Welcome to Universe26

June 22, 1972. 

John Calhoun stood over the abandoned husk of what had once been a thriving metropolis of thousands. Now, the population had dwindled to just 122, and soon, even these inhabitants would be dead.

Calhoun wasn’t the survivor of a natural disaster or nuclear meltdown; rather, he was a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health conducting an experiment into the effects of overcrowding on mouse behavior. The results, laid bare at his feet, had taken years to play out.

copied from here, full article

It would be careless to draw a straight line between the mouse experiments of Universe 25 and human society—but it’s hard not to notice a few resonances. Looking at our global community, particularly across much of the neoliberal developed world, there are echoes of the same tension showing up - perhaps most notably in declining birth rates.

Similar to the mice in Universe25, it doesn’t seem that humans are running out of resources in the narrow sense; obesity is now a greater problem for humanity globally than food insecurity. While environmental limits and the consequences of human activity are real and serious, they are not the whole story. What feels more pressing are the cultural and intangible conditions that leave our species distracted and bloated, instead of delighted and nourished. In many ways, this is a crisis of human spirit. We have "Behavioral Sink".

Universe26 begins is an attempt to test a different path forward—one that puts human thriving at the center, even in the event of economic shrinkage due to population decline and the end of growth. If our species is going to flourish beyond the extractive era we’re emerging from, we’ll need businesses that are capable of creating value without insisting that “more” is always the answer.

That’s why some projects under the Universe26 umbrella focus on value creation without growth-as-default, or have growth de-centered from their business models. A couple of examples:

• PairUp: turning vacant homes into vacation destinations—creating value without expanding the accommodation supply

• BeMall: empowering people to vote with their wallets and support companies who are BEing better to the planet

Universe 25 was the catalyst that inspired Universe26, and other inspirations behind this endeavor come from a mix of thinkers and traditions, including:

Henry Mintzberg, Taoism, Erich Fromm, Václav Havel, Srđa Popović, Ayn Rand, Josef Pieper, Robert Nozick, and Cory Doctorow.

The main priority for Universe26 right now is BeMall—explore it at the link here.

For everything else unfolding under Universe26, take a look at the Portfolio 🙂