You can look backwards with 20/20 vision.

But in the Present moment, all you can do is Improvise.

As Isaac Asimov says, "Success by planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well."

Why must one intentionaly arrange to Improvise?

Because success through following a known recipe brings with it a kind of deadness.

Aliveness comes through invention, but so do mistakes.

We went ahead with Bridgehouse Rancho Campo even though we had never done anything like this before and certainly did not know how to do it.

One result was that when we came back to San Luis Obispo, California, we contacted the woman who got permission for us to use her uncle's land in Baja California for our Rancho Campo. When we explained where we set up Camp, she told us we were nowhere near her uncle's property. We were not even on the correct piece of land!

It ended up not to matter. This was a big lesson to learn.

Back then, in 1975, we knew almost nothing of group dynamics:

• We did not know about Torus Meeting Technology. We did not know about how to liberate group intelligence.
• We did not know the Map Of Possibility or the difference between Low Drama and High Drama.
• We did not know about Gremlin or Adult Egostate Contaminations.
• We did not know about Resistance Decision Making, or the Purple Card.
• We did not have the Distinctions between Feelings and Emotions.
• We did not know about Box Technology.
• We did not know about Matriarchy and Patriarchy and the emergence of Archiarchy.
• We did not know that we were thinking with Standard Human Intelligence Thoughtware (S.H.I.T.).
• We did not know about Conscious Feelings or how to navigate Emotional Healing Processes (EHP).
• We did not know about Gameworlds, or about Cavitating, Holding, and Navigating Space.
• But the ignorance that probably hurt us most was not knowing about the 4 Brains.

Of the 5 participants, 3 were men. Guess which color brain was dominant for the men... Right. Blue. Logic. Reason. Concepts.

One woman had a Red Brain dominant. Action. Reaction. Movement.

The other woman had a Green Brain dominant. Connection. Community. Relating.

The Blue and Red Brain people mostly thought that the Green Brain person was crazy, and vice versa.

As a result of lack of awareness, we lost out on Green Brain intelligence in our Team.

This is so sad to recount, and so sad to remember. I wish it would have been otherwise. I wish we knew how important all 4 Brain Colors are for healthy group interactions. We had all 4 Brain types present. We simply did not know how to elicit collaborative 4 Brain wisdom from our Team.

Something that helped us tremendously that we did not know about at the time is Radical Freedom. Since each of us was on this expedition to learn about things we did not learn about in college, the context of our adventure was Radical Freedom.

Fortunately, in our weekly meetings at the university before departing, we had already practiced being with others on their Quest for Radical Freedom. This built skills in the areas of asking real questions, being Radically Honest, making Discovery journeys, and engaging diverse ongoing Experiments. Then, when it came time for making Proposals during our Bridgehouse Rancho Campo, we were already connected with ourselves and with each other enough that Proposals came out easily. Our Team could say what they wanted.

This way we could make plans, solve problems, and enact choices as a Team without delay or confusion. We ended up working together like a well-oiled discovery and transformation machine. This was the delight. This was also what brought unspeakably great sadness when we each went our distinct and separate ways into our futures.

Hi Clinton!

Delighted to hear your phone message when we got home late last night.

Is this mind-reading, serendipity, or that Hohm acronym I can't remember? (E.C.C.O.) I thought about you alot last week.

Life is wonderful, AND also lots of time-stress. I spend lots of time on senior care, diabled neighbors, babysitting two granddaughters, house repairs, rental house repairs, caring for almond farm properties, gardening, Nature, SSU lectures, helping
others, and lots more. We are "Overwhelmed with abundance!"

Barbara's mother, Betty Jean Lendrum, just died on leap-year day, at the age of 96. She was in senior centers for 9 years (Rohnert Park) & hospice care (Petaluma) for 16 months, and we recently told Barbara's siblings that death might be soon. They visited from Oregon, Montana, & Alaska, until Feb 28. Perfect timing.

People keep consoling our "sorrow", and I respond that "We all die someday, and I am joyous for her happy, healthy 96 years." Some family members have angrily scolded me for such a perspective. Such "attacks" remind me of Lee Lozowick giving 'hormetic' eustress gifts to students by pretending to 'attack' them. I am "An anthropologist from Mars", consciously observing their reactions and my emotions.

We spent the last 3 days emptying Betty's room. When you phoned, we were delivering Betty's furniture to Barbara's sister in Vallejo. I also repaired her fence that was blown down by unusually violent winds. Last week I repaired two other fences, at two neighbors, that were knocked over by the same hard winds. I'm optimistically grateful that I have the health, strength, and skills for such work.

Today I bicycled to SSU twice, in the rain, to attend 3 lectures. It's a delightful ride through Nature alongside Copeland Creek. After locking the bike, I walked past 14 students: 9 were looking at their phone screens, 2 talking on their phones, and only 3 lacked obvious phones - tho they likely wore ear buds. I label this as a "phony society". Also plenty of students in wheelchairs, which would have been classified as significant before 2020 and is now much more common to see after their mandatory mRNA covax (though almost nobody sees any health correlation nor honest science about the COVID vaccinations).

I capitalize Nature {&Earth &Attention &Life}, call it "Vitamin N", point out "Nature Deficit Disorder", and prefer to spend
most time outside instead of hiding in a 'cave' with technology. Hence I have not yet had very much impact via online, tho I do post comments. I mostly avoid social media, and I worry about addiction to modern technologies and arising technologies like artificial intelligence.

My impact is more one-to-one and alone (e.g. growing organic food). I 'forgive' myself by recalling Mahatma Gandhi's quote "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." Another quote that comes to mind is "Our greatest ability as humans is not to change the world, but to change ourselves." Lots of good quotes by him about Life and impact.

When giving advice, I remember, "I should not say 'should'." Instead I suggest 'choice', so that any concept is an internal choice instead of an external command.

With ~100 emails/day, I have to search them. I had failed to notice your email from Bali because I searched for Callahan instead of nextculture. Finally found it last night, clicked on the two links, and spent nearly 4 hours exploring them. Delightful! You are substantially awakening many spirits!

Sounds like Anne-Chloé is also contributing large, positive impact. Please share this with her if it seems appropriate to do so. (Might be too wordy?)

You show lots of wonderful photos on the website of Baja, cactus, beaches, sunsets, & more! I gotta buy your new books. (At
least for me, first, then perhaps for our town's public library.)

'Bridgehouse Rancho Campo' and the 1975 meetings certainly had a major impact on my Life!

Your word 'Herstory' reminds me of the words you invented 49 years ago, like 'hesh' for he/she, 'hes' for hers/his, 'hem' for her/him. Only the last handful of years are many people now often searching for non-gender words.

I see, and share, your ongoing concern with climate change. I also interact with people who disbelieve it. I suspect that at least some of their disbelief arises from some awareness of how it is being dishonestly used for profits. I call that 'Greenwashing' and hope to someday create a website clarifying the distinction. My analogy is, "Let's rip out the Amazon Rain Forest and replace it with solar panels to stop climate change." That could also earn giga-dollars in 'carbon credits'.

Just before PG&E shifted California politics for their profit last April 2023, I studied our electricity bills that have gone up 392% in 15 years and calculated that solar panels generating 173% of our usage rate would pay for themselves in less than 8.3 years (not even counting gas furnace & water heater elimination). So we shifted our house to solar power without batteries. Analogous to owning our home, now we own our power instead of 'renting' it (and will avoid the huge inflation that seems very likely soon).

I spoke to dozens of people from a handful of solar companies, and none of them had ever even heard of the carbon footprint of solar panels nor the environmental, ethical, & slave/child labor in mining lithium & cobalt for short-life lithium-ion batteries. They just blindly assume 'all solar is good'.

To prepare for solar, we first re-roofed our house, and none of the roofing companies had ever heard of nor even understood the concept of infrared reflectivity to reduce global warming. Most modern Homo sapiens are ignorant puppets of the 'corporate profit empire'.

I like to say, "Listen to everyone and do not blindly believe anyone." 

I only know that I do not know.

Well, that's probably more than enough for now . . .

Now I have to study the ballot to intelligently vote tomorrow.

Nature, or God, grants me countless gifts every moment of my Life! {I just need a time machine.}

With Love,

Alan