Seven universal keywords add up to good progress

How can seven keywords add up to Progress such as the world has not yet known? Let’s start by saying what has not brought good progress. Leaders have generally failed though they have often been admirable, We tend to focus on them and that attention is poison to actual participation. Of course, some of the most conspicuous leaders have retarded good in explicit and evil ways.

Most people would say that we need good leaders and of course, that is true – it’s just that they are generally unable to bring about great progress.

What about inventors?

Ah, inventors!

We think of the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, Tesla the unsung, Edison or Einstein. Inventors indeed make progress possible, but whether good or not depends on many other factors. This is not the place for an extended discussion about whether the bomb or the car or the plane has been good or not. The answers are complex and our focus is on the future, not the past.

If you think invention has been a powerful force, the future will dwarf the past. We are at the point of incremental tech advances.

Adding things up

Contrary to viewing progress in terms of leaders or inventors, I believe the best progress comes when you add three things. First us, people, human beings, all of us. That would be a cliché without two added elements.

Second is cyberspace, the Web, the Internet. I am talking about the connectivity that enables almost everyone on the planet to help determine the future.

The third element are the keywords for messages all of us can circulate to ensure our future will be one of good progress.

Universal terms

The words are Tolerance, helpfulness, democracy, freedom, love, justice and non-idolatry.

They are keywords central to individual messaging that is not fake news or bot-driven.

These words stand for values and ideals the world must live by to survive.

Charles Sanders Peirce anticipated cyber realities and stressed the pedagogical centrality of maxims, short statements, words, as the basis for our actual decisions regarding expression and action.

Triadic Philosophy was originated not as a text but as an actual discipline -- a daily means of combining musing, meditation, and spiritual encounter.

It proposes a half hour largely planned by the individual practitioner. It contains a means of obtaining daily forgiveness. It moves on to a colloquy or conversation centering on the ethical terms and arriving at an aesthetic action or expression or both. I’ll elaborate in the next article.