Dear readers, visitors and friends –
Welcome to Knowetix. Thank you for spending some moments of your life with us. We hope to get to know you better.
Our initial project, Points of Failure, explores the transformation we all know is required for humanity to survive, but is nonetheless painful in the extreme. We, Hyacinth Wallace and I, often think our current formative age is like the caterpillar in its cocoon. After stripping its tree of every leaf in sight it spins what it believes will be a comfortable, protective surrounding. Then everything about itself dissolves. Its very skin turns to ooze.
Can you imagine anything so frightening? Of course you can. Just read the newsfeeds everyday. But in that painful metamorphosis there is a pattern for a future existence. And as the old form dissolves this pattern gradually takes form until finally it has the strength to emerge as a completely different life. Nothing of the caterpillar remains. It all had to die.
We set Points of Failure 250 years into the future. Some progress has been made – the nations have established a Global Accord to abolish all out war. But much of the social order remains in which institutions harness human resources and initiative through domination, manipulation, appeals to greed and playing on guilt. Justice and harmony are elusive, so human misery continues.
Our first volume, INTERWOVEN, examines, among other themes, why we cede our autonomy to a small cadre of oligarchs who have no interest in the welfare of anyone else. They have demonstrated no competence to establish harmony among themselves, much less nations, cultures, religions, classes, or across gender. Yet we give them our time, our attention, our own minds, even our children. Why? What is the alternative? What will it take for us to decide differently?
The story occurs after the armistice so we can focus on the transformation required of the spirit in which people relate to one another. The doctrine of enlightened self interest can plausibly lead to a global accord. Even rich people concede that bombing each other drains material resources. But this will not be sufficient for peace, which requires justice as a prerequisite for harmony.
The peace we long for calls for transformation en masse in the way human beings regard each other at all levels of society. This inner, spiritual transformation of attitudes, feelings and motivations defies codification or precise definition. For example, what does it mean to be free of prejudice? The history of race relations in the United States alone should convince anyone that changing the legal code, however necessary, is insufficient to eliminate racial prejudice. Yet if we cannot codify such changes how will they take root and spread? And then there is the problem of the half-light. For example, we all yearn for a world devoid of prejudice, yet have been reared since birth in a world riddled with it. How do we learn to cultivate communities and institutions that do not continue with this contamination? These are the kinds of world-building challenges Knowetix seeks to learn about.
I’ve learned, ironically, that transformation starts at home. My conversation with Hyacinth in November 2022, before we even had a name, was less than ten minutes. We discussed an idea for a sci-fi trilogy and decided it was sufficiently interesting and original to pursue. That was the easy part. What followed has been our own caterpillar to butterfly transformation.
Our families have been close friends for 30 years, since Hyacinth was six years old. We lived around the corner from each other. Both families were active participants in the Baha’i Community. We were often at each other’s homes. But by the time Hyacinth entered college we saw each other less and less – just an occasional phone call or meet up for coffee. Nineteen years later how would my role as Baha’i community elder, play out as co-authors in a business partnership with a young woman I’ve known primarily as a child?
I’ll leave it to a future space to delve into the difficulties I encountered in that transition. For now I’d like to just say that the love my wife and I felt for Hyacinth, however deep, was not enough. We (Hyacinth and I) both brought heavy burdens into Knowetix. I think the first breakthrough moment came when we separately reached the same conclusion – if we were to meet the daunting challenge of bringing to the world a gift which neither of us could create by ourselves we had to commit to sacrifice personal tendencies and bad habits that interfered. I remember that moment. The first of many.
Speaking personally, transformation is not an abstract concept. For me it has meant listening without being ashamed of who I am and where I come from. But being willing to hear that my habits can give offense. And then being willing to change those habits. And then checking every once in a while to see if I’ve made any progress. Hyacinth has had her own struggles in this process, and that is her story to share. Essentially, in my own life I’ve realized the need for a higher etiquette to shape my interactions with her, and by implication, others – an etiquette that conveys respect, encouragement, kindness, frankness, cooperation and affection.
When we began this project, I thought it would be quick. Two and a half years later we’re still at it. It feels like a journey to the sun. We’ve come so far, but compared to the distance yet to travel we’ve hardly made a start.
Please, let us travel together. We kept our first novel short so it can start conversations, bind hearts, meet the challenge of the half-light. We know all of you have your own gifts and contributions to make, your own stories to write and tell. We hope to offer a platform to support people bringing these gifts forward for the betterment of all. What would it be like if a billion voices, really a billion, sang together!!
Imagine that!
Peace and courage to all, Roi