Why do our internal battles of our brains wage war against the humanity of equity?

• How does equity governance develop antidotes to the inhumanities of shadows and the dark sides of human nature?
• What makes up our shadows and dark sides?

(Scroll down to the blog section if you have read this introduction before. Read the definition of equity governance in the orientation section at the end. If curious about this learning journey, subscribe to newsletter.)

The list is long: the lack of virtues, integrity and authenticity: the ethical hypocrisies between professed values and moral actions; the irresponsible use of freedom and free speech by cult personalities, false prophets, media mavericks, marketing savants and immoral saviors; the short-term, attention-grabbing marvels of fame, spectacles, the "wow" factor and the naive hopes of false dreams; the strong man rise of asocial leadership personality disorders (pathological megalomania, narcissism, sociopathy and authoritarianism); the tribal trances of hero-worshiping follower-ship with their blind unconditional loyalty; divisive fundamentalism and dysfunctional polarizations; the injustices of isms and inequities;?the plagues of unfair advantages;?the power abuses of autocracies, plutocracies, oligarchies, kleptocracy and corrupt political systems; the unconscious capitalism of neoliberalism and amoral corporations; unethical marketing and the propaganda machines of neo-terrorism (the war of words without regards to truth and transparent accountability); the epidemics of misinformation, fake news and dis-information; and terrorism and wars.

Neoliberalism, unconscious capitalism and unethical marketing live in the shadows of short-term profits and fail the two marshmallow test.

The systemic determinants of isms and inequities are a formidable foe.

No wonder why we fail to rectify our rigged systems that escalate wealth for the elites, income shrinkages for middle classes and poverty for the poor.

We need a mass movement to co-develop equity muses who ask the right questions about how to launch?#EquityMoonshot .?

• How can we open, inspire and align our mindsets to co-design and build an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future (#ERSF)?

Muse and learn about this idealistic cause. Reflect about this virtuous question.

• How can we lead with Love, truth-seeking and the pursuit of equity?

This intergenerational lifelong learning journey with never-ending aspirations inspire people to take glocal (global-local) actions for the common good and the health of the planet. This vision of long-termism is a monumental educational endeavor for humanity extending beyond seven generations.

How can we co-create the equity governance to develop the learning organizations, communities, networks and networks of networks needed to:

• Become open-minded, truth-seeking and free-thinkers in communion with kindred spirits of diverse perspectives?
• Scale up transformational network power to co-create a fair and flourishing future for all?

Ecological regenerative economics, conscious capitalism and ethical marketing live in the light of virtues and long-termism.

These newsletters (updated 2/19/2022) are open peer-reviewed drafts, based on feedback and dialogue at?#UniteEquityMuses ?Clubhouse sessions.

Take time for a slow read

Enjoy slow thinking and self-reflection about the questions in this blog series. This preparation sets the stage to co-create generative dialogues about solving complex problems. These dialogues deepen our learning capabilities and thinking capacities about how we can use equity governance to redress the injustices of isms, power abuse and inequities.

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Why do the internal battles of our brain wage war against the humanity of equity??

Let not our naive optimism and hope deny us our common sense about the realities of our brain dysfunctions that amplify the shadows and dark sides of human nature. We need the light of healthy informed pessimism to illuminate how our governance, stewardship and leadership development failures have prevented us from co-designing and building an #ERSF.

How can we:

• Learn about how to cultivate virtues and exponentiate higher levels of human consciousness needed to co-create a fair and flourishing future to benefit all?
• Co-develop equity governance based on liberty that maximizes the upsides of fairness and freedom while diminishing their downsides?

These questions first call for asking additional questions about the shadows and dark sides of human nature.

Why is there an unhealthy relationship between inhumanity and inequity?

The higher pursuit and aspiration of equity is sabotaged by the dysfunctions of our brains. We sacrifice complexity ways of thinking about interdependence, uncertainties, dynamic emergence and non-linear causality to linear reductionism and the certainties of fundamentalism This reduces our humanity and equity as disconnected entities. Without awareness of this sabotaging process, transactional reductionism undermines both the transformational potential of our humanity and the prospects of equity.

Inhumanity gives inequity its form, and inequity give inhumanity the substance for its moral failures.

How does our dysfunctional brain regress to zero-sum debates?

Our internal psychological battles are represented by the conflict between our amygdala (passion and emotional identity) and reptilian brain (fight, flight, freeze) versus our neocortex (higher brain functioning): such as, deliberate slow-thinking to cultivate equanimity, discernment, critical thinking, media literacy and emotional intelligences skills to collaboratively seek truth together.

Perceived threats and violations of our personal value structures can trigger and activate our amygdala and reptilian brains. They inhibit and disable the functioning of our neocortex to reduce discernment. In turn, this sustains the rigidity of closed-minded thinking, groupthink and conversely, group non-think: such as, speech prohibitions and taboos about what is not permitted to be said.

The trigger zone of our automatic reflexes are the realm of fast-thinking, without deliberative slow thinking. For example, political propaganda savants emotionally manipulate and masterfully trigger anti-socialist and anti-communist reflexes with no or little justifications for short-term political gains and advantages. They deploy guilt-by-association smear campaigns to discredit and marginalize their opponents.

Ironically, right-wing extremism and white supremacists pose the greatest threat to US democracy.

A major propaganda thrust of political campaigning operates at the level of the amygdala and reptilian brains to trigger the shadow and the dark sides of human nature.

Political leaders and campaigns exploit people's media illiteracy, naivety and gullibility by using sophisticated propaganda strategies. They induce political trances by activating the amygdala and reptilian brains and disabling their neocortical brains. This induction process transforms people into indentured voters without end to support the control of the elites.

Once this trance is triggered, this shuts down any self-reflection about how to understand our biases that pre-determine our instantaneous reactions. These reactions can create a cascade of negative emotional reactions: fear, paranoia, anger, hate, rage, disgust, repulsion and revulsion. This creates a breeding for divisive dysfunctional polarizations and political toxicities.

This self-defeating delusional trance prevents people from becoming open-minded, truth-seeking free-thinkers, despite their professed aspirations for freedom. This paradoxical hypocrisy relates to media illiteracy, educational inequities and the political systems that keep people in the dark about mass manipulation of mindsets that serve the megalomania of the elites.

• How can we de-program trances that enslave their people's freedom with blind unconditional loyalty and closed-minded groupthink to cult media personalities (such as Joe Rogan, Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson. Laura Ingraham, etc) and mainstream media (such as Fox News, CNN and MSNBC)?

When emotionally triggered, fast thinking regresses to dichotomous (either/or) fundamentalism (good/evil, right/wrong, and black/white) and the futility of zero-sum debates: I'm right, you're wrong. Reductionist thinking, compounded by the futility of these zero-sum games, is antithetical to solving the complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century.

Unregulated by our neocortex, our reptilian and amygdala brains unleash the shadow and the dark side of human nature. The escalation of the internal battle of the brain can become externalized into wars, terrorism and neo-terrorism.

Neo-terrorism is the uncivil war of words, without truth, integrity and transparent accountability.

The purpose of neo-terrorist playbook is to manipulate people's negative emotions (fear, paranoia, anger and rage) and biases in order to create chaos, confusion and division that set up the need for the authoritarian leaders and saviors. This calls for counter-acting the propaganda strategies (see list below) of the neo-terrorist playbook.

• Domineer:?dominate to subordinate, fail to listen, interrupt and talk over opponent, and break the agreed rules of civil debate and engagement
• Lie:?flip truth into lies and lies into truth,?create conspiracies without any justifications, discredit the voting process without any evidence and discredit institutions for political gain
• Exploit isms?(racism, sexism, etc., ): divide and conquer the middle majority using isms to maintain their power
• Make ad hominem attacks:?make outright and unjustified personal accusations such as faulty attributions, snarly derisions, mocking depreciations, arrogant condescension and infantilizing belittlement.
• Pervert morality:?feign moral indignation, condemn and/or grossly exaggerate small, trivial or fictitious mistakes of political opponents
• Make offensive-defensive projections:?project flaws, faults, weaknesses and negative feelings onto others to avoid being attacked for the same reasons
• Bully:?elevate oneself to gain power over other by intimidation, linguistic violence, violations and marginalization
• Scapegoat: blame others for problems
• Reverse reframe: smear political opponents’ virtues as flaws
• Make cognitive over-generalizations and distortions:?use hyperboles to exaggerate real and fictitious flaws to make character smears
• Play the victim to victimize others:?play the victimizing victimization role to manipulate the abuse of power
• Reverse witch-hunting: witch hunt people who they perceive, rightly or wrongly, as witch hunting them
• Take sadistic revenge:?take pleasure in degrading, demeaning, and insulting political opponents
• Create straw man arguments:?exaggerate or invent an argument in order to attack the other person and/or their counter-argument
• Make non-sequitur arguments:?create flawed arguments riddled with illogicality, magical thinking and/or double-speak (make racist remarks while denying being a racist)
• Use false equivalencies:?normalize aberrant behaviors by asserting that both sides are just as bad

This playbook uses illegitimate argument strategies against opponents: making unsubstantiated assumptions about truth, reducing complex issues into either/or options (false dichotomies), making faulty assertions about cause-effect relationships, creating popular assertions based on ignorance and reversing the burden of proof onto their critics.

Why do we need to #UniteEquityMuses to ask the right questions?

The right questions can help us move beyond the futility of zero-sum debates: I'm right, you're wrong and to co-create generative dialogues needed to solve complex problems

How can we overcome our ethical, systemic, political, legal, policy, economic and psychological naiveties about the transformational systemic re-designs needed to:

• Manage the complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century?
• Go beyond the frame limitations of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to co-design and build an #ERSF?

To do justice to these challenges of redressing isms and inequities, we need to mobilize an #UniteEquityMuses movement to engage people in responding to the far-reaching questions (listed above and below).

Why have we not figured out how to:

• Co-develop the equity governance, systems and processes needed to redress the political abuse of power and the injustices of isms (sexism, racism, etc.) and inequities?
• Provide intervention therapy for aspiring leaders with the character traits of megalomania, narcissism, sociopathy and authoritarianism?
• Identify leaders with asocial political personality disorder (character traits described above) and prevent their rise to power?
• De-rail and disable our corrupt political, financial and economic systems that are fueled by plutocracy, corporate oligarchy and kleptocracy?
• Overcome our political and psychological naiveties about the shadow and dark sides of human nature?
• Co-ordinate a meta-view movement of implementing equity governance that empowers distributive leadership development needed to co-create self-generating, self-organizing and self-sustaining decentralized cooperative networks, organizations and communities based on reciprocal peer learning and coaching platforms?

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Which question(s) spoke to you the most and why?

If inspired, share your words of wisdom in a comment below along with the newsletter to your connections for their reactions to your comment. Subscribe to newsletter.

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We need to ask ourselves complex questions that engage us in deep dive dialogues about how to address the deep root causes for our complex webs of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century.

This calls for co-creating generative dialogues about how to launch #EquityMoonshot :?open, inspire and align our mindsets to co-design and build an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future (#ERSF) to benefit all of us. We need a mass movement of equity muses asking complex questions that help people learn to think (not what to think) about how we can address our wicked problems.

These wicked problems arise from the shadows of power abuse and the dark sides of human nature. Together, the divisiveness of our shadows and dark side erodes our humanity, breaks down our civilizations and destroys our planet.

Failing to zoom out from reductionist frames of individual rights, entitlements and value systems disables us from integrating social virtues into the process of developing equity governance.

Zooming out is a metaphor for changing perspectives from dis-connected, de-contextualized linear reductionism of the complicated parts to the inter-connected, contextualized non-linear dynamics of interacting complex adaptive systems.

Transfixed on amoral reductionism, we enhance our risks of descending down the immoral paths toward self-destructive melt-downs of wicked problems. To heal the divisive mis-deeds of reductionism, we must embrace complexity, design and holistic thinking to solve our never-ending wicked problems.

Our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems

1. Personal and social lack of virtues, such as the integrity, service, authenticity and altruism
2. Ethical hypocrisies between professed virtues and moral actions
3. Irresponsible use of freedom by cult personalities, false prophets, media mavericks and marketing savants in manipulating and exploiting people to serve their own needs
4. Savors selling naive hope and the utopian dope of false dreams
5. Absolute libertarian fundamentalism that promote the immoral freedom of blatant lies and disinformation without any accountability or consequences
6. The instant, attention-grabbing marvels of fame; "woo-wow" spectacles that distract us from facing our dire realities of wicked problems
7. The tribal trances of hero-worshiping follower-ship with blind unconditional loyalty
8. Dysfunctional polarizations driven by divisive fundamentalism and?different priorities in value systems
9. The injustices of isms and inequities
10. The plagues of unfair advantages
11. Neoliberalism, unconscious capitalism and unethical marketing living in the shadows of short-termism
12. Unethical marketers who fail the two marshmallow test
13. Hyper-consumerism and planetary demise
14. Climate change and pandemics
15. The propaganda machines of neo-terrorism: the weaponized war of words without any regard to truth, integrity and transparent accountability
16. The epidemics of misinformation, fake news and dis-information
17. The power abuses of autocracies, plutocracies, oligarchies, kleptocracy and corrupt political systems
18. The demise and decay of democracies and political governance
19. Corrupt political systems provide careers for leaders with personal traits of pathological megalomaniac, narcissism, sociopathy and authoritarianism
20. Terrorism and wars

Our systems are rigged not to address the deep root causes for wicked problems.

It's no wonder why we fail to rectify our rigged systems that escalate wealth for the elites, income shrinkages for middle classes and poverty for the poor.

• Which archetype is the lead driver for our wicked problems?

Our political systems are designed to enable a particular archetype to rise to the top of our food chains. This archetype is asocial leadership personality disorders (#ALPD). The core character flaws that drive #ALPD?are pathological megalomania, narcissism, sociopathy and authoritarianism. This "strongman" archetype epitomizes toxic masculinity syndrome and is the symbol of systemic corruption.

• What can we, the people, do to usurp systemic corruption and thereby dis-empower #ALPD leaders?
• How we co-create the equity governance needed to develop antibodies against our shadows and antidotes against our dark sides that prevent us from co-creating a fair and flourishing future to benefit all?

Muse and learn about this idealistic cause. Reflect about this virtuous question.

• How can we lead with Love, truth-seeking and the pursuit of equity?

This intergenerational lifelong learning journey with never-ending aspirations inspires people to take glocal (global-local) actions for the common good and the health of the planet. This long-term vision is a monumental learning endeavor for humanity that extends beyond seven generations.

How can we co-create the learning organizations, communities, networks and networks of networks needed to:

• Become open-minded, truth-seeking and free-thinkers in communion with kindred spirits of diverse perspectives?
• Scale up transformational network power to co-create a fair and flourishing future for all?

Ecological regenerative economics, conscious capitalism and ethical marketing live in the light of virtues and long-termism.

• How can we use the liberation ethos of equity governance to deconstruct the colonial hegemony of neoliberalism and plutocracy?
• Why does equity governance liberate freedom?

Equity governance is based on liberty for all and the responsible use of freedom with transparent accountability to truth-seeking and long-termism. This aspiration involves the development of virtues, critical thinking, discernment, verification and cross validation of claims to knowledge with triangulated use of reputable sources.

Never depend on one resource, guru, thought leader, marketing maverick, cult personality or propaganda media outlet.

This mission of truth-seeking depends on cultivating reliable advancements in trustful information and knowledge generation. This is essential for mitigating against the epidemics of mis-information, fake news and dis-information.

Equity governance is an inclusive, collaborative and egalitarian system of shared decision-making, sense-making, systemic stewardship, ecological (regenerative) economics and dynamic distributive leadership.

Equity governance provides a foundation to cross pollinate ideas for co-creativity, open innovation, and generative dialogues. This collaborative learning process is essential to foster humanitarian harmony and political cohesiveness needed to exponentiate social impact entrepreneurship.

• How can we cultivate cultures and co-design systems to bend our dystopian trajectory toward a favorable, fair and flourishing future to benefit all?

Equity governance moves us beyond social safety nets, redistributive wealth and basic income. This calls for re-imagineering the future of work, life and co-creative living to unleash the vast swaths of untapped human potential.

The mission of equity governance is about engaging all people to become open-minded, truth-seeking, free-thinkers, working collaboratively within learning networks, communities and organizations to co-create an ever-evolving human civilization of higher consciousness. This lifelong evolving process of enhancing our brain functioning and developing our virtues is essential for exponentiating human flourishing needed to launch?#EquityMoonshot?for the greater good of all.

Working toward the?#EquityMoonshot?vision is stymied by the elephant in the room. Our dysfunctional systems and their political abuses of power sabotage our aspirations to co-create a fair and flourishing future for all.

We fail to call out the moral timidity and the ethical hypocrisies of redressing the discrepancies between our far-sighted, higher "We" aspirations of our co-operative neocortical brains versus our short-sighted, tribal ("we") responses of our amygdala brains and our short-sighted reactivity of our reptilian brains (the competitive survival of the fittest.)

We are blind to what we can see.

Why do we:

• Fail to see how our complicity in creating our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century?
• Allow our political, educational, religious and spiritual leaders to fail us in co-designing an #ERSF?

Let's?#UniteEquityMuses?in asking the right questions about how to cultivate open global mindsets needed to solve the complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century.

• How can we launch #EquityMoonshot with the same priorities given to advances in technology, such as IOT (the internet of things) and space exploration?

Social technologies, AI, cryptocurrencies, NFTs and tokens cannot make up for the inhumanities of our shadows and the dark sides of human nature.

With the ethical guidance of equity governance, we collaborate for the good of the commons and the common good.

These open peer-reviewed newsletters are episodically updated, based on feedback and dialogue at?#UniteEquityMuses ?Clubhouse sessions.