SECOND RENAISSANCE.  Sounds sexy. 

Certainly a more marketable term than a nebulous “time between worlds."  On the other hand, we have been hearing about a second Renaissance since (probably) before the first Renaissance even ended!  Why are we hearing it again?  Don't we know all this already? 

Well, yes & no.  People steeped in the liminal, teal, metamodern, integral, and Game B world of transformational, developmental, and regenerative multidimensional systems-change are certainly familiar with the situation.  But let's face two facts:

(a) We can always get better at clarifying what we are talking about.  And what we are doing about it.

(b) Most people do not know what we are talking about or what we are doing. 

New people constantly arrive at our collective doorstep with a straightforward need to gain basic familiarity with these concepts, networks, and projects.  Or at least they would if we had a doorstep. 

The Life Itself group is attempting to provide such a stoop.  They call it “a gateway to this moment of civilisational crisis and awakening." 

Who are these people?

Life Itself is a self-described collective of pragmatic utopians dedicated to wiser living and social transformation in ways that prioritize inner development and cultural change.  (But in a pragmatic way.)

Their 3-part plan for expanding the Second Renaissance is as follows:

1.  Generate an accessible narrative with a simplified theory of change.
2.  Create portals to useful maps & navigation tools that help people learn the field and contact the subnetworks or projects with which they most resonate.
3. Cultivate and promulgate spaces for dialogue discussion and collaboration.

All of this, in theory, creates a shareable access point for newcomers.  Key words:  Curated.  Accessible.  Public.

>>> To get up to speed with this initiative, go to secondrenassiance.net and read their manifesto (or maybe “whitepaper" sounds more professional).

>>> On the other hand if (like most of us) the technosocial condition of late-modernity has left you mostly illiterate, check out their Webinar Preview. 

>>> Or split the difference and vibe with their Launch announcement on Substack.

THIS VISION is to resource people who are new, adjacent, or allied with the inner-led, metacrisis-aware, systems change networks but who do not yet have sufficient contacts, sensemaking, or practice to feel steeped in it -- or to know where to best invest their time & energy. 

Layman Pascal's meta-religious contribution to Perspectiva's book, Dispatches from a Time Between Worlds, asserted that “only a renaissance can solve a metacrisis."  And a Renaissance is always a complex interplay between leading-edge subnetworks and larger populations.  A tricky balance.

It seems there may be something inherently ambiguous about liminality.  And perhaps trans-paradigmatic and meta-paradigmatic thinking must, by its very nature, constantly elude descriptions of itself as a paradigm.

Our communities have a strong inclination toward weird, complex, liquid, emergent, and transrational qualities that make it difficult to put their efforts into a simplified box.  Part of our task, therefore, is to escape the limitations of typical Game A framing.  We need to keep it lively and authentic.  We need to go as deeply as possible into new visions and vibes without worrying about branding, marketing, and simplification.   

Yet despite those truths, we also urgently need to grow, educate & welcome multitudes of people who are -- as Joe Lightfoot recently called it -- regenerative curious.

And that's who this new outgrowth of Life Itself's project may help us reach.


* BONUS *

Direct people to the Second Renaissance introductory course.