Same Page Initiative

Kia ora

I’m Simon, Nakedize’s founder, and today I am deeply proud to announce the company’s holistic support for a charitable endeavour called the Same Page Initiative.

I have answered some essential questions below, but if you want to learn more about the genesis and gravity of this long-term social and environmental endeavour, please read on for a nutshell summary of the plight, cause, and resolution this work addresses.

And if you’d welcome a good dose of hope in the face of a global ‘polycrisis’, take a look at the final section where you’ll find an outline of the audacious, but simple, 10-year Same Page Plan that the Initiative is setting in motion.

I am glad and grateful for the interest that has brought you to this page.

My goals are as far-reaching as they come, but they are essential and I remain confident that if enough of us ‘get on the same page’, we can resolve anything.

Simon Hertnon
1 September 2024

Essential Q&As
The genesis of the Same Page Initiative: plight, cause, and resolution
The 10-year Same Page Plan

Essential Q&As

What is the Same Page Initiative?
What is the Initiative’s purpose?
Where does Nakedize fit in?
What other organisations are supporting the Initiative?
How can you support the Initiative?
What are the first outputs of the Initiative?

What is the Same Page Initiative?

The Same Page Initiative (‘the Initiative’) is a charitable endeavour I have been designing for the past four years.

Today, 1 September, I applied for the Initiative to become a charitable ‘collective’ to operate under the The Gift Trust’s (CC40774) Gift Collective fundholding project. This means the fundholding organisation transparently receives the Initiative’s donations and pays the Initiative’s expenses. Simple.

The Initiative is the second phase of a three-part public-good endeavour.

Personal idea (2022–2026) supported by Nakedize
Collaborative initiative (2026–) supported by donations to the ‘Collective’
Global movement (TBD)

What is the Initiative’s purpose?

The Initiative’s purpose is to realise an opportunity to empower the most positive and widespread social change imaginable – to ultimately enable millions of us to get on the same page about what really matters – by producing and sharing a select few pages of carefully designed information.

Sound crazy? Impossible? Don’t big impacts require big, complicated responses?

Not always.

A very small amount of information (for example, Love thy neighbour) can shape the goals and behaviours of whole societies. Scale of impact and scale of effort don’t have to match.

The existential problem and global opportunity for positive social change being addressed by the Initiative can, for example, be efficiently communicated with just two diagrams.

The first establishes that unwise human activity is ruining the ecological systems on which all life depend. This is the problem, and the simple diagram below was published last year by smart folk who assess risk (actuaries).

The Anthropocene Reality and Planetary Solvency from Planetary Solvency —
finding our balance with nature, a report by the Institute and Faculty
of Actuaries and the University of Exeter (January 16, 2025)

Through the diagram, the actuaries are communicating that if we don’t change the way we’ve been living since the ‘Post-war consensus’, then humanity’s inequitable, extractive, nature-is-our-inexhaustable-resource approach will eventually trigger ecological collapse.

The second diagram is one of mine.

Through this diagram, I am communicating that not all information is helpful or needed, and that vast amounts of unhelpful information drowns out and sidelines helpful and essential information.

Now, let’s join the dots to illuminate the purpose of the Initiative.

The first diagram says we have needed to change course for about 70 years, but ‘Neo-liberalism’ (which I have heard summarised as ‘capitalism on steroids’, or ‘economic growth at any cost’) has kept us on the path to ‘planetary insolvency’.

The second diagram explains the delay in our response: our brains are filled with unhelpful information that communicates messages that must be supporting us living in accordance with neoliberalism. We must be constantly hearing ‘take more, make more, buy more, compete as individuals and groups’, and so on.

So, we can think of essential information as being whatever humanity needs to know to change course and, ever-increasingly, it’s lost in the information deluge.

We can think of helpful information as any information that supports us living on a sustainable path (one not leading to planetary insolvency). Such information could be termed ‘sustainable information’, but isn’t (yet).

So, the purpose of the Same Page Initiative is to:

Trigger a shift in our attitude to information so (enough of us) understand what’s been holding us back from changing course.
Create and promote helpful and essential information, and facilitate others to do the same, so it can increasingly do the job of equipping us to change course.
Facilitate a Same Page Movement in which humans (globally, but starting in Aotearoa New Zealand) team up to take the simplest possible actions (the Same Page Plan) to change course.

Where does Nakedize fit in?

I founded Nakedize in 2004 so I could follow my passions for information design, sustainability, public service, and social change.

In 2009, Nakedize published Strong Sustainability for New Zealand in collaboration with the (then) thinktank Sustainable Aoetearoa New Zealand. It’s a (relatively concise) booklet highlighting that the global economic system has a fundamentally flawed purpose because it requires society and the environment to serve it, when it should be wholly in service of people and planet.

But the booklet’s argument for sustainable societal systems and, based on our trajectory, every other sustainability publication for the past 50 years, has been lost in the busyness neoliberalism requires 24/7. Global society is not on ‘the same page’ about the problem or resolution and Nakedize, as a commercial entity, can’t disrupt that status go. But a non-commercial collaboration can, and Nakedize can fully support that work.

[THE REST OF THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION.]

What other organisations are supporting the Initiative?

Partnership support
Mission: Mārama Limited (led by Juhi Shareef) is building a coordination platform (powered by ethical AI) for mission-driven groups such as sustainability, energy, and innovation networks and project collaborations. The platform is being designed to facilitate the work of the Same Page Plan’s seven Expediting Collaborations.

Tertiary education support
Kāpuhipuhi Wellington Uni-Professional

Collegial support
Write Group

How can you support the Initiative?

You can support work of the Initiative by becoming involved, donating, or both.

More information to come very soon.

What are the first outputs of the Initiative?

Providing Helpful Information (CP) is one of the seven expediting collaborations The first output is the Helpful Information Framework, which is the key output of

Same Page Manifesto
This is the big plan and call for collaboration.

Essential information
Simon Hertnon’s Theory of Human Needs

Simon Hertnon’s Optimal Performance Framework
The multi-purpose Helpful Information Framework (that is an output of the CP Promote Helpful Information collaboration from the Same Page Plan)
The Universal AI Declaration

The genesis: plight, cause, resolution

Plight

The plight is summarised by the Planetary Solvency graphic above.

Cause

According to the 400,000-person global professional services firm, EY, the cause of our mis-prioritisation is our global economic system.

Marked by increasing signs of ecological breakdown, deepening social inequality and rising geopolitical tensions, we find ourselves in the midst of a polycrisis. These causally entangled crises are the result of similarly interconnected structural flaws in the global economic system… Without urgent, large-scale transformation, it’s not a matter of if, but when, we’ll reach the point of ecological collapse.

— A new economy: Exploring the root causes of the polycrisis and the principles to unlock a sustainable future, New Economy Unit, EY (May 2024)

It’s hard to argue with a well-resourced organisation that has a seat at the top table of global commerce and staff representing, I’m sure, every one of the world’s top 1000 universities.

Resolution

And the resolution is to find a way for our species to collectively wake up to plight, then determinedly team up to change the purpose of our economic system:

from draining people and planet for its own exponential (cancerous) growth
to serving people and planet so all life can continue and flourish

Of course, our predicament begs the obvious question: Do humans not know that life is more important to ‘us’ than year-on-year GDP growth?

I think we all know this ‘deep down’. The problem to address is that we’re just so immersed in the global economic juggernaut and occupied by serving its growth that we can’t think straight.

We can’t get above our economy-driven competitive, individualistic, busyness.

We can’t get off the economic system’s cataclysmic path for long enough to reject it and change it.

We can’t get on the same page. So, we need an intervention of simplicity that starts with a simple plan that involves all of us.

The Same Page Plan

The 10-year Same Page Plan is the end game. It rolls out in phase 3 (Same Page Movement), but we’re seeding it right now through the Initiative.

The plan is performed by three nested groups: Supporters, Expediters, and Essentialists.

The plan has 15 tasks, split between the three groups.

To change course through:
5 Mass Actions performed by Supporters (enough of us)
To support the actions through:
7 Expediting Collaborations performed by Expediters (volunteers and practitioners working towards ecological and social betterment)
To support the collaborations through:
3 Essential Facilitations performed by Essentialists (simplifiers)

Five mass actions

Action	Purpose
A1 Team up	First, we equip our movement with the power of numbers.
A2 Notify businesses and politicians	Second, using our millions-strong vocal power, we invite businesses and politicians to proactively join us in boycotting and prohibiting harm-causing business.
A3 Boycott harm-causing business	Third, using our millions-strong consumer power, we stop supporting businesses that fail to show us their activities are wholly healthy or harmless.
A4 Prohibit harm-causing business	Fourth (and simultaneously), using our millions-strong electoral power, we withhold support for politicians who fail to assure us they will prohibit harm-causing business.
A5 Redirect societal systems	Fifth (and simultaneously), using our millions-strong wisdom and design capabilities, we amend the goals and rules of our societal systems so they serve and prioritise ecological health and social health.

Seven expediting collaborations

Collaboration	Purpose
C1 Mobilise Team Humanity	To expedite teaming up (A1)
C2 Support societal participation	To expedite notifying businesses and politicians (A2)
C3 Reinvigorate social permissions	To expedite boycotting harm-causing business (A3)
C4 Simplify legal protections	To expedite prohibiting harm-causing business (A4)
C5 Streamline system transformation	To expedite redirecting societal systems (A5)
CR Renew humanity’s wisdom	To inform all five mass actions
CP Promote helpful information	To support all five mass actions

Three essential facilitations

Facilitation	Purpose
FS Simplify the overall task	To seed popular focus and generate enough belief that changing course is achievable by supplying a simple action plan.
FP Provide essential information	To support and stimulate mass participation in the movement by providing essential information to every community in the world.
FC Coordinate the Collaborations	To expedite achievement of the Supporter Actions by providing streamlining services to the Expediter Collaborations.