I love this article, Tom. Forrest Wilson, myself, and a team of people have been building the Wellbeing Economy and a community for it called the Luminaries - https://luminaries.ouremergingfuture.com/
Ah yes, the IDW: a constellation of galaxy brains who mistook monologues for medicine. Diagnosed society like it was a lab rat but prescribed nothing but “be more like me.” Noble minds trapped in a mirror maze of their own brilliance. And then came the Liminal Web—beautiful, poetic, swirling in soulful uncertainty, but with the practical traction of a barefoot monk on an ice rink.
Now, enter the World Wise Web, the sacred middle path: not too heady, not too floaty—feet in the soil, heart in the stars. Finally, we’re asking not just what should we do, but who must we become—and about damn time. Because the metacrisis isn’t just a system failure, it’s a soul amnesia.
I’m vibing with this: small, intimate sanghas of high-agency humans who actually do the work—inner and outer. No more “10,000-word white papers into the void.” No more community-as-a-brand, leadership as performance art. Just real, wise, imperfect people tending their garden with grit, grace, and Google Calendar.
The Buddha said the next Buddha would be a community. He didn’t say it would be a Discord server, but hey—close enough.
Count me in. Pass the incense and the integration software.
Yes, Tom, let us weave a world wise web of interconnected communities. I’m working on this too by midwifing my own community called Wisdom Exchange.
But I’d like to underscore the important notion of balance - that it's not just what we’re building, but how we're building it that may make all the difference in the long run. This is where I believe the feminine quality of relationality is essential.
While we need vision and structure, we also need communal spaces where vulnerability and trust can be cultivated over time. Where people feel safe enough to see and be seen and everyone is committed to being changed in the interactions with others. Relational intelligence must not just be valued in theory, but embodied in practice.
The mature feminine spirit doesn’t push or demand. She invites. She listens. She attends to the space between us. And it is in this space the slow, tender, and relational work of coherence can emerge.
If we want our communities to endure, they must be rooted in this deeper way of belonging with one another and our surroundings. Let us not aim only for a network of competent minds, but a fabric of human hearts - strong enough to hold difference, resilient enough to repair rupture, and wise enough to move at the speed of trust...to respond to what the moment is asking of us.
This is the kind of world I believe we can co-create together. And I see your work, Tom, as adding a valuable piece to our collective endeavor.
I deeply value your experience and perspective in this area. Especially it's somewhere I need to improve personally (my latest piece on shadow revealed quite how much!).
Although my public content has tried to focus on love (albeit through an admittedly masculine/scientific lens), it's impossible for me to demostrate to people currently outside the community how much love is inside it. My answer would be: "quite a lot, but I always want more!"
We are a very new community, and definitely male-heavy and left-brained. If we fail, it will be because of this weakness. So I welcome the comment.
I hope in time you can provide specific guidance on what we can do to improve/cultivate that sense, or provide inspiration for other watching gardeners looking to plant their own seeds.
Three cheers for the w(wise)w! Appreciated your connection to Metis, which definitely feels like a crucial ingredient(manifestation) of wisdom. A term I'd first heard of from Cynthia Bourgeault who describes the term as "the capacity to take skillful, decisive, appropriate action based on three-centered awareness (head, heart, and body)". https://wisdomwaypoints.org/resources/metis-teaching-by-cynthia-bourgeault/
That’s really fun timing, because I just encountered the same triple framing from my interview with @The Fourth Way. But making the explicit link to metis was something I expected but hadn’t seen formally done yet. Cc @River Kenna https://newsletter.theleading-edge.org/p/exploring-gurdjieffs-mysteries
So good. It might be worth exploring what makes an effective 'gardener' of community. The network of communities resonates a lot. It's a bit discouraging to see how many very smart people tried to tackle what ails us without making much of a dent.
… as luck would have it (and it really was “luck”) my next interview is a 2-parter with Brian Whetten giving one answer to PRECISELY this question. And how to make a living doing it.
I sense that the agentic who are becoming more conscious (Leading Edge for example), and the conscious who are becoming more agentic (some in the Liminal Web), are two camps that will meet—and each will offer something different to the meta-crisis puzzle. The pain from their lack of consciousness or agency will compel them shore up their shortcomings.
I am sure of it. As you’ve seen from the inside of LE, it’s early but already happening. I think the liminal web needs to be more explicit with the personal benefits of deploying wealth and agency. Assuming vague philanthropic hasn’t seemed to work.
This is such a compelling and well-constructed invitation, Tom. What I appreciate most is how clearly you’re naming what so many of us have been sensing: that something new wants to emerge, not through institutions or individual genius, but through relational containers grounded in wisdom, trust, and meaningful contribution.
The terracotta warrior image struck a particular chord. I’ve been in the process of stepping out of a long phase of conventional achievement, pausing to reimagine what’s next. Reading this felt like being gently reoriented toward something essential I had started to lose sight of. It’s time to start building.
Your seven principles are spot-on. Number seven especially stood out. I’ve also wrestled with the absence of a digital infrastructure that truly supports this kind of work. Putting a pin in that for deeper exploration.
I’ll be digging into next steps to seed something in my own corner of the forest. Looking forward to connecting our communities more once I do.
The next Buddha may be a sangha, but it starts with a gardener. Huge props for moving this collective consciousness effort forward. Love it! 🙏
It's alive, vibrant, a caged animal yearning for freedom, learning to magnify its voice - for the first time without the muzzle of indoctrination and prefabricated steps.
It's inside us, intertwined with bone and marrow, cocooned in our brains, a perpetual spark seeking soil cultivated by action and teeming with traction - waiting for the chemical reaction of sweat and blood and tears brought about by those with insight beyond their years.
Those hallowed souls emboldened to face their fears.
Excellent article, Tom! And thank you for the invitation to throw our ideas and plans into the arena of public debate.
I am so grateful that your subject line popped out at me from my inbox, because this article corresponds with the ideas I’ve been thinking about and working on for many years. Alignment up the wazoo! And not just with you, but with so many of the comments. Very exciting!
I am 100% in agreement with your initial premise that for all the analysis and discussion among the megaminds, the IDW/Liminal Web hasn’t produced that much in terms of functioning solutions. I’ve written about this myself. (https://www.wavecenter.com/about/)
Your assertion that there is a vast army of terracotta soldiers in search of a meaningful way to contribute to a better world is music to my ears, because I’ve been searching for people like that.
And I’m with you on the need for a new type of digital platform to support the new forms of organization that are bubbling up out of the ether.
I could go on.
Instead, I’ll introduce the project that I and a few allies are working on. It’s called the ISIT Awareness System (ISITAS) https://isitas.org. I won’t go into it here, other than to say that it is intended to be an organization and platform designed to systematically raise our collective consciousness, and to process that awareness into practical solutions to our greatest challenges.
I know that may sound less ‘woo woo’ and more ‘silicon valley’ than some might prefer, but this project is all about the balanced cycle between the ethereal/spiritual (what we call ISish) and the material/practical (what we call ITistic). It’s about applying our wisdom effectively in the real world, and skillfully navigating the epic transformation that is currently unfolding.
According to GPT: In *Reinventing Organizations*, Frederic Laloux explores how certain organizations have evolved to operate at a higher level of consciousness and effectiveness, which he refers to as the **"Teal" paradigm**—a stage characterized by self-management, wholeness, and evolutionary purpose.
He profiles several pioneering “Teal” organizations, which he studied in depth. Here are some of the most notable ones:
---
### **1. Buurtzorg (Netherlands)**
- A Dutch home-care organization.
- Famous for its self-managing nurse teams.
- Achieved better patient outcomes with far less overhead.
### **2. Morning Star (USA)**
- A tomato processing company in California.
- Operates without traditional managers.
- Uses peer agreements instead of job titles or hierarchy.
### **3. Patagonia (USA)**
- Outdoor apparel company.
- Emphasizes environmental responsibility and employee autonomy.
- Not fully Teal by Laloux’s standards but considered “evolving.”
### **4. FAVI (France)**
- Brass foundry that makes auto parts.
- Moved from a traditional factory model to a highly decentralized one.
- Teams operate autonomously, and leadership is supportive, not directive.
### **5. Sounds True (USA)**
- A spiritual publishing and multimedia company.
- Practices conscious business and supports employee growth and purpose.
### **6. Heiligenfeld (Germany)**
- Network of psychiatric hospitals.
- Deep focus on holistic care, mindfulness, and staff development.
---
Laloux also mentions a number of other organizations that are not fully “Teal” but are **experimenting with Teal-like principles**, such as:
- **Southwest Airlines** (elements of wholeness and decentralized leadership)
Thanks for this. As a version of the World Wise Web, I have been creating approximately 100 freely available courses on the topic of applied wisdom. See: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Living_Wisely
This is excellent and neatly summarises all that we’ve been working on and seeing emerge in Portugal. I have a version of this that we have been experimenting on, and will reach out to connect. Great work Tom! I am very happy to have been introduced to your work today! And reading all the comments makes me very happy; knowing that these ideas do all spread like wild fire when we all receive them from collective consciousness or wherever they come from!
Love it. I agree with your prognosis and I’m excited to see what materializes over the next 5 years in this space. We need to build connection, and most importantly discovery. How can well intentioned people looking for this new path find each other. I’ve grown tired of the internet and the marketing. Almost lost hope, but I’m seeing a new wave approaching. 🙌🏼
I love this article, Tom. Forrest Wilson, myself, and a team of people have been building the Wellbeing Economy and a community for it called the Luminaries - https://luminaries.ouremergingfuture.com/
This was why I put out the call! Shoot me an email at tomowenmorgan@gmail.com and we can connect.
Ah yes, the IDW: a constellation of galaxy brains who mistook monologues for medicine. Diagnosed society like it was a lab rat but prescribed nothing but “be more like me.” Noble minds trapped in a mirror maze of their own brilliance. And then came the Liminal Web—beautiful, poetic, swirling in soulful uncertainty, but with the practical traction of a barefoot monk on an ice rink.
Now, enter the World Wise Web, the sacred middle path: not too heady, not too floaty—feet in the soil, heart in the stars. Finally, we’re asking not just what should we do, but who must we become—and about damn time. Because the metacrisis isn’t just a system failure, it’s a soul amnesia.
I’m vibing with this: small, intimate sanghas of high-agency humans who actually do the work—inner and outer. No more “10,000-word white papers into the void.” No more community-as-a-brand, leadership as performance art. Just real, wise, imperfect people tending their garden with grit, grace, and Google Calendar.
The Buddha said the next Buddha would be a community. He didn’t say it would be a Discord server, but hey—close enough.
Count me in. Pass the incense and the integration software.
This might be the best comment I’ve ever received.
Seconded. I've just reread it 3 more times, which puts the grand total somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 to 10.
Aleksander's comment is a 'reverse Benjamin Button' that gets better with age.
Yes, Tom, let us weave a world wise web of interconnected communities. I’m working on this too by midwifing my own community called Wisdom Exchange.
But I’d like to underscore the important notion of balance - that it's not just what we’re building, but how we're building it that may make all the difference in the long run. This is where I believe the feminine quality of relationality is essential.
While we need vision and structure, we also need communal spaces where vulnerability and trust can be cultivated over time. Where people feel safe enough to see and be seen and everyone is committed to being changed in the interactions with others. Relational intelligence must not just be valued in theory, but embodied in practice.
The mature feminine spirit doesn’t push or demand. She invites. She listens. She attends to the space between us. And it is in this space the slow, tender, and relational work of coherence can emerge.
If we want our communities to endure, they must be rooted in this deeper way of belonging with one another and our surroundings. Let us not aim only for a network of competent minds, but a fabric of human hearts - strong enough to hold difference, resilient enough to repair rupture, and wise enough to move at the speed of trust...to respond to what the moment is asking of us.
This is the kind of world I believe we can co-create together. And I see your work, Tom, as adding a valuable piece to our collective endeavor.
I deeply value your experience and perspective in this area. Especially it's somewhere I need to improve personally (my latest piece on shadow revealed quite how much!).
Although my public content has tried to focus on love (albeit through an admittedly masculine/scientific lens), it's impossible for me to demostrate to people currently outside the community how much love is inside it. My answer would be: "quite a lot, but I always want more!"
We are a very new community, and definitely male-heavy and left-brained. If we fail, it will be because of this weakness. So I welcome the comment.
I hope in time you can provide specific guidance on what we can do to improve/cultivate that sense, or provide inspiration for other watching gardeners looking to plant their own seeds.
Three cheers for the w(wise)w! Appreciated your connection to Metis, which definitely feels like a crucial ingredient(manifestation) of wisdom. A term I'd first heard of from Cynthia Bourgeault who describes the term as "the capacity to take skillful, decisive, appropriate action based on three-centered awareness (head, heart, and body)". https://wisdomwaypoints.org/resources/metis-teaching-by-cynthia-bourgeault/
That’s really fun timing, because I just encountered the same triple framing from my interview with @The Fourth Way. But making the explicit link to metis was something I expected but hadn’t seen formally done yet. Cc @River Kenna https://newsletter.theleading-edge.org/p/exploring-gurdjieffs-mysteries
So good. It might be worth exploring what makes an effective 'gardener' of community. The network of communities resonates a lot. It's a bit discouraging to see how many very smart people tried to tackle what ails us without making much of a dent.
… as luck would have it (and it really was “luck”) my next interview is a 2-parter with Brian Whetten giving one answer to PRECISELY this question. And how to make a living doing it.
This is a banger.
I sense that the agentic who are becoming more conscious (Leading Edge for example), and the conscious who are becoming more agentic (some in the Liminal Web), are two camps that will meet—and each will offer something different to the meta-crisis puzzle. The pain from their lack of consciousness or agency will compel them shore up their shortcomings.
I am sure of it. As you’ve seen from the inside of LE, it’s early but already happening. I think the liminal web needs to be more explicit with the personal benefits of deploying wealth and agency. Assuming vague philanthropic hasn’t seemed to work.
This is such a compelling and well-constructed invitation, Tom. What I appreciate most is how clearly you’re naming what so many of us have been sensing: that something new wants to emerge, not through institutions or individual genius, but through relational containers grounded in wisdom, trust, and meaningful contribution.
The terracotta warrior image struck a particular chord. I’ve been in the process of stepping out of a long phase of conventional achievement, pausing to reimagine what’s next. Reading this felt like being gently reoriented toward something essential I had started to lose sight of. It’s time to start building.
Your seven principles are spot-on. Number seven especially stood out. I’ve also wrestled with the absence of a digital infrastructure that truly supports this kind of work. Putting a pin in that for deeper exploration.
I’ll be digging into next steps to seed something in my own corner of the forest. Looking forward to connecting our communities more once I do.
The next Buddha may be a sangha, but it starts with a gardener. Huge props for moving this collective consciousness effort forward. Love it! 🙏
What a perfectly phrased comment thank you! I’m here for any support or conversation throughout.
"...something new wants to emerge..."
It's alive, vibrant, a caged animal yearning for freedom, learning to magnify its voice - for the first time without the muzzle of indoctrination and prefabricated steps.
It's inside us, intertwined with bone and marrow, cocooned in our brains, a perpetual spark seeking soil cultivated by action and teeming with traction - waiting for the chemical reaction of sweat and blood and tears brought about by those with insight beyond their years.
Those hallowed souls emboldened to face their fears.
Wow, Ethan! You have a gift for words.
Thank you, Glenn! I'm glad my words resonated, especially because you inspired them.
Excellent article, Tom! And thank you for the invitation to throw our ideas and plans into the arena of public debate.
I am so grateful that your subject line popped out at me from my inbox, because this article corresponds with the ideas I’ve been thinking about and working on for many years. Alignment up the wazoo! And not just with you, but with so many of the comments. Very exciting!
I am 100% in agreement with your initial premise that for all the analysis and discussion among the megaminds, the IDW/Liminal Web hasn’t produced that much in terms of functioning solutions. I’ve written about this myself. (https://www.wavecenter.com/about/)
Your assertion that there is a vast army of terracotta soldiers in search of a meaningful way to contribute to a better world is music to my ears, because I’ve been searching for people like that.
And I’m with you on the need for a new type of digital platform to support the new forms of organization that are bubbling up out of the ether.
I could go on.
Instead, I’ll introduce the project that I and a few allies are working on. It’s called the ISIT Awareness System (ISITAS) https://isitas.org. I won’t go into it here, other than to say that it is intended to be an organization and platform designed to systematically raise our collective consciousness, and to process that awareness into practical solutions to our greatest challenges.
I know that may sound less ‘woo woo’ and more ‘silicon valley’ than some might prefer, but this project is all about the balanced cycle between the ethereal/spiritual (what we call ISish) and the material/practical (what we call ITistic). It’s about applying our wisdom effectively in the real world, and skillfully navigating the epic transformation that is currently unfolding.
I would greatly appreciate any and all feedback!
I'd love to hear more about it (and love your almost identical diagnosis piece!) Shoot me an email at tomowenmorgan@gmail and we can discuss!
Very interesting Tom - I wrote about something similar to my own community this week….
https://open.substack.com/pub/fionaenglish/p/how-to-use-this-newsletter-as-your?r=rq28y&utm_medium=ios
Love the Rumi quote
Finding ways to build these communities consciously then becomes incredibly important when building the World Wise Web.
That's why a new paradigm of marketing and business growth needs to emerge along with these more intentional businesses.
I've been writing a little about this recently:
https://businessemerging.substack.com/p/marketing-towards-a-purpose-or-vision
Love it. Hate that we all basically have to use Patagonia as an example bc there are SO FEW other aligned companies doing this well...
Have you read Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux? He names a bunch of other « teal » businesses.
According to GPT: In *Reinventing Organizations*, Frederic Laloux explores how certain organizations have evolved to operate at a higher level of consciousness and effectiveness, which he refers to as the **"Teal" paradigm**—a stage characterized by self-management, wholeness, and evolutionary purpose.
He profiles several pioneering “Teal” organizations, which he studied in depth. Here are some of the most notable ones:
---
### **1. Buurtzorg (Netherlands)**
- A Dutch home-care organization.
- Famous for its self-managing nurse teams.
- Achieved better patient outcomes with far less overhead.
### **2. Morning Star (USA)**
- A tomato processing company in California.
- Operates without traditional managers.
- Uses peer agreements instead of job titles or hierarchy.
### **3. Patagonia (USA)**
- Outdoor apparel company.
- Emphasizes environmental responsibility and employee autonomy.
- Not fully Teal by Laloux’s standards but considered “evolving.”
### **4. FAVI (France)**
- Brass foundry that makes auto parts.
- Moved from a traditional factory model to a highly decentralized one.
- Teams operate autonomously, and leadership is supportive, not directive.
### **5. Sounds True (USA)**
- A spiritual publishing and multimedia company.
- Practices conscious business and supports employee growth and purpose.
### **6. Heiligenfeld (Germany)**
- Network of psychiatric hospitals.
- Deep focus on holistic care, mindfulness, and staff development.
---
Laloux also mentions a number of other organizations that are not fully “Teal” but are **experimenting with Teal-like principles**, such as:
- **Southwest Airlines** (elements of wholeness and decentralized leadership)
- **W.L. Gore** (known for its lattice structure)
- **Semco** (Ricardo Semler’s famously democratic company)
Would you like a chart or breakdown of how each one implements the key Teal principles?
No! That would be cool to read.
Thank you!! And that's a great point, I fall victim to that myself as they're probably one of my most referenced companies haha
As capitalism evolves to sageism, hopefully we'll have hundreds of these companies to reference rather than just a handful...
The Brunello Cuccinelli Om article is also remarkable for its uniqueness. Here's to more hares, fewer stoats.
Oh wow, I wasn't aware of that one! I'll have to check it out!!
V good @tom -- we've had some of those challenges over the years at 9others too. I'll look into The Leading Edge more now.... Thanks.
Here to chat whenever suits you!
Thanks for this. As a version of the World Wise Web, I have been creating approximately 100 freely available courses on the topic of applied wisdom. See: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Living_Wisely
Exciting! How have people been using them?
Absolutely love this Tom! Great food for thought, and something I've been experimenting with. I run such a community - The Men's Academy.
Thanks mate- will research it now.
This is excellent and neatly summarises all that we’ve been working on and seeing emerge in Portugal. I have a version of this that we have been experimenting on, and will reach out to connect. Great work Tom! I am very happy to have been introduced to your work today! And reading all the comments makes me very happy; knowing that these ideas do all spread like wild fire when we all receive them from collective consciousness or wherever they come from!
So exciting: and yes! This is why I lit the beacon
Love it. I agree with your prognosis and I’m excited to see what materializes over the next 5 years in this space. We need to build connection, and most importantly discovery. How can well intentioned people looking for this new path find each other. I’ve grown tired of the internet and the marketing. Almost lost hope, but I’m seeing a new wave approaching. 🙌🏼
This is exactly the framework for my ideal world I’ve been trying to figure out. How can I replicate it?
Aside from “just start”- I have a framework coming out in a week or so.