Chapter 2: Lens
I am of mixed ancestry. Native Hawaiian—where most of my political work has resided—and Chinese. Specifically, the Hakka—stubborn and sturdy nomads of the place called China, who retained their own language, foods, and ways across vast timeplace, refusing to be fully assimilated in the one Han culture. 3/6/26 7:49 PM
Ryūkō is neither Hawaiian nor Hakka. Ryūkō is my priest name, received when ordained in 2000 as a Rinzai Zen priest 3/6/26 7:49 PM
A translative context for ryu is “dynamic energy” and ko is “radiating light.” 3/6/26 7:49 PM
Tempting, but we are in an urgent slipstream 3/6/26 7:51 PM
Prescriptively, there is first the recognition of lens—its presence and its specific characteristics. Second, the interruption of one’s own lens to remove the habit filter otherwise known as our bias. Third, an understanding of how another person’s lens populates their perspective, hearing it without our own judgment, and therefore catching a glimpse of what is behind, underneath, desperately wishing to be known, and a preview of what may come. It is listening without filter plug-ins. 3/6/26 7:52 PM
Chapter 3: Slipstream
Collective acceleration is the shorthanded description of the felt experience of living in the world during a time in which everything seems to be “going faster” so much so that it is better captured as “much more going much faster.” 3/7/26 10:06 PM
During the same century, 90 percent of the Indigenous population of the Americas succumbed to a combination of illnesses imported by Europeans. In comparison, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken an estimated three million lives so far, about 4 percent of the world’s population. 3/7/26 10:06 PM
The dislocation of Indigenous peoples robbed subsequent generations of place-based wisdom. Migrants contribute to peoples and places. Migrations in and of themselves are sharp pivots. “That” used to be our life and future. Now “this” is our life and future, known and unknown. 3/7/26 10:08 PM
But 37 percent of the world’s population don’t use the internet, mostly due to access issues defined by poverty and proximity to infrastructure, which in turn impact access to information and basic services that are increasingly only available through internet-related technology. 3/7/26 10:10 PM
This accelerating time of convergence is a time in which crisis is omnipresent. The collapse of all things feels imminent. We feel it because it is impossible for there to be such turmoil on the ground and in the universe itself without great waves of energy, or perhaps the energy is created by the internal turmoil we feel. Both are probably true, which magnifies the signature and momentum of this great current moving through the timeplace. 3/7/26 10:12 PM
Thus, seen and felt, herein lies 机, the critical juncture for entering the pathway of the current. 机 is the threshold between the chaos of collective acceleration and entering the slipstream. 3/7/26 10:13 PM
Chapter 5: Horizon
The mayor’s future story is only twenty or so years in the future. A near horizon, indeed. And yet, a simple story allowed us to see, hear, and feel all that we needed to know about which horizon we desire and will work toward. The blah blah policies of regenerative tourism, ecologically safe products, community stewardship were brought to mutually thriving life. 3/8/26 2:45 PM
Our choices and our actions will carry out our predispositions, including the ones we dread 3/8/26 2:47 PM
In the near horizon, details count and are about doingness, and the rough calculation of how many units of doingness one may accomplish between now and the descriptive picture of the near horizon 3/8/26 2:48 PM
Chapter 6: Worldview
The values, the ways, the spirit mechanisms defining the world as we would have it be matter. The pause to take a breath and lift our eyes to the horizon, the mountain-scape, beyond the edge of the desert or ocean, is to tell a story that is beyond the moment’s fierce fights and to say—in story—the manifestations of the values, the ways, the spirit mechanisms of the world as we would have it be. 3/8/26 2:59 PM
Multigenerational continuity of values and responsibility . . . Worldwide relationships based on deep work and community . . . Indigenous peoples who have thrived and work beyond their ancestral birthplaces, which are recognized by traditional place names once thought erased . . . A strong purpose of world peace that must be worked for and is the responsibility of the spiritual and common folk . . . Governance beyond the institutions of government . . . Reclaimed land and elements of the land, especially water, in mutual relationship . . . Stewardship . . . Looking and planning forward, w-a-y forward . . . Beyond food security, food abundance and sharing and remembrance . . . more! 3/8/26 3:00 PM
To name a few. And yet, even naming the few, here, surely you can feel the difference in the energy and therefore the possibility more so in two dozen kinds of poke from deep sea and near shore fish now abundant, enjoyed by spirit leaders and scientists and farmers from across the globe, in relationship based on deep work and community, pondering what will unfold stepping into the fierce struggle for sustainable peace. 3/8/26 3:01 PM
Chapter 7: Leap
We have faith in our fellow travelers, fellow warriors, fellow poets, fellow farmers, fellow cooks on the path we are building together because we are building together. Trust undergirds faith. 3/8/26 3:03 PM
Chapter 9: Practices
The practice of clearing the deck(s)
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The practice of breathing
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Seek the views of others who are standing on hills. 3/8/26 3:35 PM
The practice of climbing and standing on the hill
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In interdependence, we are each as whole and as strong as we can be at any given moment, and yet choose to be intertwined. In relationship, the 1 + 1 is often > 2. Three in intertwined relationship become the foundation (think: a stool) and the core of a critical mass. Tending, feeding, weeding 3/8/26 3:36 PM
The practice of cultivation
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The practice of storytelling
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Chapter 10: Strategy
I do what I do to move ever closer to a world that lives in interdependent thriving. Or what is my meta purpose? My meta purpose is to actualize a world of interdependent thriving. And how will I measure success? Success will be measured by my descendants6 experiencing interdependent thriving in actuality and as their operational worldview. 3/8/26 3:40 PM
Transitions that leverage and meta morph
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Relational
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Creation
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Capacity
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Truth and response storytelling
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And trajectories? Well. They’re pathways that are all about navigation. The straight-through-the-opposition-no-matter-what is always available and, parenthetically, among the least successful strategic practices. Instead, consider:
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Come with
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Instead of spending many hours unable to achieve consensus let alone consent, are there eager folks, ready and willing to move? Consider flowing around the boulder(s), especially the ones of your own making. 3/8/26 3:48 PM
Flow around
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What burrowing under feels and looks like is engaging in work that furthers our forward movement out of sight and out of mind and out of the way of the people and institutions that are obstacles, and thus make our way beyond the spacetime of entrenchment. 3/8/26 3:48 PM
Burrow under
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Waiting for the tide
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There are many embedded values in the horizon of fruitful emergence. And there are certain values that embed the most fruitful of strategies consonant with a horizon of fruitful emergence.
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The value of extended kinship
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The value that the world is an island
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The value of “art is long, life is short”
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Chapter 11: Choose
We must interrupt the habit of believing that we have no choice but do this alone and choose into the kinship of teams and community. We must interrupt short-term thinking and choose multigenerational strategies that nevertheless have many short-term benefits. 3/8/26 3:56 PM
Chapter 12: Hu
Hu is the Human Quotient. Who we are matters. 3/8/26 3:58 PM
I used to think of the Hu as the bundle of characteristics and traits—some learned or honed, but most innate—that constitute the behavioral foundation for the best (and worst) leadership, warriorship, strategy, voice. 3/8/26 3:57 PM
