Downshifting

Creating an ASBL for "Shifters" ? : Meaningful Downshifting 4 Regenerative Upcycling Transition Management ?

Dante imagines an organization ( not for profit - asbl in Belgium ) which can facilitate the convergence of people interested in a synthesis of the following concepts ,

with as aim to exchange and build on information that enables shifts in their lives and the lives of others - finding and creating meaning / Aka Logotherapy -, generating collective intelligence through Participatory Action Research.

It also addresses itself to people who are faced to Bore-Outs ( even more so than Burn Outs )

It leads to a convergence of existing and novel movements.

I will describe some of its aspects, and am reaching out to see how this can be set up together.

It can help inform how to reduce and manage ones spending ( some people getting used to a certain lifestyle related to their higher earnings )

in preparation of

- shifting into a part-time - taking a year off - or eventually leaving an employee job all-together ( while informing of potentials to create alternative livelihoods that can still be economically sustainable )

It aims to be a medium of mutual moral support, shared information and inspiration , and potential collaboration, eventually serving as an Incubator, for Lifestyle Change, while finding ways to provide for ones needs at different stages. Facilitating midst others ones Self Actualization process, and enabling shared intentionality into Selfless actualization, while reducing the perception of potential marginalization.

It would include various social configurations. A second step being to leverage multi-generational approaches, that can enable synergies, frameworks, or access to information that enables mutual support between adults with children.

It eventually also includes people with an interest in Existential Migration, as part of processes of networked collective intelligence in support of individuation and self(less) actualization.

Some of the concepts :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downshifting

Downshifting is a social behavior or trend in which individuals live simpler lives to escape from what critics call the rat race of obsessive materialism and to reduce the “stress, overtime, and psychological expense that may accompany it”.[1] It emphasizes finding an improved balance between leisure and work[2] and focusing life goals on personal fulfilment and building relationships instead of the all-consuming pursuit of economic success. The term also refers to the act of reducing the gear of a motor vehicle while driving a manual transmission. Downshifting, as a concept, shares many characteristics with simple living, but is distinguished, as an alternative form by its focus on moderate change and concentration on an individual comfort level, a gradual approach.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreout

the absence of meaningful tasks, rather than the presence of stress, is many workers' chief problem. Boreout consists of three elements: boredom, lack of challenge, and lack of interest. These authors disagree with the common perceptions that a demotivated employee is lazy; instead, they claim that the employee has lost interest in work tasks. Those suffering from boreout are "dissatisfied with their professional situation" in that they are frustrated at being prevented, by institutional mechanisms or obstacles as opposed to by their own lack of aptitude, from fulfilling their potential (as by using their skills, knowledge, and abilities to contribute to their company's development) and/or from receiving official recognition for their efforts.

somewhat different to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_burnout

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upcycling

Upcycling, also known as creative reuse, is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_design

Regenerative design is a process-oriented systems theory based approach to design. The term "regenerative" describes processes that restore, renew or revitalize their own sources of energy and materials, creating sustainable systems that integrate the needs of society with the integrity of nature. The basis is derived from systems ecology with a closed loop input–output model or a model in which the output is greater than or equal to the input with all outputs viable and all inputs accounted for. Regenerative design is the biomimicry of ecosystems that provide for all human systems to function as a closed viable ecological economics system for all industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_management_(governance)

Transition management is a governance approach that aims to facilitate and accelerate sustainability transitions through a participatory process of visioning, learning and experimenting.[1][2][3] In its application, transition management seeks to bring together multiple viewpoints and multiple approaches in a 'transition arena'. Participants are invited to structure their shared problems with the current system and develop shared visions and goals which are then tested for practicality through the use of experimentation, learning and reflexivity. The model is often discussed in reference to sustainable development and the possible use of the model as a method for change.

Key principles to transition management as a form of governance:[4]

seeks to widen participation by taking a multi-actor approach in order to encompass societal values and beliefs takes a long-term perspective (between 1-3 generations) creating a basket of visions in which short-term objectives can be identified focused on learning at the niche level, experiments are used to identify how successful a particular pathway could be and uses the concept of "Learn by doing, doing by learning"[4] a systems thinking approach which identifies that problems will span multiple domains, levels and actors.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logotherapy

Logotherapy is based on an existential analysis[3] focusing on Kierkegaard's will to meaning as opposed to Adler's Nietzschean doctrine of will to power or Freud's will to pleasure. Rather than power or pleasure, logotherapy is founded upon the belief that it is the striving to find a meaning in one's life that is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans.[4] A short introduction to this system is given in Frankl's most famous book, Man's Search for Meaning, in which he outlines how his theories helped him to survive his Holocaust experience and how that experience further developed and reinforced his theories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_action_research

Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach to research in communities that emphasizes participation and action. It seeks to understand the world by trying to change it, collaboratively and following reflection. PAR emphasizes collective inquiry and experimentation grounded in experience and social history. Within a PAR process, "communities of inquiry and action evolve and address questions and issues that are significant for those who participate as co-researchers".[1] PAR contrasts with many research methods, which emphasize disinterested researchers and reproducibility of findings.

PAR practitioners make a concerted effort to integrate three basic aspects of their work: participation (life in society and democracy), action (engagement with experience and history), and research (soundness in thought and the growth of knowledge).[2] "Action unites, organically, with research" and collective processes of self-investigation.[3] The way each component is actually understood and the relative emphasis it receives varies nonetheless from one PAR theory and practice to another. This means that PAR is not a monolithic body of ideas and methods but rather a pluralistic orientation to knowledge making and social change.[4][5][6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_intelligence

The concept is used in sociology, business, computer science and mass communications: it also appears in science fiction. Pierre Lévy defines collective intelligence as, "It is a form of universally distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, coordinated in real time, and resulting in the effective mobilization of skills. I'll add the following indispensable characteristic to this definition: The basis and goal of collective intelligence is mutual recognition and enrichment of individuals rather than the cult of fetishized or hypostatized communities."[5] According to researchers Pierre Lévy and Derrick de Kerckhove, it refers to capacity of networked ICTs (Information communication technologies) to enhance the collective pool of social knowledge by simultaneously expanding the extent of human interactions.[6] Collective intelligence strongly contributes to the shift of knowledge and power from the individual to the collective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individuation

In Jungian psychology, also called analytical psychology, individuation is the process in which the individual self develops out of an undifferentiated unconscious – seen as a developmental psychic process during which innate elements of personality, the components of the immature psyche, and the experiences of the person's life become integrated over time into a well-functioning whole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization

Self-actualization can be seen as similar to words and concepts such as self-discovery, self-reflection, self-realisation and self-exploration.

As Abraham Maslow noted, the basic needs of humans must be met (e.g. food, shelter, warmth, security, sense of belonging) before a person can achieve self-actualization – the need to be good, to be fully alive and to find meaning in life. Yet, Maslow argued that reaching a state of true self-actualization in everyday society was fairy tale. Research shows that when people live lives that are different from their true nature and capabilities, they are less likely to be happy than those whose goals and lives match. For example, someone who has inherent potential to be a great artist or teacher may never realize his/her talents if their energy is focused on attaining the basic needs of humans.[5]

https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Selfless_Actualization

"Maslow's message is that to achieve peak experience people must move from self to other. Social justice, generativity, and transformative thinking and acting are all concepts that could be associated with this orientation. The fundamental idea is that people must move to a focus and concern for other people to achieve the highest level of human nature. People who move beyond self-actualization "are, without a single exception, involved in a cause outside of their skin: in something outside of themselves, some calling or vocation" (Maslow, 197 1 :42). This view is supported by, among others, Erik Erikson (1987) and Carl Rogers (1961). " (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamotivation)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_migration

Existential migration is a term coined by Greg Madison (2006) in Existential Analysis, the journal of the Society for Existential Analysis. Madison's term describes expatriates (voluntary emigrants) who supposedly have an "existential" motivation, unlike economic migration, simple wanderlust, exile, or variations of forced migration. ‘Existential migration’ is conceived as a chosen attempt to express something fundamental about existence by leaving one’s homeland and becoming a foreigner.

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Instead of a "Business Incubator" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_incubator )

it can become a "Lifestyle Incubator" that can be generated by also creating "Meta Layers" - empowering through generating systems, which can also be seen as "Phyles" ( which can be not for profit organizations - entreprises )

http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Phyles

"A phyle is a confederation — which is to say, a network with no higher structure — of conversational communities with their own companies, which share a series of common funds in a transnational space: basically, “social security” and mutual economic support systems." (https://english.lasindias.com/why-we-are-not-yet-a-phyle-and-where-those-who-form-them-will-come-from)

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yet it does not require conformity to a community dynamic, such as in Intentional Communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_community ( although people may choose to integrate such aspect depending on their preferences )

Hence it aims at generating structures that enable Participatory Action Research and Networked Individual Inquiry, that remains highly critical of

Group Think

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.

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When using the Integral Theory as tool,

one clearly shows that although one can support with information people in need for "Green Value Memes" ,

the main focus is a shift from "Green" to "Yellow",

and from "Yellow" to "Turquoise" ...

http://s3.amazonaws.com/estock/fspid8/116100/everystockphoto-116188-o.png

https://image.slidesharecdn.com/culturescanintrov2-091207111537-phpapp01/95/culture-scan-an-introduction-to-spiral-dynamics-5-728.jpg?cb=1260184555

and serves rather as a tool for collective intelligence

( which can also support the development of tools, such as Assemblee Virtuelle does, including for example ontologies supporting Open Value Networks https://www.virtual-assembly.org/en  , http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Open_Value_Network  )

The "tools" development aspect may be one of the various branches of mutually supporting modules

( which also include learning environments and practices, modular housing solutions , etc )

tending towards not merely "Business Intelligence", but "Life Intelligence" 2.0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Intelligence_2.0

by further generating a coalition of software developers, including Open Linked Data approaches.

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Its narrative will be in support of

Contribution based peer production approaches in support of Commons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons

The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately.

https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/commons-based-peer-production-information-economy/2016/10/21

and making usage of "The 10 Commandments" of Peer Production

https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-ten-commandments-of-peer-production-and-commons-economics/2015/10/24

favoring "Equipotentiality", a non credentialist approach based on self selection

https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Equipotentiality

Michel Bauwens: in my interpretation, peer production processes are characterized by the adoption of equipotentiality as an organizing principle. This means that everyone can potentially cooperate in a project, that no authority can pre-judge the ability to cooperate, but that the quality of cooperation is then judged by the community of peers, i.e. through Communal Validation. In equipotential projects, participants self-select themselves to the module to which they feel able to contribute. A related term, used by Jimmy Wales of the Wikipedia project, is Anti-Credentialism, which refers to the fact that no credentials are asked beforehand, unlike the process of Peer Review.

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It exposes "Bullshit Jobs" and purely non productive financial speculation.

( http://web.archive.org/web/20160316040057/http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ )

It attempts to increase the velocity of currencies and access to resources to increase opportunities and problem solving opportunities.

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Although initially, one can start locally, working with existing organizations,

having more classical meet-ups with people interested in initial stages of change in their lifestyle.

Different approaches can be used for convergence.

It can include eating together ( or cooking together ),

it can include sports and walks, etc

Starting in ( cosmopolitan ? ) cities.

Eventually organizing retreats at some point,

and applying "Art of Hosting", "Dragon Dreaming" and other approaches

http://www.artofhosting.org/

http://www.dragondreaming.org/dragondreaming/what-is-it-exactly/dragon-dreamingthe-dragon-dreaming-process/

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I look forward to start locally,