The name was not my idea.

The name itself comes from a life-changing vision Abraham Maslow had just a day after the Pearl Harbour attack.

On that day, as he shed tears over humanity's lack of understanding and all the unnecessary suffering that ensued , Maslow envisioned a peace table: a place where he saw people sitting around and talking about "human nature and hatred and war and peace and brotherhood…" and all the things needed to truly understand human beings and finally make real progress forward. Unfortunately, he died before he could establish that table.

In this space, I want us to run with his idea—to talk about the things mentioned above and more. The goal is to provide concepts, ideas, theories, explanations, and guidance on what we need to do so we can fully understand Human Development and Human Potential, and so we can reverse this planet's accelerating downward spiral.

If you want to contribute, you can. Help us with intelligent, grounded discussions, do some research, promote us on social media, subscribe and become a student—maybe even a teacher. Really, we're open to whatever you think can help us achieve our vision: a sustainable world of abundance, empowerment, and expanded creativity, free of suffering, poverty, hierarchy, power, and control. And our mission: the development and implementation of new theoretical and pedagogical paradigms capable of shifting our thinking, raising our individual and collective consciousness, and ushering in what psychologist Abraham Maslow referred to as Eupsychia, or the good society.

Mike

Initially, the thing was premised on the startling experiences I had. Since I was trained as a scholar. You can read a bit about my experiences here in my article "Connection 100—An Auto-Ethnography of My (Mystical) Connection Experiences" The experiences were transformative. I recognized the fact immediately that if enough people could be induced to have these experiences, we could easily transform, even save, the planet.

Upon inception, the goal of Lightning Path was to create a "fast path" towards what I came to call Connection Experience but others would refer to as mystical or peak experience.  Since then, the goal of the LP has evolved not just solely as a path towards better connection, but towards a Human Development Framework. As defined in the SpiritWiki,  a Human Development Framework (HDF) is a framework devoted to understanding the human species, supporting Human Development and actuating full Human Potential. The goal of such a framework is to help create what Abraham Maslow called Eupsychia, or the Good Society.

I've done a lot of writing over the years on this. It has been a challenge not only because the scope of this thing is huge, but also because it requires a new theoretical language, new frameworks, and new ways of understanding that are not only carefully integrated, logical, consistent, and complete, but free of (we might say emancipated from) status quo understandings. That’s a big challenge, particularly when you also have to make this accessible to all.

I’m not going to claim to have accomplished this. Really, any successful move in this direction is a collective effort more than a one-person show. I am confident in saying, however, that I have built a solid theoretical foundation upon which we can build and empirical and practical structure. Right now things are a bit scattered. My goal on these forums is to start piecing it together into a coherent framework from which we can develop, ground, and spread the new paradigm.

Tucker, J. B. (2005). Life before life: A scientific investigation of children’s memories of previous lives. St. Martin’s Press.

Stevenson’s successor at the University of Virginia offers a readable synthesis of more than forty years of case research for a general audience. Tucker presents representative cases in detail—including American cases, which undermine the objection that the phenomenon occurs only in reincarnation-believing cultures—and summarizes the database’s recurring patterns: the young age of onset, the high proportion of cases involving violent death, the fading of memories by middle childhood, and the concordance of birthmarks with verified wounds. The book’s distinctive contribution is theoretical: Tucker engages materialist objections directly and argues that the accumulated data are best accommodated within a framework in which consciousness can exist independently of the brain, sketching parallels with the nonlocal character of quantum phenomena. Life before life thus functions as the contemporary bridge between the case literature and the philosophy-of-mind debates treated in the final section of this bibliography.

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When you ask this question you basically get one of two answers.

1. Humans are intrinsically bad. They are violent, greedy, sinful, awful, fallen angels/greedy apes.

2. Human are intrinsically good. They are altruistic, loving, compassionate, caring and good.

Everybody is familiar with the first answer because that's basically the answer you are taught in church and school. Humans are violent apes. Humans are inherently sinful. Humans are bad little children who can’t listen and behave and are in need of constant tutelage and correction. Humans like to be powerful and in control. There's lots of iterations.

Many people are familiar the second answer. This answer is taught by mystics like Jesus philosophers like Aristotle, authors, and musicians who suggest that deep inside we are good, possibly glorious, maybe even divine.

This might seem like an easy question to answer, but it's not. It is difficult and can be confusing. That’s because if you look you will find lots of evidence for both sides. There's lots of examples of people acting incredibly vile and disgusting and lots of examples of people acting with compassion and love, even to the point of self-sacrifice.

It's confusing, right?

Not really. It's only confusing if you ignore the half of the evidence that doesn't fit your side. If you don't ignore evidence, the answer is right there. Are humans good or bad? The answer is both. They can be incredibly evil and vile but also incredibly wonderful, even divine. Satanic and angelic.

The question at this point becomes what determines which side? What determines whether we act good or bad?

Based on evidence we have an answer to that question as well and the answer is, it depends. What does it depend on? It's not genetics if that's what you think. Rather, it depends entirely on your environment and, more specifically, the environment as provided by your relations (your mom, dad, siblings, community, teachers, etc.). As soon as you are born you are born into an environment provided to you by all your relations. That environment has a powerful influence on your development.  

If you have a good environment you grow up up loving, compassionate, empowered, calm and connected. You express yourself and your talents. You are a fully functioning human being. OTOH if you have a bad environment, you grow up the opposite; desperate, greedy, aggressive, defensive, mentally and physically ill, dysfunction, and not expressing your full potential. 

Any serious discussion of utopia/Eupsychia/The Good Society must start with this basic truth of human nature which is that it is context dependent. That this is true doesn't negate the fact that there may be aspects of our humanity that we might call essential or natural, that we might have an essence of that genetics might play an influence. It is just to say environment is critical and we must start our discussions with that. 

Download from the LP Repository or Internet Archive

In the having mode, one's relationship to the world is "one of possessing and owning, one in which to make everybody and everything, including , property" (p. 24). Possession extends beyond things to knowledge, people, ideas, feelings. Our identity becomes that which we eat (Wagyu beef),  what we buy (Mercedes-benz),  and what we consume (only the top brands, the brands with vibe, etc.). In this mode, we are merely a shell.

In the being-mode,  we are two things.

1. Being as aliveness: we are alive, engaged,   and connected; the mode  "in which one neither has anything nor craves to have something, but is joyous, employs one's faculties productively, is oned to the world" (pp. 18–19).
2. Being as essence: — from the Indo-European root es: "that which is authentic, consistent, true" (p. 24). To say something is refers to its true nature, not its deceptive surface. In LP terms, a fully functioning individual in being-mode is aligned, connected, and expressing their true essence, their essential beingness, that which you  really are. 

The goal of life is to be much, not to have much.

Download To Have or to Be.

• the reduction of labour
• small communities, not cities, which function as a "large and affectionate family in which everyone would play parental and filial roles (very Indigenous)
• the reduction of consumption
• an "annual wage."
• community socialization (it takes a village) where everybody is involved in childcare 
• the significance of environment, including early environment, in determining behaviour
• Aesthetic needs: "A world which has been made beautiful and exciting by artists, composers, writers, and performers is as important for survival as one which satisfies biological need"
• Leisure needs, but authentic creative leisure (I need to add this to needs theory)
• the reduction of government devoted primarily to "health, education, and welfare."

  The way forward? "What is needed is not a new political leader or a new kind of government but further knowledge about human behavior and new ways of applying that knowledge to the design of cultural practices." (italics added)

It is now widely recognized that great changes must be made in the American way of life. Not only can we not face the rest of the world while consuming and polluting as we do, we cannot for long face ourselves while acknowledging the violence and chaos in which we live. The choice is clear: either we do nothing and allow a miserable and probably catastrophic future to overtake us, or we use our knowledge about human behavior to create a social environment in which we shall live productive and creative lives and do so without jeopardizing the chances that those who follow us will be able to do the same. Something like a Walden Two would not bea bad start." Jan, 1976 

Download Walden Two

That’s just not true.

Utopian thought is not a fringe, anti-science, activity. It is not the province of spaced-out idealists or starry-eyed dreamers. On the contrary, Utopian thinking is one of the oldest, most persistent, and I would argue most respectable intellectual traditions on the planet. There’s been so much of it that we can speak of “waves” of Utopian thought. It has been with us for centuries, millennia, really, carried forward by philosophers, scientists, psychologists, sociologists, artists, and mystics alike. Indeed, some of the world’s most rigorous and influential minds in human history, and to be fair some of the world’s not-so-rigorous mind, in have devoted serious effort to imagining and designing the Good Society.

In this forum category we'll consider and discuss Utopian thought, what it is, why it emerges, it's content, etc. I'll develop a short reading, viewing, and listening lists to go along with this area. Feel free to suggest books for those interested in getting grounded in this area.

For the academically inclined, let us briefly consider the purpose and structure of Utopian thought. (the below is draft)

The Purpose of Utopian Thought

Widdicombe, 1992

The Structure of Utopian Thought

• Superior - creation of new social orders and governmental structure (Mohl)
• Inferior - reform of said social order
• Political (Kleinwachter)
• Economic