Parable of the Rosebush: Worldbuilding - Thirty+ Themes for Transformation
An Evolving List of Themes in rEvolution Z.
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Parable of the Rosebush: rEvolution Z is built on over thirty interconnected themes that explore humanity’s journey from collapse to regeneration. From the symbolic struggle of the rosebush to the rise of Geotribalism, these themes challenge us to transform toxic systems into fertile ground for a thriving, cooperative future.
Foundational Concepts
These themes establish the core ideas and metaphors that underpin the story, setting the stage for the deeper exploration of transformation.
Parable of the Rosebush: rEvolution Z (Book 3): A Metaphor for Humanity
Humanity is like a rosebush struggling to thrive in toxic soil. To flourish, we must plant ourselves in regenerative systems of abundance, cooperation, and aligned incentives.
Inspired by Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward and Octavia Butler’s Parable series, this theme reimagines Butler’s prophetic warnings of dystopia as a call for syntropian transformation. Rather than succumbing to chaos and collapse, the story envisions humanity intentionally creating a regenerative, life-sustaining paradigm.
The Forces of Moloch: Humanity’s Antagonist
Moloch, as explored in Ginsberg’s Howl and Scott Alexander’s Meditations on Moloch, symbolizes systems of scarcity, competition, and incentives misaligned (S.C.I.M) that lead to self-destruction.
Moloch thrives on rivalrous dynamics like capitalism, money, and power structures, perpetuating inequality and ecological collapse.
In biblical narratives, Moloch demanded the sacrifice of children—a haunting metaphor for our modern systems, which now sacrifice the youth, Generation Z, and future generations to the insatiable demands of scarcity-driven, exploitative systems.
(Coming) Parable of the Tribes: The Geotribal Age: Book 4: The Roots of Conflict
Drawing from Andrew Bard Schmookler’s Parable of the Tribes, humanity’s history has been shaped by rivalrous dynamics where domination and aggression have been the “winning strategies.”
To move forward, we must transcend these zero-sum, scarcity-driven behaviors by adopting collaborative, geotribal systems.
Hyperlistening: The Gift of Deep Connection: Hearing the Unspoken, Sensing the Unseen
Trim’s hyperlistening—a rare ability to hear emotions, tensions, and truths beneath the surface—echoes Lauren Olamina’s hyper-empathy in Parable of the Sower. Both gifts deepen their understanding of the world but also expose them to its pain, shaping their roles as reluctant yet transformative leaders.
In a society dominated by the noise of the attention-based economy, Trim’s quiet, introspective nature and ability to truly listen become a radical act of resistance, guiding humanity toward a Geotribal future where connection and understanding replace distraction and division.
The Meaning Crisis
Drawing on John Vervaeke’s work, the story explores how humanity’s lack of shared purpose and fractured worldviews contribute to societal decay.
Offers paths toward reconnecting with meaning through community, storytelling, and shared values.
Shifts in Consciousness: Beliefs Matter
The idea that stories and beliefs shape our reality more than facts.
Changing the narrative humanity tells itself about human nature, scarcity, competition, and our potential.
Inspiration from Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell and Rutger Bregman’s Humankind, focusing on human goodness during crises.
The power of rewriting our collective story to reflect abundance, cooperation, and hope.
The Path to Transformation
These themes delve into the mechanisms and principles for systemic change, moving from individual to collective action.
Human Nature and Altruism
Challenges the notion that humans are inherently selfish or violent, drawing from Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell and Rutger Bregman’s Humankind.
Highlights historical and contemporary examples of human goodness emerging during crises.
References Buckminster Fuller’s insight that “when humans get what they need, when they need it, they are spontaneously benevolent.” The real challenge lies in creating the conditions where this innate altruism isn’t just a fleeting response to disasters but becomes an ongoing norm in our systems and societies.
Conscious Evolution: Shaping Change Intentionally
Drawing from Barbara Marx Hubbard’s vision of conscious evolution, this theme emphasizes humanity’s potential to guide its own transformation.
Inspired by Lauren Olamina’s Earthseed mantra in Parable of the Sower:
“All that you touch You Change.
All that you Change Changes you.
The only lasting truth Is Change.
God Is Change.”
If change is inevitable, we can consciously shape it into something regenerative and beautiful.
Beyond Rivalrous Dynamics: Evolving Our Systems
A central focus on transcending scarcity, competition, and misaligned incentives (Molochian forces) that drive conflict and unsustainability.
Drawing on Daniel Schmachtenberger’s insights, the story explores the dangers of rivalrous dynamics multiplied by exponential technologies like AI. Schmachtenberger warns: “Rivalrous dynamics multiplied by exponential technology self-terminate. So, we either figure out anti-rivalry or we go extinct. Figuring out anti-rivalry is a psycho-spiritual process, inside of ourselves.”
Humanity now faces the challenge of a global empire for the first time in history, where no external "barbarians" exist to collapse it, only internal dynamics. Schmachtenberger's observations on the collapse of all previous empires underline the urgent need to transcend rivalrous systems and adopt regenerative, anti-rivalrous alternatives to ensure survival and flourishing.
Post-Money, Post-Market Systems
Humanity’s next Copernican Revolution involves evolving beyond money, markets, and ownership into an open-access, resource-based economy, where resources are managed sustainably and equitably.
Inspired by Jacque Fresco’s Venus Project, this vision explores how abundance, technology, and cooperation can replace scarcity-based systems, breaking free from the limitations of monetary economies. The Moneyless Society aims to create a new and unparalleled economic system that provides for everyone, where people contribute voluntarily, when and where they choose.
As Daniel Schmachtenberger explains: “The long term solution, if humanity is to keep existing, it will not have a thing called money and capital. It intrinsically has power asymmetries built in; it is an intrinsically f*cked technology. It is not in itself benign. If those concepts don’t go, I bet everything that I know that humanity goes extinct. Money as a system has to go.”
Schmachtenberger further asserts: “There is no human future that is compatible with a single fungible global currency and interest, and most of human access mediated by private property ownership.” These insights highlight the critical need to rethink how humanity structures access, ownership, and value to ensure a sustainable and equitable future.
Dissolving Power: The Path Beyond Ownership and Control
As first introduced in my Book One: The Next Copernican rEvolution (available here on Substack and on Amazon), rather than seizing power from entrenched systems—a path that risks global civil war—Parable of the Rosebush: rEvolution Z advocates for dissolving power by dismantling its mechanisms: money, markets, and ownership.
Eliminating money as the metric of power shifts humanity into a post-scarcity paradigm of abundance, cooperation, and aligned incentives (A.C.A.I).
This transformation fosters trust-based governance, decentralizing power and aligning it with collective well-being.
Dissolving power renders oppressive systems obsolete, paving the way for a regenerative future built on shared resources and mutual trust.
Regenerative Economics and Syntropy
A focus on shifting from degenerative, growth-driven systems to regenerative, syntropic ones that align human activity with ecological flourishing.
Syntropy refers to systems that increase in complexity, organization, and harmony over time, creating conditions for life to thrive.
Collective Action and Resilience
These themes emphasize the role of communities, movements, and grassroots efforts in driving systemic change.
Resilience Through Community
Exploring how local, bioregional and global communities can foster resilience, cooperation, and mutual aid.
Decentralized hubs like New Paradigm Farms (fictional) and Liminal Villages (in real life) serve as models for regenerative systems.
Fractal scaling of these principles to a Geotribal global network, creating resilience from the grassroots to a planetary level.
Decentralized Movements and Self-Governance
Movements like the Zapatistas, Rojava, and Geotribalism offer models of horizontal, decentralized, post-scarcity self-governance.
Inspired by Murray Bookchin’s ideas of participatory democratic confederalism, and ecological post-scarcity anarchism, these movements reject hierarchical power structures.
The Promise and Pitfalls of the Regenerative Movement
Explores the growing regenerative movement, highlighting the thousands of paradigm-shifting changemakers, organizations, and communities worldwide that are already advancing positive, alternative ways of living.
Celebrates their achievements while addressing the challenges of duplication and wheel-reinvention, which often detract from unification toward a larger superordinate goal necessary to achieve critical mass.
Examines how many of these initiatives are hamstrung by economics, forced into competition with one another for limited funding, rather than collaborating for collective impact.
Highlights how coordination failures and the over-complexification of social architectures inhibit the regenerative movement from scaling effectively and achieving the systemic transformation it aims for.
Impermanence and Resilient Communities
Drawing from Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, this theme explores the fragility of land-based communities under threats from governments, corporations, paramilitaries, cartels and disasters.
Advocates for commons-based community land trusts to ensure shared ownership and collective resilience.
Highlights real-world examples like the Zapatistas in Mexico and Rojava in Syria as models of decentralized, adaptive, and self-determined communities.
Stresses the need for open-source, anti-fragile systems and communities that can thrive in the face of external pressures, creating a foundation for regenerative futures.
Vision for the Future
These themes paint a picture of the regenerative future and the steps needed to get there.
Geotribalism: Humanity’s Unified Future
A vision of a global “One Tribe” consciousness that transcends borders, cultures, and divisions, enabling true cooperation and collaboration.
Geotribalism, as the Turquoise Stage of Spiral Dynamics, envisions humanity operating in harmony with the Earth and one another, fostering interconnectedness and systemic thinking.
While promoting global unity, Geotribalism also celebrates “community individualism” and diversity, recognizing that thriving systems emerge, like nature, when unique cultures, perspectives, and identities are embraced and valued within the broader collective.
Climate Crisis as Catalyst for Transformation
The unfolding climate crisis forces humanity to confront the unsustainability of its current systems.
Explores how disasters like flooding and wildfires reveal both the worst of elite panic and the best of human altruism.
Draws parallels to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, where climate-fueled disasters unravel social structures, underscoring the urgent need for systemic transformation to avoid dystopian futures.
There won’t be enough money in the universe to pay for all the climate damage, leading to the collapse of illusory constructs like insurance companies and the monetary system. Humanity will be forced to move beyond monetary considerations to focus on repairing and regenerating the planet through direct action and collaboration.
The Metacrisis: Navigating the Convergence of Crises
The metacrisis refers to the interconnected web of global challenges—climate collapse, economic instability, political polarization, and technological disruption—that amplify one another, creating a systemic threat to humanity’s survival and flourishing.
This theme explores how addressing the metacrisis requires a shift from fragmented, reactive solutions to holistic, regenerative approaches that address root causes and foster resilience at every level of society.
Technology as Liberator or Accelerator of Collapse
Examines how AI and exponential technologies can either amplify Molochian forces or become tools for liberation in a regenerative, post-Moloch world.
A critical exploration of how humanity’s consciousness, systems and incentives determine whether technology helps us thrive or self-destruct.
As highlighted in Julia McCoy's Liberation Through the Machines, AI holds liberating potential, freeing humanity from menial tasks and empowering creativity, collaboration, and meaningful engagement in building a better future.
The Rise of Synthesizing Minds and Regenerative AI
In a world of overwhelming complexity, synthesizing minds—those who connect insights from diverse sources—are essential. As Howard Gardner notes in his book Five Minds for the Future, “The ability to knit together information from disparate sources into a coherent whole is vital today.”
Collaborating with Regenerative AI: Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann asserts, “The mind most at a premium in the twenty-first century will be the mind that can synthesize well.” Regenerative AI enhances this ability, organizing and amplifying human intelligence for greater collective insight.
Together, synthesizing minds and regenerative AI can form a mycelium-like network of collaboration—integrating diverse perspectives, fostering cooperation, and guiding humanity toward the Geotribal Age, where connection and shared purpose become the foundation for flourishing.
Regenerative AI can help us achieve the simplicity on the other side of complexity by distilling massive amounts of data into actionable insights, enabling us to solve systemic challenges with clarity and purpose.
Narrative as a Tool for Change
Beliefs matter, and stories shape beliefs. This story explores how humanity can rewrite its narrative to embrace cooperation, abundance, and resilience.
By telling the current-day story of humanity’s real-time transition to a new geotribal paradigm, we can inspire collective action and reimagine our shared future.
Coordinating transition tactics and aligned incentives, we can activate a "regenerative renaissance"—a practical and transformative movement that builds systems fostering abundance, cooperation, and ecological harmony.
The rEvolution Z Movement
These themes focus on the youth-led movement and its role in shaping the future.
rEvolution Z: Youth Leading the Change
Generation Z, symbolized by the protagonist Trim, rises to the challenge of dismantling Molochian systems and building a regenerative future.
Emphasizes intergenerational collaboration, where wisdom from elders and indigenous societies combines with the creativity and passion of youth.
Rethinking Governance and Democracy
Exploring new models of sense-making and decision-making that go beyond electoral politics and adversarial win/lose governance systems.
Envisions AI and technology aiding humanity in “arriving at decisions” collaboratively, rather than divisively “making decisions.”
Indigenous Wisdom and Tribal Revival
Honoring and re-integrating indigenous knowledge, practices, and perspectives into the global conversation.
A “tribal revival” that acknowledges the deep wisdom of earlier societal models, reimagined at a higher octave in the Geotribal Age.
Recognizing that the turquoise stage in Spiral Dynamics (Geotribal Age) represents a synthesis of global interconnectedness and indigenous principles of harmony, cooperation, and balance.
The Great Simplification and the Superorganism
Inspired by Nate Hagen’s work, this theme explores how humanity’s trajectory is shaped by the superorganism—our collective system of growth, consumption, and extraction that operates beyond individual control.
As we face resource depletion, ecological constraints, and energy descent, “The Great Simplification” becomes inevitable.
The simplification process forces humanity to "do more with less," driving systemic changes that prioritize efficiency, cooperation, and resilience.
This is not an idealistic, utopian vision but a radically practical necessity for survival, aligning with the broader themes of transitioning to regenerative systems and conscious evolution.
The story examines how this simplification can catalyze the transition from Moloch-driven systems of competition and scarcity to Geotribalism, where humanity thrives within ecological limits while enjoying shared systems of abundance and a higher quality of life.
The Future of Thriving Communities: Lessons from Regenerative Agriculture and Ecovillages
Regenerative agriculture and permaculture are essential for a sustainable future, but as discussed in my essay, The Next Evolution of Ecovillages, over 90% of ecovillages fail due to operating within scarcity-driven capitalist systems.
Ecovillage escapism, the tendency to retreat from the larger world’s challenges, often prevents these communities from achieving systemic transformation and influencing broader societal change.
To fulfill their revolutionary potential, ecovillages must evolve beyond survival strategies and embrace radical approaches, especially regenerative technology, that challenge scarcity-based paradigms at their roots.
The Big Picture
These themes tie everything together, offering a holistic view of humanity’s journey toward regeneration.
Elite Panic vs. Grassroots Resilience
Examines how the ruling class’s fear-based responses to crises exacerbate problems, while grassroots communities often thrive through cooperation and mutual aid.
Highlights how attempts to seize power from the powerful often backfire due to elite panic, reinforcing oppressive systems. Instead, this story explores defeating Moloch and the powers-that-be by “dissolving power” and the mechanisms that sustain power structures, enabling decentralized and regenerative alternatives to flourish.
Octavia Butler’s Influence: Dystopia vs. Syntropia
Springboarding from Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, this story explores an alternative path—syntropy, regeneration, and cooperation.
Rejects dystopian inevitability, offering a vision of a more beautiful world built through conscious evolution.
Envisions Syntropia as a desired future, where humanity thrives in alignment with ecological and social harmony—contrasting sharply with the dystopian narratives that dominate movies and novels, which risk becoming self-fulfilling prophecies by shaping collective beliefs and expectations.
Three Pillars of the Great Turning: Shaping a Life-Sustaining Civilization
Inspired by Joanna Macy, David Korten, and Thomas Berry, this theme emphasizes humanity’s pivot from an Industrial Growth Society to a Life-Sustaining Civilization.
The Three Pillars of the Great Turning—Shifts in Consciousness, Holding Actions, and Structural Change—form the foundation for transitioning to a regenerative future.
The "Great Turning" represents humanity's ascent up the spiral of evolution toward Geotribalism, aligning with the Turquoise Stage of Spiral Dynamics. rEvolution Z will require an updated interpretation of the Three Pillars of Activism, adapted to meet the demands of this pivotal era of transformation.
Paradigm Shift in All Quadrants: Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics
The evolution of human consciousness is mapped through Spiral Dynamics, as developed by Clare Graves, Don Beck, et al., emphasizing humanity’s potential to reach the Turquoise Stage. This stage is characterized by unity, interconnectedness, and systemic thinking. The Geotribal Age represents this Turquoise Stage, where humanity transcends division and operates in harmony with the Earth and one another.
Integral Theory, pioneered by Ken Wilber et al., provides a comprehensive framework for synthesizing diverse worldviews into a coherent model of collaboration. This supports the transition toward higher levels of consciousness, cooperation, and coordination.
This evolution is not limited to individual consciousness or biology but extends to our collective cultures, systems, and institutions. Humanity’s progress depends on co-creating structures and systems that reflect this new level of awareness, fostering regenerative systems aligned with our cooperative potential.
Crossing the Threshold: Personal and Collective Transformation
Trim’s personal journey mirrors humanity’s collective crossing into a new paradigm, highlighting the challenges and triumphs of embracing change.
The Collective Hero’s Journey
Humanity is undergoing a shared journey, moving through the stages of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey—Ordinary World, Call to Adventure, Initiation, and Return.
Unlike traditional narratives focused on individual heroes, this is a collective journey of all humanity, shifting from a paradigm of separation and rivalry to one of unity and collaboration.
Together, these themes invite us to imagine, co-create, and step into a future where humanity thrives in harmony with itself and the Earth—a future where the rosebush finally blooms.
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