Genie 101
The Ai Sakai
Reducing all preventable suffering on Earth a hundredfold before the end of
the century is a primary goal of ours. We have a more detailed version of this goal that we call
the Ai Sakai. ('Ai' is a Japanese word that means harmony or love. 'Sakai' is a Japanese word that means frontier, limit,
boundary.) The Ai Sakai is itself one of our seven greatest upgrades.
It's an upgrade over the goal of "world peace." World peace
is fine as a vision, but as a goal it has several major shortcomings:
1) It's too utopian, absolute and perfect. It's too all-or-nothing.
2) It has no time-frame. (By when are we to achieve world
peace?) 3) It's also ambiguous.
Do we mean just no war, or all-around peace, including economic and environmental
balance? 4) One of the greatest short-comings, however, is that
"world peace" can lead to
endless philosophical and religious arguments and speculation. Compared
to this, the Ai Sakai is refreshingly clear. We can look up the numbers,
the amount of forms of suffering that took place in the year 2000, looking at the top
twenty sources of major suffering. We simply divide this by 100, and we
have the goals for minimizing hunger, war, major communicable diseases and
other forms of suffering. This leads
to practical discussions and experimentation, not endless talk. Unlike
"World Peace" the Ai Sakai has a timeframe (the year 2100). It is
achievable because we are talking about preventable
suffering and premature death. It's a goal that would tend to produce
widespread agreement, since no one likes suffering. It's a goal for
which progress can be measured, and celebrated all along the way.
It's easy to believe that the vague, perfectionistic, and conflict-causing
concept of "world peace" has done a huge disservice to
humanity. By creating an impossibly high standard for humanity, it
probably de-motivates many people. It's also causes many people to ridicule as
idealistic anyone holding a vision of a peaceful world. You could even
say that it has contributed to humanity's self-esteem problem because we are
continually failing to achieve world peace. But if the Ai Sakai were embraced, it would give
people a new standard, one toward which progress could be measured.
Of course, the Ai Sakai seems about as impossible as world peace--that is, until
you understand how we figured out how to increase the pool of donations and
volunteers to charities and their supporters by about $500
Billion a Year. And when you understand
how our superprograms can accelerate human learning and lifestyle change, then
suddenly the Sakai no longer seems so idealistic. These two upgrades
alone bring the Sakai into the realm of plausibility. Our
Proof Through the Night idea, the Golden
Rule 2.0, The Two
Tables Model, Supercharity
and the rest of our upgrades brings it even closer.
Besides the goal of a hundredfold reduction in suffering before the end of the
century, the Ai Sakai has two other components. One is at least a 90%
re-balancing or "new-balancing" of Earth's life-support systems by
2100. For example, eliminating 90% of the pollution in rivers or oceans,
relative to their worst levels of contamination. A third component is a
regular annual increase in personal happiness for those who participate in the
plan. (We expect this to happen when participants use superprograms to
learn a skill or habit that increases person happiness.) These two additional components make the Ai Sakai a
more well-rounded goal: In addition to the focus on humans and human
suffering, there is also the focus on the rest of the planet. And in
addition to a person's focus on the entire world, there is a focus on one's
own happiness and fulfillment.
Benefits You Can Get -- Why Participate?
* We are doing very high-leverage good. -- Why do something to
help five or ten people when you can be part of something that can ultimately
help millions or hundreds of millions of people? Participation is
something you can be proud of.
* You can use some of our tools to improve your own life -- We've
developed over 20 life-enhancing tools. You can also help us field test
tools in development, such as Wide Wealth or parts of Proof Through the Night.
* Optimism. By learning about our major upgrades, and by passing
them on to others, you will have solid reasons to feel more optimistic about
the world.
* Small amounts of your time go a long way. People who join the
FARN can help us with short five or ten minute projects. (Surveys,
networking requests, proofreading, etc.)
* You will be a star in our real-life adventure drama. Each week
we plan to make an Action Signal video to highlight volunteer efforts and
progress on our projects. Each will be a new episode in our unfolding
drama.
More
For a key article, one that gives a more in-depth assessment of our work,
comparing it to another approach, see Lester
Brown's Plan B 3.0 versus Group Genie's Mighty Plan. We highly recommend this article to those wanting to an
introduction to our work.
For the organizational structure of Group Genie, see "Join
Us'."