Article Index — Quick Reference

Kent Dahlgren
4 min readFeb 12, 2021

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In a derivative of the the Gashadokuro (餓者髑髏) trope, a Japanese story tells of a man in the Hiroshima Prefecture who is in a field at night and, hearing an eerie voice moaning, “My eye hurts,” finds a skeleton there with a bamboo shoot growing from its eye socket. He removes the bamboo shoot and offers the skeleton dried boiled rice, upon which the skeleton tells him the story of its murder and its personal history, and rewards him for his kindness.

I frequently write on a variety of topics. The articles are categorized and linked here for easy reference.

Topic Overview:

  • 214 Alpha related
  • Anti-Fragile Playbook
  • Community Activation and Launch Methodology (C.A.L.M.)
  • Industry
  • Cultural / Economic / Political
  • Security
  • Fiction and Musings

Articles — 214 Alpha-Related

214 Alpha is a software and services company that gives a small town or community everything they need to launch and sustain a self-funded economic stimulus, using money that normally stays “under the table,” and activating leadership sourced from within the community, so they can reclaim their dignity, on their terms.

Company Cultural Value: Enoughness

(Introduction) Who Are you Guys?

Values: Listen to the Young

Introduction: The Anti-Fragile Playbook

A joint effort with Ruth Glendinning of Future Story Lab, the Anti-Fragile Playbook is a step-by-step guide for those seeking to deliver a self-funded economic revival that addresses the root causes of generational poverty and trauma

(Community Design) Is this Communism? What is this Anti-Fragile Playbook?

Anti-Fragile Playbook: January 2021 Update

Community Activation and Launch Methodology (C.A.L.M.) Step 1: Outrage

There’s a lot of reasons to become “fed up,” but frustration alone must take a back seat if lasting change is to be made. The Community Activation and Launch Methodology guides activists from outrage to stewardship through actions designed to help them reclaim their dignity on their terms.

(Outrage) Fire as a Catalyst for Rebirth

(Outrage) From Outrage to Stewardship, through failure — Retrospective

(Outrage) Failure as a Catalyst for Systemic Quality

(Outrage) If I Could Go Back and Do it Again — Retrospective

C.A.L.M. Step 2: Vision

As the outrage of the prior stage gave way and made space for solution-oriented creativity, a vision is formed, and this vision will need to be shared with others. This second step where you begin to first imagine the rough but essential building blocks of a self-sustaining, self-governing community.

(Vision) Growing up at the Feet of Giants

(Community Design) Thanksgiving in July

(Vision) A Neighborhood Start-up’s “First Bite”

(Vision) Small-Town Economic Revival: a How-To

(Community Design) A Shared Vision

(Community Design) The Church

(Community Design) Dancing through Difficulties, “by the Numbers,” into Sovereignty

(Community Design) A Franchise for a Neighborhood “Citizens Assembly,” Featuring Self-Funded Earn and Learn…

(Community Design) Veteran’s Day: from a formerly homeless vet

(Community Design) How can 214 help my community? (special needs kids)

C.A.L.M. Step 3: Community Building

There is no such thing as a community created by a single person; all successful communities relied upon the collaborative efforts of a small but dedicated core team, rallied around your original vision defined and fine-tuned during the prior step. Through your example your successful activism, advocacy, and community building efforts will demonstrate your community’s first examples of self governance.

(Team Design) The 214 “org” Holonic Model for Self-Governance

(Team Design) Holonic Performance Tuning (Fire, Leaf, and Water)

(Team Design) Holons: Defusing the Emotional Echo Chamber

(Team Design) Minimum Size, Minimum Participants, Maximum Capacity: Holons

(Team Design) Holon Magic

(Team Design) Organizational Limit: Size

(Team Design) Personal Development: the Rock Tumbler

(Team Design) Personal Development: There’s a Place for Everyone

(Team Building) Holonic Care and Feeding: the Fovea

C.A.L.M. Step 4: Funding

Once you have followed the previous three steps it is a lot easier to secure funds, and far less likely there will be conflict within the community. Take it from the experts: you have to complete steps one (OUTRAGE!) through three (Community Building), first, or you will likely raise very little money, and if you do, it will result in chaos unless necessary precautions are taken.

(Funding) It takes Money to Make Money (the soft capital edition)

(Funding) Month-by-Month: the Financial Model

(Funding) Knowledge vs Wisdom

(Self-funding) Scarcity is Perceived; Wealth Abounds

(Funding Design) A Self-Funded Economic Stimulus (Chamber of Commerce)

C.A.L.M. Step 5: Activation

Activation always happens in steps. Think about how to create a pilot, with a limited scope of participants, and a limited scope of functionality, and prepare for failures and the maturity to not take yourself so seriously as you iterate through cycles of improvement. Laughter is key.

Alchemy

Cooking as Metaphor: Alchemy part 2.14

(Community Activation) The “Moms”

(Community Building) Operations 101

(Planning) A Landslide Does not Begin With Boulders, it Begins With Pebbles. With Sand.

(Community Building) Project Management

Community Arbitration: a Legal “How it Works”

C.A.L.M. Step 6: Launch

Launch: this is when the rubber hits the road. This may sound difficult, but in fact, if you did all your work in the prior steps, this part is actually pretty simple (but not always easy); the adoption of technology, operations, and services in support of your vision, implemented in phases (steps), and in the spirit of full-transparency, honesty, and continuous improvement. Featured: Nic Rivera

(Community Design) Hyper-local Basic Income

(Community Design) Childcare Co-op: a Neighborhood-Level how-to

(Community Design) Health Care, Child Care, and Basic Income

(Community Design) Anti-Fragility, “Keystones,” Diversification, and Up-Cycling

(Reputation Economy) The Genesis of Selvage

(Reputation Economy) The Genesis of Weft

(Reputation Economy) Forgiveness and the Elastic Freeing of Opportunity Cost

C.A.L.M. Step 7: Stewardship

As soon as your vision becomes a reality, your core team will be in the thick of acting as a trustee of your own community. An investment in stewardship is essential to operational continuity in the wake of departure, displacement, or death of charter members.

(Stewardship) Stewards of the Land, on Behalf of Gaia

(Governance) are you in Creative Mode? Or Survival Mode?

(Pollination) Franchises as a form of Autonomous Self-Governance

Industry

General industry-related topics

Blockchain and “cloud computing” — market adoption similarities

The Decentralized Industry isn’t Ready

Retrospective: It Pays to Hold Your Ground

How Facebook’s Use of Psychology Inspired Civil Strife

Cultural / Economic / Political

(Cultural) Is Erik Prince Evil?

(Political) Improving Government from the Bottom-up

(Economy) Fiscal Velocity

(Cultural) The Weaponization of Memetics (intro)

Security

Not really security, but. You know.

Closing the Loop on Open Source

Honey Pots and Honey Tokens — a Primer

Johan Nygren’s Pseudonym Pairs (P2P Identity Verification)

Fiction and Other Musings

I like to write stories.

Death is a Gift

Corporations: the AI Apocalypse

Fiction: Unchained

Coyote

The Weaponized, Linguistic Inevitability of Hip Hop

Coryn

Blackberries as Metaphor

Profile: John Keats

Profile: Emanuel Lasker

Hacking the Tapestry 095

Fiction: Squirrel Babies aren’t Real

Fiction: Evelyn the Eleventh

Fiction: Armageddon Awakening

Fiction: Marina’s Holon of Five

Fiction: Marina’s Secret

Fiction: Awakening of the Great Ones

Fiction: The Psyop

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Kent Dahlgren

Product management fix-it guy. World-famous people skills. Extremely small hands. (edit) marketing lady says I’m also supposed to say “CEO of software company”