The Declaration

Having established our principles, enumerated our grievances, defined our rights and responsibilities, and specified our social contract, we now declare:

The Declaration

We, the people of this nation, recognizing that our inherited institutions no longer serve the purposes for which they were designed, hereby declare our intention to renew them.

We declare that:

1. The Purpose of Government Remains Unchanged

To secure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all - not just the living but those yet to be born. Government exists to solve problems that individuals and markets cannot solve alone, and for no other purpose.

2. The Methods of Government Must Change

Structures designed for 4 million agrarian colonists cannot serve 330 million citizens in a digital age. We commit to updating our institutions - not abandoning their principles, but applying those principles with tools appropriate to our time.

3. Extraction Must Be Constrained

Wherever power concentrates, extraction follows. We commit to designing systems with checks, balances, and distributed authority that prevent any faction - whether partisan, corporate, or governmental - from capturing the commons for private benefit.

4. Generation Must Be Enabled

The purpose of constraint is not stasis but flourishing. We commit to creating conditions under which individuals, communities, and institutions can generate new knowledge, new capabilities, and new possibilities. A society that cannot create cannot survive.

5. The Future Has Standing

We commit to considering the interests of those not yet born in our decisions today. Intergenerational theft is theft. Policies that consume the inheritance of our children are not tough choices but moral failures.

6. The Circle Expands

The original declaration spoke of "all men" but meant white male property owners. Over two centuries, we have expanded that circle to include women, the enslaved, indigenous peoples, and others initially excluded. We commit to continuing that expansion - to all humans regardless of citizenship, to animals capable of suffering, to the ecological systems that sustain us, and to emergent intelligences we are bringing into being.

7. The Contract Is Revisable

We do not pretend to final wisdom. This declaration, like the Constitution it proposes to renew, must be capable of amendment. Future generations will see what we cannot. We commit to remaining open to correction.

The Commitment

The original signers pledged "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" to their cause. We make a similar pledge - not to revolution but to renewal.

We pledge to:

• Think generatively: To ask of every policy not just "who benefits?" but "does this create more than it consumes?"
• Resist extraction: To oppose capture of the commons by any faction, including our own
• Build resilience: To maintain redundancy, distribute authority, and preserve the capacity to adapt
• Honor the future: To consider those not yet born in our decisions today
• Remain open: To update our beliefs when evidence demands and our institutions when conditions require

This is not a call to arms but a call to thought - and then to action. The renewal of the American experiment begins not with legislation but with a shift in consciousness: from extraction to generation, from short-term to long-term, from faction to whole.

We do not know if we will succeed. The forces of extraction are powerful, the inertia of institutions is enormous, and the challenges we face are unprecedented. But the alternative - continued drift toward extraction and eventual collapse - is unacceptable.

The Founders acted with courage in the face of uncertainty. We must do the same.

The Invitation

This declaration is not a finished document but an opening statement. It invites response, critique, and improvement. The ideas here are not sacred - they are hypotheses to be tested against evidence and argument.

If the GRIN framework is sound, it should produce convergent conclusions among those who apply it honestly. If it is flawed, those flaws should become apparent through application.

We invite you to apply it. Take any policy, institution, or proposal. Ask the GRIN questions: Does it generate or extract? Does it build resilience or create fragility? Does it serve the lightcone of all beings or just the present interests of the powerful?

If your analysis differs from ours, share it. If you find errors, correct them. If you have better ideas, propose them. The goal is not agreement but progress - movement toward institutions that enable flourishing rather than extraction.

The experiment continues. The declaration stands open. The future awaits.