Summary: The world is changing fast. People need a better mechanism to help them adapt and learn, and to also help them reach their goals.

If you think about our ‘Ladder of Empowerment’ concept below almost all organizations are on the bottom two rungs. A great boost in humanity’s ability to adapt and survive would occur if most organizations could evolve into ones that operated on all four rungs, especially the top two rungs.

It’s hard to summarize superprograms, but this will give you a rough idea: First imagine a small group where everyone is learning the same thing, maybe yoga, or maybe money-management. Most groups are like that — a single focus. Now imagine a group where each person is learning a different thing, but they still share the process of learning: assess your needs, find a method, practice it, and then test your knowledge. Now in this group, people network to the expertise they need. The person who wants to learn yoga might learn from the person who wants to learn money-management, who learns that from the person who wants to learn conflict resolution skills, who learns conflict resolution perhaps from a networking contact of the person learning yoga. And they all support each other.

It would be as cheap as community college courses—or free—but one advantage is that you start when you like, you don’t have to wait months for a class to begin. Also, you learn at your own pace. And you can learn many different things in the same group. Superprograms don’t always require groups of people. For instance, a pair of individuals could support each other by phone or online video chat.

One source of superprograms’ increased power is that people are taught to consciously re-gather the 15-25 ingredients needed for learning, such as rewards, practice, absence of distractions, expectation to learn, feedback, evaluation, and 5-10 other ingredients. By the way, lacking even one of these major ingredients is like a making a cake without a needed ingredient. The result is a very sad cake, in other words, inefficient learning or no learning at all.

Another source of a superprogram’s power is that superprograms emphasize building up your capacity (your spare time, money, skill and health) so you can do more for yourself and others.

Finally, there’s a built-in emphasis on passing the support on to others. “Teach people to learn and the whole world can be transformed.”

Conventional education as compared to Superprograms

Conventional Education:

• Workshops, self-help books, and seminars lack the ongoing structure to help people fully integrate the knowledge or skill.

• College courses are often too expensive.

• Even community college courses may not be offered at the right time and location. Besides, no one has time to take a course in all areas in which they could use help and support (health, mental health, personal finance, relationship skills, the environment, political action, etc.)

An Upgrade: Superprograms

Superprograms are a new category of learning structure that bring together many of the needed ingredients for learning, and help individuals consciously analyze their learning and add any other needed ingredient. They can help accelerate learning and change because people learn more efficiently, more flexibly and at lower cost, making it more accessible.

A superprogram does all of the following:

It addresses many needs at once—not one right after the other, but together.

It provides ongoing structures to allow learning to be fully integrated. People consciously re-gather the needed ingredients for learning and change.

It’s low-cost or free.

It increases the capacity of its participants (time, money, energy and skill).

It balances self-change with world change (helping others and maintaining our life-support systems).

Current Superprograms

CLEAR superprogram  This is the recommended superprogram. It uses primarily only five materials.

Mission Ball (MissionBall.Org) A superprogram in a game format in which four teams compete over 9 to 13 weeks.

To get an idea of what it feels like to be in a superprogram you can read a fictional story, The Story of Anne and Diane. (Many of the materials mentioned in the story can be found on this website.)

Potential impact: If people can learn new habits and skills more efficiently, they can do several things that will save them (and the world) money and time: learn better health maintenance habits; learn financial skills; learn mental health skills producing greater happiness; learn relationship skills (communication and conflict resolution) that produce happiness and decrease misery; learn socially responsible shopping and investing skills; and learn ecological living skills.—All of these skills can have an impact on the world.

In general, the great value of superprograms is that they can be roughly equivalent to an evolutionary or genetic change in humans. Instead of perpetually struggling with an incomplete set of life skills and life knowledge, people can ‘evolve’ into a higher life form because they have an ongoing learning structure. That’s why superprograms have the potential to change the world, if enough people use them.

If enough people use superprograms to change their lives and improve the world, superprograms become a new global upgrade for humanity.