Holotopia

Keywords: holotopia

This article is about holotopia as a keyword. For the corresponding prototype, see Holotopia prototype.

Instead of a definition

Seeing things whole and making things whole leads to holotopia.

Turning on the light. Learning to use information and knowledge as they best may serve us.

When we develop the capability to use knowledge to illuminate what is hidden and see the whole – then a whole new order of things is seen as both necessary and possible; and we become empowered to create it.

We called this new order of things holotopia, to point to the similarities and the differences it has compared to the more common utopias. Like the utopias, the holotopia is a highly desirable view of the future. Indeed, we feel it is more desirable than the utopias tend to be. And unlike the utopias, the holotopia is readily realizable. Indeed, the holotopia is ready to emerge almost by itself, as soon as we allow ourselves to see things differently. The reason is that we already own the knowledge needed for its fulfillment.

Another reason for this name is that the holotopia naturally results when we embrace wholeness (making things whole) as value, and as a rational goal.

As an insight or a vision, the holotopia changes the tone of our engagement with contemporary realities and with our future quite thoroughly. Although many of us may not live to experience the new order it envisions – it is now, before the fulfillment, that the creative opportunities abound!

Holotopia also changes the way we go about handling the contemporary issues—both those large ones, and those smaller and even personal ones: Instead of fixing, we focus on rebuilding; instead of struggling with "problems" within the existing order of things, we focus on changing that order of things.

Understanding holotopia

The insight we call the holotopia is made concrete and palpable in terms of five insights, about five large and centrally important themes of interest. Each of them alone is sufficient to see the need and the possibility of a profound, Renaissance-like change. Even more interesting, however, are their relationships, which show why we cannot realistically make the changes that any of them points to – without acting on all of them. Together, the five insights make transparent the paradoxical insight that the holotopia stands for:

Comprehensive change can be easy – even when smaller and obviously necessary changes may be impossible.