Which constellation of virtues will align us to co-create an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future for us all to flourish?

Introduction

Work-in-progress: updated regularly after hosting clubhouse meetings. This brief introduction invites you to join the #UniteEquityMuses learning community. Equity muses inspire people's curiosity, imagination and co-creativity to address how to launch equity moonshot: co-design an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future.

In short, equity is about giving everyone fair opportunities to reach their highest potential. The pursuit of equity is one of the core virtues to illuminate the dark sides of isms and the injustices of immoral corrupt power that design systems to sustain and exacerbate inequities.

Equity muses ask the questions that people do want to ask, hear or answer about our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century: inequities, pandemics, the cascading impacts of the climate change emergency, environment degradation and the demise of planetary health.

How do you feel about:

• #COP26, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Environmental Social Governance (ESG). Is it too little, too late? And are they mis-guided? And if so, how.
• Our incompetent governance and leadership systems in solving these wicked problems?

To what extent do you feel that people are unaware about the impacts of these wicked problems?

This blog post invites you to consider embarking on a life learning journey in communion with others to address this virtuous question.

• Which constellation of virtues will unite us to co-create a flourishing future for the benefit of all?
• How can we co-create equity governance and cultivate ecological economics to exponentiate our innovation-entrepreneurship enterprises and proactively deconstruct the dysfunctional dark sides of neoliberal legacy systems?

Invite colleagues to chat and?join #UniteEquityMuses chats by downloading the Clubhouse App.

Enjoy musing and dialoguing over complex questions (see examples listed below). Consider becoming an #EquityMuse within your community, organization and network. If you have time for a deep dive, read and reflect about the whole blog to prepare for the live chats.

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LEVEL 1--How can futurist co-designers make a difference?

Equity muses are a particular kind of change agent (futurist co-designers, co-creative visionaries and network power generators) who challenge leaderships mindsets about how to co-design and build an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future (#ERSF).

As equity muses, we ask complex questions to open, inspire and align people's mindsets for an #ERSF. These questions inspire peoples' curiosity, imagination, co-creativity, open innovation and social entrepreneurship to work for the benefits of the commons, humanity and the health of our planet. We empower people to cultivate the virtues needed to co-create a flourishing future for the benefit of all: to do good for the commons and the common good.

• Why do we fail to live up to our full collective potential to do good?

We are failing because we have yet to learn how to redress the injustices of isms, inequities and planetary demise.

We are failing to be fair to ourselves, to each other and to the future health of our planet: mother earth. Without a profound respect for fairness, we lack a unifying sense of purpose to act for the common good. Like the Covid pandemic, the climate change emergency will greatly exacerbate pre-existing inequities. Without equity, we lack an overarching sense of direction for all. Our inequitable state of affairs beckons these questions.

• Where the hell are we going?
• Why are we in varying states of denial about our addiction to the short-termism of neoliberalism and ignore or deny its downsides?
• Why do we avoid anticipating the worst case scenarios and fail to develop the anti-fragile and resilience capabilities and capacities needed to mitigate catastrophic climate events?
• Why have we failed to cultivate the virtues to overcome the seven deadly sins and the systemic corruption within and across our corporate, economic, financial and political domains?
• Will we be victims or masters of our own destiny?

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LEVEL 2--How can we systematically change our governance, leadership and learning paradigms?

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." Buckminster Fuller

• Why is this reductionistic aphorism naive?

"Building Back Better" (incremental first-order change) is also naive. And "Build Anew" (systemic second-order change) is insufficient. To co-create a flourishing future for the benefit of all, we need to proactively deconstruct the neoliberal dark sides of neoliberalism.

Left unchecked, the dark side will sabotage our future.

Our marketing models of maverick-messenger-niche-message-movement paradigms are ineffective ways of learning how to solve our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century.

The maverick individualism of the hero's journey is an inadequate narrative to solve our wicked problems. There is no one savior. There is no one guru or framework to save us. We need to be wary of failing for "messiahs" with their absolutisms of universal principles, savor complexes, seductive metaphors, the promises of utopia alongside with misguided false hopes.

After all, we are in uncharted territories of complex problems that nature did not create. Nature and their metaphors are our guide for regeneration, but not the solutions for our self-inflicted human problems arising from the injustices of isms and our vast inequities. Biomimicry and nature metaphors alone are insufficient for solving our human and technological challenges, such as making renewable energy widely and inexpensively available to all.

In short, our maps and models are not the territory. The cults of individual mavericks and their loyal follower-ship are fragmented, disconnected systems that elevate their egoistic personality brands above ethical causes based on virtues.

• How can we expand beyond the cult of personalities to the civil cultures of the people, by the people for the people?

The solution does not lie within mavericks, saviors and their brand models. Solutions lie synergistically within us all by learning how to tap into our exponential co-creativity to solve complex problems. This calls for cultivating equity governance, tri-polarity steward and distributive leadership development.

• How can we co-create integrated networks of equity governance and distributive leadership networks that co-elevate cause-based ethical visions and missions above personal, professional and corporate brands?

We need equity muses (change agents, change makers and interlopers) to make the interconnections across the hubs and nodes of these leadership ecosystems. This calls for exponential learning platforms: creating scalable peer learning, coaching and mentoring platforms to facilitate intra-personal, inter-personal and systemic transformational change at all levels and across all sectors.

Let's not be naive about the dark side

Corrupt political systems, neoliberal economics, plutocracy and kleptocracy all collude to exacerbate inequities, climate change, planetary demise and the sixth extinction.

Our systems are perfectly designed to self-inflict the catastrophes that they produced.

The negative impacts of our linear waste-production economies, planned obsolescence, hyper-consumerism and resource extraction disproportionally afflict women, children, low income countries, marginalized communities and indigenous people.

These catastrophes call for addressing far-reaching questions (see below) about the political abuses of megalomania, narcissism and sociopathy and the systemic inadequacies of our political, economic, financial and legal governance that are failing to mitigate against these nefarious forces.

We are all enablers of corrupt power and our addictions to neoliberalism.

• Why are we failing to stop our enablement of corrupt political systems?
• Why are we inadequate in solving our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century?
• Why do we not ask enough questions about our ethical leadership crisis that has failed to cultivate the virtues needed to resolve our deeply divisive conflicts and dysfunctional polarization arising from our different priorities in our value systems?
• Why do we lack the moral courage to demand transparent accountability of our leaders in co-creating a flourishing future for the benefit of all?
• Why do we neglect to resolve our resource allocation dilemmas needed to build an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future (#ERSF)?

We have a scarcity of exponential innovators and abundant wastelands of unfulfilled human potential.

This quote calls for asking additional questions about the unfairness of inequities.

How can we:

• Address the injustices of the inverse care law (the people who need the least get the most and the people who need the most get the least)?
• Redress the climate change paradox (the countries who have the least carbon foot prints suffer greater consequences and the countries who have the greatest carbon foot prints suffer lesser consequences)?
• Co-create an abundance of exponential innovators, learning platforms, organizations and communities needed to cultivate fertile ground needed to exponentiate human and social capital development needed to solve our complex web of self-inflicted, wicked problems?

What is the highest purpose of equity?

Equity has financial, legal and ethical implications. The ethics of equity is the highest purpose.

Equity governance is about cultivating cultures and designing systems to co-create more level playing fields that give everyone fair opportunities to reach their highest potential of healthy well-being and develop the virtues needed to amplify human flourishing for the greater good of all.

Equity is the antidote to isms, exclusion and the abuse of power.

The pursuit of equity is about exponentiating a diverse abundance of human and social?capital?development at all levels. Equity is about aligning self-interests for the common good.

• What are your reservations and/or objections to this definition of equity?
• What are your suggestions to improve this definition?

#EquityMoonshot is about opening, inspiring and aligning our mindsets, so that we can co-design and build an #ERSF for the benefit of all.

• But why are our leadership paradigms failing to co-create a flourishing future to benefit all?

Shareholder capitalism feeds the maniac monsters of neoliberalism and the competitive free market. They green-wash Environmental Social Governance (ESG) and pay lip service to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

How can we:

• Co-develop ecological economics, equity governance, distributive leadership development, stakeholder conscious capitalism, social entrepreneurship and the win/win market place of open innovation and transparent accountability needed to redress the dark sides of neoliberalism, planned obsolescence, hyper-consumerism and resource extraction?
• Co-evolve equity governance based on a constellation of virtues that inspires and empowers a quantum leap forward in our distributive leadership capabilities and capacities for building an #ERSF?
• Muse over complex questions to snowball generative dialogues about co-creating a living story movement that continuously works toward a flourishing future for the greater good of all?

These question calls for re-designing our political, economic and educational systems to build an #ERSF.

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LEVEL 3-- How can we #UniteEquityMuses to ask complex questions?

#EquityMuses are change agents who ask questions about how to cultivate our core virtues needed to co-create a flourishing future for all. They use Socratic questioning to catalyze network power for transformational change by amplifying the quality of interpersonal communications needed to exponentiate collaborative relationships and learning for the common good.

This experiential process of deep inquiry moves beyond death-by-Zoom (Clubhouse, etc.) pedagogy, self-promoting monologues, marketing hooks, click bait, didactic mansplaining and passive learning to using interactive platforms to facilitate self-reflection, enhance self-awareness, co-create generative dialogues and exponentiate collaboration and deep learning in response to these questions about mindsets, identities, virtues, values and social impact.

#EquityMuses are the holy fools who challenge sacred cows by asking complex questions that challenge our mindsets about how we can solve our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems. The nature of our mindsets and identities are shaped by cultural forces and memes without our full awareness.

• How can we become more aware of the acculturation processes that implicitly shapes our identities, virtues and values of our mindsets?

Challenging questions can trigger strong emotional reactions that help people gain insights into their mindsets (closed vs open mindedness, emotional vs rationale, head vs heart, etc.,), identities (rigid vs adaptable) and defense mechanisms (functional vs dysfunctional). Emotional triggers provide insights into the righteousness of how virtues and values implicitly shape the identities of mindsets.

#EquityMuses also use supportive questioning to inspire and evoke slow thinking that enables people to become open-minded, truth-seeking free thinkers: a lifelong learning journey of cultivating virtues.

Equity muses inspire our moral imagination to create catalytic innovations for the common good.

Ask questions about the differences between values and virtues

Values and virtues are overlapping but distinct concepts. We need to understand the distinctions and the inter-relationship between values and virtues in order to solve complex problems and address the challenge of developing equity governance and leadership.

• Why do virtues matter more than values in solving our complex web of self-inflected wicked problems?
• How can we liberate ourselves from the egoistical trappings of our identities, virtues profile, values structure, mindsets, metaphors and words?
• Which constellation of virtues will enable us to put the social virtue of long termism ahead of the individual value of short termism? And why?

Discussing the distinctions and relationships between values and virtues benefits from exploring the semantics about what these two words mean to you personally and to others before engaging in generative dialogues about how to respond to these questions.

• What is the simplest definition of values?

Values express priorities about what is most important to an individual, family, organization, community, culture or nation, such as personal preferences, concepts, standards, principles and even virtues.

Hierarchical value structures reflect reductionist linear thinking that handicaps our systemic, sense-making abilities to manage complex problems. Furthermore, rigid value structures give rise to closed-mindedness, fundamentalist thinking and dysfunctional polarizations that is incapable of solving complex problems.

• What is the simplest definition of virtues?

Lived virtues are about thinking, feeling and doing good for ourselves and our communities without fanfare: creating a healthy commons to align self-interests with the common good and the health of our planet. However, when we use our virtues in reductionist linear ways, we also fall into the same mindset limitations of managing complex problems ineffectively.

Instead, we can use virtues in non-hierarchical ways. This involves co-selecting and negotiating a constellation of 3-5 virtues of shared meaning in order to co-create a cultural meme (a proposition) as a True North compass for galvanizing and scaling up aligned actions.

• How do we understand the relationships between values and virtues?

Open-mindedness enables adaptive use of virtues to make sense of the complexities in managing the polarities between individual values and social virtues. This involves facilitating tri-polarity stewardship (see symbol above in header). Using equanimity as the third pole to lead transformational change, we can navigate between the polarities between individual values and social virtues in ways that maximizes the upsides and minimize the downsides of our values and virtues.

Not all individual values (such as liberty, freedom and transactional profit) are virtues, and not all social virtues (such as equality, equity and transformational purpose) are valued.?

Liberty and freedom are individual values. Freedom is right, not a virtue. Individuals can act in (ir)responsible and (un)fair ways. Liberty enables virtuous, amoral and immoral behaviors. In other words, liberty liberates freedom for the good, the bad and the ugly. In contrast, the pursuit of equity for the common good is a social virtue.

• How do we entrust people with liberty and freedom to act for the common good?

Liberty and freedom give people the opportunities to exploit power and take advantages over others to establish privileged status and elite entitlements.

The meme of the American dream, "to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" focuses on individual values and not social virtues. Implicitly, this focus and omission of this value proposition devalues equity and equality.

• How can you identify your prioritization of values, explore our own profile of virtues and clarify how you understand the distinctions between values and virtues within yourself and in relationship to others?

This question is like a fish discovering water.?

The cultural assimilation of values and virtues implicitly shape your personal, professional and group identities without your full awareness. Self-awareness and awareness of others is essential for the lifelong learning process and collaborative practice of cultivating virtues needed to put our values effectively into action for the common good.

Otherwise, there is a greater risk of implicit mis-communications and counter-productive conflicts over the meaning of virtues and values that prevent the engagement of generative dialogues and deep learning about how to address the substance of these questions.

• How can we orchestrate, harmonize and resonate the frequency of our mindsets to amplify the signals of inspiring positive energy that mollify the noise of destructive negative energy?

Ask questions about #EquityMoonshot

#EquityMoonshot calls for moving us beyond our hyper-consumerist linear waste-production economy based on planned obsolescence. (Watch the brilliant documentary, The Light Bulb Conspiracy, to learn more).

• How can we rectify the deep root causes for waste and the inequities of waste?

What if we were to design an evergreen ecological economy based on rental and leasing products (without individual ownership) that are built to last, where the manufacturers are incentivized to increase the life cycle of their products and recycle their waste.

• How can we co-create an evergreen ecological economy that concurrently de-constructs the destructive aspects of neoliberalism?

#EquityMoonshot is about co-creating a flourishing future for the greater benefit of all: opening, inspiring and aligning our mindsets to co-design and build an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future (#ERSF).

However, the framework of positive psychology predominantly focuses on human flourishing from an individualistic clinical perspective. Flourishing runs the risk of becoming another privileged form of elitist rhetoric, like equality did in the Declaration of Independence by designing systems that perpetuated the economics of slavery and systemic racism. This calls for moving beyond this individualistic bias to developing a systemic framework of human flourishing for all, based on the social virtues of equity, fairness and justice.

Equity muses ask complex questions that focus on exploring what (in)equity and (un)fairness means to you personally but also from ethical, political, legal, economic and health perspectives. The purpose of these questions is to co-create a shared understanding of equity, fairness and justice means from different perspectives. A shared understanding about these virtues is essential for developing social norms of transparent accountability to assure equity, fairness and justice.

• Why do our different priorities in value structures sabotage equity, fairness and justice?

Equity muses also focus additional questions to expose what sabotages these virtues, such as the character flaws of our leaders, cults, abuse of power, systemic isms, corruption, injustices, propaganda machines, dis-information, manipulative marketing, moral hypocrisies, virtues signaling (such as green-washing and white-washing), rhetoric-action gaps, ethical and legal violations and the lack of transparent accountability to virtues.

#EquityMuses inspire people to cultivate their imaginations in asking questions of their leaders about the ethical transparency of virtues, values, mindsets and moral actions.

• What about reframing the political value of regulation with the social virtue of transparent accountability to reward positive deviants and to penalize negative deviants?

#EquityMuses ask virtuous, meta-view and big hairy audacious questions (#BHAQs) about how to launch #EquityMoonshot.

Virtuous questions address how we can put ethical guard rails on how we can put our values into moral actions and prevent corruption.

Meta-view questions help us to explore our similarities and differences in our mindsets, understand the relationship between virtues and values and clarify our different priorities in our value structures.

#BHAQs help us learn how to galvanize moral actions needed to solve our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems. These questions focus on addressing the transformational challenges of mobilizing mass actions for the common good and the health of our planet.

Ask complex questions about the dark side

The neo-terrorism of the dis-information era, uncritical fast thinking and gullibility are elevating deranged manipulative leaders with the character flaws of megalomania, narcissism and sociopathy. Neo-terrorism is a war of words without regard to integrity and truth. Lies become truth, and truth become lies.

The era of neo-terrorism and the abuses of free speech are disintegrating integrity, ethical norms, critical slow thinking, lifelong learning and the cultivation of virtues to develop flourishing communities, organizations, networks and societies.

Neo-terrorism is a metaphor for the battle of the brain. Our reptilian and amygdala brains are respectively the savage warrior and the emotional cults of blind unconditional loyalty. They are at war against the equanimity and virtuous governance of our neocortical brains.

Developing virtues and character strengths are the antidotes to counteract the cults of deranged personalities, the disinformation of propaganda machines, dysfunctional polarizations and toxic politics.

How do we:

• Reverse the downward spiral of systemic corruption into the amoral abyss?
• Ascend the upward spiral of virtues toward a flourishing future?

The #UniteEquityMuses vision is to build a living story movement to launch #EquityMoonshot. This calls for co-developing coordinated networks of distributive leadership and integrated eco-systems that cultivates cause-based cultures over the elevation of cult personalities.

Ask complex questions about our future narrative

Take your time for self-reflection and slow thinking to muse over these questions. Each of these questions are worthy of in-depth dialogues.

• "How and why" should we unite our massively transformational purposes for "what"?

Begin by asking, dialoguing and musing over these questions about how to inspire and co-create a flourishing future.

• Why are our educational systems (schools, colleges, universities, coaching enterprises, leadership institutions and religious organizations) failing to cultivate the mindsets needed to solve our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems?
• How do we scale up exponential learning, collaboration and innovation platforms to open, transform and align our mindsets, so that we co-create our entrepreneurial, resilience and anti-fragile capabilities and capacities to solve wicked problems?
• How can we use ethical, complexity, systems, design, networking and exponential thinking to address complex questions about equity, regeneration, sustainability for co-creating a flourishing future?
• Why do questions about the distinctions between virtues and values matter? Is liberty and freedom more of a value than a virtue, or vice versa? What about profit, purpose, equality, fairness and the pursuit of equity?
• How we overcome our illiteracy in understanding the polarities between values and virtues and the conflicts that arise from different priorities in value systems that give rise to dysfunctional polarizations?
• Why do virtues matter more than values for addressing the 26th Conference of the Parties (#COP26) on climate change, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (#SDGs) and the Environmental Social Governance (#ESG)?
• Why are these initiatives fundamentally flawed and destined to fail in co-designing an #ERSF?
• How do we cultivate the "We" global mindset to redress the dark sides of our egoistical ("i") reptilian and amygdala brains that sabotage long-termism for short-termism?
• How can we co-develop the equity governance, tri-polarity stewardship and distributive leadership needed to build a regenerative and sustainable future for the benefit of all?

Ask questions about the different meanings of equity

Ironically, equity is a homonym with a triple meaning and paradoxical polarities. In Latin, equity means fairness and justice.

• Legal pole. Equity is?a system of law originating in the English chancery and comprising a settled and formal body of legal and procedural rules and doctrines that supplement, aid, or override common and statute law and are designed to protect rights and enforce duties fixed by substantive law. (Meriam-Webster definition)
• Ethical pole. Equity means the fairness of the commons and open innovation: the transcendent "I" and the "We" consciousness of glocal (global-local) collaboration and citizenry to act with virtues for the common good and create fair opportunities for all.
• Economic pole. Equity means financial investment-ownership and patents: the egoistical "i" and the "we" of competition and tribalism.

The Covid pandemic has called into question the fairness of patents in addressing the global inequities of vaccination rates. Vaccine inequities are symptomatic of much deeper problems that arise from the unfairness of systemic isms. This pandemic is our wake-up call to addressing our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems.

The self-destructive conspiracy of neoliberalism is equivalent to an economic juggernaut careening recklessly and mindlessly over the precipice of the climate emergency, planetary demise and the sixth extinction.

Neoliberalism is an out of control dysfunctional system devoid of equity governance and transparent accountability.

Neoliberalism is past its expiration date. Our addictions to hyper-consumerism and the unlimited growth mindsets of neoliberalism are monumentally worse than the crisis of the opioid addiction epidemic. Our states of ignorance and mass denial about these dire circumstances exploit short-termism to sabotage long-termism.

Our financial system, economic paradigm and our "rigged" free markets are based on hyper-consumerism and non-renewable resource extractions that have metaphorically raped and pillaged Mother Earth and abused Gaia. The wrath of Mother Earth will take its revenge with a cascade of exponential black swan events that will far surpass the Covid pandemic.

• How can we co-develop the equity governance for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and ecological economics to deconstruct the dark side of neoliberalism?

Both the Covid pandemic and the climate emergency are mere symptoms of much deeper problems. We do not ask enough evocative "why" questions about our complex questions that explore the reasons for the deep root causes of our wicked problems. And we do not spend enough time clarifying what we mean by the key words (like liberty, freedom, equality and equity) used in our questions before responding to them. Without a shared understanding about the purpose and meaning of these keywords, discussions about responding to these questions are at high risks for mis-communication, conflicts and dysfunctional polarizations.

We have an ethical, leadership and educational crisis of incompetence in solving our self-inflicted wicked problems that do not have final solutions. We are morally failing to cultivate the virtues at scale in order to solve these monumental problems. We need to co-create catalytic innovations that make smaller and not bigger problems. Bigger problems increase inequities and accelerate planetary demise. Smaller problems lessen inequities and regenerate planetary health.

• How can we co-create a unifying vision and mission for the greater good of all?

Ask ethical questions about equity leadership

• What are the differences between cult leaders for power and cultural leadership for equity, humanity and our planetary health?

Cult leaders of the "egoistical i" are ultimately serving their own power in the guise of altruism. Cultural leadership of the "collaborative We" serves the common good by uniting our self-interests for the exponential benefits of all.

Dysfunctional systems are led by corrupt leaders with the character flaws of megalomania, narcissism and sociopathy. Corrupt systems elevate dysfunctional leaders who serve the plutocratic and political elites.

How can we:

• Overcome the personal, professional and corporate branding of cult leadership, organizations and systems that cultivate loyal closed-minded followers?
• Redress the shortcomings of executive coaching programs that are symbiotic parasites on corporations driving planetary demise and the sixth extinction?

Functional systems are led by virtuous leaders with the character strengths of empowerment, altruism and transparent accountability. We need to co-develop the equity governance needed to cultivate high-performing servant leaders who understand how to deconstruct the dark sides of cult leadership, neoliberalism and hyper-consumerism while co-constructing an evergreen economic paradigm needed to build a flourishing future for the greater good of all.

• How can we build the network power, governance systems and transparent accountability to cultivate equity leaders who serve, we the people?

The noble leadership aims of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Environment Social Governance and the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) on climate change are well-meaning and narrow-minded initiatives, because our neoliberal economies are rigged to exacerbate inequities. These initiates will do little in reducing the burdens of inequities for low-income countries, the poor, women, children and marginalized people. The Covid pandemic exposed our dysfunctional fragile systems that are designed to perpetuate and exacerbate inequities.

Ask virtuous questions that expose the hypocrisies of values

Typically, corporations, organizations, enterprises and political parties rank order their values into a value proposition. This rank ordering sets up reductionist and linear algorithmic thinking that is maladaptive to solving wicked problems.

Rigid value structures and priorities set up dysfunctional polarizations between right-wing and left-wing philosophies and between conservative and liberal mindsets that exacerbates our political fragilities and impair our capabilities and capacities to solve wicked problems.

This inequitable state of affairs calls for exploring the ethical philosophy of neoliberalism.

What are the core virtues guiding:

• Technocratic neoliberalism such as the social media and tech giants (Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Clubhouse, Apple, Microsoft, etc)?
• Neoliberal extraction industries, such as oil, gas, coal and minerals?
• Neoliberal hyper-consumerism companies based on planned obsolescence?
• The constitution and governance of the metaverse?

What's missing is an overarching constellations of virtues to guide how we align our value propositions for a flourishing future.

• How can we use the light of virtues to illuminate the dark sides of values?

Virtues provide ethical guidelines on how to operationalize values and act in moral ways.

• Why do we need unite equity muses to ask leaders virtuous questions about how to co-design an #ERSF?

Plato identified four virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance) as the foundational theory of ethics in classical philosophy.

• Are Plato's virtues still relevant for solving the wicked problems of the 21st century?
• What 3-5 virtues do you propose to guide how to co-create an #ERSF and why?

Equity leaders minimize and prevent the amoral and immoral abuses of?freedom by addressing the questions below.

How can we co-create a constellation of virtues (such as equanimity) as our true North to guide how we:

• Navigate between the individual values and social virtues while maximizing their upsides and reducing their downsides?
• Galvanize our co-creativity to cultivate a thriving future to benefit all?

A constellation of virtues avoids the reductionist limitation of prioritization, because we use different virtues to different degrees depending on the context of solving wicked problems.

How can we use our constellation of virtues to:

• Co-create corporate stakeholder capitalism and an evergreen economy to prevent the neoliberal juggernaut mindlessly and recklessly careening over the precipice of the climate change emergency?
• Stop sacrificing long-termism for the short-sighted benefits of short-termism?
• Open up our minds and imaginations to co-create and exponentiate catalytic innovations to benefit all?
• Cultivate self-organizing, self-generating virtuous networks of networks that hold our governments and institutions ethically accountable to we, the people for the common good?
• Open, inspire and align leadership mindsets within and across the political, public and private sectors for the common good?
• Ethically align our value propositions within and across these three sectors to launch #EquityMoonshot?
• Co-develop the equity governance needed to build an #ERSF?

Virtuous questions call for developing new learning paradigms to co-design and build an #ERSF based on virtues, generative dialogues, co-creativity, social innovation, entrepreneurship and network power guided by complexity, systems, design and exponential thinking.

Calls-to-actions for exponential learning and collaboration

Use self-reflective learning for personal development

• What is your understanding about the distinctions between virtues and values? And why is making these distinctions important, or not to you?
• Complete the free version of the virtue survey to assess your profile of character strengths. Write about your self-reflections about your self-assessment. What did you discover? Consider sharing your self-discoveries in a blog post before having a group discussion with others.
• What virtues and values have implicitly influenced your identity and shaped the meta-cognition and biases of your mindsets.
• What do you propose to be the personal constellation of 3-5 virtues as your personal virtues proposition?
• What do you propose to be the societal constellation of 3-5 virtues as the True North compass for co-creating a flourishing future?
• How would you use those virtues to compose a meme (in less than 10 words) for an co-designing an #ERSF?

Engage in generative dialogues to facilitate collaborative learning

Discuss in small groups:

• Your understanding about the distinctions between virtues and values
• The meaning of your personal virtues proposition
• The rationale for your meme for an #ERSF

Learn about equity muses

• Join #UniteEquityMuses Clubhouse events to build a change agent network
• Ask virtuous, meta-view and big hairy audacious questions about how we can hold ourselves, our leaders, governments, institutions, corporations and organizations accountable to co-design an #ERSF
• Become equity muses within your networks, organizations and communities
• Invite others to consider becoming equity muses

Build a #UniteEquityMuse Movement

• Deliver a mastermind mentor program to scale up the training of equity muse trainers and equity muses
• Advocate for co-developing the governance, the tri-polarity stewardship and distributive leadership needed to build an #ERSF

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Six virtue categories and 24 character strengths

Wisdom?

• Creativity (originality, ingenuity)
• Curiosity (interest, novelty-seeking, openness to new experience)
• Open-mindedness (judgement, critical thinking)
• Love of learning
• Perspective

Courage?

• Bravery (valor)
• Persistence (perseverance, industriousness)
• Integrity (authenticity, honesty)
• Vitality (zest, enthusiasm, vigor, energy)

Humanity?

• Love
• Kindness (generosity, nurturance, care, compassion, altruism, "niceness")
• Social Intelligence (emotional and personal intelligence)

Justice?

• Citizenship (social responsibility, loyalty, teamwork)
• Fairness
• Leadership

Temperance?

• Forgiveness and mercy
• Humility and modesty
• Prudence
• Self-Regulation (self-control)

Transcendence?

• Appreciation of beauty and excellence (awe, wonder, elevation)
• Gratitude
• Hope (optimism, future-mindedness, future orientation)
• Humor (playfulness)
• Spirituality (religiousness, faith, purpose)

What other virtues are missing from this framework?

Virtues that touch on several categories are truth-seeking, patience, conscientiousness, equanimity and the pursuit of equity and equality. And are beliefs virtues, or if so, why? And if not, why?

Patience?is the mother of all virtues.

What about inspirations and aspirations for virtuous acts? And any others?

This framework of virtues and character strengths is an imprecise heuristic map about the territory of virtues. Without definitions, talking about virtues and values can be like lassoing clouds, but generative dialogues can create shared meanings about virtues and virtues.

For example, how does your definition of spirituality and hope compare to other people's definitions? Without shared understanding of virtues, we run the risk of mis-communications and malalignment of actions.

What are your definitions of spirituality and hope and your rationale to justify them as core virtues for co-designing an equitable, regenerative and sustainable future? Both spirituality and hope are more like features than benefits. In contrast, the pursuit of equity and long-termism (seven generations) are outcomes to benefit all.

Assess your virtues and character strengths

Our mindset dispositions shape our profiles of virtues, and vice versa. The circularity of nature and nurture implicitly influences the development of our virtues. This implicitly gives rise to a diversity of virtues profiles that we are not fully aware of. Our implicit biases toward different virtues and values affects how we can and cannot collaborate in working together.

People with dispositions to religious beliefs may place higher priorities on faith, hope and charity as their guiding virtues, whereas people with secular perspectives may place higher priorities on other virtues. These different profiles of virtues raise issues about how our people of different religious and non-religious orientations can create a sacred space to harmonize a spiritual constellations of virtues that guide us on how we can work together toward an #ERSF.

The benefits of completing this survey (see link above) is that it can help you become more aware about your virtues and character strengths. It categorizes your virtues into a reductionist hierarchy of higher, middle and lower clusters as a static snap shot of your character strengths. However, you many value some virtues more than others at different times in your life, and your character strengths can evolve over time.

You can use the results of your survey in group discussions to reflect and discern whether your survey results represent actual, professed and aspirational virtues. How you see yourself and how others see your virtues and character strengths may differ.

This vertical framework conceals the personal, situational and contextual dynamics of trait and state virtues. Reframing this hierarchical framework as a horizontal matrix of flexible concentric circles (core, middle and outer) provides an emergent perspective about the relationship between virtues that can change over time by volition and contextual circumstances.

Another option is to draw a word map of your 3-5 character strengths in large font as your core virtues and then create an ecosystem of your remaining character strengths in smaller fonts and draw connections between them. For example, a person rated love of learning and curiosity as higher virtues and humor as one of the lowest virtue. From a reductionist perspective, these character strengths are separated. From an interdependent perspective, this person could use the irreverence of humor to lighten up and challenge sacred cows in order to evoke greater curiosity and enhance lifelong learning. This learning process can help to understand the interdependent nature of interacting character strengths.

At a community level, we can also use group discussions to learn how we can enhance our literacy in cultivating core virtues in communion with others for the #ERSF.