On this page I collect (and from time-to-time update) inspiration for story activists, story tellers and the like. I do this with the intent that it can be used for support in creating a new, better future for humanity. The more powerful questions we can develop that help us question the many, often false or unvalidated assumptions that we have used to build today’s society, the more options we will be able to discover to accelerate improving that society. If you have useful questions to add, please leave a remark.
Stories, the Human Operating System
Story activism – questions to help inspire societal and ecological progress with memes and stories
Story is the operating system of human consciousness
The Art of Powerful Questions
To create powerful societal change stories, we first need to create powerful questions.
“Creativity always begins with a question”
“Everything you do is grounded in your assumptions”
“What’s possible is based on your history”
Most may think of creativity as the process of your brain making large leaps to link unconnected concepts to something new. It’s actually the opposite, according to Beau Lotto. Creativity is small, logical leaps based on your prior experiences.
In this figure below (see also here), we can see how we can develop a hierarchy of questions. This will help us develop the most powerful questions.
Growth
Growth is an important driver of today’s economic schools of thought. But why do we need growth? Maybe by asking ourselves critical questions we will discover that growth was once useful and served a purpose towards societal progress, but now it seems to be reaching the end, since on a finite Earth, there cannot be infinite growth.
Questions
- Why do we need economic growth?
- Why do economists insist that more equality leads to less economic growth?
- Why do economist insist that more inequality leads to more economic growth?
- Why do econmists insist on measuring annual GDP as a key performance indicator? Performance of what against what cost?
Helpful documents:
- Economist Joseph Stiglitz“The trickle-down notion— along with its theoretical justification, marginal productivity theory— needs urgent rethinking.” Read more: http://bit.ly/2ck5LDy https://www.facebook.com/evonomics/videos/2012472735690172/
Neo-liberalism
Questions
- Why is privatizing considered (by neolibs?) the best instrument to create markets?
- Why is privatizing of primary needs (think of Maslov) like Shelter, Healthcare, Energy, Water, Food deemed better for society?
- Why is neo-liberalism considered a ‘natural’ concept close to human nature
- Why is neo-liberalisme’s winner-takes-all mentality considered good for humanity?
Helpful documents
Capitalism
Questions
- Why is it necessary to buy or sell something?
Helpful documents:
Productivity / Efficiency
Questions
- Can an ecosystem be more efficient than a system based on competition?
- Why do we often assume that maximizing efficiency is better than optimizing?
- Why do we want to become more productive?
- Who benefits from more efficiency?
- When an organization is fragmented in order to create more competitive (sub)markets, does that lead to a more or less productive overall (end-to-end) chain as seen from customer point-of-view?
- Is GDP the right way to measure societal and ecological stability/progress?
- Is it correct to add earnings from services sectors if they need to be paid for by disasters from others? (for example a train crash, see the article about faulty assumptions of GDP)
Helpful documents:
- The faulty assumptions of GDP explained https://www.facebook.com/SustainableMan/posts/10155540080887909:0
Market
Questions
- Why do we need a market?
- Why do certain people think a ‘free’ market always lead to better solutions?
- Why is the ‘Invisible hand’ used as a metaphor, considered it is in practice really not invisible but manipulated?
- Why do we need the invisible free hand (Laissez-faire)?
- Why are markets considered the only instrument to solve poverty and inequality?
- Why is a market mechanism considered to be contributing to more productivity in an (end-to-end) demand/supply chain?
- Why is a market not considered as an inefficient man-in-the-middle mechanism?
- Why can’t we determine for which (Maslov) domains, markets are the most optimal concept? (think of Shelter, Healthcare, Energy, Water, Food, …)
- We is competition considered a universal concept, even in any (new) market or market that previously had no competion?
- Why is competition considered the optimal instrument for markets where investments are high and ROI is relatively low (infrastructures like in Energy, Water, Roads, Transport, …)
- Why is it considered that only competition within the concept of a ‘free market’ lead to better AND cheaper products or services?
- Where / when / in which cases can competition lead to corruption?
- Why is competition a morality that is based on unknown assumptions?
- Why is survival of the fittest considered the only or best way to progress society and/or ecology?
- Why does competition lead to artificial scarcity?
- Why can competition in some instances lead to higher prices and thus not being a universal concept?
- Why is it true that, in a good functioning market, profits cannot be accumulated leading to excess power of a single party?
- Why does fragmenting an existing market (e.g. Transport) lead to cheaper services AND better (quality) services?
Learning to unlearn 
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