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TOWARDS AN OPEN CIVICSCIVIC INFRASTRUCTURES AS ENABLING CONDITIONS FOR AVITAL RESILIENT, AND PARTICIPATORY CIVILIZATION2024112620 Message

In Us We TrustOur Critical PathThis Is Not A ManifestoWhat Is Civilization?The Ontological ShiftInnovating Civic InfrastructureOur Context Is Crisis, Our Crisis Is A BirthA Post-Tragic Protopian AudacityOpen Civic CultureWhy Civic CultureRegenerating What’s Been LostTranspolitical SolidarityEnabling StructuresOpen Civic SystemsMaking the Old System ObsoleteThree Horizons & The Third AttractorConditions Of The Third AttractorSystem CompositionSystem Design PrinciplesSystem Design EthicsStigmergy: The Nature Of Open Civic SystemsPolycentricity: Holons Of Self-OrganizationBlockchain: Peer To Peer CyberneticsEmergent System CapabilitiesOur ChoiceAcknowledgementsCitationsAppendixOpenCivics ThesisOpenCivics ConceptsOpen Civic Innovation FrameworkOpenCivics NetworkCONTENTS

This document is offered openly to the commons. This work claims no author; those who havecontributed to the various streams present in the following pages are many. You might even say weare legion. Because, despite our unique geographic, historical, and cultural contexts, we arespeaking with a unified voice. This voice moves through us. We hope it will move through you alsoas you take in these words and find whatever is good and true and and beautiful and useful to youamong them.This document has been created for civic innovators, organizers, and patrons as an argument for thedecentralization of civic innovation and revitalization of civic systems in service of thetransition towards a life-affirming civilization. It makes the case for the urgent creation of newcoordination mechanisms in response to the existential mandate for humanity to evolve into a non-rivalrous, mutually responsible civilization.We offer these words as a clear and simple prayer, that we might embrace the all-encompassingsobriety of collapse with an all-encompassing love for our fellow human beings and their sovereignrights to vitality, resilience, and choice. We do not claim to have invented these rights, ratherwe see them as intrinsic to the nature of love and interbeing, a sacred foundation of mutualitythat is rooted deeper than any religion, culture, or creed.OpenCivics is not a brand or business; it is a spark to ignite a renaissance of civic participationand stewardship, a recognition of our shared belonging to and responsibility for our world.OpenCivics is an invocation of a broader movement towards an open civics — a collective and evolvingfield dedicated to reimagining civic systems through participatory design.While the words in this document are already dead, flattened expressions, they point to somethingalive, a spirit that lives within all of us that yearns for a more beautiful world.This document is a seed, published under a copyleft open-source license as an invitation to all toadapt, expand, and evolve its contents, fueling an ongoing exploration of what it means to enact anopen civics. It serves as a “living blueprint,” designed to spawn new ideas, respond to emergingchallenges, and address societal needs through collective input and iterative development.We are here to collectively imagine and dream a different kind of future into being, and, if you’rereading these words, that journey has already begun within you. The whispers of that future live inthe words that follow.These words are dedicated to all those who have carried the vision of a world based in consent,trust, and mutual benefit – but did not live to see its ultimate arrival.Their dream now lives within us to carry forward.To connect the words within these pages with your own as nodes in a web of co-evolution, we suggestadopting the document naming convention : towards-an-open-civics_YYYYMMDDHHFind and fork this work from : opencivics.wiki and go.opencivics.co/githubIN US WE TRUST03“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any humanpower can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art,and very often in our art, the art of words.” — Ursula K. Le GuinIN US WE TRUST

OUR CRITICAL PATH“Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within thatinch, we are free… I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An inch, it issmall and it is fragile, but it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or giveit away. We must never let them take it from us.” — V For Vendetta

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. “ — R. Buckminster FullerHistory shows us that manifestos can give rise to monolithic, centralized movements, form in-groupand out-group dynamics, and lead to forms of social organizing that are far too easy to topple orcapture. Instead of a call simply to rise up and overthrow a system of power over others only toreplace it with a new one, this is a call to root down into the places we call home and rise uptogether into a new epoch of shared power and shared responsibility.This is also not a fully formed schematic of a perfect utopia. Utopias are neither real nor useful.We are protopian systems thinkers, more concerned with systems of care and a culture of profoundempathy that help us to incrementally move forward together as one pluralistic and polycentricsocial body and planetary superorganism. This process will continue far after we die and will takecountless shapes as our descendants determine for themselves what constitutes a more beautifulworld.We draw our inspiration from the Sunflower and g0v Movements in Taiwan, the Democratic Autonomymovement in Rojava, the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement in Sri Lanka, the compelling research andcommunity organizing of thinkers and activists like Buckminster Fuller, Vandana Shiva, Barbara MarxHubbard, Nora Bateson, Michel Bauwens, Forrest Landry, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Joanna Macy, AudreyTang, Glen Weyl, Nathan Schneider, Richard Flyer, as well as organizations like Radicle Civics,RadicalxChange, Design Science Studio, Moral Imaginations, The BioFi Project, and numerous others.In earnest, we are imagination activists and pragmatic futurists, unwilling to accept the statusquo of a sick planet and a sick humanity, driven to methodically adapt human civilization from theground up.PolycentricA system or structure that has multiple centers ofcontrol, authority, or importance. In a polycentricsystem, power and decision-making are distributed amongdistinct entities or locations, rather than beingcentralized in a single point. This concept can apply tovarious contexts, such as governance, urban development,and organizational management.ProtopiaA term coined by futurist Kevin Kelly to describe astate of society that is continuously improving, ratherthan aiming for a perfect utopia or falling into adystopia. Unlike utopia, which represents an ideal andoften unattainable perfect state, protopia focuses onincremental progress and ongoing positive change. Itacknowledges that while perfection is impossible, we canalways strive to make things better, even if only by asmall margin each day.PluralismA system in which multiple groups, principles, orsources of authority coexist and interact within asociety. It emphasizes the acceptance and coexistence ofdiverse cultural, religious, ethnic, and politicalgroups, allowing them to maintain their uniquetraditions and identities while contributing to thebroader community.Superorganism A group of synergistically interacting organisms of thesame species that function together as a single,cohesive entity. This concept is often applied to socialinsects like ants, bees, and termites, where the colonyoperates as a unified whole with specialized roles anddivision of labor. Individual members of thesuperorganism cannot survive for extended periods ontheir own, as their survival and functionality aredeeply interconnected with the group.THIS IS NOT A MANIFESTO05/ OUR CRITICAL PATHOUR CRITICAL PATH / THIS IS NOT A MANIFESTO

A civilization is a collectively and dynamically composed construct. Put simply, our society is theproduct of the often unconscious and implicit cultural and systemic agreements that we enter intoin order to participate. These agreements are shaped by our culture, formalized through ourinfrastructures, incentives and institutions and enacted through our interactions. Together, thesereinforce the specific patterns of production, consumption, and social reproduction we call‘society’ or ‘civilization.’”Infrastructures can be understood as underlying resource mechanisms like money, energy, supplychains or law that mediate or enable specific types of interactions. Incentives can be understoodas reward mechanisms for taking particular actions. Institutions can be understood as the socialmechanisms that govern the behavior of individuals within a community. Together, these foundationsdetermine what we can create and what we will be rewarded for creating (production), what we areable to consume (consumption), and what kinds of agency we have to modify and perpetuate thesesystems (reproduction). The flows of resources, information, and currency move along the riverbanks created by these institutions which, in our current epoch, perpetually reinforce well wornpatterns of rivalry, scarcity, and extraction.Human civilization is, in effect, a decentralized metabolic process, moving energy around theplanet while shifting its form. As a phenomenon, this is neutral. Ants create ant hills. Birdscreate nests. Foxes create burrows. Humans create civilizations. As fundamentally social,relational beings, hardwired by our evolutionary programming to form tribal groups, we arenaturally inclined to reproduce the social constructs of our civilization within the space definedby our infrastructures, incentives, and institutions.We collectively uphold and signal our alignment with these structures in order to belong to, andsurvive within, the human social organism into which we are born. As such, we are all responsiblefor participating in and maintaining the current epoch of human civilization which has produced aparticular series of self-reinforcing effects and outcomes that could be called ecocide,technocracy, late-stage capitalism, or the meta-crisis. As a catch-all descriptor for our manyconcurrent crises, the meta-crisis describes an interconnected set of crises whose common featureis their systemic and self-reinforcing nature.As Stafford Beer says, “the purpose of a system is what it does.” In our current times, it seems asthough the purpose of our civilization is to concentrate wealth and power while externalizing coststo the commons, resulting in ecological and social collapse as centralized power and externalizedcosts exponentially accelerate. Despite the narratives of “progress” and “democracy,” a simpleanalysis of the outputs of our current civilization reveal that these narratives are, in fact,window dressing for a system that is failing to produce a healthy biosphere and a thriving qualityof Life for humans.These self-destructive phenomena are not so fatalistically bound to human nature as “capitalistrealism” would have us believe. They are merely emergent outcomes based on the underlying set ofagreements that form our infrastructures, incentives, and institutions, all of which combine tocreate the enabling structures of ecocidal and anti-social behaviors. These agreements, and thesystems they inform, can be modified and transformed. Our history is replete with examples of theseshifts occurring, most notably in the formation of the United States of America, a phase transitionof power from a monarchic empire into a relatively self-governed nation. The founders of the UnitedStates were neither mythic beings with superhuman powers nor evil supervillains. They were, infact, humans just like you or I, products of their time with the audacity to leverage the power ofthe word and collective action to invoke a democratic and isonomic social contract. 06WHAT IS A CIVILIZATION?/ OUR CRITICAL PATHOUR CRITICAL PATH / WHAT IS A CIVILIZATION?

To better understand how we might reform our social contract by fundamentally shifting theunderlying agreements of our current epoch, it is critical to describe the often invisiblestructures that compose our current global order and that have failed to produce wellbeing forpeople and the planet.For the last 250 years, the state and the corporation have been the foundations of our species’first-ever globalized civilization. Implicit in both of these structures are the fundamentalagreements of a rivalrous, zero-sum worldview in which hierarchical, bureaucratic institutions andextractive, capital-accumulating corporations govern the majority of human interactions andrelationships. While this set of agreements or worldview seem “natural” or inherent to many humanstoday, prior civilizational agreements have been mediated by religious institutions, royalaristocracies, militaries, mercantile marketplaces, and feudal lords.This abridged list of civilizational forms is offered merely to illustrate that civilizationalforms are not fixed despite such an appearance to those who live within them. The Roman Empirelikely seemed eternal to many Romans even as invaders were at the gate. The underlying agreementsof our civilization are “like water” in that we are so subsumed by them that we take them forgranted as intrinsic, barely even noticeable. But the cracks in the edifice of our currentcivilization are showing, reminding us that these are no more than collective agreements that canbe changed. Shifting these agreements is an inter-generational phase transition, a challenging butnecessary process that requires an ontological shift and deep cultural transformation.Systems ThinkingAn approach to understanding and solving complexproblems by viewing them as part of an overall system,rather than in isolation. It involves recognizing theinterconnections and relationships between differentcomponents of a system and understanding how changes inone part can affect the whole. This method emphasizeslooking at patterns and dynamics over time, rather thanstatic snapshots.Exponential Feedback LoopsSelf-reinforcing cycles within a system where the outputof the system amplifies its own input, leading to rapidand often exponential growth or decline. In these loops,a small change in the initial state can result insignificant and accelerating effects over time. Thistype of feedback is common in various natural andtechnological systems, such as population growth,financial markets, and viral spread, where the rate ofchange increases proportionally to the current state ofthe system.EmergentPhenomena that arise from complex interactions andcannot be easily predicted or understood by simplyanalyzing their individual components. In variouscontexts, emergent properties or behaviors are thosethat manifest as a result of the collective dynamics ofa system, rather than from any single part of it.Meta-CrisisThe interconnected and overlapping global crises thatcollectively threaten the stability and sustainabilityof our world. It encompasses a wide range of issues,including ecological collapse, economic instability,social inequality, and political dysfunction. At itscore, the meta-crisis highlights our systemic inabilityto address these challenges effectively due tounderlying flaws in our perception, understanding, andgovernance structures. This concept urges us torecognize the interconnected nature of these crises andto seek holistic, integrative solutions that address theroot causes rather than just the symptoms.CapitalismAn economic system characterized by private ownership ofthe means of production, market-based allocation ofresources, and the pursuit of profit. In the context ofthe meta-crisis and exponential feedback loops,capitalism can be seen as both a driver and a product ofthese interconnected global challenges.NaturalThe term “natural” as a culturally constructed conceptrefers to the idea that what is considered “natural” isshaped by cultural beliefs, practices, and norms.Natural law is a philosophical theory that posits theexistence of a set of moral principles inherent in humannature and the natural world, which are discoverablethrough observation.07OUR CRITICAL PATH / WHAT IS A CIVILIZATION?

An ontological shift can be seen as a transition from one way of understanding what exists or whatit means to exist, to another, potentially radically different way of seeing and being. Changingone’s ontology involves moving from one conceptual framework about reality to another, which canhave profound implications for how we understand and interact with the world around us. Theexistential crises we face today offer us an initiatory challenge and opportunity to transmutecollapse into rebirth, an opening to reflect on and evaluate the ontological basis of our currentcivilization. And through this free fall between epochs of history, we are liberated to heal thewounds of humanity’s past and re-integrate ancient and nearly-forgotten ways of knowing ourselvesand the world; a profound socio-cultural transformation from a worldview of fragmentation andseparation to a worldview of interbeing and mutual interdependence; from a worldview of dominanceand competition to a worldview of harmony and co-creation.This ontological shift is already underway all around the world, despite the appearance ofstagnancy driven by the media and legacy institutions. Legacy institutions will hold onto theirontological assumptions far longer than the general public as the result of the massive edificesand sunk costs embroiled in the foundations of our current epoch, motivated by intrinsic incentivesto maintain a status quo that disproportionately benefits those who have already enclosed and areextracting from the commons we share. But if you look beneath the surface into emerging subculturesaround the world, a new ontology is already emerging and traditional indigenous ways of being andknowing are being revitalized. Those who undertake this courageous cultural transformation havealready begun to discover new ways of being that integrate different cultures and value systems tomeet the converging challenges of our present context.Joanna Macy describes this transition as “The Great Turning,” a civilizational phase transitionfrom an industrial growth society into a life-affirming society. Amidst this transition, Macy notesthe three dimensions of The Great Turning as holding actions that slow the damage, analysis ofstructural causes and the creation of structural alternatives, and shifts in consciousness. Whilethis thesis focuses more explicitly on an analysis of structural causes and the creation ofalternatives, shifts in consciousness are often where deeply transformative changes first begin.At the core of this ontological shift is a new story of what it means to be human on the planet wecall home. While our most recent epoch of human civilization was formalized upon the underlyingagreement that we are rational actors engaged in a zero-sum competition for scarce resources anddominance, contemporary biological, sociological, psychological, metaphysical, and complexitysciences tell a different story. These new and ancient understandings reveal that our relationshipsare what make our lives possible, rich and meaningful – and that the health of these relationshipsdetermines the health of the whole. An equally material and metaphysical insight, akin to theBuddhist notion of interbeing or the Zulu philosophy of Ubuntu, our collective futures areinescapably bound together.Within this emerging ontology, humans reimagine themselves as intrinsically part of and responsiblefor the vitality of our planet, our communities, and our commons. We are transformed from passivecitizen-subjects and consumers into active citizen-participants and stewards. Our sense of personalwell-being, once limited to the lens of the isolated and fragmented individual, nuclear family,nation or ethnicity, is being challenged by our current existential civilizational crises to evolveinto a more holistic perspective.08THE ONTOLOGICAL SHIFT/ OUR CRITICAL PATHOUR CRITICAL PATH / THE ONTOLOGICAL SHIFT

“In a real sense all life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a singlegarment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until youare what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...This is theinter-related structure of reality.” ― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham JailCivilization-scale decay, made visible through the crises of homelessness, addiction, mental healthepidemics, wealth inequality, ecocide, and the proliferation of potentially dangerous exponentialtechnologies like AI and gene editing, reveal that there is no refuge, no place in our globalizedcivilization that is insulated from the risks and impacts of existential civilizational collapseand deteriorating quality of life. While our fates have always been bound together, these runawayexistential risks make our mutual interdependence visceral, obvious, and un-ignorable.This realization is the basis for a kind of sacred civics as a transcultural, transreligious, andtranspolitical understanding of our mutual belonging and mutual responsibility. This emerging civicvirtue exists at the immanent substrate of our material reality, not needing to leverage anymetaphysical claims to bind our culture and systems to an ethical foundation of care, reciprocity,and mutuality. Scientifically and spiritually, our individual survival and thriving areincreasingly bound together by either the game theoretic lose-lose or all-win reality of the meta-crisis’ runaway feedback loops. While many of our current systems reinforce an ontological frame ofanti-social and ecocidal competition, our capacity for self-destruction, accelerated by theemergence of exponential technologies, requires a transformation in our fundamental relationshipsbetween self and other to reflect our new understanding of the interdependent nature of reality. Byfacing the reality that “rivalrous dynamics, multiplied by exponential technology, are inherentlyself-terminating,” we confront the existential mandate for humanity to evolve into a non-rivalrous,mutually responsible planetary species.Drawing inspiration from the Buen Vivir movements in Bolivia and Ecuador as well as the GrossNational Happiness Commission in Bhutan, we can see systemic implementations of this ontologicalshift towards inter-being and commons stewardship. Particularly in the Buen Vivir model,institutionalized in the Bolivian and Ecuadoran constitutions, well-being is described through anindigenous understanding of the mutually reinforcing relationships and scales of well-being,integrating individual, familial, communal, and ecological health. While these constitutional andgovernmental applications of an ontological shift have been difficult to reinforce due to thelingering effects of extractive multinational corporations, they offer a vision of an alternativeapproach to systems of governance and economy based on a new way of being.Ontological shifts begin within an individual’s beliefs, coalescing into social agreements andnorms. Thus, no one can choose to make an ontological shift on our behalf. A new world only emergeswhen we choose a different way of being, courageously stepping outside of the confines of theunhealthy societal agreements that define many aspects of our current paradigm. Beginning in smallpockets or “islands of coherence” which evolve into “systems of influence” through network effects,this emergent worldview will gradually develop its own culture, institutions, incentives, andinfrastructures that “make the old system obsolete.” As such, embedding this ontological shift intoexplicit new social agreements, formalized through the design of new open civic systems alignedwith the life-centric principles of pluralism and mutually interdependent collective agency,becomes an existential imperative for the continuity of human civilization and perhaps Life onEarth. This simultaneously cultural and systemic intervention is an essential strategic leveragepoint or “trim tab” to shift our planetary macro socio-economic order. In this context, civicinnovation can be viewed as the emergent creative impetus driving us to imagine and build thefoundations of what could be called a “life-affirming civilization.” 09OUR CRITICAL PATH / THE ONTOLOGICAL SHIFT

OntologyA branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature ofbeing, existence, and reality. It seeks to understandthe fundamental categories and relationships of entitieswithin the universe.Existential riskAny event or scenario that has the potential to causethe extinction of humanity or the irreversible collapseof human civilization. These risks are characterized bytheir severity and the scale of their impact, whichcould prevent humanity from achieving its long-termpotential. Examples of existential risks include nuclearwar, catastrophic climate change, pandemics, anduncontrolled artificial intelligence.InterbeingA philosophical concept rooted in Zen Buddhism, notablyproposed by Thich Nhat Hanh. It emphasizes theinterconnectedness and interdependence of all elementsof existence. According to this concept, nothing existsin isolation; everything is interwoven and mutuallydependent. This understanding informs ethical living,mindfulness, and compassionate actions, highlightingthat our well-being is intrinsically linked to the well-being of others and the environment.Zero-SumA situation in which any gain by one party is exactlybalanced by a loss to another party. This means that thetotal amount of resources, benefits, or wealth remainsconstant, and one person’s gain is another person’sloss. Zero-sum scenarios are often used in game theoryand economics to describe competitive situations wherethe interests of participants are directly opposed.Civic virtueThe personal qualities and behaviors that contribute tothe effective functioning of a civil and politicalsociety. It involves the dedication of citizens to thecommon welfare of their community, often prioritizingthe public good over individual interests.Islands of coherenceSmall, localized areas or systems within a larger,chaotic environment that exhibit a high degree of order,stability, and functionality. These “islands” caninfluence the broader system by serving as models ofcoherence and potentially catalyzing wider systemicchange. The concept is often used in discussions aboutsocial, ecological, and organizational systems tohighlight how pockets of stability and innovation candrive transformation in larger, more complex systems.Network effectsThe phenomenon where the value or utility of a product,service, or platform increases as more people use it.Essentially, the more users there are, the morebeneficial it becomes for each user. This can create apositive feedback loop, where increased usage attractseven more users, further enhancing the value.Trim tabBuckminster Fuller used the term trim tab metaphoricallyto illustrate how small, strategic actions can createsignificant change. Just as a trim tab on a ship oraircraft can adjust the course with minimal effort,individuals or small groups can act as trim tabs withinlarger systems to influence and steer them in newdirections.CommonsResources that are shared by a community and accessibleto all its members. These resources can be natural, suchas air, water, and land, or cultural, such as knowledgeand public spaces. The concept of commons emphasizescollective management and stewardship, often involvinginformal norms and practices that ensure sustainable useand equitable access.10OUR CRITICAL PATH / THE ONTOLOGICAL SHIFT

Despite a contemporary connotation with roads, bridges, and arduous town hall meetings, the originof civics relates to an act of service, the choice to care for the life of another for no reasonother than a profound devotion to the web of relationships that make our lives possible. Reclaimingthis original spirit in a contemporary context, civics is both the creation and stewardship ofcivilizational systems of care.In our contemporary context of centralized bureaucracies and corporations, little is currentlyexpected of citizens with regards to civic service, the stewardship of our commons and communities.Where centralized government agencies do provide a necessary function of scale, they are oftenineffective at resource allocation and are vulnerable to corruption and capture. The current roleof citizen has devolved into either that of a passive recipient of government services or a voterfor various levels of bureaucracy and executive authorities.Humanity is beginning to remember that, as participants in civil society, we are all citizens ofour world, and it is our mutual responsibility as citizens to serve as civic stewards. As civicstewards, it’s up to us to create the conditions of mutually assured thriving. The choice to be acivic steward is to take responsibility for our civilization with courage, creativity, anddevotion.And when our systems of civic stewardship are insufficient to empower the necessary adaptiveresponse to shifting circumstances or crises, some civic stewards rise into the role of civicinnovator. The choice to be a civic innovator is to take responsibility for the improvement ofcivic systems that empower others to be civic stewards.Civic innovation is the collaborative improvement of civic systems that are important for thepublic good. Civic innovation seeks to restore and renew the spirit of collective stewardship ofour commons and communities by providing novel mechanisms for civic stewardship. When our legacycivic institutions fail to provide such mechanisms for holistic well-being and collectivestewardship, it falls to us as innovators and as citizens to define and implement our ownsolutions.The scope and scale of civic innovation required to meet our present moment of existential risk andcivilizational collapse is unique in the course of human history. While all epoch-definingtransitions have been consequential and all-consuming, never before has a globalized humancivilization, equipped with existential exponential technologies, engaged in the degree of socio-economic reconfiguration required of us now. And yet, we can take heart in the knowledge that suchtransitions have occurred, however messily, throughout the history of our species. In each case,the imaginations of the civic innovators of those times were constrained and informed by thecivilizational failures that they experienced. In our particular case, we are directly facing aworld mired in the disastrous consequences of exponentially centralizing wealth and power. Indialogue with the systemic nature of these outcomes, we can envision a pluralistic society in whichour civic infrastructures localize and distribute flows of resources and decision-making authorityvia open, participatory, and composable mechanisms.This spirit of responsible civic stewardship as innovators calls for an open civics: a designphilosophy for distributed collaboration and civilizational stewardship that engages in theevolutionary adaptation of our core civilizational systems via the direct participation ofcitizens. This philosophical approach engages the public and all relevant stakeholders in aparticipatory design process that empowers civic organizers, innovators, and patrons to work11INNOVATING CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURE/ OUR CRITICAL PATHOUR CRITICAL PATH / INNOVATING CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURE

better, together. An “open civics'' implies an approach to civic innovation that is non-rivalrous,non-enclosable, self-determined, and composable by citizens. These civic innovations can be bestconceived as “open protocols,” patterns of human coordination that provide the same civilizationalservices and utilities as traditional institutions using a networked approach.The emerging Decentralized Civics (DeCiv) movement is modeling networked civilizational systemsbased on the pluralistic and participatory development of open-source software, stigmergic livingsystems patterns, open standards bodies, the symbiotic intelligence of an artistic or culturalscene, and commons self-governance principles. In an open civic system, institutions aresupplemented or altogether replaced by extitutions (external, open organizations), infrastructuresby open protocols (open-source, decentralized systems), and extractive incentives by prosocialincentives (rewards that encourage cascading benefits).A key historical example of extitutional self-organization is the Free Breakfast for SchoolChildren Program (or the People’s Free Food Program), a community service program run by the BlackPanther Party that provided free breakfasts for children before school. The program emerged indirect response to the inadequacies of the federal government's under-resourced public schoollunches. Run almost entirely by volunteer women from neighborhoods across the United States, thisself-organizing pattern was a key political strategy for the black nationalist movement as itrevealed the community’s collective power to meet their own needs without relying upon largeinstitutions. The FBI’s COINTELPRO attacked and defamed the breakfast program and then, in theearly 1970’s, Governor Ronald Reagan's administration created a statewide free breakfast programwith an underlying objective to seize the political power the Black Panther Party had gained.Modeling contemporary interventions off of the success of the Black Panther Party, we can enableand empower this same type of participatory stewardship from the bottom up through technologicaland social mechanisms that are inherently evolutionary, consensual, and adaptive to our currentcrises. This approach meets the existential failure modes of our current systems through thedevelopment of cosmo-local design patterns.Cosmo-localism refers to the dynamic interplay between global coordination and hyperlocalparticipation. The notion of cosmo-localism allows for self-determination at the most local scaleof an infrastructure or design pattern while enabling scaling, federation, and nesting into largersocial bodies or associations. This pluralistic and composable approach to infrastructures,incentives, and institutions is simultaneously a strategy for enhanced system anti-fragility aswell as an evolutionary feedback cycle that preempts the kinds of institutional decay and capturewe face today. By designing civic systems according to this design philosophy, we envision anexciting new phase of open civic innovation; a Cambrian explosion of experiments in self-governanceand self-determination that transforms the blighted landscapes of our social and ecological commonsinto a thriving substrate for mutual solidarity and well-being.When networked together in the spirit of mutual solidarity through processes of consensualalignment at global and local scales, these experiments enable the development of dual power inplace and network effects online, which can be leveraged to adapt or replace legacy institutions.Highly localized experiments in alternative civic systems which neglect the design imperatives ofglobal interoperability may face an existential threat, remaining insular and vulnerable tocooptation or out-right destruction by legacy institutions and incentive models if they lacknetworked support, legitimacy, and funding. If successful, this distributed movement of alternativecivic systems, modeled on the underlying ontology of interbeing, will form the foundations of aparallel society, a fork of our current civilization that will gradually draw energy, resources,and attention from our legacy systems. Investments in these parallel systems offer a pathway tocompost capital through close loop value chains, removing our need for continuous non-profitfunding by creating alternative economies that shift the incentive landscape from the grassroots tobioregional to planetary scales.Historical examples of similarly innovative civic experiments range from the Zapatista Movement inMexico to the Sunflower Revolution in Taiwan and the Democratic Autonomy Movement in Rojava. TheDemocratic Autonomy movement in Rojava arose in the context of institutional collapse during theSyrian Civil War, filling a power vacuum created by the conflict. Their anarcho-socialist parallelsociety prevails amidst these precarious conditions. While the Zapatistas have maintained their ownsocial contract for decades without being captured by the Mexican federal government, they havefailed to leverage their dual power to influence their legacy institutions to the same degree12OUR CRITICAL PATH / INNOVATING CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURE

that the Taiwanese Sunflower Movement achieved. The Taiwanese protest movement culminated in anegotiated deal that successfully asserted new forms of participatory civic innovation into theirexisting institutions through the vTaiwan and g0v programs and methodologies. These contrastingapproaches reveal the strategic necessity to assert influence and develop dual power for thesuccess of nonviolent social movements.DeCiv also draws inspiration from the decentralized science movement, or DeSci, which posits thatthe scientific method can be applied through egalitarian, decentralized means, effectively openingthe process of scientific discovery beyond the boundaries of large academic institutions.Similarly, decentralized civics is a field of applied research conducted by citizens,technologists, and community organizers to develop and deploy novel civic systems as open-source,participatory public protocols that provide for critical civilizational functions.We envision a future in which open civic innovation evolves into a widely recognized and well-compensated field of prosocial socio-technical design, in which all citizens are empowered tolisten to the needs of their communities and develop new civic systems that directly improve theircommunity’s quality of life.To formalize, engage, and ethically steward this emerging field of practice, we feel it isnecessary to form the OpenCivics Network, a community of practice and coordinating body for civicinnovators, community organizers, and patrons in the civic domain. Similar to the role the TokenEngineering Commons has played in the emerging field of token engineering by providing legitimizingand scientific grounding, we feel a responsibility to ensure an ethical and coordinated effortamongst civic innovators to create foundational utilities that empower civic stewardship and servecollective well-being.The applied field of civic innovation and civilization system design has many antecedents and drawsfrom many related disciplines, new and old. To catalyze a revitalization of the field and empower amore distributed approach to civilizational design while maintaining a shared ethical foundation,this thesis proposes three civilizational health indicators. These indicators offer lenses throughwhich we can evaluate and understand the outputs of any open civic system that we may contributetowards as innovators:Vitality is Life’s capacity to create more Life, the embodied state of thriving that emerges fromthe interconnected levels of well-being and quality of life for individuals, communities, andecologies.Resilience is the state of and the capacity for adaptive self-organization sufficient to providecore life-support function across changing world circumstances.Choice is the state of fundamental respect for the sovereign agency of all beings and the capacityof individual agents to express their agency and influence their circumstances.These principles have been derived and distilled from a combination of systems thinking and firstprinciples outlined by thinkers like Donella Meadows, Elinor Ostrom, and Daniel Schmachtenberger.In particular, Daniel Schmachtenberger’s insights on the systemic drivers of the crises we facehave provided a critical set of design criteria for new systems, new infrastructures, institutions,and incentives that are sufficient to effectively respond to and address what Daniel calls “themeta-crisis.”13StigmergyA mechanism of indirect coordination between agents oractions through the environment. The principle is thatthe trace left in the environment by an individualaction stimulates the performance of a succeeding actionby the same or different agent. This concept is oftenobserved in social insects like ants and termites, wherethe actions of one individual influence the behavior ofothers through the modifications they make to theirenvironment.Dual powerThe creation and coexistence of two competing politicalframeworks within the same space. This concept involvesthe establishment of alternative, autonomous structuresand institutions that operate outside of and inopposition to existing state and capitalist systems. Thegoal is to build a liberatory power that can eventuallyreplace the dominant power structures, fostering asociety based on self-organization, mutual aid, anddirect democracy.OUR CRITICAL PATH / INNOVATING CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURE

As renowned futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard said, “our crisis is a birth.” The systemic breakdowns weface necessitate the emergence of entirely new systems and ways of being, reconstituting, renewingand reimagining ancient cultural foundations at a planetary scale for the first time. Never beforein our history has our existential self-destructive capacity forced us to understand at theplanetary scale how to explicitly align the underlying agreements and mechanisms of humancivilization with living systems principles. We have had the freedom, throughout our adolescenthistory as a species, to explore many different expressions of how civilization could be organized.Now, our exponential technologies, driven by rivalrous dynamics to the brink of total speciesannihilation, are offering us a choice. We can either learn how to design and bind the underlyingagreements of our cultures and systems in alignment with living systems principles and the holisticstewardship of the well-being of our planet, shifting the fundamental context of our modes ofproduction, consumption, and reproduction, or we will destroy ourselves. While this propositionseems daunting, this alignment is materially the only viable path through the eye of the needleavailable to us as a species due to the runaway feedback loops of exponential technologies.Looking at the world around us, it isn’t difficult to see that we live in a world in crisis.Ecocide, biodiversity collapse, climatic shifts, extreme weather, mass climate migrations andrefugees, catastrophic topsoil degradation and food system collapse, homelessness, mental healthepidemics, ideological fragmentation and escalating polarization, chronic illness, wealthinequality and economic centralization, national and personal debt crises, inflation, the potentialof peak oil, the rising costs of energy, resource extraction, genetically engineered bioweapons,the truth and meaning crisis, and severe social transformations and risk as Artificial Intelligenceprogresses are among the many runaway crises we face as a species. These converging crises are anexistential threat to human civilization. At this stage in the exponential curve of multiplerunaway crises, a collective fundamental phase-shift is extremely urgent. Interoperable transitionmethods and a shared sense of global human solidarity are critical to our species’ longevity andsurvival.Underlying these seemingly distinct expressions of civilizational decay and collapse are a sharedset of systemic dynamics reinforcing the exponential feedback loops that drive these anti-socialand ecocidal patterns. As a whole, these patterns can be referred to as wicked problems, thepolycrisis, or the meta-crisis. The self-referential quality implied by the term meta-crisis refersto the particular self-reinforcing quality of systemic feedback loops whose path-reinforcingdynamics make self-correction more and more difficult as time passes.Whole System DesignAn approach that considers all components of a systemand their interrelationships to optimize overallperformance and sustainability. It involvesunderstanding how different elements within a systeminteract and influence one another, aiming to createsynergies and leverage points for improvement. Thismethod is often used in fields like architecture,engineering, and environmental planning to ensure thatall parts of a system work together harmoniously.Tragedy of the CommonsAn economic theory that describes a situation whereindividuals, acting in their own self-interest, overuseand deplete a shared resource, leading to its eventualdestruction. This occurs because each person benefitsdirectly from using the resource, while the costs ofoveruse are distributed among all users. The concept waspopularized by ecologist Garrett Hardin in his 1968essay, where he illustrated it with the example ofcommunal grazing lands.OUR CONTEXT IS CRISIS, OUR CRISIS IS A BIRTH14/ OUR CRITICAL PATHOUR CRITICAL PATH / OUR CONTEXT IS CRISIS, OUR CRISIS IS A BIRTH

For example, in democracies around the world, the complex feedback loop of “regulatory capture”produces dynamics that undermine the public’s ability to utilize the mechanisms outlined inconstitutional frameworks for representative self-governance. Many elected officials, even well-intentioned ones, are elected into office to make change, but by the time they have the power tomake that change, they are often already so influenced or inhibited by the incentives of corporatecampaign finance and duopoly institutional entrenchment that they cannot effectively represent thewill of the people who elected them. These elected officials may make some nominal or superficialgestures toward transformational change, but ultimately they are beholden to the already-capturedinstitutions that provision them with access to power.From the race to Artificial General Intelligence to the attention economy to military spending,multi-polar traps are system dynamics in which mistrust and rivalry force competing corporationsand governments to continuously accelerate their tactics without regard for the consequences forand negative externalities to society. The behavioral dimension of a multi-polar trap is driven bythe belief that “if I didn’t do it, someone else would.” This self-fulfilling logic, driven by aneconomic system that rewards the behaviors regardless of their existential risks they generate,creates a “race to the bottom” which risks the continuity of Life on Earth in favor of short termprofits. In the contexts of socio-economic, technological, and military industrial systems, the systemdynamics of multi-polar traps, the tragedy of the commons, and recursive accumulation of wealth andpower form a nearly impenetrable mess of misaligned incentives and runaway feedback cycles. In anideal world, democracies would provide a countervailing influence on unrestrained, centralizedcorporate power, but the same forces that drive extractive and anti-social behaviors in thecorporate sector have overtaken our democracies.Seen in this context, the meta-crisis is a coordination and adaptation failure, a civic crisisstemming from the long term effects of separation, rivalry, and the consolidation of wealth andpower on the public’s ability to govern itself effectively. If markets, governments, andmultinational corporations are systemically incapable of coordinating a response to theinterconnected crises we face, it becomes self-evident that reformist efforts are ultimatelyinsufficient to address our crises at the root. In actuality, despite the techno-optimism thatoccurs in elite conferences around the world, corporate-driven reformism not only distracts fromthe underlying system dynamics but also prolongs the perceived legitimacy of legacy institutions.While holding actions can slow the progression or reduce the harm caused by these systems, thesystemic and self-reinforcing nature of these runaway processes implies that much deepertransformational actions are required to preserve the continuity of human civilization and perhapseven Life on Earth.15In short, the meta-crisis represents a nested set offeedback loops that not only drive exponential accelerationof existential risks but increasingly undermine ourcollective capacity to address those risks within theinternal processes of our captured systems. In both ourdemocracies and economies, these systemic drivers of runawaycrises have consumed and undermined the capacity ofelections and markets to mitigate them. Thus, we as a publichave no choice but to formalize our own civic systems thataddress the failure modes of our current systems. To design whole systems alternatives that avoid reproducing these failure modes, it becomesnecessary to review the game theoretic probable outcomes driven by these current systemic dynamics.Only with a sufficient understanding of the impending collapse scenarios that loom on the horizoncan we successfully generate anti-fragile coordination mechanisms that are sufficient to meet thecrises we face. Schmachtenberger refers to the three probable outcomes from current runawayfeedback loops as “the three attractors.” The phrase “attractor” is a reference to chaosmathematics, a field of study regarding complex systems in which the number of and interactionsbetween variables make linear models and predictions impossible. Attractors, or basins ofattraction, refer to the bounds of a system which can be known even when the specific outcomes...OUR CRITICAL PATH / OUR CONTEXT IS CRISIS, OUR CRISIS IS A BIRTH

within those bounds are unknowable. While we can’t predict the exact outcomes of the nested andcomplex systems that are driving the meta-crisis, we can make a reasonably informed prediction ofthe future systemic equilibria that may emerge as these feedback loops reach the exponential curvesthat we are now approaching or, in some cases, have already entered. The three probable attractorsthat Schmachtenberger predicts based on his game-theoretic study of current dynamics are chaos,authoritarianism, and distributed coordination. The chaos attractor is defined by the collapse of institutions and centralized authorities underthe weight of a plurality of distributed crises that fracture those institutions’ ability tomaintain legitimacy and control. In the absence of a new, mutually accepted social order, systemsdevolve into tribalism and neo-feudalism with different clusters of actors vying for power,legitimacy, and control, likely at the regional scale. This attractor implies a high likelihood ofnot only civilizational collapse but potentially human extinction.The authoritarian attractor is defined by a techno-fascist crack down on individual agency in orderto retain a sense of social order in the face of accelerating breakdowns and crises. We see earlystages of this attractor emerging with online censorship and the rise of both globalized corporateauthoritarianism as well as hyper-nationalist elected leaders who have leveraged xenophobia and astrongman ethos to gain power and influence. While both of those expressions of authoritarianismposition themselves as antagonists to one another, they are mirror expressions of the sameauthoritarian attractor. Elites around the globe likely prefer this attractor as it allows them toretain power and wealth as collapse scenarios accelerate.Lastly, the distributed coordination attractor is defined by emergent, agent-centric self-organization that is able to provide localized resilience to rapidly changing circumstances throughdecentralized mechanisms. Schmachtenberger calls this system equilibrium “the third attractor,” areference to the narrow path of systemic adaptation that simultaneously addresses the failure modesof our current systems while increasing the probability of avoiding the other two attractors. Thisattractor would result in a vast redistribution of wealth and agency, making it unappealing toelites but demonstrably more equitable, regenerative, and life-affirming than the other twopossible attractors.In this context, it becomes an ethical and strategic necessity to orient humanity’s collectiveagency towards defining, designing, and deploying civic systems that create the enabling conditionsfor the third attractor.Such systems would require three design principles to guide the development of modular, composable,and interoperable civic systems that optimize for the third attractor and avoid unintentionallyreproducing the self-destructive qualities of our current civilization. Our critical path towards alife-affirming civilization is defined by self-correcting feedback loops, aligned incentives, andcivic culture.Self-correcting feedback loops refers to truly participatory democracy paired with a sufficientlyeducated public able to interpret the holistic impact of our collective agency. Distributed,powerful, collective agency is required to ensure that any unhealthy feedback loops that may emergeat any point in our collective future can be addressed and mitigated holistically. This can beachieved through direct democracy mechanisms, citizen assemblies, strong public education,traditional ecological knowledge and open socio-ecological data.Aligned incentives refers to an incentive landscape in which individual self-interest is alignedwith the collective interest of humanity and all Life on Earth. Pro-social incentives reward formsof value that create cascading benefits for humanity and the planet. Unlike our current incentivelandscape which rewards extraction and enclosure of value, prosocial incentives rewardcontributions to the commons and markets that produce holistic well-being and mutual thriving. Thiscan be achieved through an economic structure organized by a diverse array of different strategieslike democratically governed worker-owned cooperatives, nature-backed currencies, and evaluativemetrics like Gross National Happiness.Civic culture refers to the revival of a commonly practiced culture of mutual stewardship andresponsibility. Renewing our sense of mutuality and solidarity is a critical precursor to any ofthe downstream behavioral and socio-economic shifts described above. Deconstructing the16OUR CRITICAL PATH / OUR CONTEXT IS CRISIS, OUR CRISIS IS A BIRTH

Regulatory captureWhen a regulatory agency, established to act in thepublic interest, instead advances the commercial orspecial interests of the industry it is charged withregulating. This phenomenon happens when the regulatedentities exert significant influence over the agency,leading it to prioritize their interests over those ofthe general public. As a result, the regulatory body mayact in ways that benefit the industry rather thanensuring fair and effective regulation.Multi-polar trapsSituations where multiple actors, each pursuing theirown self-interest, collectively contribute to a harmfuloutcome that none of them individually desire. Thisconcept, rooted in game theory, illustrates howindividual rational actions can lead to collectivelyirrational results. For example, in a competitivemarket, businesses might engage in practices that aredetrimental to the environment or society to stay ahead,resulting in overall negative consequences.Self-organizationA process where a system spontaneously forms anorganized structure or pattern without external control.This phenomenon occurs through local interactions amongthe system’s components, often driven by feedbackmechanisms. Self-organization is observed in variousfields, including physics, chemistry, biology, andsocial sciences. Examples include the formation ofsnowflakes, flocking behavior in birds, and theemergence of market dynamics.Systemic failure modesThe ways in which a system can fail due to inherentflaws or vulnerabilities within its structure,processes, or interactions. These failures are notisolated to individual components but arise from thecomplex interdependencies and interactions within theentire system. Identifying systemic failure modesinvolves analyzing how different parts of the system cancollectively lead to failures, often requiring aholistic approach to understand and mitigate theserisks.Game theoryA branch of mathematics that studies strategicinteractions where the outcomes depend on the actions ofall participants. It provides tools for analyzingsituations in which players make decisions that areinterdependent, meaning each player’s strategy dependson the strategies of others. This field is widely usedin economics, political science, psychology, andcomputer science to model and predict competitivebehaviors and outcomes.Decentralized vs distributedDecentralized systems distribute control and decision-making among multiple independent nodes without acentral authority, exemplified by blockchain technology.In contrast, distributed systems spread tasks and dataacross multiple nodes that work together, often with acentral coordinating authority, as seen in contentdelivery networks (CDNs). While both involve multiplenodes, the key difference lies in the presence orabsence of central control.weaponized culture war dynamics that are currently being leveraged to reduce collective agency bypitting identity groups against one another can be effectively achieved through the lens ofbioregionalism. Bioregionalism represents a philosophy of mutual belonging to the places,watersheds, and biosphere we call home as a fundamental basis for solidarity. Civic utilities likeinformal solidarity networks, connected locally and globally, that share resources and providegrassroots coordination infrastructure for mutual benefit are among the tools that directly supportthis civic cultural renaissance.Put together, these underlying systems design principles reflect what could also be called a “life-affirming civilization.”Thus, this thesis attempts to offer a sketch of this design philosophy for distributedcoordination, the basis of an open civics. This paper proposes an underlying participatory designmethodology for self-organizing processes and resilient, place-based and cosmo-localinfrastructures that provide the enabling conditions for a fundamentally post-capitalist and evenpost-nation-state human civilization. By providing an initial methodology that provides a processontology for the fundamental elements, functions, and processes of distributed coordination, thisthesis outlines both the core mechanisms of the OpenCivics Network as a set of emergentcapabilities, as well as the Open Civic Innovation Framework as a coherent, overarching meta-framework for a participatory process of civilizational adaptation. By linking the many commons andpeer-to-peer efforts to revitalize the civic design space, this framework provides a foundation fora fully distributed process, governed by those who engage in it.This model is not intended to be complete or final in any sense, rather it offers a schellingpoint, a point of convergence and a starting point from which we might collectively, to coordinatethe process of systemic adaptation and co-evolution.17OUR CRITICAL PATH / OUR CONTEXT IS CRISIS, OUR CRISIS IS A BIRTH

18Agent-centricA perspective or approach that emphasizes the role,experiences, and motivations of individual agents withina system. In the context of systems design, this canmean designing systems that orient around the behaviorsand interactions of individual agents within a largersystem, while providing mechanisms understanding howtheir actions influence and are influenced by the systemas a whole.Living systems principlesThe fundamental characteristics and behaviors of livingorganisms, viewed as complex, open systems. Thesesystems are self-organizing and interact continuouslywith their environment, maintaining themselves throughthe flow of information, energy, and matter. Keyprinciples include order, sensitivity or response to theenvironment, reproduction, adaptation, growth anddevelopment, homeostasis, energy processing, andevolution. These principles help to define what makessomething “alive” and illustrate how living systemssustain and evolve over time.RegenerativeThe ability or tendency to regrow, renew, or restore,especially after being damaged or lost. This term isoften used in various contexts such as biology,medicine, and environmental science. For example,regenerative medicine focuses on repairing or replacingdamaged tissues and organs, while regenerativeagriculture aims to restore soil health and ecosystembalance.AttractorsIn chaos theory, attractors are sets of numerical valuestoward which a system tends to evolve, regardless of thestarting conditions of the system. These attractorsrepresent the long-term behavior of a dynamical system.OUR CRITICAL PATH / OUR CONTEXT IS CRISIS, OUR CRISIS IS A BIRTH

This proposed vision of possibility is inherently audacious. It invokes a radical reimagining of ahuman society rooted in love, care, and mutual responsibility. Such an audacious act of imaginationis required to shift the overton window of perceived possibility. One of the greatest tools ofmanipulation used by systems of power is the belief that our current socio-economic order is areflection of reality itself. A close examination of the natural world reveals that it is, in fact,cooperation and synergy that defines the success or failure of a species in the evolutionaryprocess. This is also true of the evolution of human civilization.This thesis emerged from direct experiences of awakening to a sense of the suffering of our world,a gradual and ongoing process of removing the veils of indoctrination to perceive the massive scaleof violence, inequality, and injustice upon which our current society is based. Entering the troughof disillusionment as understanding of the depth of the crisis increases, it can be easy to chooseeither the path of dissociation and numbing or total annihilating grief. Both choices are entirelyreasonable given the scale and profound tragedy of loss of human life and the mass extinction ofother species, but a third response, holding the grief and possibility simultaneously, is alsoavailable. The post-tragic aesthetic and sensibility emerges through the embrace of our grief andempathy as fuel for our creative action. We are motivated to reimagine our world not in spite ofour current tragedies but because of them. Similarly, solar punk and lunar punk as aesthetic andcultural movements have emerged as similar expressions of the dynamic balance between radicaloptimism and sobering realism in the face of extreme crises.The radical reimagining of our human society emerges as an act of rebellion against the prevailinglack of socio-political imaginary that insists that capitalism is the only viable political andeconomic “forever” system. But unlike utopian claims that are usually driven by a singleindividual’s imagined design of alternative socio-economic frameworks, the radical reimaginingproposed by this thesis instead offers a set of mechanisms and processes by which we maycollectively dream and enact a new world into being.Protopia, a term coined by futurist Kevin Kelly in 2009, refers to a society based on incrementaland mutually determined progress. By taking incremental steps forward together, grounded in ourdirect experience of reality and the collectively determined needs of our immediate communities, weare carving out alternative, imaginal spaces in which we can collectively dream and create adifferent kind of society together. Instead of proposing a utopian vision of how human societyshould organize itself, this thesis offers the OpenCivics Innovation Framework as a methodology forthe distributed and collective process of civilization-scale transformation.This transition will likely take place across a multi-generational time span before we arrive at anew, stable, system equilibrium, and it is a near certainty that the process will be disruptive andtenuous at points, but our audacity to dream of a more beautiful world as our current civilizationdegrades around us is the first step in that multi-generational process.Our hearts have been broken thousands of times as we have felt and been transformed by thesuffering of our world. The impulse to care and respond to this suffering is a natural response asempathic and social beings, a response that has been denatured by our social conditioning,wounding, and reliance on bureaucratic institutions to care for the collective on our behalf.Liberating this natural impulse to care for humanity and our world is the great work of thesechallenging times. Our choice to open our hearts after being let down again and again by ourleaders and systems is a courageous one, but a more beautiful world can only emerge when we rise uptogether as a human species, facing the suffering of our world with compassion and wise actionA POST TRAGIC PROTOPIAN AUDACITY19/ OUR CRITICAL PATHOUR CRITICAL PATH / A POST-TRAGIC PROTOPIAN AUDACITY

Overton windowThe range of policies and ideas that are consideredpolitically acceptable to the mainstream population atany given time. Named after Joseph Overton, a policyanalyst, this concept illustrates how public opinionshapes what politicians can propose and support withoutappearing too extreme. The window can shift over time associetal norms and values change, allowing previouslyradical ideas to become mainstream and vice versa.Essentially, it defines the boundaries of acceptablediscourse in the political landscape.Imagination activismAccording to Moral Imaginations, imagination activisminvolves expanding and exercising one’s imagination tobroaden ways of thinking and envisioning what ispossible and achievable. An imagination activist notonly enhances their own imaginative capacities but alsoequips themselves with tools, questions, and exercisesto help others expand their imaginations. This approachaims to shift perceptions and translate new ways ofthinking into actionable changes.Post-capitalistA hypothetical or emerging state of society and economythat exists after the decline or end of capitalism. In apost-capitalist society, traditional capitaliststructures, such as the reliance on private ownership ofthe means of production and the pursuit of profit, arereplaced by alternative systems.System equilibriumIn the context of social, economic, and politicalsystems refers to a state where all forces andinfluences within the system are balanced, resulting instability and no net change over time.SynergyThe interaction or cooperation of two or moreorganizations, substances, or other agents to produce acombined effect greater than the sum of their separateeffects. This concept is often used in business,science, and other fields to describe how collaborativeefforts can lead to enhanced outcomes that wouldn’t bepossible individually.Post-tragicThe term post-tragic refers to a state or condition thatemerges after experiencing a tragic event. Unlike theconcept of post-traumatic, which often focuses on thelingering negative effects and trauma, post-tragicemphasizes a transformative process. It involves movingbeyond the initial suffering and finding meaning,growth, or a new perspective as a result of the tragedy.This concept is often used in literature, psychology,and philosophy to describe how individuals or societiescan evolve and find resilience after profound loss orhardship.we have the tools, methods, and frameworks ready at hand. From that place, an open civics is a callto awaken the spirit of care and compassion in the public and encode the spirit of non-rivalrouscoordination among civic innovators, such that humanity can rise up together to collectivelyreimagine our world.20OUR CRITICAL PATH / A POST-TRAGIC PROTOPIAN AUDACITY

OPEN CIVIC CULTURE“If man chooses oblivion, he can go right on leaving his fate to his political leaders. If he choosesUtopia, he must initiate an enormous education program - immediately, if not sooner.”— R. Buckminster Fuller

Properly understood, the systemic drivers of the meta-crisis make it clear that incremental andinstitutional solutions are ultimately insufficient in the face of the entrenched, systemic criseswe face. The combination of the sluggish rate of adaptation and centralized approaches to changemanagement within institutions calls for a more foundational and participatory strategy.Understood as an adaptation and coordination failure, the meta-crisis only truly resolves throughwhat Daniel Schmachtenberger has referred to as a “civic renaissance.” Implicit in the termrenaissance is the notion of rebirth and revitalization, a return to something that has been lostor degraded. In this sense, a civic renaissance is a return to a shared sense of mutualresponsibility and care, rooted in an understanding that there is no “away” and it is within one’srational self interest to care for the wellbeing of our commons, communities, and planet.Civic virtue is the personal expression of a broader cultural renaissance, referring to theennobling choice to rise into stewardship and direct responsibility for the maintenance andembodiment of systems of care.This type of civic culture is a precursor to the types of distributed coordination required toaddress the root drivers of the meta-crisis in our local communities and global commons. At thecore, this shift revolves around ending our a reliance on centralized institutions to provisioncore civilizational utilities by restoring our fundamental rights as planetary citizens to self-determine and autopoetically enact our own civilizational systems through self-organizingcollective action.Unlike crises humanity has faced in the past, the complex, existential and all-encompassing natureof climatic shifts, supply chain breakdowns, and food system fragility require distributed, cosmo-local resilience and direct action.For humanity to truly become a non-rivalrous, mutually responsible species, we must first developthe cultural capacities to effectively navigate prisoner's dilemma scenarios by choosing tocoordinate and cooperate, avoiding lose-lose scenarios by seeing ourselves as mutuallyinterdependent.Instead of prescribing top down solutions that attempt to correct for the failures of our currentsystems, a distributed renaissance of civic culture would transform the substrate or soil of ourcommunities, empowering ourselves to coordinate the production of networked and pluralistic civicutilities, from the bottom up.This foundational cultural transformation may be more difficult than a top down technocraticresponse, but ultimately it is the basis of the kind of distributed coordination thatSchmachtenberger describes as essential to the proliferation of the third attractor. While it mayring hollow to some who might view it as naive or idealistic to presume that such non-rivalrouscultures are possible, such a belief demonstrates reflects an inherent bias towards human nature. The scientific foundations of the ProSocial model, which builds off of Nobel Prize winner ElinorOstrom's study of commons governance patterns by integrating work in the fields behavioralpsychology, evolutionary biology, and interfaith studies, demonstrate that "Modern evolutionaryscience tells us that behaviors and cultural traits evolve based on their consequences within agiven context… The science of ProSocial is focused on understanding and fostering social contextsin which individual and group interests are aligned, such that cooperative behaviors are reinforcedmore than selfish behaviors.” This science is well documented and the ProSocial methodology is aprimary cultural toolkit for our civic renaissance.WHY CIVIC CULTURE22/ OPEN CIVIC CULTUREOPEN CIVIC CULTURE / WHY CIVIC CULTURE

While our commons and ecologies have been ravaged by extractive industries, so too has our socialfabric. Accelerated by the attention economy and the influence of social media algorithms, humanityhas been pitted against itself at a time when global solidarity is more needed than ever.Regenerating the social fabric requires a fundamental shift in power dynamics, moving fromrivalrous institutions and incentives, towards a pluralistic, polycentric, and prosocial approachto large-scale coordination.Essential to this process is the concept of imagination activism, coined by the European researchand practice centre Moral Imaginations, which brings community members together to empower peopleto create shared imaginings of the futureThis bottom up approach to consensus building and direct collective action brings us out of ourfilter bubbles into immanent and embodied relationships with the humans and non-humans with whom weshare our physical home.Reliably, when we return to the common ground of shared being and belonging, our attention isdirected towards creating safe places for our children and future generations, valuing intactecologies that support essential ecosystem services, and recognizing the human need for connection,dignity, and purpose.A key example of this material solidarity is the phenomenon of water stewardship. Across all of ourideological silos and bubbles, our material survival is inextricably rooted in our access to andthe quality of our water. Weaving together farmers, residents, hunters, ecologists, indigenousfirst nations and others, we are compelled by our mutual reliance on clean water to protect andsteward water as a sacred civic resource. These areas of mutual alignment are often overlookedwithin rivalrous social, economic, and political systems because they do not generate the requisiteoutrage and division upon which those systems thrive.Therefore, regenerating our ecologies, communities, and commons becomes part of the sameregenerative return towards the renewal and revitalization of local stewardship and direct civicresponsibility for the systems that shape our well-being.REGENERATING WHAT’S BEEN LOST23/ OPEN CIVIC CULTUREOPEN CIVIC CULTURE / REGENERATING WHAT’S BEEN LOST

This expression of civic culture and cosmo-local orientation to stewardship defies the internallogic of the divide and conquer strategies deployed by our rivalrous political factions, invoking anew kind of transpolitical solidarity that is more concerned with quality of life and pluralistic,bottom-up positive sum collaboration.By embracing a philosophy of pluralism and agent-centricity, we transcend and integrate the best ofmany different political philosophies as we coordinate at the local level to improve quality oflife.Divisive political ideologies become less relevant in this context as we are focused on thematerial conditions of our lives and are less concerned with the regulatory state and its top downrestrictions or incentives.Instead of competing to control the state’s violent apparatus, communities can engage in a processof discovery that foregrounds shared alignment and emphasizes creativity and experimentation.Such a process is measured by the intersubjective metrics of quality of life, determined based onthe needs and perspectives of each individual and thus dependent upon a diversity of strategies toimprove quality of life from the ground up.This type of transpolitical ethos is rooted in the practice of commoning, a form of politicalconsciousness that harkens back to grassroots populist movements throughout history. Ourcontemporary political consciousness has been fundamentally shaped by the forces of capitalaccumulation and first-past-the-post voting which leverage duopolistic control and lesser of twoevils tactics to maintain a firm grip on the types of political orientations that are seen aslegitimate. As Noam Chomsky writes, “the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is tostrictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within thatspectrum.”Open civic culture expands the spectrum of acceptable opinion by rooting into an overarchingfoundation of place-based mutual solidarity while promoting pluralism and consent with regard tothe diverse strategies a community might employ to improve its own quality of life. By focusing ongrassroots consensus-building instead of top-down technocratic control, open civic culture opens anew topology of innovation and direct action that simultaneously transcends and includes variouspolitical orientations and ideologies by de-centering “power over” relationships in service ofconsensual, “power with” relationships. This type of political orientation is not new. Itrepresents a way of being that has been practiced by place-based communities throughout history.Its renewal is foundational to a movement of mutuality, solidarity, and care.TRANSPOLITICAL SOLIDARITY24/ OPEN CIVIC CULTUREOPEN CIVIC CULTURE / TRANSPOLITICAL SOLIDARITY

While many examples exist worldwide of communities self-organizing in this fashion, usually underthe duress of immediate crisis or institutional collapse, the protocols utilized by thosecommunities are often informal and rarely reproducible from movement to movement.A very particular subset of the various types of innovation we can engage in as a species, civicinnovations are mechanisms that support these self-organizing movements and local communityorganizing in a pluralistic structure that is more concerned with bottom up coordination than topdown control.The goal of the Open Civic Innovation Framework and the OpenCivics Network is to provision thesemechanisms to the public in a structure that can be easily adapted, composed, and forked to meetthe direct needs of local community organizers.As a pattern language for open protocols, the Open Civic Innovation Framework offers a meta-patternfor these types of utilities, enabling them to be easily composed into civic stacks and supportingthe alignment of civic innovators as they consider how their innovations might be networked andinteroperated.The OpenCivics Network is a decentralized solidarity network that includes patrons, innovators, andlocal community organizers in a participatory and non-rivalrous co-design process, supportingcoordination, funding, and applied research into systemic interventions that support direct civicempowerment.By holding the process of civilizational adaptation as a non-rivalrous network, the OpenCivicsNetwork connects civic innovators, organizers, patrons and the public while also providing keycoordination functions in the form of formalized templates for impact reporting and projectinteroperability.If successful, the collective impact of the framework and network, as a convergence andcoordination point for innovators and the public, will give rise to new, open civic systems,animated by a revitalized civic culture, able to support the embodiment of an open civic culturethrough the design philosophy of open civic systems.ENABLING STRUCTURES25/ OPEN CIVIC CULTUREOPEN CIVIC CULTURE / ENABLING STRUCTURES

OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS

MAKING THE OLD SYSTEM OBSOLETE27/ OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMSTogether, these enabling structures, composed of interoperable civic utilities, form new kinds ofcivic systems. These systems may be hard for us to conceive at present, given just how degraded ourcivil society and commons have become. But as our current systems continue to crumble around us,our imagination is the primary limitation on the kind of world that we can create next. Open civicsystems simply make old systems obsolete by providing a higher quality of life for citizens bymaking better use out of existing resources, leveraging local knowledge and problem-solving, andanchoring networks of relationships. With this possibility as our north star, we peer ahead, beyondthe horizon of our current systems, towards the rising sun of the third attractor.Instead of fighting the existing world order, we can embrace the fact that it is already crumblingunder its own weight. While holding actions are still needed to mitigate harm, we can soften intothe liberation of knowing that our legacy systems are already actively undermining themselvesthrough their increasingly evident contradictions and inability to effectively respond to mountingexistential risks. Focusing on the fundamental building blocks that make a parallel society andeconomy possible, our energy can be channeled into producing localized systems that empower us togradually withdraw our consent and participation from legacy systems.“It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a 'higher standardof living than any have ever known.' It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishnessis unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival.” — R. Buckminster FullerOPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / MAKING THE OLD SYSTEM OBSOLETE

Within the three horizons framework approach to change management and paradigmatic shifts, thefirst horizon (H1) represents business as usual. The second horizon (H2) represents adaptationsthat occur in response to the failures of the status quo. These adaptations can prolong thedysfunction of the status quo by marginally addressing its insufficiencies (H2-) or they can createthe enabling conditions for an entirely new horizon (H3) to emerge (H2+).An analysis of the depth and scope of the meta-crisis’ generator functions reveals that H2-innovations are not only ‘too little, too late’ when it comes to addressing the perverse economicincentives and regulatory capture that drive ecocide and anti-social behaviors, they're also likelyto prolong the long disaster that we're currently embedded within. As such, it is critical todescribe the third horizon or third attractor in greater detail, both to ensure any transitionalapproaches are indeed H2+, and to guide a process of distributed coordination towards theunderlying frameworks and initiatives that will increase the probability of the third attractor’semergence.This section of the thesis attempts to define the third horizon in the form of open civic systems,a design philosophy based on the indicators and design principles of a life-affirming civilization.Open refers to a design philosophy akin to the design of open source software. To empower trulydistributed coordination in the re-imagination of our core civilizational systems, an open designapproach enables any participant to modify, fork, or merge a design pattern in an evolutionaryprocess of adaptation and natural selection.Civic refers to the systems of care that undergird the incentives, infrastructures, andinstitutions of any given civilization. By focusing our attention on these underlying systems, weare able to shape the downstream flows of our democracies and economies.THREE HORIZONS & THE THIRD ATTRACTOR28/ OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMSOPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / THREE HORIZONS & THE THIRD ATTRACTOR

According to Donella Meadows, “a system is a set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. The systemmay be buffeted, constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system’s response tothese forces is characteristic of itself.” In short, a system is a set of feedback loops betweencomponents that produce their own emergent behaviors and effects. Thinking in terms of systems,instead of in terms of individual components, is essential to meaningfully and effectively engagewith the complexity of our world.The sections that follow will provide an overview of open civic systems as a precursor for adistributed coordination framework for the development and deployment of such systems.29OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / THREE HORIZONS & THE THIRD ATTRACTOR

Open civic systems require three primary conditions – based on the design principles of a thirdattractor – in order to avoid unintentionally reproducing the self-destructive qualities of ourcurrent civilization. Our critical path towards a life-affirming civilization is defined by self-correcting feedback loops, aligned incentives, and civic culture.Self-correcting feedback loops refers to truly participatory democracy paired with a sufficientlyeducated public to interpret the holistic impact of our collective agency. Distributed, powerful,collective agency that is able to make decisions based on high quality and holistic sensing ofecological data and wisdom is required to ensure that any unhealthy feedback loops that may emergeat any point in our collective future can be addressed and mitigated holistically. This can beachieved through direct democracy mechanisms, citizen assemblies, strong public education,traditional ecological knowledge and open socio-ecological data.Aligned incentives refers to an incentive landscape in which individual self-interest is alignedwith the collective interest of humanity and all Life on Earth. Pro-social incentives reward formsof value that create cascading benefits for humanity and the planet. Unlike our current incentivelandscape which rewards extraction and enclosure of value, prosocial incentives rewardcontributions to the commons and markets that produce holistic well-being and mutual thriving. Thiscan be achieved through an economic structure organized by democratically governed worker-ownedcooperatives, nature-backed currencies, and evaluative metrics like Gross National Happiness.Civic culture refers to the revival of a culture of mutual stewardship and responsibility. Renewingour sense of mutuality and solidarity is a critical precursor to any of the downstream behavioraland socio-economic shifts described above. Deconstructing the weaponized culture war dynamics thatare currently being leveraged to reduce collective agency by pitting identity groups against oneanother can be effectively achieved through the lens of bioregionalism, a philosophy that invokesour mutual belonging to the places we call home as a fundamental basis for solidarity. Civicutilities like informal solidarity networks, connected locally and globally, that share resourcesand provide grassroots coordination for mutual benefit are among the tools that could support thiscivic renaissance.CONDITIONS OF THE THIRD ATTRACTOR30/ OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMSOPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / CONDITIONS OF THE THIRD ATTRACTOR

Our current system composition is defined by institutions, infrastructure, incentives, interactionsand culture – whose systemic failure modes have been described extensively above.To reimagine our systems in the context of an open and composable approach, it is necessary tounderstand how these three components currently exist and how they might be transformed.Institutions (Functions)Institutions are the structured roles, rules, and norms that govern the behavior and interactionswithin the system. These are the formal and informal systems that provide stability, enforcepolicies, and guide decision-making processes.Infrastructure (Utilities)Infrastructure represents the physical and digital systems, tools, and facilities that support thesystem’s operations. These utilities enable the functioning of the system’s core activities andensure that resources are effectively utilized.Incentives (Mechanisms)Incentives are the mechanisms designed to motivate and encourage desired behaviors and outcomeswithin the system. These can be financial rewards, recognition programs, advancement opportunities,or any other forms of motivation that align individual actions with systems goals.Interactions (Flows)Interactions refer to the dynamic flows of information, communication, and resources betweendifferent parts of the system. These flows ensure coordination, collaboration, and feedback amongthe various subsystems, enabling the system to function cohesively.Culture (DNA)Culture represents the underlying values, beliefs, and norms that shape the behavior and mindset ofindividuals within the system. Culture is a kind of social DNA of the system, influencing howpeople interact, make decisions, and approach their work.SYSTEM COMPOSITION31/ OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMSOPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / SYSTEM COMPOSITION

In an open civic system, institutions are transformed into extitutions, extractive incentives aretransformed into prosocial incentives, and infrastructures are transformed into open protocols.Institutions to ExtitutionsExtitutions are frameworks for self-organization that provision the same services as traditionalinstitutions through participatory coordination mechanisms. Instead of relying on enclosure tocentrally coordinate these services and utilities, extitutions rely on open protocols to coordinatethe provisioning of essential services through the web of relationships between members of thepublic.Whereas bureaucratic mechanisms were developed to ensure quality and reliability of core civicutilities and services, extitutions take a more agile and consent-based approach that invitesmembers of the public to elect into acts of service using decentralized mechanisms for attributionand compensation.What these open frameworks lack in centralized management, they compensate for through transparencyand choice. If a service becomes unreliable or poorly managed, citizens may utilize the openprotocol framework to self-organize an alternative.Examples of extitutions abound in crisis scenarios when centralized institutions are unable orunwilling to provision a core civilizational service, placing the burden of responsibility oneveryday citizens to self-organize their own solutions.Extractive Incentives to Prosocial IncentivesProsocial incentives align positive feedback with holistic markers of wellbeing for individuals,communities, and ecologies. Such incentives would acknowledge the disproportionate value of aliving tree when compared with the value of the lumber generated by its extraction.Prosocial incentives can be designed into new types of markets that provide economic value topreviously uncompensated actions or they can be embedded into currency models that reflectprosocial values. Incentives can also be aligned through the design of financial instruments thatautonomously reward specified actions that are reported and verified by peers.Reputation systems are another form of prosocial incentive in which trust networks provide a meansof visualizing the prosociality of peers. Prosocial incentives are a decentralized response to theeffects of extractive incentives landscapes in which unregulated market demand drives multi-polartraps, but instead of addressing these market failures with top down regulation, they insteadattempt to link rational self-interest with mutual benefit through decentralized means.32TRANSFORMATIONSHealthy SystemUnhealthy SystemOPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / SYSTEM COMPOSITION

Fragmented Infrastructure to Networked Open ProtocolsOpen protocols are the DNA of the social organisms that make up exititutions. By their very nature,they are non-enclosable and non-rivalrous patterns of human self-organization that can be modifiedand adapted.Essentially a recipe book for particular forms of collective agency, they can be composed andrestructured based upon local needs and “ingredients.” By utilizing the same underlying patternlanguage, open protocols become an evolutionary phenomenon. Just as DNA composed of the sameunderlying proteins can be combined to create trees, whales, and humans, so too can open protocolsbe utilized to create community food sovereignty networks, home school associations, and communalmaker spaces.These patterns can evolve like DNA through the same process of natural selection that occurs inother living systems. Viewing infrastructure in this way, we evolve our understanding ofinfrastructures as simply a physical substrate in the form of roads or cables towardsinfrastructures as conceptual frameworks for physical coordination. Open protocols can still beutilized to provision large scale physical infrastructures, but their design implies a fundamentalshift from top down coordination to bottom up coordination to meet the same needs.Importantly, to achieve these ends, humanity must align upon an open pattern language for theseprotocols to ensure their scalability and replicability across differences and support innovatorsas they collaborate towards the interoperability and composability of the mechanisms they create.33OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / SYSTEM COMPOSITION

As civic innovators build and deploy open protocols, civic utilities, and civic stacks thatcollectively form the civic hyper-structure of an open civic system, the following principles willbe vital to ensure the strategic viability of such approaches. These characteristics or qualitiesare critical to ensure both theoretical and practical alignment with the open civic system designphilosophy.Modular refers to the design principle whereby a system is divided into separate, self-containedunits or modules. Each module can function independently but can also be combined with othermodules to create a more complex system. This approach allows for flexibility, scalability, andease of maintenance, as individual modules can be updated or replaced without affecting the entiresystem. Modularity also empowers local communities to self-assemble their own compositions ofvarious modules to meet their own needs based on their own goals and priorities.Composable refers to the capability of any modular component of a system to be modified accordingto various parameters, enabling components to be configured to meet specific needs. In the contextof open civic systems, composability allows for the fine tuning of modules to increase theiradaptability and customization based on the unique requirements of different communities orprojects.Inclusivity ensures that the system is accessible and usable by all individuals, regardless oftheir background, abilities, or circumstances. In open civic systems, inclusivity involvesdesigning with diverse user needs in mind, promoting equity, and ensuring that everyone canparticipate in and benefit from the system. This includes considerations for accessibility,language, and cultural relevance.Interoperable describes the ability of different systems, organizations, or components to worktogether seamlessly. In open civic systems, interoperability ensures that various modules orplatforms can exchange information and function together effectively, regardless of theirunderlying technologies or architectures. This is crucial for creating cohesive and efficient civichyper-structures.SYSTEM DESIGN PRINCIPLES34/ OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMSOPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / SYSTEM DESIGN PRINCIPLES

The end goal of open civic systems is not simply a mental exercise in alternative systems design.Open civic systems are inherently designed to increase the capacity for self-correction that woulddirectly empower citizens to move towards health and wellbeing.To evaluate the success or failure of any open civic system, a triad of qualitative indicators arenecessary as a rubric for a healthy civilization. These heath indicators, or system design ethics,shouldn’t be considered as separate domains but rather as interconnected criteria for holisticevaluation of systemic adaptation and design.ResilienceResilience is the state and the capacity for adaptive self-organization sufficient to provide corelife support function across changing world circumstances.As things change over time, resilience ensures we have the ability to adjust and adapt withoutcompromising our essential needs. The philosophy of decentralization is inherent to the philosophyof resilience, because centralized structures are fragile and non-adaptive whereas decentralizedstructures are modular, adaptive, and redundant to ensure their ongoing function as circumstancesstress the integrity of a system. For example, imagine compostable bioplastic 3D printer micromanufacturing to minimize dependencies on international industrial supply chains. The creation ofdecentralized local infrastructure allows us to more easily meet needs locally and adapt to change.Examples of indicators of resilience include:DiversityRedundancyAdaptive CapacityInterconnectivityChoiceChoice is the state of fundamental respect for the sovereign agency of all beings and the capacityof individual agents to express their agency and influence their circumstances.Designing for choice compels us to design systems that support agency, not constrict or take itaway. Systems of self-definition are systems in which agents opt-in and choose how they want toparticipate. Choice also implies that agents have the ability to assert their will and change theirsituation if they are not satisfied or fulfilled. In Elinor Ostrom's foundational work on governingthe commons, she states that people who are affected by a governance structure should be able toparticipate in it and modify it. Choice is fundamental because unless all agents are able toparticipate in the design and application of our systems, systems designers may leave out criticalcapacities and inclusions by not consulting or engaging with particular communities, producingunhealthy cultures of dominance.SYSTEM DESIGN ETHICS35/ OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMSOPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / SYSTEM DESIGN ETHICS

Examples of indicators of choice include:Opt-in and opt-out mechanismsFlexible participation levelsParticipatory decision makingFeedback and conflict resolution mechanismsModularity and composabilityAccess to information and data self-custodyVitalityVitality is Life’s capacity to create more Life, the embodied state of thriving that emerges fromthe interconnected levels of well-being and quality of life for individuals, communities, andecologies.Vitality is based on the indigenous Quechua principle of Sumak kawsay, which means “I am wellbecause you are well”. This implies that our ecological, communal, and individual thriving arebound together. For truly holistic thriving to occur, a system must concern itself with the allinterconnected scales and expressions of wellbeing.Examples of indicators of vitality include:Cultural diversityEngagementCommunity vitalityEcological diversity and resilienceLiving standardsPsychological well-beingSelf-reported physical healthUse of timeEducation36OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / SYSTEM DESIGN ETHICS

Across the natural world, we can see examples of nature engaging in positive sum feedback loops inwhich plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, water, light, and soil exchange energy and information formutual benefit. The sum total of these interactions is the “web of Life,” a nested set ofrelationships that form a complex adaptive system that is self-regulating, self-healing, self-reinforcing, and continuously evolving.Stigmergy is a type of swarm intelligence in which individual agents, taking their own actions,signal those actions to other agents in such a way that other agents can contribute in a positivesum feedback loop. Examples of stigmergy in non-human organisms include ants, termites, bees,flocks of birds, bacteria, and slime mold. In humans, we can see examples of stigmergy in BurningMan, open source software development, Wikipedia, the Occupy movement, and various internetexperiments. More akin to jazz music or an improv troupe than an institution or organization,stigmergy uses a simple set of decentralized rules to support individual agents in contributing tomutually beneficial goals. What is lost in terms of the linear clarity derived from centralizedplanning and control is greatly outweighed by the unplannable complexity and beauty of a swarmcontributing their unique gifts towards an emergent structure.In all of these instances, the positive sum feedback is mostly driven by contributions andalignment. Contributions that attract more contributions feed back on themselves. These rewards areintrinsic to participation. No one needs to direct or command them to occur. When it is clear howto contribute without stepping on someone else’s toes (literally or metaphorically), humansnaturally want to converge around shared efforts in which their participation is meaningful andpurposeful. This is a form of participatory commons governance in the sense that it empowers us tocollectively steer the ship of a common effort through our contribution instead of through our topdown control of others’ agency.STIGMERGY: THE NATURE OF OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS37“The concept of stigmergy has been used to analyze self-organizing activities in an ever-wideningrange of domains, including social insects, robotics, web communities and human society. Yet, it isstill poorly understood and as such its full power remains underappreciated. This paper… [defines]stigmergy as a mechanism of indirect coordination in which the trace left by an action in a mediumstimulates subsequent actions… [Stigmergy] enables complex, coordinated activity without anyneed for planning, control, communication, simultaneous presence, or even mutual awareness. Theresulting self-organization is driven by a combination of positive and negative feedbacks, amplifyingbeneficial developments while suppressing errors. Thus, stigmergy is applicable to a very broadvariety of cases, from chemical reactions to bodily coordination and Internet-supportedcollaboration in Wikipedia.” – Stigmergy as a universal coordination mechanism I: Definition and components by Francis Heylighen/ OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMSOPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / STIGMERGY: THE NATURE OF OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS

Open civic systems create scaffolding for stigmergic coordination by providing open templates foragent-centric coordination. Institutional functions and all other functions of a society areultimately based in human coordination, making open civic systems capable of achieving the sameoutputs as any centralized institution. Open protocols, the DNA or source code for open civicsystems, function similarly to the pheromone pattern languages of ants that inform how agentscommunicate and stack their contributions. In this way, open civic systems integrate human socialsystems with the patterns of living systems.In the same way that an ant colony or bee hive can be considered a macroorganism, an emergent wholewith its own form of collective agency, a human social organism is the equivalent design patternfor human coordination. Social organisms grow out of a core mission, vision, and culture that isdefined in the nucleus of the social organism’s social DNA. This social DNA serves as a north staras it is encoded and reproduced by agents through means of peer accountability, empowering humanagents to opt-in to social organisms with whom they align at the fundamental DNA level. This coreDNA also informs the functions, roles, flows, and membranes that are required for the socialorganism to achieve its purpose within its social ecology. Distinct from institutions orcorporations that tend to function as a kind of “zombie” or cancerous social organism, never dyingor engaging in reciprocal flows with their environment, social organisms are intended to beconceived, gestated, matured, and decomposed as the entire social ecology continues to evolve andtransform to reflect the needs and desires of the many generations of agents who animate them.While this fundamental transformation in human social behavior and structure is profound, itreflects patterns that exist all around us in the natural world. A human civilization based onthese fundamental design patterns would represent a truly open civic system, able to easily adaptto changing circumstances, respond to collectively determined needs, and provide cosmo-localfeedback cycles in which the collective superorganism of humanity could continuously learn and growas peers.38OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / STIGMERGY: THE NATURE OF OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS

Embracing the living systems view of the interrelatedness and complexity present in our ecologies,and perhaps our future human systems, we begin to view components of a system as nested wholes orholons.POLYCENTRICITY: HOLONS OF SELF-ORGANIZATION39“A holon is something that is simultaneously a whole in and of itself, as well as a part of a larger whole.In this way, a holon can be considered a subsystem within a larger hierarchical system” – Wikipedia/ OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMSOPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / POLYCENTRICITY: HOLONS OF SELF-ORGANIZATIONThis fractal perspective allows us to view the world throughthe lens of polycentricity, a way of seeing that cancontextually shift depending on which holon we’re seeking tounderstand. Because each component is a whole unto itselfwithin a fractal web of relationships, polycentricity emergesas a way of engaging with the sovereign sphere of each holonwhile acknowledging that a complex system will contain manycomponent parts which are themselves sovereign wholes. Thiswhole systems approach allows us to engage with and designhuman systems that reflect the various interconnected holonicscales of a complex system, from the sub-atomic to themolecular, cellular, organismic, social organismic, ecologicaland biospheric scales. At each scale, the autonomy and healthyreciprocal flows within and across each holon will affect thehealth of the system. This living systems understanding is reflected in political philosophy through the principle ofsubsidiarity, an idea which emerged out of the natural law philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and theneo-Calvinist political philosophy of “sphere sovereignty,” which states that “social and politicalissues should be dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with theirresolution.”Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America offers a description of the principle ofsubsidiarity in early America. Tocqueville observed that “decentralization has, not only anadministrative value, but also a civic dimension, since it increases the opportunities for citizensto take interest in public affairs; it makes them get accustomed to using freedom. And from theaccumulation of these local, active, persnickety freedoms, is born the most efficient counterweightagainst the claims of the central government, even if it were supported by an impersonal,collective will."While 21st century American democracy has fallen claim to profound centralization and regulatorycapture, the same spirit that Tocqueville noted in early America is being revitalized andreimagined in a contemporary context through the reemergence of the bioregional movement. Abioregion is defined as “an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than abiogeographic realm, but larger than an ecoregion or an ecosystem, and is defined along watershedand hydrological boundaries,” and the bioregional movement is an emerging social effort toreorganize our civic participation in the context of a whole systems approach to regenerating ourbioregions.A beautiful living example of a cosmo-local and polycentric approach to whole systems thinking,bioregionalism embraces the holonic nesting of our belonging to and embeddedness within our livingsystems. Thinking bioregionally shifts our perspective towards the holonic nature of ourrelationships. Instead of seeding a new kind of nationalism wherein the locus of power and identityis an abstract nation state, bioregionalism sees humanity as part of a single biosphere and globalhuman community while localizing our actions at the scale at which closed loop systems are mostneeded and relevant. In this sense, bioregionalism and a living systems view of civicinfrastructure are one and the same.

To build the infrastructures of open civic systems that align with this holonic and polycentricview, new technological substrates are needed. Although the early stages of the internet weredefined by peer to peer interactions between academic institutions, our digital commons was quicklycaptured by centralized “web2” entities like Google and Meta who realized that by placing essentialinternet services on their own servers, as opposed to self-hosted ones, they could extractattention and advertising revenue. What followed was a classic multi-polar trap in which misalignedincentives and the enclosure of our digital commons led to a race to the bottom in which themonetization of our attention became an arms race between increasingly monopolistic tech giants. Atthe core of these dynamics is the infrastructural failure of the “client-server” model whichprevents users from interacting with one another outside of a centrally mediated context.To both address these dysfunctional system dynamics as well as to create alternative systems, itbecomes necessary to develop decentralized technological substrates in which users may interactwith one another peer to peer and produce novel forms of autopoetic self-governance that are notpossible within centralized technology platforms. Blockchains are one such technological substratewhich leverage the power of encryption and competition between nodes in a network to secure animmutable ledger of interactions, maintaining trust between parties without relying on acentralized structure. While not without fault or its own forms of centralized capture, blockchains– and similar P2P technology – represent a significant step towards a technological substrate forcivic infrastructure that supports composability and interoperability.BLOCKCHAIN: PEER TO PEER CYBERNETICS40/ OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMSOPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / POLYCENTRICITY: HOLONS OF SELF-ORGANIZATION

This design approach to open civic systems is directly connected to the development of open sourcesoftware, applying the same methodologies for social systems. Coherence and consensus in thisstigmergic and evolutionary landscape is determined based on swarm intelligence and the utility ofthe outputs themselves.As the system evolves, patterns that produce positive outcomes will be selected, with forking andmerging of patterns achieving the same effects as genetic mutation and reproduction. Through anopen protocol pattern language, these learnings and evolutionary adaptations can be cosmo-locallyshared and integrated, allowing humanity to learn together how best to design and deploy open civicsystems.These types of network effects and swarm dynamics are not possible through centralized approaches,but they are also potentially fragile unless the underlying signaling pathways are clearly definedand mutually established. Consensus is not necessary in the pluralistic approach to specificinstances of the pattern, but strong consensus is necessary at the level of the meta-pattern inorder for the evolutionary dynamics to take effect.As civic innovators, patrons, and organizers align and coordinate as a community of practice, novelcapacities emerge as the cumulative effects of networked civic utilities are developed. The gravityof this alignment and coordination gradually pulls legacy systems and human attention from onebasin of attraction to another. This collective effort also produces the emergent effect ofscenius, an acceleration of creative capacity through the dynamic interplay and exchange betweenaligned innovators. The strength of these feedback loops produces rapid iteration, participatoryco-design, and addresses the blind spots created when centralized groups attempt to impose theirvision or process on those they intend to serve.If humanity can align around open civic innovation models, our collective intelligence can beharnessed to collaboratively compose the civilization that we share.EMERGENT SYSTEM CAPABILITIES41/ OPEN CIVIC SYSTEMSOPEN CIVIC SYSTEMS / EMERGENT SYSTEM CAPABILITIES

42Our collective future remains a mystery. And yet, around the world there is a rising yearning forprofound systemic change. Ignored by legacy institutions of politics, media, and technology, thisyearning can be harnessed by those who provide a sincere, distributed, and coordinated avenue fordirect participation in the reimagining of our world.We call the bluff of narratives of progress and naive techno-optimism that tell us to stay home onTik Tok, placing orders on Amazon while the world burns around us and our so-called leaderscontinue to shred the future of the rising Millennial and Gen Z generations through furtherextraction, military spending and indebtedness.While we cannot predict when a large-scale planetary revolution will occur, we can prepare the soilfor its optimal success. We envision the next Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, or SunflowerMovement occurring with the support of the civic utilities we create today. Instead of protestingcorrupted and dying institutions, the defining movements of the 21st century can and must hold apositive image of the future that expands the scope of our imagination and guides our collectiveaction towards creativity and experimentation.In these uncertain times, civilizational collapse scenarios are abundant. From top-soil degradationand food system collapse to climate mass migration to extreme weather to biological warfare and thelooming threat of mass global conflict, we can’t predict when and how our systems will collapse,but we can say with certainty that the long disaster of late stage capitalism has already begun.As such, it is our responsibility as innovators and as a public to build the lifeboats and parallelsystems that can catch humanity as it falls from one social order into another. It is both ourethical duty as well as our transformative opportunity to align, coordinate, resource, collaborate,convene, and learn as a global community developing the civic infrastructures of a world built uponlove, care, and mutuality, empowering the public to co-steward and self-determine our collectivefuture, together.In Us We Trust.OUR CHOICE“The impossible happens.” — R. Buckminster FullerOUR CHOICE

This work is dedicated to all those who have carried the vision of a world grounded in consent,trust, and mutual benefit but did not live to see its ultimate fulfillment.We extend our deepest gratitude to Timothy Archer, co-founder of OpenCivics. Without his early andsignificant contributions to the foundational concepts and architectures OpenCivics may not havebeen birthed. His visionary work and initial efforts are the basis for many ideas within thisthesis, network, and framework. Timothy’s unique role in laying many of its intellectualfoundations remains deeply appreciated and honored.We recognize that we also stand upon the shoulders of countless other individuals who have comebefore us, holding fast to the dream of a world that works for all. To those alive today who havechosen the challenging path of shifting human civilization toward a life-affirming future, we walkbeside you, grateful for your courage and determination.We are profoundly thankful for the guidance, wisdom, and insights offered by our mentors, peers,and collaborators. In particular, we extend a heartfelt thank you to Spencer Saar Cavanaugh,Richard Flyer, Aaron Brodeur, Charles Eisenstein, Erica Blair, Exeunt, Cameron Murdock, SheriHerndon, Nathan Suits, Scott Morris, Ted Grand, Tracey Abbott, and Eric Lohela for their earlyfeedback on this document. Their thoughtful input helped refine the ideas presented here, and theircommitment to this work has been invaluable.The current iteration of this document has been drafted, assembled and refined by OpenCivics co-founders Benjamin Life and Patricia Parkinson, who have taken great care to synthesize themultitude of contributions, inspirations, and feedback into what we believe is a seed of a coherentand actionable vision.We also wish to acknowledge the broader intellectual and activist ecosystems that have informed theoriginality and creativity of this paper. Special thanks to the Sunflower and g0v Movements inTaiwan, the Democratic Autonomy movement in Rojava, The Pirate Party in Iceland, Partido De La Redin Argentina, Occupy Wall Street in the US, the Ada'itsx / Fairy Creek Blockade and Standing Rockmovements, and the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement in Sri Lanka. The influence of Richard Flyer’swork on symbiotic culture, Joanna Macy’s “Great Turning” and the Work That Reconnects, VandanaShiva’s Earth Democracy, and Buckminster Fuller’s visionary contributions, including Critical Pathand Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth, are fundamental to the synthesis this document offers.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS43ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We further express our gratitude for the contributions of thinkers and doers that have expanded ourunderstanding of complex design, civic, cooperation, and social systems, including Barbara MarxHubbard, Kevin Owocki, Michel Bauwens, Sheri Herndon, Jamaica Stevens, Nora and Gregory Bateson,Daniel Schmachtenberger, Forrest Landry, Glen Weyl, Audrey Tang, Donella Meadows, Nathan Schneider,Margaret Wheatley, Christopher Life, Sophia Life, Ferananda Ibarra, Ilya Prigogine, Scott Morris,Toni Lane Casserly, Balaji Srinivasan, Primavera De Filippi, Raymond Powell, Joe Brewer, SamanthaSweetwater, Peter Russell, Adrienne Marie Brown, Nick Farr, David Graeber, Hanzi Freinacht, KenWilber, Tyson Yunkaporta, Jordan Hall, Jim Rutt, Exeunt, Elder Bill Jones, Satoshi Nakamoto,Vitalik Buterin, Zarinah Agnew, Christopher Alexander, Jacque Fresco, Joan Halifax, AlbertMarshall, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Herman Daly, Roxanna Shohadaee, Nicolas Alcala, Ted Nelson,Jaron Lanier, Neri Oxman, Philip Shepherd, Niklas Luhmann, Jude Currivan, E.O. Wilson, AllenSaakyan, Tibet Sprague and Terran Collective, Paul Watson, Bruce Mau, Otto Scharmer, Barbara Sher,Samantha Power, Edward West, Brandon Quittem, Reiki Cordon, Scarlet Masius, Anima LaVoy, CaseyFenton, Christopher Breedlove, David Casey, Stuart Cowan, Chelsea Restrum, David Sneider, ChrisCassano, Vital Sounouvou, Ashe Oro, Erica Blair, Sterlin Lujan, Marshal McLuhan, Dan Larimer,Brandon Graham Dempsey, Sadie Alwyn Moon, Fritjof Capra, Kevin Kelly, Caitlin Long, Jeff Stibel,Umberto Eco, Martin Keogh, Kenneth Mikkelsen, Richard Martin, Eric Hoffer, Vinay Gupta, GaryDykstra, Francis Haugen, Dr. Zachary Stein, Nancy Stark Smith, Larry Harvey, Stuart Mangrum, JordanSiegel, Nate Hagens, Susanna Choe, Gary Sheng, Jeff Emmett, and Phoebe Tickell. A host of other visionary works and movements have also shaped this project, including the meta-crisis research of Kyle Kowalski, Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics, the Bhutanese GrossNational Happiness Index, Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons, and the enduring lessons of theBlack Panther Party’s free breakfast program. Each of these efforts has helped guide the evolutionof the Open Civics Framework.Their work has enriched this thesis, particularly in areas of peer production, mutualism,pluralism, design science, participatory democracy, systems theory, emergence, integral theory,transdisciplinary innovation, cognitive liberty, metamodernism, speculative futures, collaborativetechnology, ecopsychology, evolutionary conciousness, voluntarism, digital nations, ontologicaldesign, modular civic infrastructures, bioregionalism, all-win civic culture, hyperstructures,anarchist political philosophy, indigenous knowledge systems, value flows, commons governance,cybernetics, complexity science, and our civic renaissance.For every person and effort named here, we honor and acknowledge the unseen and unnamed people whohave contributed in myriad ways to the cultural substrate and scenius from which this work emerged.44ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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APPENDIX

The OpenCivics Thesis exists to articulate the systemic failures and challenges of contemporarycivilization while proposing a transformative vision for a collaborative and resilient future. Itaims to motivate individuals and communities to engage in self-organized civic innovation andstewardship, fostering a culture of collective responsibility and active participation.go.opencivics.co/thesis-wikiOpenCivics Concepts is a living repository of key terms and ideas that are critical to the theoryand practice of open civic innovation. These concepts are intended to evolve as the field of opencivic innovation matures and grows into an established discipline.go.opencivics.co/concepts-wikiThe Open Civic Innovation Framework is a guide for designing and implementing self-organized opencivic systems that promote vitality, participation, and resilience while addressing societalchallenges. It aims to empower communities and individuals to actively participate in localstewardship and civic engagement through participatory design methodologies that prioritizecollective well-being and shared responsibility.go.opencivics.co/framework-wikiThe OpenCivics Network is a community of practice and solidarity network working to renew civicculture and adapt civic systems to create the conditions for a vital, resilient, and participatorycivilization to emerge. Together, the OpenCivics Foundation, Consortium, and Labs, serve theOpenCivics Network.go.opencivics.co/network-wiki47/ OPENCIVICS THESIS/ OPENCIVICS CONCEPTS/ OPEN CIVIC INNOVATION FRAMEWORKAPPENDIX/ OPENCIVICS NETWORK