Calling All Explorers
We are called to brave new ways.
We hear this calling from every direction:
We hear it from within.
We are imbued with the need to seek meaning and purpose. We are born with the yearning and capacity to expand what we understand. We retain an ancient affinity for awe and wonder.
To live happy and fulfilling lives,
We need to act on these impulses.
We hear it from without.
The world stumbles from crisis to crisis. The unintended consequences have become the main result. Solving problems of our own making has become society's primary job. This much is clear: our ways aren’t working.
To survive and thrive in a complex world,
We need to see new things and try new ways.
We hear it from the past.
Attitudes and behaviors that reliably led to success not long ago can now cause failure. Older, ancient wisdom is proving more enduring – and suggests that modern minds are missing something big.
To renew our understanding of a fast-changing world,
We need to rethink, reimagine and relearn what we think we know.
We hear it from the future.
Everywhere we see horizons that might lead to better worlds. The tension we feel between the way things are and the way things could be is becoming unbearable.
To arrive to a future where we’re actually living better,
We need to challenge those horizons.
This call to explore is timeless and urgent. It is a hardwired part of our own happiness. And it is essential to human progress and wellbeing.
We need to answer it.
It is getting harder and harder to answer this call.
To explore is to be, think and act in a mode that contradicts much of modern work and life.
To explore is to prefer new questions over straight-and-simple answers. To prefer emergent possibilities over pre-set destinations. To prefer surprising consequences over intended results. To prioritize finding good beginnings over getting things done.
To explore also means finding others to explore with us. The journeys we make, whether inward- or outward-bound, reveal more new things in ourselves and in the world when we make them together. We all have gaps on our maps that only other people can help us discover. And only if we meet as explorers — with the aim not to conquer or convince, but to be changed by the exchange.
We call any space where people think, act and interact as explorers basecamp.
To begin new journeys, we need these spaces.
The spaces where explorers meet are vanishing...
...from our work lives.
The ever-increasing demands to get more things done faster within our own silo leaves little time, energy or permission to feel our way, imagine new horizons, generate missing conversations or bring forth new connections.
...from our digital lives.
Our social networks feed us a filtered diet of information that reinforces how we already see the world.
...from community life.
Widening gaps of income, education, age, race and identity are making the simplest encounters with different perspectives harder and rarer – let alone deeper connections.
...from democratic life.
Knowledge and values that once were common ground are now dividing into toxic contests between competing interests.
...from our personal lives.
Now, more than at any other time in history, we have the freedom to choose who we become as individuals. But we have never had less time or space to think about it.
As these spaces vanish, it becomes harder and harder for us to be in this world or see this world any other way than how we already do.
Our lives and our world today are lessened by the journeys not begun, from starting points that no longer exist.
Neue Geo is a Society to help all of us answer our most important calls to journey.
We stoke the urge to explore at every level: personal, interpersonal and collective. We fuel people’s exploratory spirit with original thinking, expansive insights and brave community.
We create and defend the spaces where people can meet as explorers and begin brave new journeys. We manifest basecamp in every scale and context, from interpersonal to international, and we share the methodologies for people to do the same themselves.
We nurture and celebrate the culture of exploration. We tell stories, log learnings and create connections to enable all of us to share our journeys of discovery and be guides to one another.
The Society's vision is a new, global Age of Discovery – one in which every person is on their own essential voyage and we all arrive at new, greater understandings of the world, ourselves and each other.
Do you hear the call to explore?
