Below is a provisional Current Reality Tree for a group trying to make progress toward the Second Renaissance goal.

In LTP terms, a Current Reality Tree depicts the unfavorable part of the present system by connecting visible Undesirable Effects to deeper root causes through cause-and-effect logic. Dettmer says the CRT is used to articulate UDEs, relate them to root causes, identify the few critical root causes producing many of the UDEs, and isolate the system constraints that must be addressed for maximum improvement.

System under analysis

System: A Second Renaissance group / community / initiative.

Goal from the goal tree:
Co-initiate a Second Renaissance: a conscious transformation of foundational views, values, practices, and institutions toward a wiser, weller, regenerative civilization.

Throughput definition:
The rate at which the group produces durable adoption of wiser views, values, practices, and social forms by people, groups, and institutions.

Current Reality Tree

Undesirable Effects

These are the visible symptoms that show the system is not yet producing enough throughput.

UDE 1 — Many people resonate with the ideas, but few enter sustained practice.

UDE 2 — Events, content, and conversations create inspiration but little durable adoption.

UDE 3 — The group is busy, but throughput remains low.

UDE 4 — Core organizers carry too much of the work and begin to burn out.

UDE 5 — New participants do not know the next step after initial contact.

UDE 6 — The group has difficulty forming stable pockets.

UDE 7 — Existing pockets remain small, fragile, or isolated.

UDE 8 — The wider sangha is sympathetic but not strongly mobilized.

UDE 9 — The movement remains conceptually rich but operationally weak.

UDE 10 — The language feels abstract, elite, or hard to translate into ordinary life.

UDE 11 — The group struggles to measure progress meaningfully.

UDE 12 — Decisions drift toward visible activity rather than real transformation.

UDE 13 — Conflicts, ambiguity, or interpersonal strain slow the work.

UDE 14 — Institutional influence remains limited.

UDE 15 — Replication is weak: others admire the work but do not reproduce it.

Critical Root Causes

I would start with five candidate Critical Root Causes.

Dettmer cautions against trying to find one vague “core problem.” Instead, he recommends identifying a few critical root causes that are actionable and within the decision maker’s sphere of influence.

CRC 0 — The group lacks a governance process for validating and updating its strategic maps.

CRC 1 — The group lacks a clear operational definition of throughput.

Because throughput is unclear, the group cannot reliably distinguish real transformation from activity.

CRC 2 — There is no explicit pathway from interest to practice to contribution to replication.

People can encounter the ideas, but there is no well-designed conversion system that helps them move from inspiration into durable participation.

CRC 3 — The work is too cognitively framed and not sufficiently embodied in repeated practice.

The Second Renaissance papers emphasize that this transition requires shifts in ways of being, thinking, feeling, and acting, and that pragmatic ways to embody and enact new ideas are as important as the ideas themselves.

CRC 4 — The group has not yet created sufficiently dense containers for pocket formation.

The “How” paper says pockets require shared commitment, consistent practice, and enough interaction density to make a new way of life sustainable against the pressure of the mainstream.

CRC 5 — The group lacks a disciplined learning and constraint-management rhythm.

Without a regular review of UDEs, constraints, experiments, and throughput, the system keeps improving locally rather than increasing the whole-system rate of transformation.

Tree Logic

Read this from bottom to top.

Causal branch:

CRC 0: No agreed process for updating the trees
↓
Revision suggestions depend on informal authority, charisma, persistence, or the original author’s judgment
↓
Participants may not trust the trees as shared artifacts
↓
The group hesitates to let the trees organize consequential R&D
↓
Throughput definition becomes premature or contested
↓
The group cannot confidently move into the dependency chain
↓
UDE: Strategic modeling creates insight but not legitimate shared direction.

CRC 1:
The group lacks a clear operational definition of throughput.
↓
The group does not know what counts as real progress.
↓
The group measures what is visible and easy to count:
events, content, attendance, reach, conversations, money.
↓
UDE 11: The group struggles to measure progress meaningfully.
↓
UDE 12: Decisions drift toward visible activity rather than real transformation.
↓
UDE 3: The group is busy, but throughput remains low.

CRC 2:
There is no explicit pathway from interest to practice to contribution to replication.
↓
New people receive inspiration but no clear next step.
↓
UDE 5: New participants do not know the next step after initial contact.
↓
Interested people remain passive consumers.
↓
UDE 1: Many people resonate with the ideas, but few enter sustained practice.
↓
The sangha remains broad but weakly committed.
↓
UDE 8: The wider sangha is sympathetic but not strongly mobilized.

CRC 3:
The work is too cognitively framed and not sufficiently embodied in repeated practice.
↓
Participants understand the diagnosis intellectually.
↓
But their habits, relationships, attention, nervous systems, and social routines remain mostly unchanged.
↓
UDE 2: Events, content, and conversations create inspiration but little durable adoption.
↓
The group produces worldview agreement without corresponding life-practice change.
↓
UDE 9: The movement remains conceptually rich but operationally weak.

CRC 4:
The group has not yet created sufficiently dense containers for pocket formation.
↓
Members remain embedded mainly in mainstream patterns and incentives.
↓
New views and values are hard to sustain in daily life.
↓
UDE 6: The group has difficulty forming stable pockets.
↓
Existing pockets lack enough density, support, or repeated interaction.
↓
UDE 7: Existing pockets remain small, fragile, or isolated.
↓
Few lived examples exist for others to imitate.
↓
UDE 15: Replication is weak: others admire the work but do not reproduce it.

CRC 5:
The group lacks a disciplined learning and constraint-management rhythm.
↓
The group does not regularly identify the current constraint on throughput.
↓
Energy is spread across too many initiatives.
↓
Core organizers compensate through heroic effort.
↓
UDE 4: Core organizers carry too much of the work and begin to burn out.
↓
The system becomes less capable of supporting others.
↓
UDE 13: Conflicts, ambiguity, or interpersonal strain slow the work.
↓
UDE 14: Institutional influence remains limited.

Combined Current Reality Tree

Here is the integrated version.

CRC 1: Throughput is not clearly defined.
CRC 2: There is no explicit pathway from interest → practice → contribution → replication.
CRC 3: The work is too cognitive and insufficiently embodied.
CRC 4: Containers are not dense enough for stable pocket formation.
CRC 5: There is no disciplined learning / constraint-management rhythm.

↓

The group cannot reliably distinguish activity from transformation.
AND
New participants are not converted into sustained practitioners.
AND
Practices are not repeated deeply enough to change ways of being.
AND
Participants remain mostly embedded in mainstream life-patterns.
AND
Organizers do not focus on the current system constraint.

↓

The group produces inspiration, content, meetings, and agreement,
but not enough durable adoption.

↓

UDE 1: Many people resonate with the ideas, but few enter sustained practice.
UDE 2: Events and content create inspiration but little durable adoption.
UDE 3: The group is busy, but throughput remains low.
UDE 5: New participants do not know the next step.
UDE 8: The sangha is sympathetic but weakly mobilized.
UDE 9: The movement is conceptually rich but operationally weak.

↓

Because few people become sustained practitioners,
few become contributors or facilitators.

↓

UDE 4: Core organizers carry too much work and burn out.
UDE 13: Conflict, ambiguity, and interpersonal strain slow the work.

↓

Because few contributors and facilitators exist,
the group cannot create enough dense containers.

↓

UDE 6: Stable pockets are hard to form.
UDE 7: Existing pockets remain small, fragile, or isolated.

↓

Because stable pockets are scarce,
there are few lived examples that others can copy.

↓

UDE 15: Replication is weak.
UDE 14: Institutional influence remains limited.

↓

Because replication and institutional influence are limited,
the Second Renaissance remains more of an idea-field than a lived cultural transition.

↓

TOP UDE:
The group is not yet increasing the rate of durable cultural transformation fast enough.

The central causal loop

The most important loop may be this:

No clear throughput definition
↓
Activity is mistaken for progress
↓
No disciplined focus on conversion into practice
↓
Few sustained practitioners
↓
Few contributors and facilitators
↓
Few stable pockets
↓
Few examples of lived new culture
↓
Weak replication
↓
Low throughput
↓
Pressure to do more visible activity
↓
Activity is again mistaken for progress

This is probably the main system trap.

Likely system constraint

The current constraint is probably not “lack of awareness.”

It is more likely:

The group lacks a reliable conversion architecture that turns interest into sustained practice, contribution, pocket formation, and replication.

That one constraint connects many UDEs:

Weak conversion architecture
↓
weak onboarding
↓
weak sustained practice
↓
few contributors
↓
few facilitators
↓
few pockets
↓
weak replication
↓
low throughput

The “How” paper’s transition model makes this especially important: paradigmatic change moves through pockets, sangha, and movement, and these levels are mutually dependent. Pockets trial new ways of life; sangha nourishes pockets; movement gives visibility, shared identity, and broader participation.

What to validate next

A real CRT should be tested against lived evidence. The group should ask:

Are these really our UDEs?
Which symptoms are observable?
Which UDEs are worst relative to the goal tree?
Low attendance may not matter; low durable adoption does.
Do the causal arrows hold?
For each arrow, ask: “If the cause exists, does the effect necessarily or probably follow?”
What is missing?
Some branches may need added causes such as money, governance, conflict skill, narrative clarity, or social trust.
Which root causes are within our influence?
A CRT is useful only if it points to actionable leverage.

Working conclusion

The CRT suggests that the group should not primarily solve for “more reach,” “more content,” or “more events.”

It should first solve for:

A clear throughput definition plus a repeatable pathway that converts resonance into sustained practice, contribution, pocket formation, and replication.

That is the most promising intervention point for increasing progress toward the Second Renaissance.