The vision is a very specific road map for those who believe that the future desired herein is worth creating.

A Tale of Two Activists:  A Vision for the Here and Now

Consider Julian:  Angered by social injustice and environmentally unsustainable commerce, and inspired by earlier generations of activists, Julian graduated from college determined to make a difference in the world.  He got a job as a canvasser for a social justice organization at below minimum wage (indeed, the organization pleaded with the government for an exemption to pay its employees below minimum wage).  After eighteen months at this job he obtained a better job, working for a non-profit, as a community organizer in a poor Hispanic community.  

This was a far more satisfying job than going door-to-door; the women of the community often brought him burritos for lunch and he felt valued by the community as he fought city hall to ensure that they got their fair share of parks and recreations dollars and quality water and sewage services.  He was still paid just slightly more than minimum wage, but the satisfactions of the job made it all worthwhile.  After five frustrating years in this position, constantly battling the government, Julian fell in love with a woman he met at a protest march, and they married and decided to raise a family. 

He went back to school for a couple more years to get a teaching credential while still working as a community organizer, then went into public school teaching, finally earning a modest but comfortable salary.  He started out idealistically as a young teacher, and was supported by his principal as he tried out innovative methods that developed critical and creative thinking and emotional intelligence in his students.  That principal was then transferred, and his new principal, concerned with the low test score gains at the school, required all faculty to be trained in a form of direct instruction, in which the teacher’s entire day was scripted.  Instead of teaching creatively, Julian was now forced to read out loud from an instruction book, which told him what to say and specified how the students were to respond. 

His autonomy as an educator was non-existent.  He quickly came to hate his job but conscientiously tried not to expose his frustrations to his students.  He looked into taking a job at a nearby private Montessori school where he could teach in a way that had integrity and rewarded his creative intelligence, but it would have required a 40% pay cut and the loss of his retirement.  By this time he and his wife had a child and a mortgage, and he couldn’t afford to leave the public schools.

Julian vacillated between rage and depression day after day, year after year.  In his quietest, most honest moments, he wondered if he had wasted his life:  although he and his wife contributed $50 they couldn’t afford to Greenpeace each month, and they only bought ecologically conscious products, he knew he just wasn’t making much of a difference in the world.  But he also knew that he couldn’t stomach selling out to corporate America even if it meant that he could give more money to activist causes.  Was there no alternative between dying a slow death of the spirit and selling out?

Consider Patrice:  Patrice, who was a freshman the year Julian graduated, was likewise angered by social injustice and environmentally unsustainable commerce.  For a time, she attended the same activist meetings as Julian and went to the same protest marches.  Then one day she attended a FLOW speech on campus that mostly just confused her.  The speakers seemed to have an honest commitment to making the world a better place, and introduced her to many new concepts she had never heard before, but they also were unabashedly enthusiastic about free markets.  It was weird stuff, but she couldn’t quite reject it out of hand. 

For the next several months she read FLOW materials and argued with members of the campus FLOW group about free markets and sustainability and innovation and entrepreneurship and advertising and consumer sovereignty and personal responsibility and personal growth and just about everything else it seemed like.  Gradually, as the FLOW world-view came into focus and she came to understand the potential for global change provided by FLOW, she became excited.  She saw how she could have an enormous positive impact on the world, be a much happier person, and, indeed, have a blast and live a prosperous life, while making the world a better place.  Although Julian and her other activist friends mostly cut her off in anger when she quit attending their meetings (she had gotten to the point at which she found the anger and righteousness at those meetings tedious), she didn’t care anymore.  She was busy making things happen.

Patrice became a leader in the FLOW movement.  She organized a FLOW Happiness and Well-being chapter that supervised internships at various local new private and charter schools that were creating happier, better places for kids to learn.  Although occasionally a placement or a school didn’t work out, for the most part she constantly heard stories of how happy the schools were to have extra help, how meaningful the interns found the experiences, and most of all how young people’s lives were being changed.  The students who worked at these schools became school choice activists, working vigorously on behalf of educational vouchers, tax credits, and more liberated charter schools.  She later found that many of the interns she set up went on to create their own chains of schools based on the new educational approaches learned in these cool laboratory schools. 

She also organized FLOW Open World groups that coordinated campus entrepreneur clubs with do-gooders eager to address social, economic, and environmental issues in developing communities throughout the world.  There were already several dozen bright, ambitious young men who were busy creating web-based businesses in their dorm rooms.  In her former life she would have despised these geeky guys for not joining her at anti-globalization protests.  But now she was organizing many of her former protester friends to create on-line education and training for people around the world. Through Open World they were working with teen-agers in Sri Lanka, micro-entrepreneurs in Bolivia, and a tech park in Kyrgyzstan, to develop a wide range of skills and establish positive relationships beyond their local communities.  Her goal was to develop the teenagers’ skills to the point at which the campus geeks would hire them to work on their web businesses. 

She encountered significant challenges in addressing cross-cultural communication issues, and sometimes it seemed as if her team had to learn how to explain the entire modern world to people in other countries so that they could be effective employees and collaborators.  But when the first poor people in Sri Lanka, Bolivia, and Kyrgyzstan received their first $5 PayPal payments invariably they would send her Open World team the most effusively grateful thank-you’s. 

More impressively, a remarkable number of them, once they started earning $50 per month or so, began donating money back to the project. They felt both grateful and rich, and wanted to give back. 

Both the geek entrepreneurs and the former anti-globalization protestors were so overwhelmed by this display of generosity, by those so much poorer than themselves, that they began holding a weekly “Upwing” party at which each person was required to bring someone of the opposite political persuasion as a date.  Each “Right-Left” couple paid $20 to get into the party, $10 of which went directly to scholarships for students at private schools in the developing world (where a year’s private school tuition was $20-40 per year).  These parties, and this movement, began spreading to campuses across the U.S., and within a few years were producing millions of dollars for scholarships around the world.

Initially the campus environmentalists were hostile to the Open World project because they thought that it just meant more economic growth that would be destructive to the environment.  A low point was when one of the Upwing parties was disrupted by a protest with signs proclaiming “Don’t Sleep with the Enemy,” “Beware:  Capitalism is a communicable disease,” and far more vulgar slogans.  This became awkward after Oxfam officially supported the Open World project, but there were still very negative attitudes towards Open World among some of the environmental groups. 

Patrice realized that she needed to do some outreach, so she held FLOW sustainability workshops and one-by-one twisted the arms of key players in the campus environmental movement to attend.  The workshops first clarified the distinction between those resources, which were in serious danger of depletion due to tragedy of the commons problems, and those, which were not due to the fact that they were owned.  They then presented ways to address tragedy of the commons problems and how to persuade business people that property rights solutions to such problems were good business. 

They had panel discussions between FLOW leaders, environmentalists, economists and business people that revealed openness to practical environmental solutions on the part of all parties.  Patrice then created a campus sustainability chapter that supported property rights solutions, a green tax shift, and environmental entrepreneurship without the rage and exaggeration that too often undermined the credibility of some of the traditional campus environmental groups.  Patrick Moore, the founder of Greenpeace who had quite publicly given up the destructive approach many years ago, became a campus hero among the FLOW Sustainability group.  Greenspirit, Moore’s newer, more positive organization grew rapidly, and students joined Moore in supporting a growing forest products industry to reduce atmospheric carbon.

One of the implications of the FLOW sustainability approach was price rationing to ensure that resources were not depleted.  Although price rationing did eliminate sustainability fears, it created a new concern:  The poor would not be able to afford basic resources.  Patrice adroitly led those new recruits who were most concerned about this issue to create the Affordability Group.  This group worked on creating a campaign to reduce unnecessary building and zoning regulation that caused housing to be so unaffordable.  Once the members of this group understood that they had an effective strategy for reducing housing costs for the poor by 50% or more, and that housing took up 60% or more of the housing budgets for poor people, they were more willing to support price rationing policies that could result in higher gasoline prices, higher energy prices, and higher water prices. 

Their big victory was to re-write the housing regulations for New Orleans and then to get Wal-Mart to partner with a manufactured housing firm and several innovative architects.  The day Wal-Mart signed the contract to purchase 500,000 elegant modular homes to retail for $4999 each the entire Affordability movement around the country celebrated.  The next day the world was dumbfounded when Wal-Mart announced that they would give away the first 50,000 units to New Orleans families who wanted to return if the Affordability group could legalize affordable housing in ten other urban areas.  Remarkably, with efforts going on in fifty cities, within six weeks ten new cities had legalized affordable housing and by the end of the year thirty-five of the fifty cities had legalized such housing – and Wal-Mart stock went up 10%.

Patrice had previously thought of graduate school after graduation, but by the time she graduated she found herself on the board of directors of eleven organizations, six non-profits and five for-profits.  She had received significant shares of stock from each of the for-profits.  She also found herself to be in high demand as a speaker and consultant and found that she could earn a good living showing other groups how to apply FLOW principles.  A couple of years later one of the Open World for-profit companies went public and she found herself a multi-millionaire before she was thirty.  But she was far too busy to even notice. 

When she married a fellow FLOW entrepreneur they raised their children in both the U.S. and Tanzania, where she was setting up an Open World project to save the chimpanzees.  One of her best FLOW friends, whom she had placed at a school as an intern, had become one of the greatest educators on earth, leading a chain of fifty for-profit schools that were havens of creativity and well-being.  When Patrice was not traveling she would simply go and spend time at her daughter’s school because it was such a beautiful environment.  And, logically enough, she helped her friend to open up a franchise of the school at the Open World zone in Tanzania.  She was gently envious at her daughter’s opportunities to learn a local Tanzanian dialect while learning to speak to the chimpanzees as well.

Life was such a spectacular experience she usually forgot her role in transforming the world for the better – until she happened to have lunch with her old friend Julian.

Of course, Julian quit his public school job the next day.  But that is another story.

The Global Consequences of FLOW Activism from
Today Through 2040

This section consists of three parts:

I.  The Growth of Peace and Prosperity Around the World.
II.  Focus on the Growth of the Well-Being Industry in the U.S.
III.  Progress Towards Global Sustainability

We start with the first section because we need global peace and prosperity for all, but the vision is ultimately not satisfying if it is based merely on mindless materialism.  Thus we also need to envision a growing well-being industry; the U.S. is used as an example, though other nations might move first on this.  And, finally, global peace and prosperity would not be sustainable if we destroyed the environmental conditions needed for life in the process; thus a parallel process describing progress towards global sustainability is also included.

I.  The Growth of Peace and Prosperity Around the World

Campus activists target specific regions in which to develop their peace and prosperity initiatives:  There are activist groups devoted to Asia, Europe, Oceana, Africa, and the Americas.

ASIA

2010:  The Asia group begins an aggressive campaign to reduce trade barriers and to increase trade across national boundaries throughout Asia in the name of peace and prosperity.  Student groups protest trade barriers and government control of the economy in Japan and Thailand.   Idealistic young entrepreneurs from the West pour into China and, in the midst of the old regime, help to create thriving enterprise zones throughout China.  While creating wealth for hundreds of millions of Chinese, they also deliberately transmit an understanding of the FLOW vision of peace and prosperity.  The entrepreneur movement in India is becoming politically credible and powerful as people recognize how much wealth is being brought into India.  FLOW chapters develop on campuses throughout India.

2020:  As the Chinese realize that, with the right legal environment, they will quickly become the wealthiest nation on earth, the entire Chinese mainland becomes the most dynamic free market region on earth:  there are thriving markets in education, health, insurance, community design, construction, policing, and management.  Meanwhile, despite tremendous wealth creation in India, attitudes are still slow to change:  gradually the socialist structure of India is being dismantled, but many entrepreneurs are frustrated.  Most out-sourcing is now being taken to China rather than India.  India starts to create free zones in imitation of the Chinese growth phenomenon.

2030:  As the Chinese juggernaut takes off, with Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand all deeply integrated, the issue of Taiwan gradually disappears as Taiwan becomes another important gear in the powerful Chinese wealth machine.  Indian leaders, seeing China leap from behind to become wealthier than they are so quickly, are finally beginning to act more assertively to support markets.  As the FLOW ideology spreads, there are some forward-thinkers who are even discussing trade as a means of building more peaceful relations with Pakistan.  A shocking paper is published on the possibility of "economic government" in the disputed Kashmir region, which would allow people to choose by means of private enterprises which "government" controlled them.

2040:  A leader in North Korea appears who realizes how easy it would be to move from a place of poverty, weakness, and embarrassment to one of wealth and dynamism.   Without losing face, he follows "the Chinese model" of "deep market" activity.   As a latecomer to the game, he chooses to out-do even the Chinese, and North Korea starts to make startling gains in wealth as the most perfectly-designed deliberate market economy ever begins to take off.   India finally adopts a substantially market approach.  Because trade with India has become so profitable, Pakistani businessmen protest ongoing government restrictions and hostilities towards India.  The FLOW student movement reaches Pakistan as well, and student groups are demonstrating for peace and free trade with India.  The Pakistani government pretends to remain hostile, while giving on all essential issues, thus setting the foundation for a lasting peace with India.

EUROPE

2010:  The Europe group starts by trying to transmit the FLOW vision to European student groups.  There are a few bright stars:  Lomberg and Norberg are among the leaders of a brilliant new student movement in Europe.   But the backlash is tremendous and powerful.  Most student groups remain virulently Leftist.  Estonia and Ireland are becoming the wealthiest, most vibrant, and exciting centers of culture and innovation in Europe.

2020:  The core FLOW group in Europe is steadily developing.  Despite the substantial welfare states in Scandinavia, the most powerful FLOW leaders are based there.  Several state-sponsored universities have dynamic FLOW research centers.  The FLOW energy in Scandinavia has spread to Britain, where Irish thinkers both in Ireland and Britain are the intellectual leaders of the British FLOW movement.  The Czech Republic and Hungary are centers of first-class FLOW intellectual work as well.  Throughout Eastern Europe, idealistic young entrepreneurs are working together with government leaders to create super-economies.  The greatest resistance continues to come from France and Germany.  Russia is still barely functional.  People refer to France and Russia as "Third-world countries."

2030:  The standard of living in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong have long surpassed that of Europe.  As the newer Asian miracles make it clear that the standard of living in China, Thailand, and Vietnam are rapidly surpassing Europe, more Europeans begin to take note.  Moreover, as the United States, Canada, and Australia are now recognized as the leaders of the FLOW "social justice" movement due to their incredible receptivity to immigrants, European countries are becoming increasingly ashamed of their "chauvinistic socialism" and realize that opening their borders and their labor markets would produce more social justice than did the "gated community" socialism of the 20th centuries.  Most of Europe is now developing a quite obvious market momentum.  Although the Left still controls France, it is becoming embarrassing.  There are FLOW student protests against the aging Leftist leaders and intellectuals in Paris.

2040:  Europe is changing as it opens its markets.  Young people are now openly ridiculing the Leftist history of Europe in the 20th century.  Europe is becoming radically multi-cultural as large numbers of Arab and African peoples enter the European market.  European intellectual life begins a dramatic ascent, as the brightest young people have become brilliant FLOW theorists; people wonder if the FLOW intellectual leadership has definitively passed to Europe.  Russia is starting to come to life because of trade with its highly successful neighbors.  In Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, radical community experiments are taking place.  Americans living east of California are shocked by the exotic combinations of lifestyles that are developing.  German intellectuals write long treatises defending the most innovative (and bizarre)  "lifestyle corporations" that create new ways of living that shock the old.  Music and art suddenly become explosively new and exciting in Europe.  Ireland is producing poetry and literature and film and virtual reality experiences that delight the world.   France is obviously trying to play catch-up while pretending to save face.

OCEANA

2010:  Australia and New Zealand are leaders from the start.  Both nations continue to receive large influxes of immigrants and to experience large increases in their standards of living.  Because the FLOW consciousness is so well developed there, immigrants from Indonesia are constantly returning home with new understandings of how government can work and how businesses can be created so that peace and prosperity will be available to all.  Thousands of young people from Australia and New Zealand are setting up their own businesses with partners in Indonesia.

2020:  As Australia and New Zealand develop distinctive cultures which combine Anglo, Aboriginal, Asian, and south Pacific traditions, people from all over the globe visit the region to experience the food, the ambiance, the culture, the communities.   One hasn't really lived until one has visited the "Oceana potpourri."  Australia is becoming a global economic heavy-weight due to the massive increase in population and wealth.

2030:  The Indonesian government is steadily becoming less corrupt because of the ongoing influence of FLOW entrepreneurs.  Islamic radicalism is increasingly marginalized.  The world’s largest Islamic population is becoming a global model for Islamic integration into modernity.   Indonesians become proud of the regional brilliance for culturally-evolved tourism, and contributes an Islamic experience that is bringing in increasing numbers of tourists and intellectuals.

2040:  Oceana has become a peaceful, happy, dynamic place in which to live, to visit, and to do business.  Australia has a reputation as one of the most effective economies on the planet.  Indonesia is the first large nation in the Islamic world to become committed to entrepreneurs and markets, and Islamic leaders regularly visit the country to see how it is being done.

AFRICA

2010:  The African experience remains largely grim.  Botswana has become ever more free market, and people are beginning to call it “the Estonia of Africa.”  There are bright spots in South Africa, where an open repudiation of socialistic measures has begun, and in Libya, where Quaddafi's son has decided to create the first successful Islamic market society.

2020:  South Africa has begun to become a serious market force and South African students, leaders, and intellectuals are trying to persuade other African nations to implement the market reforms that have given them so much success.  Libya and Egypt are gradually integrating into the global economy.  Throughout North Africa young Islamic entrepreneurs who have returned from Europe are starting to promote FLOW ideas.  Open World experiments in Tanzania are starting to produce remarkable growth there within the small Open World zones.

2030:  A surprise break for Africa:  an American FLOW billionaire has made an arrangement with the leader of Kenya to purchase several million acres for a FLOW "model state" in exchange for a large cash price plus consulting and educational services for the Kenyan government.  Idealistic young people from all over the world move to help start "the Kenyan experiment."  As businessmen begin to take the Kenyan government seriously, businesses start to locate in Kenya, both within the FLOW experiment and throughout the country.  South Africa has become a strong, modern economy and its neighbors are starting to imitate it as well as to benefit from the strong trade ties.

2040:  The Kenyan experiment has excited the world.  Although North Korea is a close second, the Kenyan experiment is showing more dramatic levels of economic growth than have ever been seen anywhere.  Kenya as a whole is starting to show a healthy economy.  With north Africa becoming economically successful, Kenya being a global model, and South Africa having become a major global economy, most of the rest of the continent is experiencing strong pressure internally and externally, from businessmen, political leaders, and student groups, to begin developing a just society.

THE MIDDLE EAST

2010:  Other kingdoms within the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have followed the lead of Dubai in creating free zones and attracting billions in oil money in the process.  Oman is developing market-based eco-tourism and flourishing as well.  Little progress elsewhere.
2020:  Kuwait and Qatar have followed the model set by UAE and Oman; they are both receiving billion in investment dollars.  Egypt is moving in this direction as well.  There are rumors that the young professionals in Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia are looking enviously at their wealthy and dynamic counterparts in UAE and Oman.

2030:  The Dubai model has conquered much of the middle East.  Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan remain committed to hostility toward Israel rather than modernization, but even here the growing influence of commercial peace throughout the region is becoming increasingly compelling.  Business ambition, rather than religious fanaticism, has conquered the region, despite occasional ongoing violence.

2040:  Although anti-Israel rhetoric still exists, and an occasional act of violence, the general push is towards progress and commerce.  The rest of the world, outside Africa,  Russia, and France, has become so wealthy and successful that Islamic pride has now shifted to outdoing the Chinese in terms of a commitment to market progress.  They have a long ways to go, but now that their extraordinary oil revenues (due now to very high oil prices) are devoted to real investment, they do have some advantage in the race.

THE AMERICAS

2010:  Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, and many of the Caribbean economies have all become substantially integrated into the U.S. economy due to free trade agreements.  All are visibly developing.  FLOW student activists have fought to stop the "drug wars" that have destroyed Columbia and Peru; it appears as if a drug de-criminalization movement is about to pull the plug on drug cartel profits.  U.S. campus activism still includes many Leftist groups due to the ongoing presence of the "tenured radicals," but there are strong FLOW groups at most campuses.  It is increasingly recognized that tariffs, subsidies, and border controls are shameful evidence of social injustice.  There are student protests whenever illegal aliens are arrested or when employers are sanctioned for employing them.  It is widely recognized that border controls on human beings contribute more to slavery and human degradation than does any other practice.

2020:  The U.S. has become a largely bilingual nation.  After significant resentment, the FLOW idealists have helped turn the attitude around to one of celebration of the Hispanic influence.  The obvious increase in wealth in Mexico helps: anyone who refuses to celebrate the increased standard of living comes across as a cruel bigot.   Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, and the Caribbean are all approaching a U.S. standard of living.  Other nations throughout Latin America are eliminating corruption and instituting solid market reforms.  FLOW intellectuals, activists, and entrepreneurs are pouring across borders throughout Latin America.  FLOW idealism has finally penetrated the campuses and opinion leaders; there is pressure on the government to liberate education and health care.  The teachers' unions and AMA are putting on aggressive campaigns, but everyone knows that they are fighting a losing battle.

2030:  The entire Americas are becoming wealthy and integrated.  Although spots of profound poverty remain, optimism pervades the hemisphere as people see the progress that is being made.  The United States itself is becoming a miracle of education and well-being as free markets in health and education are starting to come to life.  Bright young people are swarming into the fields and large, idealistic, entrepreneurial corporations are offering "lifestyle" contracts that integrate education, health, insurance, and residential options in interesting and appealing packages.

2040:  The Americas enjoy a decent standard of living throughout.  Large American lifestyle corporations have enormous research and development budgets devoted to designing better ways to make human beings happy and well.  American corporations are contracted throughout the world to improve well-being.  Their only serious competitor is "The Kenya Corporation," whose lifestyle product is even more original than is that produced in the U.S.; the average income of a Kenya Corporation adult is 50% greater than is the average income of members of its nearest competitor and life expectancy is 10 years longer.  An Australian/Indonesian conglomerate is developing a "South Pacific Delight" package that looks formidable even to the producers of "Hawaiian Blend" and "Marin Medley" among the hedonists.  "Mormon Glory" is a best-seller throughout Latin America and has made in-roads into Africa.  It has been banned in the Arab nations.  Most of Latin America is still loyal to "The Catholic Church," which has become far more effective at creating well-being than it ever was in its first 2000 years of existence due to the pressure of a competitive market.  "Confucian Discipline" is a best-seller in American inner-cities as well as maintaining continuing domination in Chinese markets around the world.  "Bubba's Good Times" dominates the market throughout the southeast U.S., but does not sell well internationally except for a few odd cult followers in Italy and the Ukraine.  "Tibetan Buddhism" has colonies throughout the Americas.  "Life is God," based on Sufi Mysticism, has attracted a devoted following among educated Americans, Europeans, and Iranian Muslims.

The leading lifestyle corporations periodically attempt to ban additional experimentation, but the FLOW ethic has become so firmly rooted that people are outraged when the existing corporations attempt to limit access to newcomers.  "The Innovators" is a large organization, known for the intellectual brilliance of its members and for producing diverse and experimental lifestyle options that push the boundaries in every direction.  Although the more traditional companies hate to admit it, many of their best new ideas regarding art, education, the wellness industry, and community structure come from The Innovators.

II.  Focus on the Growth of the Well-Being Industry in the U.S.

2010:  Campus activists focus on fighting for changes in law and attitude that will allow the entrepreneurs to market well-being.  Priorities include school choice and the complete elimination of government-mandated licensure in all fields.   Government restrictions on the health and insurance industries are coming under attack.   Campus groups work with inner-city communities to create innovative solutions to housing and safety while activists fight those zoning and building code obstacles to better housing and legal rules that reduce public safety.

The role of universities themselves are questioned; some students protest harmful and idiotic courses, others simply desert harmful courses.  A league of FLOW professors, very small at first, promotes coursework that will make the world a better place.  Student groups rate the value of courses that undermine well-being.   As some courses consistently receive negative ratings, those professors are gradually left with small cadres of angry Leftist loyalists that no one takes seriously anymore.

After the final political battles over No Child Left Behind have disillusioned everyone over government control of education, a serious "educational freedom" movement has begun.  Young people, students and young parents alike, are aggressively pushing for a radically open school voucher program.  It looks as if it may pass.

2020:  Finally, in 2015, substantial educational freedom was granted to Americans.  Thousands of the brightest young people in America began to flood into education, billions of dollars worth of capital began to support their projects, and interesting, effective, exciting ways of schooling children began to be developed.  University education departments are so obviously obsolete that most of them are either closing down or being taken over by the education corporations.  Because of the revolution in education, more and more pressure is being focused on the medical field.  The AMA is frightened.  Meanwhile, there are interesting small experiments in which innovative entities take over the management of cities and residential areas.  Legislators in Nevada are proposing that state government be managed by these "legislative innovators."

2030:  American education is becoming a global force to be reckoned with.  Although Chinese diligence and innovative education in China may leave us behind for some time to come, most observers consider the U.S. to be driving the future in terms of K-12 education.  As educational institutions cultivate healthier habits, graduates from many institutions receive discounted health insurance.  The health industry has been partially de-regulated, and as a consequence specialists in "healthy living" have joined forces with K-12 educational organizations and insurance companies to create "lifestyle plans" that often include discounted food options, massage, bodywork, meditation, exercise, vacations, entertainment, etc. that, in combination, result in significantly reduced rates of heart disease, cancer, obesity, and other "lifestyle diseases" of the 20th century.  Residential corporations work closely with lifestyle suppliers.  Nevada state government has been contracted out to a legislative innovator; this corporation has various contracts with several different lifestyle providers and residential corporations to create custom legal environments appropriate to different customer groups throughout Nevada.

2040:  The average American currently earns $100,000 per year in 2004 dollars and average life expectancy at birth is up to 120 years.  More importantly, most people thoroughly enjoy life.  Private corporations manage most towns and cities.  Women and children can walk through the streets of any city in America day or night alone and be perfectly safe.  People look and feel healthy and trim.  Learning and culture are alive and vibrant.   Most people work when they want to, for as long as they want, where they want.   Physical and emotional stress is rare except when deliberately chosen.  People devote an increasing percentage of their time and incomes to developing their mind, body, and spirit.  Suicide and depression, violent crime, spousal and child abuse, are all almost non-existent.  Because these trends are even more dramatic in Nevada, New Hampshire and Arizona have also contracted out government management to innovative corporations: the sense is widespread that we have only begun to learn how to live well. 

III.  Progress Towards Global Sustainability

2010:  The scientific community is beginning to learn the economic principles that form the basis for FLOW.   Several universities around the world have developed joint programs between science, engineering, economics, and law in order to begin to develop intelligent solutions to environmental problems. Widespread support develops for a green tax shift using geonomic principles and for innovative property rights solutions and Ostrom solutions to commons problems

2020:  Groundwork is being developed for flexible, intelligent legal frameworks that protect the environment while providing incentives for technological innovation.  Global frameworks addressing issues relating to air, water, and biological diversity are being developed by international teams of scholars.

2030:  Combinations of governments, NGOs, universities, private corporations, and individuals are creating contracts that allocate resources in ways designed to improve the environment.  Participation is voluntary, and levels of participation in the agreements vary widely based on the quality and intelligence of the contract design.  As this trend becomes more obvious, consortia of scientists, engineers, lawyers, and economists band together to produce better contracts and monitoring provisions.  Chinese private communities are leading the way in purchasing their services.

2040:  "Sustainability Contracting" has become a global business.  Several different companies offer environmental design and enforcement contracts.  Most nations, cities, and other political units, as well as most major corporations, are signatories to one or several of these contracts.  International under-writers provide substantial discounts to entities that sign credible environmental contracts.  Those few nations and corporations that have not signed typically face large insurance costs and are vulnerable to larger liability suits when they violate another nation or corporation's environmental well-being.  While this field is highly complex, combining many different types of technical expertise, an innovation dynamic has developed which is producing concretely better results.  Most people experience a natural environment that is healthy, aesthetically satisfying, and filled with vibrant, diverse eco-systems.

A Concrete Vision of a School in 2060 as a Result of the
FLOW Activism Through 2040

I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.
L. Frank Baum

By 2060 “schools” have become almost unrecognizable to beings from the early 21st century.  Indeed, most young people learn academic content by means of software or by means of brain implants and develop their other human characteristics in deliberate, chosen communities.

 On my 100th birthday I apply to visit “The Wellness Community.”  This community is known for growing the best organic computers, for its eco-habitats, and for its healing resources.  The community sells custom evolved computers to major clients around the world to manage complex organizational systems.  Its own communities are managed by their evolved organic computers to ensure constant improvements:  the system automatically monitors brain waves, gene activation, hormonal levels, immune system functioning, and hundreds of specific biochemical markers in order to optimize well-being.  The inhabitants’ immune systems are such that they almost never become ill; the communities spend almost nothing on health care.  They have developed habits that prevent the onset of chronic diseases; combined with new techniques to slow aging processes, the expected life expectancy of people from this community is 160 years and growing.   Because of their profound expertise in human well-being, sick people from the mainstream culture pay for limited recuperation periods in the community.  There is a long waiting list to have one’s children accepted by the communities, despite the fact that the communities are replicating themselves as fast as they can while maintaining the integrity of the community structure. 

There are ten levels of this type of community.  After a comprehensive physical and emotional examination, it is determined that I am capable of visiting the sixth level.  Prior to entry, I must undergo a six-day preparation period in which I live in a special chamber in which my diet, activity, and sensory input are carefully managed.  The preparation includes exercises, meditation, bodywork, a soundtrack that combines music and mythical experience, special baths, and mineral and vitamin treatments.  Apparently, prior to preparing outsiders to visit these communities, some people would have heart attacks, or experience mental breakdowns, or become incontinent, or otherwise lose control over basic functions.  It is explained to me that visitors from regular life are not prepared for the intensity of experience available in the community.

I awaken.  As I transition from dream-state to consciousness, I am first aware of warm lights and fragrant tropical smells, then waves of distant sounds, waterfalls, surf, voices, and singing in the distance.  I then feel female fingertips almost, but not quite, touching my temples and my ankles.  Gradually a warm energy begins to flow back and forth from my head to feet and back again, initially small and gentle, and gradually with greater and greater warmth and intensity.  Finally I open my eyes and am helped to sit up.  I am given a flask of cool, silky liquid, which I drink slowly.  And I look around.  I am in a semi-enclosed space with a waterfall crashing over a bright-green, moss-covered cliff.  At the base of the waterfall is a small, deep pond, and then a short river flows through a sandy beach and into the ocean.  There are transparent sheets of a clear substance that partially enclose the space; I’ve been told that climate control is achieved by means of a combination of changes in the air flow through the crystal sheets combined with the activation and de-activation of heat-producing or absorbing micro-organisms that live in the moss on the waterfall.  The level 6 community in which I have been permitted entry is devoted to young people between the ages of 13 to 25; I am told about 300 live in this community, visiting their families whenever they please.  They are scattered around the space, some alone, some in small groups.  Some are reading, some are using a technical device, some are engaged in some type of martial art, some are preparing a meal, and some are diving through the waterfall into the pond.  There are caves off to the side that apparently contain study quarters for those who want isolation or technical equipment.

What is most striking is the constant singing and music.  It varies and undulates constantly.  Sometimes there are high-pitched solos, then group a cappella, then a flute.  Sometimes drums would start, and then chanting.  Sometimes the music would all emanate from one corner of the enclosure; at other points voices and instruments would appear from all different places.  The patterns were strange and unfamiliar; every moment flowed seamlessly into the next, there were no sharp changes, and yet the whole set of sounds was constantly changing.  Somehow the group as a whole seemed to know what should come next.

Michael Strong

Michael Strong is a pioneer in education and independent learning. He is an author and the founder of innovative Socratic, Montessori and Paideia programs in Alaska, California, Texas and New Mexico. Michael is co-founder and serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Visionary Officer of FLOW.