dialogues deepen our learning capabilities and thinking capacities about how to cultivate equity governance needed to redress the injustices of isms, power abuses and inequities.

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How might we best use MLK quotes to promote equity?

• History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
• Injustice anywhere [systemic isms and inequities] is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
• He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.?

How might we ask ethical BHAQs with radical candor?

Regrettably, the political toxicities of dysfunctional polarizations and the divisive injustices of isms and inequities have only amplified since the assassination of Martin Luther King (MLK).

How can we evolve toward higher levels of human consciousness to:

• Woke unwokeness and unwoke wokeness?
• Stop history from repeating phases of democratic progression and regressive populism?
• Solve our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century?

Our interconnected and interdependent wicked problems are complex in that they have no single, simple nor final solution: nor either-or answers. Wicked problems are not per se solvable, such as the ego-centric shadows and the dark sides of human nature. Across all systems, positive and negative influences compete prevent, minimize or exacerbate the abuse of power and corruption. There are no ends to wicked problems.

BHAQs call for asking additional ethical questions about how to redress our moral failures in developing the equity governance needed to co-create a fair, free and flourishing future to benefit all.

How might we redress our ethical hypocrisies?

Expedient political leaders pay lip service and fleeting regard to MLK, cheery pick his quotes that wash-white the increasing complex intersectionalities of systemic isms and inequities, and treat MLK as annual ceremonial checkbox with no or superficial accountability to the civic virtues of equality and equity. This tokenism raises ethical BHAQs.

• How might we make faster progress with US constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Alliance to address the moral discrepancies between virtuous rhetoric and actions as it relates to the injustices of systemic isms and inequities?

This evocative question calls for imagining and visualizing how to launch Equity Moonshot. This lifelong intergenerational journey of co-creating a fair and flourishing future for the benefit all moves us beyond the "cultocracies" of idolizing charismatic leaders, sages-on-the-stage and cult personalities. These idols, saviors, gurus and conjuring mavericks, along with their inner sanctums and inside/outside dynamics of power, cannot save us. They tout the idealism of inclusion and unity while practicing exclusion.

We can only save ourselves through civil co-operation and civic collaboration.

Unity is an aspirational vision, but also an inspirational myth.

• How might we open, inspire and align our mindsets to collaborate on working on the Equity Moonshot quest despite our political differences?

This consensus-making process is about building middle ground for transformational collaboration. On the one hand, this calls identifying and maximizing our shared interests and agreements. On the other hand, this calls for eliciting, including and understanding differences of opinion but also honoring the process of disagreement with civility and discernment in seeking truth together.

Truth-seeking involves the inclusive triangulation process of discernment, verification and validation. This involves exploring the merits and demerits of different perspectives as a consensus-building means to build trust in truth-seeking.

Respectful discernment includes hearing all voices. This truth-seeking process involves building a middle ground of facts, evidence and assessments and marginalizing the falsehoods of mis-information and dis-information. The middle ground of authentic truth-seeking drives the iterative problem-solving process. Non-mainstream endeavors are still relevant in addressing the uncertainties of managing wicked problems.

In contrast, our ego-centric shadows and dark sides of human nature trigger emotional reactivity that risks the divisive escalation of dysfunctional polarization and the downstream effects of political toxicity: fear, hate, paranoia and fictitious conspiracies.

Divided, we fall. Aligned, we rise up together for the greater good.

Why ask blue sky and blue ocean BHAQs?

Blue sky BHAQs are about visions of unlimited possibilities and opportunities for working on Equity Moonshot. Blue ocean BHAQ questions are based on the unlimited abundance of resources for human development needed to solve our wicked problems

• Why are we failing to ask the blue sky and blue ocean BHAQs?
• Why are our leaders failing to respond to blue sky and blue ocean BHAQs?

BHAQs have embedded assumptions, biases and frames about the nature and causes of wicked problems and their proposed solutions. Naive, short-sighted questions will not solve complex problems. A good question contains half the answer to a problem. But good answers to the wrong questions are not solutions.

This calls for asking more divergent, far-reaching questions. We too often fail to zoom out long enough to look at the big picture.

How can we:

• Explore, address and understand how a complex web of fear-based influences close our mindsets and disable us from striving, thriving and flourishing in harmony with ourselves, nature and the planet?
• Co-evolve our collective open-minded equanimity and the wisdom of the crowd, the systemic stewardship of equity and the distributive egalitarianism leadership of needed to co-create a self-organizing, self-sustaining and self-regenerating story movement about Equity Moonshot?

How might we solve our wicked problems more effectively?

There will always be some degree of uncertainty about whether we deployed the best solutions even after addressing wicked problem. Any solution may create another problem that is larger or smaller than the one that it solved.

The complex interdependent web of wicked problems include planetary, political and public policy issues: consider the unintended consequences of unhealthy food policies and food production. The must-watch documentary movie, Kissing the Ground, describes how regenerative farming practices have been nearly eroded away, but their resurgence, along with permaculture, are essential for cultivating a healthy planet.

The must-watch documentary movie, Breaking Boundaries, helps us to understand where and how we have extended beyond the inter-connected domains of our planetary limits: biosphere integrity, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, aerosol pollution, biogeochemical flows of nitrogen and phosphorus, freshwater use, land system change and chemical pollution.

However, these movies did not address the multiplicity of factors that disabled us from solving the complex web of wicked problems.

• Short-sighted, myopic and incompetent leadership
• Ineffective political governance to serve the needs of the people
• Political lack of transparent accountability
• Rigged political, legal and financial systems to serve the elites with increasing wealth concentration
• The global demises of democracies
• Unconscious capitalism enabled by amoral and immoral corporatocracies
• Neoliberal linear economies that perpetrate, perpetuate and exacerbate inequities and wealth inequalities
• Hyper-consumerism and the demise of planetary health
• Cult propaganda machines that create dis-information epidemics, induce tribal trances and control mindsets
• The rise and power abuses of totalitarianism, oligarchies and kleptocracy
• The ascent of asocial leadership personality disorder: megalomania, narcissism and sociopathy
• Failure to dethrone authoritarian strong men and tyranny
• Breeding grounds of toxic cultures based on fear, distrust and paranoia
• Dysfunctional polarizations, isms (sexism, racism, etc.,)
• The demise of informed citizenry
• The rise of disaffected and disgruntled non-citizens

Our political and economic systems are perfectly designed to create the self-inflicted problems that they cannot solve.

Why ask "why" questions about re-designing systems?

Mis-guided solutions can exacerbate unintended consequences and create even bigger problems than they tackled. In contrast, effective solutions based on complexity thinking maximize intended positive consequences and minimizes untended negative consequences to create smaller problems.

• How might we designed our academic, educational, religious, leadership and political institutions to co-create a fair, harmonious and flourishing future for the benefit of all?

This how question needs further "why" questions about why our institutions have not asked and answered enough of the BHAQs to make an exponential difference.

We have yet to develop the learning platforms, processes and systems needed to understand our ourselves, both individual and collectively, and to redress the ineffectiveness of our governance systems and processes that perpetuate incompetent leadership, political, educational and religious institutions.??

• Why do our political institutions lack the equity governance, ethical stewardship and transparent accountability to democratically serve, we the people?

These systemic questions focus on the political, legal and policy limitations that put constraints on working toward greater equity and exacerbate isms and inequities. The academic discipline of critical race theory provides a framework to open our mindsets about how to redress the drivers of systems injustices.

We also need to ask BHAQs about the injustices of systemic isms and inequities and the need for cultivating open-minded, truth-seeking free-thinkers.

How might we liberate equity for all?

The BHAQs above call developing scalable lifelong intergenerational learning platforms to exponentiate transformational collaborations.

How can our educational, religious and leadership institutions:

• Overcome the educational limitations of using pedagogy, lectures and talking-head experts delivering content that fail to co-create the processes for building ongoing learning organizations, communities and networks needed to generate exponential network power for launching #EquityMoonshot story movement?
• Develop our lifelong intragenerational learning platforms, from cradle-to-grave, for working on the #EquityMoonshot quest?
• Put personal development and person-centered learning at the core of education and lifelong learning?
• Co-develop inclusive harmonious belonging?
• Co-create a deeper meaning about our higher purposes and callings
• Co-elevate and mainstream the development of virtues into all levels of education and lifelong learning?
• Facilitate collaborate sense-making about how we can develop a constellation of virtues about how to put our ethical values into moral actions?
• Co-envision the noble cause of co-creating a lifelong intergenerational learning platform to launch Equity Moonshot?

These BHAQs call for expanding our mindsets from:

• "Spotlighting" and interviewing individuals to "showcasing" generative dialogues that focuses on asking BHAQs about how to serve noble cause of working on the Equity Moonshot quest
• The ego-centric, marketing brand era of saviors, gurus, mavericks and cult personalities to the exponential caused-based era collaborations of learning networks, communities and organizations
• The individual story of the "hero's journey" to a mass "mycelium" living story movement to cultivate the equity governance, the ethical stewardship of equanimity and distributive leadership networks of empowerment for co-creating a fair, free and flourishing future.

As equity muses, we pose ethical BHAQs to generate the best moral solutions for solving our wicked problems. Consider joining the Equity Muse learning academy to scale up transformational collaborations. #UniteEquityMuses and leaders to empower people to work on #EquityMoonshot .

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Pay cultural humility forward to launch Equity Moonshot

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