Surviving and Thriving in a Chaotic Transition

July 16

Two great minds, Michel Bawens and Gibin Hong attended an informal soirée at Pim Kemasingki’s house. Here are a few themes they addressed: Themes from the past: Looking at patterns in past transitions of civilisations in order to identify and understand the present. Themes from the present: What factors are new today that were not there in the past? Communication technology? Decentralisation? Peer to peer organisations? Virtual global systems affecting traditional geographical systems. Looking at pioneering communities and what they are doing. Themes from the future: History is an interplay between growth and conquest-oriented institutions; markets and states. How can we imagine a future world order that can guarantee production for human needs without destroying the planet’s viability? if the past is an incessant cycle between growth and collapse, is destabilisation inevitable? Let’s look at innovative institutions and solutions today. What do these big changes mean to us? Can we find stability amongst the impending chaos? Michel Bauwens is the founder of the P2P Foundation, a global organisation of researchers into decentralised infrastructures and modes of life that become possible with new technologies; he has visited hundreds of communities that are engaged with crafting change, and are building prototypes for new social institutions. He worked with governments, mayors, international organisations, and even with the Vatican. Gibin Hong is the director of the Global Political Economy Institute. He advised the former mayor of Seoul, who crafted Seoul into a leading ‘sharing city’, collaborated with one of the leading presidential candidates around transforming Korea, and is currently working with the governor of the leading province. He is a leading influencer with his own Youtube channel and a translator of political economy classics such as Kate Raworth’s book on the Doughnut Economy.