World Knowledge Bank®

About the Historic World Knowledge Bank®, A Virtual Democratic Country

SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF THE WORLD KNOWLEDGE BANK®

1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5.. 6.. 7..

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1.. That all life has a creative insight into living and that each life develops knowledge that is irreplaceable and needed by the human community.

“Creative insight into living” means that every moment that you are alive you are faced with a complex set of challenges and circumstances that you need to understand, internalize, and act on. That means that life is flush with new understanding and new questions about how to live. When you realize that you have this creative insight, you are empowered to find your own way, and you realize you don’t need credentials to express your own creativity and contribution. Recognizing this capacity creates new opportunities for individuals and communities.

2.. That taken together all this life knowledge is a most powerful force for good in the world, because when you share what you know in a just way, you sustain your life and that of those around you and transform the way the world works.

When you recognize the value in yourself and others, you open up new conduits for understanding, exchange, and growth. It makes us free to meet each other. It reshapes the relationship between you, the individual, and the many. The act of listening to each other’s knowledge is a loving and constructive act. Appreciating this knowledge opens you up to both a recognition of your own value and to the awareness that you are part of something larger.

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3.. That every life has a right to revenues generated through or from the shared use of its knowledge.

From a global point of view, this creativity is a new source of wealth in the world. It is currently distributed more or less evenly. We have an opportunity to keep it that way, unlike what has happened with other sources of wealth, where its ended up in fewer and fewer hands. This opportunity for wealth is a rare event and the World Knowledge Bank® is dedicated to creating the infrastructure that supports the fair access to and equitable distribution of this wealth.

4.. That every life has a right to the privacy of their thoughts and the right to share
that knowledge as they chose rather than having it taken from them.

To move freely and wholely, your mind and body must belong to you. Civilization has a tradition of ensuring physical integrity. So we can take that body of law and build on it by extending it to your mind and your thoughts. The way things work now, someone else can own the fruit of your creativity. Your thoughts are used to someone else’s advantage and you may not reap any reward from it. You should decide when and how your knowledge is shared, but until now there hasn’t been a structure to support your retaining control of your own thoughts and ideas.

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5.. You are responsible to be mindful of the impact your knowledge has on others.

Sometimes what we know can harm others even if that’s not our intent in sharing it. Some examples of knowledge that could cause harm includes information about how to inflict hurt, gossip, or simply knowledge that relates to something intense, disturbing, or traumatic. In those cases, we might choose not to share our knowledge or we may warn people that the content is sensitive and that they should approach it with caution.
As living beings our primary lifework is to figure out how to live with ourselves and with others. Most of us have to root out what we don’t like about ourselves, admit it and take responsibility. This taking-responsibility is often difficult but it is this self knowledge that empowers us by allowing us to better understand our own behavior,giving us more tools and a broader range of creative acts with which to live and enjoy life—while making us less likely to injure others unknowingly. In this way
every moment is a living moment, an opportunity for demonstrating character.

6.. That you are freed to share your knowledge more generously when there is a safe
and strong place and way to do that.

There can be fear in sharing what you know. Fear that people won’t understand, will find it strange, or will use it in a way that doesn’t feel right to you. When you are part of a community that takes responsibility for its actions, pledges honesty, and works together to resolve disputes, then you can develop your creations and let their forms emerge without inhibition. To allow for a greater range of creativity, you have to let ideas emerge in a raw way without hesitation and allow the process to unfold. Simply put, the safety encourages both more creativity and more sharing for everyone’s benefit.

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7.. That you can help create more safety and justice by participating in and wrestling collectively with the challenges and responsibilities for resolving concerns and disputes around how our knowledge is used out in the changing world.

By participating, you contribute to the resources available to resolve disputes in peaceful and creative ways. By participating, you take responsibility for the consequences that are created for you and others. Standing on this foundation of shared life experiences, we invent new ways of working together in which both justice and mercy are indispensable but where, of the two, mercy is the greater good.

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