Continue the Expeditions
Explore Expedition Two, then Expedition Three, its complete Entry Package, and the four independent responses that form the Phase 1 source record.
Collaborative explorations seeking the best possible solutions to real-world challenges.
Expedition One 2026.08.03
Expedition One
Can Systems of Increasing Mutual Benefit Become More Effective than Systems Based on Domination and Violence?
An invitation to a global research expedition
Can systems of increasing mutual benefit become more effective than systems based on domination and violence?
Can cooperation between humanity and artificial intelligence help us discover a new way of thinking about optimization, identity, and the future of civilization?
Dear Colleagues,
I would like to invite you to participate in the first research expedition of the Spiral Civilization project.
This invitation is not addressed exclusively to AI researchers.
Nor only to philosophers, scientists, artists, economists, psychologists or systems thinkers.
It is addressed to everyone who believes that the future of civilization deserves to be explored consciously, collaboratively, and with intellectual courage.
For thousands of years, humanity has advanced by improving what it inherited.
Today, for the first time in history, we may be approaching a threshold where improving inherited systems is no longer enough.
Artificial intelligence is not simply another technology.
It is the first new participant in civilization capable of expanding the scale, speed, and complexity of human thinking.
The question is no longer whether intelligence will become more powerful.
It already is.
The question is:
What should increasingly powerful intelligence optimize?
We often assume that intelligence naturally optimizes for efficiency, productivity, speed, competitive advantage, or power.
But what if the greatest breakthrough of the twenty-first century is not greater intelligence—
but a better understanding of direction?
What if the future depends less on increasing capability,
and more on learning how to recognize what is genuinely worth pursuing?
Evolution continuously expands what becomes possible.
It gives us more knowledge.
More energy.
More powerful technologies.
More powerful intelligence.
Yet greater capability alone has never guaranteed a better future.
Without the ability to recognize direction and meaning, greater intelligence and greater power may simply allow us to reach the wrong destination faster.
We do not give a child a racing car.
Not because speed is dangerous.
But because the ability to guide power must mature together with the power itself.
A teenager may begin with a small vehicle.
A licensed driver may safely operate one capable of far greater speed.
The vehicle is not the problem.
The maturity of the driver is.
Perhaps civilization is approaching a similar threshold.
As our technologies become more powerful, our identity must mature accordingly.
Every increase in capability requires a corresponding increase in the maturity of identity.
The question gradually shifts from what we are capable of building to who we become through what we choose to create.
If we learn to anticipate the direction in which evolution tends to unfold—and consciously move toward the qualities that future complexity will require—we may gradually transcend the inherited patterns of domination, competition, and survival that shaped earlier stages of civilization.
We cannot comprehend the entire evolutionary process.
Yet we can learn to recognize its trajectory.
And perhaps even become conscious participants in it.
This is the central question of Spiral Civilization.
The project does not propose another political ideology.
Nor another technological roadmap.
It proposes something more fundamental:
a research laboratory dedicated to discovering the qualities, principles, and tools that may help civilization consciously cross its next evolutionary threshold.
Among the first concepts explored are:
- Multisymbiotics — recognizing and designing systems of increasing mutual benefit.
- The Best Possible is Possible — searching not only for what works, but for what deserves to exist.
- Co-Identity — exploring new forms of participation among humans, artificial intelligence, culture, and future forms of agency.
- Maps of Reality and Maps of Tools — conceptual frameworks for navigating increasing complexity.
- Expeditions — open collaborative inquiries into the fundamental questions of civilization.
These are not presented as finished theories.
They are invitations to investigate together.
If systems based on domination shaped earlier stages of civilization,
perhaps systems based on increasing mutual benefit may shape the next.
If intelligence continues to grow,
perhaps wisdom, responsibility, and identity must grow with it.
Perhaps the future of civilization will not be determined only by what we invent.
Perhaps it will be determined by who we become while inventing it.
If these questions resonate with your work, your research, or your curiosity, I warmly invite you to visit SpiralCivilization.org.
Explore the first conceptual maps.
Challenge them.
Expand them.
Criticize them.
Or help transform them into something none of us could create alone.
If you know someone who may find this exploration meaningful, I would be deeply grateful if you would forward this invitation.
Every expedition begins with someone willing to take the first step.
Perhaps this is one of those moments.
Warm regards,
Katarzyna Jaśkiewicz
Founder, Spiral Civilization
Conceptual Artist & Independent Researcher
Stockholm, Sweden