Ask #COP27 leaders #BHAQs: how might we use radical candor and compassion as our wake-up calls to liberate ourselves from our neoliberal addiction?

Peer-reviewed work-in-progress. Candor appreciated. Updated episodically based on feedback.

Big hairy audacious questions (BHAQs) challenge our mindsets. They can trigger our emotional reactivity and provide self-reflection opportunities to explore how our beliefs, values and perspectives pre-determine our thoughts, feelings, biases and actions. Self-reflection can open doors to new lines of inquiries, thinking and insights for collaborative learning and transformation. Enjoy musing over the BHAQs if you can find the time for slow thinking.

• How might we break through our neoliberal addiction denial?

UN chief António Guterres issued a stark warning at COP27 about our "Highway to Climate Hell." This rhetoric is as effective as telling an alcoholic to stop drinking. Dire warnings about climate change are like water off of a duck’s back.?

• How might COP27 leaders enable us to overcome our moral hypocrisies of good intentions in addressing global warming?

Global warming is the delirious fever of malevolent megalomania. Treating the fever does not cure the deep root causes for our inept governance, unethical stewardship, incompetent leadership, the hegemonic abuses of power and the corporate tyranny of neoliberalism that subverts and sabotages the integrity of virtues and democracies.

Neoliberalism is the cut-throat competitive, market-driven, extractive and exploitative shareholder capitalism that minimizes, circumvents and obstructs regulations and transparent accountability to serve the greater good. The unadulterated mantra of neoliberalism is "greed is good, profit maximization is the greatest."

These narcissistic and sociopathic calls to action have no regard to the commons, humanity, the common good and the health of the planet. We are in states of denial about our neoliberal addiction, because we are enamored by the seductive short-termism of hyper-consumerism while ignoring the long-termism of mass waste production, environmental degradation and planetary demise. Neoliberalism has relegated us to transactional consuming machines and impaired our sacred inspirations of becoming virtuous human beings,

These deep root causes of these virulent weeds perpetrate and perpetuate our complex web of self-inflicted problems in the 21st-century. These poisonous weeds abuse power and inflict untold traumas. Regrettably, we are in states of unwokeness (unawareness of unawareness) and denials about the pandemics of unrecognized human suffering.

• How might we enhance our empathies about these dire states of despair and exponentiate our compassion to heal human suffering and reverse planetary demise?

To thwart the overgrowth of these virulent weeds, we need to cultivate the virtuous interdependencies of regenerative ecologies (such as the interconnected governance of politics, public policies, the law, economics, and architecture) to solve our wicked problems.

The fury of "talking heads" preaching about the devastations of neoliberal addiction, such as Al Gore's speech at COP27, do not heal the spiritual voids of moral inactions and hypocrisies.

• How might we, the people, remediate the ethical incompetencies in our political, policy, legal, educational and religious institutions that fail to scale up the transformational collaboration needed to solve our wicked problem?

These gargantuan challenges call for radical candor and compassion in co-developing complex learning interventions to address how our neoliberal addiction marginalizes commonholders.

Commonholder has a new definition to address civic responsibilities. Commonholders do good for the commons, humanity, the common good and the health of the planet. Commonholders include all citizens. This inclusive concept redresses the colonial legacies of stakeholders.

• How might we, as commonholders, co-create tapestries of living story movements about our virtuous responses to BHAQs?

Equity muses ask BHAQs to cultivate flourishing story movements about EquityMoonshot: co-design and build an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future.

How might we, the people:

• Break the trance of unwokeness (unawareness of unawareness) about how neoliberal corporate wealth progenitors drive exponential inequities and planetary demise??
• Redress the shadows and dark sides of dark money that subvert democracies and sabotage the light of virtues illuminating the transformational way forward?
• Co-create global intergenerational lifelong learning academies to work on the EquityMoonshot quest?

Neoliberalism is unregulated by any open transparent accountability for the greater good.

How might COP27 leaders:

• Close the hypocritical chasms between the hollow political rhetoric of declarations and the need for exponential transformational collaboration to solve our wicked problems?
• Stop peddling the dope of hope and false expectations that placates radical candor and deflects discerning skepticism about the harsh trajectories of our dystopian future?
• Redress corporate enablement of our neoliberal addiction and their co-dependencies on shareholder capitalism?

Neoliberal hubris is an economic driving force of social irresponsibility and a soulless God of materialism.

How might #COP27?leaders:

• Stop the rape and pillage of mother earth and reverse the pandemics of power abuse?
• Develop the competence to exponentiate the needed transformational changes and paradigm shifts from the drowning asphyxias and forrest fire incinerations of neoliberalism to the post-growth green economies?
• Re-imagine wealth creation as the exponential growth in human learning potential and social capital development to lead fulfilling, frugal lifestyles in a minimalist, post-growth economy?

BHAQs aim to open, inspire and align our mindsets to work on the Equity Moonshot quest.

How might we:

• Redress our political, educational and religious institutions that indoctrinate, control and enslave people’s mindsets?
• Liberate the sovereignty of human agency to co-design and build an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future to benefit all??
• Enable AI and machine learning to cultivate civic learning communities and open-minded, truth-seeking free-thinkers collaborating together to serve the greater good?

Learn more about how to become an equity muse and ask BHAQs.

• How might we align coalitions of organizations to launch the? #EquityMoonshot?learning academy, go upstream to address the ethical determinants of health and cultivate the virtues to assure planetary health?