Who this article is for...

• People who want to join in on the experiment

• People who are interested in the general idea of acting as One Organism

WHAT is the One Organism Experiment?

The "One Organism Experiment" is the attempt to truly interact with a group of people as one interconnected Organism, to live from the Story of Interbeing not only in theory but in practice.

WHY is this experiment so important to try?

The Story of Separation rips our world apart and creates suffering within ourselves and for other people & species.
When the true part (“we are uniquely different”) becomes a lie (“we are separate from each other”) then I can live in the illusion that I can advance while putting someone else down, that I can be happy about my possessions while someone else at the other end of the world dies of hunger.
It’s like our right arm believing he (or she?) is better off punching the left arm until it is broken because the right arm could exercise its own strength in the process… Not working...

Truly healing our wounds as a society requires a “Cultural Enlightenment”, a shift in paradigm from Separation into Interbeing, the birth of a “New Story of Humanity”.
But: Not only in theory! In practice!

Over the last years & decades, we have come up with a lot of frameworks & models that might work if they could truly be applied all over the world. But that is the crux! And that’s where this experiment comes in, why it exists.

One way to look at it is that except for humans the world interacts as one big organism, keeping itself balanced all the time (including all the “killing” & eating done by animals). Every animal, every plant, every being is playing their role in the bigger picture, unhealthy parts that aren’t serving the larger organism will naturally be selected out (over long periods of time of course!). And so it is with humans.

We, humans, have managed to evolve a capacity in power that is unique in the sense that we are capable of NOT playing our role within the larger organism, working against it for our self-interest (# illusion of separation). Yet, if we don’t find a way to align this power in service to the larger whole then there will come a time (soon) when we humans will naturally be selected out (and may this be only because the whole biosphere becomes inhabitable for mammals)…

The “One Organism Experiment” is an example of how to truly align with universal principles, a prototype of different cells coming together in a truly synergetic way, a blueprint for the highest form of how human beings can interact.
Starting in a small circle (a healthy mother cell) and expanding from there, both by becoming a larger organism itself and by inspiring other people to give birth to new healthy mother cells that will finally form a huge mycelium network with all other healthy cells.

The question is this:
How should we (as the whole of humanity) be able to act in alignment with Life, the planet, the entire Universe if we can’t even practice it in our intimate circle?
The answer: We are not!

So let’s take on this journey & experiment around to figure something out where uniquely different people actually come together & symbiotically interact truly as One Organism. 😍

HOW does his actually work?

Okay, now it gets complex. ✌️
Not because we’re making it complex, but simply because life is complex. Basing our actions on an oversimplified model of reality cannot but cause harm. So let’s try to integrate all that complexity without making it complicated. Let’s try to find simple ways of expressing the infinitely complex reality (= 2nd level simplicity)

One thing to keep in mind is that it is way more difficult for us humans to interact as one organism than it is for trees in a forest. We need to take into account the immense power that allows us to resist universal principles in the first place.
Can we ever perfectly do that? No! Can we try our best? For sure!

The perspective we’re presenting here is not the truth. It’s one angle to look at truth, keeping in mind that “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.”
Having said that, let’s give it our best try to put it into words & models

A Useful Metaphor

What helps bring more clarity to complex topics that don’t have a definable truth? Metaphors!
So let’s use one. 🙌

Speaking of organisms & nature, let’s look at what plants need in order to healthily grow & flourish in their unique being, beautifully playing their role in the larger symphony. It basically needs:

• Sunlight

• Warmth

• CO2

• Water

• Soil

We could add a few more things:

• Nutrients

• Space

• Pollinators

What our One Organism Experiment needs

Equally fundamental, our One Organism Experiment needs the following things to truly flourish in its potential & contribute its gifts to other people & the world at large:

• A Vision = the connection to the big WHY (we’re doing this experiment)

• Virtues = guiding, universal principles, that we can align our actions with

• Mottos, Guidelines & Models = that make the universal principles tangible & (more) concrete 

• A self-learning “Operating System” (OS) = self-imposed agreements for how we want to interact

The Vision serves as our sunlight, giving us energy & direction from high above.
The four main virtues serve as our warmth (Love & Trust) and our CO2 (Wholeness & Openness).
The Mottos & Guidelines serve as water flowing through all parts of the Organism.
The self-learning Operating System (also iterating OS or iOS) serves as the soil, the foundation out of which we grow aloft.

You’re missing the nutrients, the space & the pollinators? Don’t worry, we’ll add them later. 😊
Let’s start with the four mentioned things first. 🙌

Vision (= our sunlight)

We already covered that, at least roughly. 🙂
And while roughly might be enough to understand what this is all about, it is nowhere near sufficient for those who actually want to be part of the One Organism.

To stay connected to the vision, the big WHY is absolutely essential!
To not just understand the vision & the impact but to really feel it!
Only when you truly embody something, you will be able to act in alignment with it, when it becomes hard, when it becomes challenging.

• More here (soon)
  + reminder to read through this overview first

Virtues (our warmth & CO2)

We’ve already briefly touched the four main virtues Love, Wholeness, Openness & Trust.

Without going into detail here: When you get deeper, you will realize that all those are universal virtues that hold true at any moment at any time.
Creating something aligned with life (like the One Organism idea) without integrating universal First Values & First Principles? A contradiction in terms! So let’s invite them to the party. 🥳

Love & Trust resemble Warmth. What more to say? That seems like a natural association.
Wholeness & Openness resemble the CO2. They both touch parts that sometimes carry a negative association but are truly valuable to our (eco-) system.

Wholeness means honoring the “positive” sides (this “positive”/”negative” connotation will lose its power completely when truly living the virtue of wholeness) like visions & dreams as much as the “negative” parts as shadows, fears & limiting beliefs. Being open to those parts (& other people pointing them out) will often hurt & cause pain. We want to transmute that pain into constructive life-force as plants are using CO2 to create oxygen.

• Go deeper here (soon)

Mottos, Guidelines & Models (= our water)

Mottos, guidelines & models are awesome tools to help us bring the infinite One Truth into practical application. But: They are only tools. And tools can be misused.

Keep in mind that all mottos you will come across in this section will only carry one dimension of the truth, not the whole truth. Holding it in dialectic with other truths that appear contradictory enables us to get a deeper understanding of Life, to have insights, to gain clarity.

As it is pretty easy to take single parts out of each motto/guideline/model and misinterpret them in a way that they are not aligned with Truth & universal principles anymore. It’s your responsibility to always listen between the lines, to tune your receiving devices for the deeper message, not the mere words, to listen to the signal, not to the noise.

• concrete examples (will follow)

iOS (= our soil)

Now we get into trouble! This part is so complex & rich in (dense) ideas that it could easily fill multiple books all by itself. 🙌

How are we going to balance the desire to keep it short (so this article serves its function as an overview) and to give an accurate idea of what’s covered here?
No idea! But let’s try. 🙂

Question: What are the essential building blocks, to create a self-learning Organization?
Answer: Certainly not the domains, businesses & organizations usually think about (services/products, meetings, resources, authority, etc.)

Instead, we came up (remember: all models are wrong!) with three/four additional elements. One of the additional four is “having a vision”, which we have already covered. (The iOS itself doesn’t say what the vision is, it just says that you need one). So let’s focus on the other 3 additions:

• Defaults & Meta-Rule(s)

• The 4 Components (Communication + Transparency + Learning Process + Learning Mindset)

• The 3 Principles (Purpose + wholeness + complexity consciousness)

Complicated? No! Complex? Yes!

The 3 Principles obviously heavily overlap with our vision & virtues. This is a good sign, as the iOS itself only lays the groundwork (= soil) for other things to grow in; but they must (!) align with those principles & components to actually work as a self-learning organization. No more depth needed, we’ve already covered that.

The 4 Components are the essential minimums that any self-learning organism needs to encompass & they all beautifully interact with each other. More on that in the “iOS - main article”. But beware! We’re entering a bottomless pit here, going into deeper & deeper layers!

The Defaults finally are the answer to the question that comes up, when you become truly aware of what “complexity consciousness” means;
“If rules don’t work anymore, because they are too rigid for this dynamic world, how else will we be able to coordinate large groups of people?”

Which means we will need only one single rule to govern the whole organization:
“Follow the Default or openly communicate that you don't.”

You can see the four components in action here:
You have complete freedom to do whatever you want, but if you choose to go off the chartered course (maybe you’ll find new, better ways!), be open & honest about that (= transparency) and share it with others (= communication) so that we can learn from the exploration (= learning mindset) and potentially adapt our Default (= learning process).

• Go (a lot) deeper here. (Link to iOS Main Article)

The 3 missing parts

The reason we skipped them (Space + Nutrients + Pollinators) before is that they go more into the specifics of how this experiment is put into practice. So if you are not interested in going deep here & becoming a part of the Organism yourself, then don’t give this part too much attention. It’s included for the thoroughness here & will come up in more detail later on for everyone who wants to go deeeep. 😍

Space:
We took this one literally! It’s the place in which we set up our experiment. What is the physical location for a “real-life” community, is the digital platform for an online community. In this case: Our Discord Server.

Nutrients:
What nourished the whole learning & growth process are the actual Defaults that are being created and that we either follow or transparently communicate when we don’t. It might be the most important part of the iOS, yet the iOS itself doesn’t say what defaults are installed. It’s up to the people to feed our organism with nutrients…

Pollinators:
Well, that’s easy. The pollinators are the (committed!) people who are part of the One Organism Experiment & who will spread it via their actions & awareness.
You want to be a pollinator? Then keep reading & choose accordingly in the final section to get to know what it truly means to commit to this experiment (it might be more far-reaching than you think 🙂).

A Short Recap

Wrapping this article up, we come back to our initial metaphor:
A plant needs sunlight + warmth + CO2 + water + soil (+ space + nutrients + pollinators) to grow.

Our One Organism Experiment needs the same things:

• A Vision that Serves Life (= sunlight)

• Universal Virtues (= warmth & CO2)

• Mottos & Guidelines (= water)

• An iterating Operating System (= soil)

And to put it into practice:

• A Discord server (= space)

• Actual Defaults (= nutrients) &

• Committed people (= pollinators)

Yes, an imperfect metaphor. And we hope a helpful one that made it easier to understand what this One Organism Experiment is all about.

Thanks for reading. 🙌

What's next?

• Want to Join?

  • go here

• Interested to explore?

  • just follow any of the "go deeper" links above

• Q&A section

  • will follow soon

Appendix (internal)

Improving this article (things to add/change in next iteration)

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