Here's an idea submitted to Google in a contest they sponsored a couple of years ago. The idea was to propose an idea that would help a great number of people in some significant way.
10. What one sentence best describes your idea?
Create an interdisciplinary forum to resolve differences and further the work of primary fields of knowledge and transformative disciplines.
11. Describe your idea in more depth.
Different fields of knowledge and transformative disciplines intending to further the health, well-being, and productivity of humanity often generate conflict and are at cross purposes. I propose that we create a forum to provide a common ground of language, principles, and methods through which these fields and disciplines can cooperate and further each others’ pursuits. Many differences among disciplines are due only to a lack of understanding of others’ jargon or meanings. Other conflicts are due to differences in the disciplines’ range of investigation or application—they are simply not addressing the same dimensions of reality or consciousness. The apparent conflict between evolutionism and creationism probably fits in this category. As another example, ‘normal’ human function develops ‘good’ habits and shuns ‘bad’ ones, while deep creative genius seems to preclude all habits in contacting a spontaneous ‘flow’. Establishing common ground should help resolve many of these confusing issues, help investigators focus on what’s important, and add precision rather than heat to their explorations.
Many fields limit—sometimes implicitly--their investigations to ‘normal’ and abnormal levels of consciousness and functioning. As a result most people have lost sight of opportunities for optimizing the human condition. So within the common ground it would be helpful to develop a vision of peak performance based on peak experiential qualities of people from numerous cultures and environments. Precisely what is the ‘zone’ that peak performers talk about? Preliminary efforts to identify desirable personality traits, skills, environments, or ‘best practices’ have been made, but this has actually distracted us from what’s essential. What basic aspects of experience provide moment-to-moment feedback no matter what we’re doing in any situation? Besides ‘normal’ and peak performance, a forum should identify other relevant levels of functioning, as well as the ‘mechanism’ of transition from one level to another.
13. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?
Anyone pursuing knowledge, plus all those who eventually make use of the knowledge generated by the many disciplines, would benefit. Take one example, using common ground to explore and appreciate differing moral systems. People all over the world lead their lives in different ways, trying to follow varied moral or ethical systems. Ironically, history has witnessed how differences between these systems lead to conflict, aggression, and even war. A forum could explore what different types of systems there are, how such systems arise, which levels of consciousness they apply to, and whether ‘something’ might explain how they all arise. We might come to appreciate and understand relationships between such systems rather than simply rejecting some as ‘wrong’ or ‘misguided’.
Academic and professional specialization has had the unintended effect of isolating investigators and perpetuating unexamined principles; common ground can reconnect people and further all inquiry.
10. What one sentence best describes your idea?
Create an interdisciplinary forum to resolve differences and further the work of primary fields of knowledge and transformative disciplines.
11. Describe your idea in more depth.
Different fields of knowledge and transformative disciplines intending to further the health, well-being, and productivity of humanity often generate conflict and are at cross purposes. I propose that we create a forum to provide a common ground of language, principles, and methods through which these fields and disciplines can cooperate and further each others’ pursuits. Many differences among disciplines are due only to a lack of understanding of others’ jargon or meanings. Other conflicts are due to differences in the disciplines’ range of investigation or application—they are simply not addressing the same dimensions of reality or consciousness. The apparent conflict between evolutionism and creationism probably fits in this category. As another example, ‘normal’ human function develops ‘good’ habits and shuns ‘bad’ ones, while deep creative genius seems to preclude all habits in contacting a spontaneous ‘flow’. Establishing common ground should help resolve many of these confusing issues, help investigators focus on what’s important, and add precision rather than heat to their explorations.
Many fields limit—sometimes implicitly--their investigations to ‘normal’ and abnormal levels of consciousness and functioning. As a result most people have lost sight of opportunities for optimizing the human condition. So within the common ground it would be helpful to develop a vision of peak performance based on peak experiential qualities of people from numerous cultures and environments. Precisely what is the ‘zone’ that peak performers talk about? Preliminary efforts to identify desirable personality traits, skills, environments, or ‘best practices’ have been made, but this has actually distracted us from what’s essential. What basic aspects of experience provide moment-to-moment feedback no matter what we’re doing in any situation? Besides ‘normal’ and peak performance, a forum should identify other relevant levels of functioning, as well as the ‘mechanism’ of transition from one level to another.
13. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?
Anyone pursuing knowledge, plus all those who eventually make use of the knowledge generated by the many disciplines, would benefit. Take one example, using common ground to explore and appreciate differing moral systems. People all over the world lead their lives in different ways, trying to follow varied moral or ethical systems. Ironically, history has witnessed how differences between these systems lead to conflict, aggression, and even war. A forum could explore what different types of systems there are, how such systems arise, which levels of consciousness they apply to, and whether ‘something’ might explain how they all arise. We might come to appreciate and understand relationships between such systems rather than simply rejecting some as ‘wrong’ or ‘misguided’.
Academic and professional specialization has had the unintended effect of isolating investigators and perpetuating unexamined principles; common ground can reconnect people and further all inquiry.
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