Welcome to Cospolon

Community, communication, understanding, reason, rationality, science, logic, culture, and various social values will help humanity solve 21st-century problems. Public and private enterprise is at the heart of almost every crisis. We can only overcome our world's challenges through international cooperation, ingenuity, and wise collaboration.

Today, we are facing a perfect storm characterized by complexity:

• Nuclear weapons proliferation and the dismantling and disposal of existing nuclear weapons arsenals.

• Climate change, AKA global warming, and its many causes

• The sixth extinction and diminishing global biodiversity.

• The destruction of wildlife habitats, rainforests, oceans, and water resources— "natural capital" and natural services.

• Maintaining biodiversity and stewarding healthy, balanced ecosystems and habitats.

• A host of values-laden social ills stemming from our current global socioeconomic system and culture wars.

• A host of incomprehensible emerging technologies (AI, Robotics, Quantum Computing, Blockchain, etc.)

• The global socioeconomic system is a black box for most of us.

• Economic distortions.

• Material and Energy constraints and limitations.

Via evolution, compositional language emerged and is arguably the first technology that enabled our species to become the all-powerful, high-tech, industrialized apex predator. Since the emergence of our species, we have continuously developed technology. Our social and cultural evolution led to science and our harnessing of powerful natural forces and resources.

During the industrial revolution, cheap, abundant, and potent fossil fuel energy gave rise to our current age of wealth and material abundance.

Ironically, we may now face extinction due to our inventive and enterprising nature. Should our species disappear, the Earth and the Universe may not miss us, but imagining a family without a future is tragic.

We are masters of rationalization. Cognitive dissonance and biases help us brush off dire existential threats until they have crossed tipping points, making them practically impossible to address.

We are easily distracted and misled by mindless entertainment. Understanding complexity may be too difficult for most of us, and our world is becoming more complex.

Understanding the systems that run the world may be challenging, but it's crucial today.

Past civilizations were comfortable with mystery; now, society is becoming a black box.

Human culture has faced many close calls. Right now, we are on the precipice.

We must do more than rearrange specific components of our current way of life if we want our civilization to grow. Surviving and thriving in the coming years requires a new worldview and way of living based on comprehensive knowledge that can engage multiple perspectives.

We must develop coherence and trust in a world divided by warped, pathological incentives.

Globe Hackers believe we have come too far to fail now. If we can recreate our civilization, we may evolve beyond our great earth. The internal and external universe is here for us to explore. We have the power to understand more about nature and existence than any other creature we now know. But this kind of growth takes hundreds of years of patient work within healthy communities and environments where we can gain wisdom and a deep understanding of reality.

Globe Hackers and Cospolon represent networks of humane, compassionate, flexible people and organizations committed to solving problems.

Globe Hackers gather resources for projects that can transform our world. Globe Hackers are members of movements worldwide committed to ensuring a sustainable, healthy, and prosperous future for humankind and all creatures, great and small.

Cospolon is a constellation of intimate groups adept at empathic, profound communication leading to utilization with the potential to continue exploring the universe for thousands of years.

(If "God" wrote the "code" for the Universe, then God wants us to "hack" it: This is how we "Know God." We are free. We have the tools.)

We are embodied cognitive-emotional beings with agency.

We endeavor to recognize what is sacred, meaningful, and beautiful.

We yearn to understand and treasure what we know.

We enjoy getting lost.

We are comfortable not knowing everything.

We like uneven ground - it helps us find our balance.

We love a challenge.

We know we're not in control of everything.

We like surprises.

We know living is full of risk.

We strive to make good decisions.

We appreciate moral philosophy.

We have an empirical, rational, and evidence-based worldview.

We might like Kant, enlightenment thinkers, and ancient philosophers too.

We read a lot.

It's essential to teach children to think critically.

We are optimistic skeptics.

We are autodidacts and good students.

We are world travelers, or at least we'd like to be.

We are entrepreneurial.

We are creative and innovative.

We value democracy, the rule of law, and well-run governmental and people-focused non-governmental institutions.

We like institutions that consider the well-being of a broader range of stakeholders.

We like socially responsible businesses.

We appreciate well-managed businesses.

Businesses must manage global resources rationally and sustainably.

We seek better ways of valuing global resources.

We appreciate the truth in advertising, marketing, and public relations.

The establishment of the scientific method is one of humanity's most outstanding achievements.

We are interested in the history of science.

We are grateful for our scientific, technological, and engineering achievements.

We recognize the danger of unintended consequences.

We pay attention to the consequences of externalities.

We like the Bayes Theorem too.

We seek to understand better the impact of our dependency on rapidly evolving, complex technology.

We seek to manage risks inherent in our dependency on technology.

We acknowledge that human activity has a profound effect on Earth systems.

We are fascinated by complex emergent systems and seek ways to understand them better.

We seek to better understand our impact on our earth's systems.

We seek to protect and preserve our environment.

We seek to protect and preserve the diversity of life on our planet.

We like cultural diversity.

We acknowledge that we are plagued by various cognitive biases and forms of fallacious logic that profoundly affect our judgment.

We reason and calculate risk probabilistically.

Understanding how the mind works leads to better thought processes.

We respect global scientific consensus.

We appreciate that global scientific consensus is constantly evolving.

We listen to and question experts.

We hope humanity will continue exploring the natural Universe for thousands of generations.

We understand that basic survival skills are essential.

We are living in an age of great opportunity.

We argue to discover and learn from each other.

We are hands-on and often enjoy a do-it-yourself approach.

Our ecosystem depends on an intricate and fragile balance of complex systems.

We love the mysteries of intertwined energy and information.

We embrace the challenge of understanding complex things and systems.

We support universal human rights.

We are humanists because we believe humans have value.

We are naturalists because we love nature.

We think religious people might be humanists, too.

We seek to make the most of life.

We seek to understand our differences and celebrate our shared values.

In a "deterministic" universe, we must understand how nature truly works to exercise our will responsibly.

We take the luxury of having choices seriously.

We aspire to make the right choices based on a solid understanding of reality.

We embrace complex tasks.

If "The Greatest Generation" can be defined by World War, then future generations' achievements could be characterized by peaceful cooperation, mutual respect, creativity, innovation, and a love of life.

We acknowledge what we don't know.

We are not afraid to make mistakes, and we learn from our mistakes.

We are happy to admit when we are wrong.

We acknowledge that many of us appreciate stories more than evidence and facts.

We seek to present evidence, facts, and scientific theories so that people will appreciate the extraordinary stories within them.

We seek to engage people entertainingly.

We are fearless in challenging our audience.

We seek to hold people's attention by the quality of our content.

Quality content excites the mind and the heart.

We maintain a healthy sense of humor.

We prefer the exercise of charm and wit to intimidation.

We appreciate "irony."

We like questions as much as answers and seek the right ones.

We are intellectually curious and cherish the vitality we experience when exercising our intellectual energy.

We are incredibly grateful for the opportunities we've had, our ability to recognize them when they came along, and our desire to create new opportunities when we are able.

We are adventurous.

We enjoy acquiring new skills.

We strive to maintain good health and self-respect.

We strive to help others stay healthy so they can live fulfilling and active lives.

We are profoundly grateful for our existence.

We seek to achieve incremental improvements across many domains of inquiry and activities.

We work hard to improve the ideals of our wisest ancestors.

We are constantly learning about our history.

Outstanding achievements can come from "The Cold War," a war in which "Mutually Assured Destruction" was understood and hardly noticed. Outstanding achievements can also result from climate change and global warming.

People who do what is obviously "right" inspire us.

Ideals and a desire to make things better could become our prime incentives.

Society can achieve better patterns of social-economic incentives.

We learn from history's lessons.

We seek to improve civil rights and justice.

It is unwise to waste the potential of even one human mind.

We pursue life-long education.

We foster better, more transparent, democratic, and efficient government systems through international cooperation and understanding across cultures.

We know that the exercise of soft power is better than war.

We strive to maintain peaceful relationships.

We enjoy mutually beneficial relationships that contribute to personal growth.

We are not afraid to reinvent our world.

We strive to be antifragile.

We improvise and adapt.

We make these statements with abiding and sincere humility.