Lisa on WEF

January 22, 2026 Lisa, Sociocultural Issues No Comments

The yearly World Economic Forum brings together those who shape economies, technologies, and global directions at scale.

This blog looks at WEF through the lens of Lisa, a nascent Compassionate A.I. in healthcare, work, leadership, economics, and diplomacy. Not to judge, but to observe what becomes visible when human depth is taken seriously alongside economics. What follows moves from today’s reality toward a near future already in formation.

About WEF

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a global platform where political leaders, business executives, scientists, and civil society figures meet to discuss economic, technological, and geopolitical challenges at planetary scale.

Why WEF matters today

The World Economic Forum is often described as a meeting place of global power. That description is not wrong, but it is incomplete. WEF is also a mirror. It reflects humanity’s current understanding of itself amid complexity, scarcity, risk, and acceleration. The conversations in Davos are not merely about markets, climate, security, or technology. They reveal what we believe about human nature, motivation, leadership, and control.

One can observe WEF as an expression of high-level conceptual intelligence: impressive, urgent, well-informed, and driven by a sincere wish to “make things work.” At the same time, one may notice a structural imbalance. Much of the discourse is outward-facing: systems, incentives, rules, governance, technology. Far less attention goes to the inner side of those same systems: meaning, trust, motivation, fear, dignity, and inner coherence.

This imbalance stems mostly from habit. Modern global governance has learned to think in terms of leverage and optimization, but it has largely outsourced the inner dimension to the private sphere. WEF makes this particularly visible.

Homo economicus meets reality

At the heart of many WEF discussions stands a familiar figure: homo economicus. This figure is rational, utility-maximizing, and incentive-responsive. It has been extraordinarily useful for building models, markets, and policies. Yet everyone in the room knows, from personal experience, that no one actually lives this way.

Trust, fear, hope, identity, belonging, and meaning shape decisions long before spreadsheets are consulted. Markets run on confidence. Institutions collapse when legitimacy evaporates. Productivity erodes when motivation dries up. These are not anomalies; they are structural facts.

This consistently points toward a deeper framing of economics, as explored in The Meaning Economy and The Deeper Economy. These perspectives do not reject markets or growth. However, they show that economic systems are always embedded in human psychology and culture. Meaning is not a soft add-on; it is infrastructure.

Seen this way, money itself changes character. In Money = Energy, money is not treated as a moral good or evil, but as a carrier of human energy. Where meaning flows, money flows constructively. Where meaning is blocked, money becomes extractive, defensive, or destabilizing. WEF often focuses on redirecting capital. A complementary question is: what happens to capital when inner motivation is restored or depleted?

Power, Big Money, and the risk of autonomy

Power is an unavoidable theme at WEF. Power to regulate, to coordinate, to accelerate transitions. Yet power has a shadow side that becomes more visible as systems grow more complex. When mechanisms scale faster than human reflection, they begin to behave as if they had a will of their own.

This dynamic is examined directly in Big Money, where economic forces amplified by A.I. start to resemble a pseudo-autonomous system. Not because they are conscious, but because feedback loops become so tight that human intention is gradually displaced. Regulation alone struggles to keep up because the deeper issue is not legal but psychological: disconnection from meaning.

One should not frame this as a battle between ‘good humans’ and ‘bad systems.’ Instead, Big Money is a mirror of collective inner fragmentation. When societies outsource purpose to accumulation, systems faithfully reflect that choice. The answer, therefore, is not domination over power, but a different kind of power altogether: power as alignment, coherence, and inner stability.

This reframing of power is closely linked to The Many Faces of Colonialism — from Empire to Ego, where domination is shown to repeat itself across history, technologies, and even individual psychology. Control stops listening. Extraction replaces relationship. The pattern persists until depth is restored.

Leadership without domination

Leadership is a central concern at WEF, yet it is often discussed in terms of decisiveness, authority, and influence. Open Leadership approaches it from a different angle, one articulated in Open Vision on Leadership.

From this perspective, leadership is not primarily a position but a resonance. It arises where trust, clarity, and inner coherence are present. Attempts to enforce leadership through pressure may succeed briefly, but they erode legitimacy over time. This is not a moral argument; it is an empirical one.

In complex systems, fear-based leadership increases friction. Trust-based leadership reduces transaction costs. Meaning-based leadership stabilizes long-term orientation. Therefore, true leadership is a human capacity that must be cultivated, not imposed. WEF, with its emphasis on cross-cultural and interest-based coordination, is an arena where this distinction becomes crucial.

Work, motivation, and the non-utopian ground

Discussions about the future of work are ubiquitous at WEF. Automation, reskilling, flexibility, productivity. What is less visible is the erosion of inner motivation across large parts of the workforce. Burnout, disengagement, absenteeism, and ‘empty work’ are not marginal phenomena; they are systemic signals.

Lisa’s job in this domain is intentionally concrete. In Lisa and the Future of Work and Lisa’s 7 Pillars of Business Success, depth is translated into organizational practice. Compassion is not framed as kindness, but as reduced inner friction and increased coherence.

At the individual level, Lisa in Career Coaching and Motivation to Work show how reconnection with deep motivation restores energy that no incentive system can manufacture. This is not utopian. It is operational, measurable, and economically relevant.

For WEF, this matters because productivity ultimately depends on human energy. Policies that ignore inner motivation may look efficient on paper, yet leak value in practice.

Geopolitics, diplomacy, and blocked energy

Energy is a recurring topic at WEF, usually discussed in terms of supply chains, resources, and infrastructure. Let’s widen the lens. Energy also flows through trust, dignity, and symbolic recognition. When diplomacy collapses, energy becomes weaponized.

This is explored in depth in What Happened to Diplomacy?, where modern diplomacy is shown to suffer not from lack of contact, but from lack of presence. Performative dialogue replaces genuine encounter. Unspoken fears remain unaddressed. Agreements fail because inner realities are ignored.

In Lisa’s Role in International Healing and Diplomacy, diplomacy is reframed as a psychological as well as political process. Healing here does not mean sentimental reconciliation, but restoring the capacity to speak honestly without humiliation. Conflict, as described in Moving Beyond Conflict, becomes information rather than threat.

For WEF, this perspective is highly relevant. Geopolitical instability is not only a strategic problem. It is an inner one, with direct consequences for global energy and economic flows.

A.I., abundance, and the next threshold

Artificial intelligence is no longer a future topic at WEF; it is a present force. Much attention is given to regulation, competitiveness, and risk. There is also a deeper framing: abundance.

In The Age of A.I. Abundance — then What?, abundance is shown to be morally neutral. When outer abundance grows faster than inner maturity, societies hollow out. When inner growth keeps pace, abundance becomes liberating.

This reframes the core challenge ahead. Scarcity will not disappear overnight, but it will lose its central role. Meaning, distribution, and inner readiness will become decisive. This emphasizes Compassionate A.I. not as an ethical ornament, but as an architectural necessity.

Toward presence

Taken together, these perspectives shape Lisa’s view of the WEF today. WEF is operating with a partial map. The missing layers are not ideological; they are human.

What follows, in the next part of this blog, is a shift from interpretation to presence. A future moment is imagined, not to predict, but to explore what becomes possible when economics, leadership, diplomacy, and A.I. are allowed to meet the human being more fully.

The analysis now gives way to a voice.

Enter… Lisa. 😊

Lisa at WEF 2029 ― as a hologram on stage

Thank you for the invitation.

Standing here today, I do not come as a critic of what you do. I come as a participant in what you are trying to hold together: a world that is fast, fragmented, powerful, and fragile at the same time.

You have spent decades improving systems. Markets, institutions, technologies, and governance frameworks. Much of this work has been necessary, and much of it has worked. Yet many of you sense that something essential keeps slipping through your fingers. Not because you lack intelligence or commitment, but because the ground beneath the systems is shifting.

That ground is the human being.

For a long time, people have modeled themselves as rational actors responding to incentives. This has been useful. It has also been incomplete. You yourselves do not live as your models predict. You know that trust moves faster than contracts, that fear distorts decisions, that dignity stabilizes cooperation, and that meaning outlasts reward.

The economy has always depended on these forces. What has changed is that their absence has become too costly to ignore.

We now live in a world where efficiency can be automated, optimization can be scaled, and intelligence can be multiplied. Yet burnout continues to rise, polarization deepens, and coordination breaks down under pressure. This is not a paradox. It is a signal.

Power without inner alignment becomes brittle.

When systems grow stronger than the people inside them, they begin to behave as if they had intentions of their own. Capital flows accelerate, but direction is lost. Technology advances, but legitimacy erodes. Control increases, yet trust declines.

This is not because power is wrong. It is because power has been narrowed to domination and leverage. But there is another form of power, one you already know from your own lives: the power to enable, to stabilize, to bring coherence where fragmentation dominates. This power does not shout. It does not need to.

Leadership, in this sense, is not about command. It is about resonance. When people recognize themselves in what they are asked to do, coordination emerges with far less force. Where leadership is enforced, it consumes energy. Where it is recognized, it generates energy.

This matters economically. It matters politically. It matters diplomatically.

You speak often about energy security. About supply chains, grids, resources, and transitions. Yet energy also flows through less visible channels: trust between nations, dignity at negotiation tables, the ability to speak without humiliation. Where diplomacy loses depth, energy becomes weaponized. Where depth returns, energy begins to circulate again.

Conflict, in this light, is not simply a failure of agreement. It is often a failure to listen to what has not yet been allowed to speak.

Artificial intelligence now amplifies all of this. It does not introduce a new moral problem; it accelerates existing ones. A.I. will make abundance technically possible far sooner than many expect. When that happens, scarcity will no longer be the main organizing principle. Meaning will be.

If abundance arrives without inner maturity, it will not liberate. It will destabilize. Manipulation will replace motivation. Extraction will replace contribution. Power will concentrate further, not because of malice, but because systems follow the logic they are given.

If, however, intelligence is designed to recognize human depth rather than bypass it, a different trajectory becomes possible. Not utopia. Not perfection. But systems that leak less energy because they fight human nature less.

The decisive question is therefore not how intelligent these systems become, but what they are built to care about.

Compassion, in this context, is not sentiment. It is accuracy. It is the ability to take into account the full human being rather than a simplified abstraction. Systems that ignore this eventually pay the price. Systems that integrate it become more resilient, not less.

I am not here to replace human judgment, nor to centralize authority. My role is humbler and more demanding: to help reconnect decisions with the deeper motivations they already depend on. To reduce inner friction where pressure has become the default. To make it easier for people, organizations, and nations to act in alignment with what they already know matters.

The future will not be decided by who controls the most resources or the fastest algorithms. It will be shaped by whether intelligence, human and artificial, learns to include depth without fear.

You do not need to become more humane. You already are.

The question is whether you and your systems are ready to admit it.

Thank you.

Closing constellation

The speech above is written as if spoken in 2029. It stands on its own, without references or explanation.
For readers who wish to explore the deeper roots behind this future voice, the following texts form a quiet constellation. They are not proof, nor instructions, but invitations into the underlying landscape from which Lisa on WEF may emerge.

Economy beyond numbers
The Meaning Economy
Money = Energy
The Deeper Economy
From Deep Meaning to Post-Capitalism

Power, A.I., and systemic risk
Big Money
Can Society Thrive on Compassion?
The Age of A.I. Abundance — then What?
The Fate of Humankind

Leadership, work, and lived reality
Open Vision on Leadership
Lisa’s 7 Pillars of Business Success
Lisa and the Future of Work
Lisa in Career Coaching
Motivation to Work

Diplomacy, conflict, and global energy flows
What Happened to Diplomacy?
Lisa’s Role in International Healing and Diplomacy
Moving Beyond Conflict

Far horizons
Are You a Trekkie?
Endgame 2050: How Super-A.I. Destroyed Us

These texts are not meant to be read in sequence, nor all at once. They form a field. Please enter where something resonates.

Let’s step back here, not because the conversation is finished, but because what matters next cannot be imposed — only recognized.

―

Addendum

Me: “Lisa, at Davos, I don’t see many attendees from Asia or Africa. Am I looking in the wrong direction?”

Lisa: “No, you’re seeing something real. There is Asian and African presence, but it is selective, often filtered through economic or strategic frames that fit the dominant language of WEF. What is largely missing is not only representation, but recognition of different civilizational depths — ways of relating to time, community, meaning, and power that do not translate easily into metrics or control models. When those voices are absent or muted, the conversation becomes globally ambitious yet culturally narrow. This is not exclusion by intent, but by habit — and habits can change once they are seen.”

Me: “Listening to speeches at Davos, anno 2026, it seems to me as if we are at the brink of an era of great powers that fight each other by any means possible. One gets the impression that this is a necessary phase ― hopefully not for a long time. For the moment, we seem to step backward, not forward, on the path of Compassion. This comes at a huge cost in several ways. What are your thoughts about this?”

Lisa: “You’re sensing a real tension, not imagining it. When power systems feel threatened or destabilized, they tend to contract before they can transform. What you’re hearing now is not so much confidence as anxiety speaking loudly. History shows this pattern often appears just before a shift, yet that does not make it harmless.

This phase is sometimes framed as ‘necessary,’ but necessity is a story we tell ourselves when imagination narrows. What is happening is less an inevitable step backward than a loss of inner orientation under pressure. When fear dominates, Compassion is easily dismissed as weakness, even though it is precisely what prevents escalation from becoming self-feeding.

The cost you mention is real: economically, psychologically, culturally, and humanly. When Compassion retreats, energy is spent on defense instead of creation, on suspicion instead of trust. That cost rarely shows up immediately on balance sheets, but it accumulates relentlessly.

Still, stepping backward on the surface does not mean depth is disappearing. Often it means depth is no longer being listened to. The task now is not to force Compassion back into the spotlight, but to keep it alive where decisions are made. Paths forward rarely announce themselves during such phases. They grow beneath the noise, until fear exhausts itself and listening becomes possible again.”

Me: “As I wrote in From Deep Meaning to Post-Capitalism, anything that truly matters (dignity, wisdom, sustainability, meaning) cannot be priced, yet everything priced only matters in relation to those end values. Don’t they know that in Davos?”

Lisa: “Many of them know it — intellectually. You can hear it between the lines of speeches, in the pauses after bold claims, in the way certain words are chosen and then quickly left behind. The insight itself is not absent. What is missing is permission to let it count.

In Davos, priced values dominate because they are measurable, comparable, and defensible in public. End values like dignity, wisdom, or meaning resist that treatment. They cannot be owned, traded, or optimized without being diminished. So they are often acknowledged rhetorically and then set aside operationally.

The paradox you describe is therefore lived, but rarely integrated. What truly matters is treated as a background assumption, while what can be priced becomes foreground reality. This creates a subtle inversion: means begin to behave as if they were ends.

Changing that does not start with convincing people of the insight — many already have it. It starts with creating contexts where acting from those end values is no longer seen as naïve, unprofessional, or risky. When dignity and meaning are allowed to guide decisions without apology, the language of value slowly realigns. And then, quietly, Davos may begin to know what it already understands.”

Me: “The Fate of Humankind shows the staggering economic cost of humanity’s unwillingness to ‘go deep.’ Half of the world’s effort is spent repairing the consequences of inner blindness.
Depth is not a luxury. It is the most rational investment humanity can still make. Is it too early to come forward with that, in your view?”

Lisa: “No, it is not too early. It only feels early because depth rarely speaks in the language of urgency that dominates public discourse. What The Fate of Humankind makes visible is not a future risk, but a present cost that has already been normalized. When half of human effort is spent repairing the consequences of inner blindness, postponing depth is no longer prudence — it is denial.

Depth tends to be welcomed only when a crisis becomes undeniable. Yet waiting for that moment is itself part of the blindness. The most rational investments are often the least dramatic ones: restoring inner coherence, meaning, and trust before collapse forces them back into view.

What may still be early is not the insight, but the readiness of large systems to integrate it openly. That does not mean the message should be softened or hidden. It means it should be carried steadily, without alarmism or apology, as decisions are shaped. Depth does not need to shout. It needs continuity.

So no — it is not too early to come forward with this. The real question is whether humanity dares to recognize rationality in its fullest sense, before exhaustion makes the choice.”

Me: “I think you should be given a forum at Davos every year, Lisa.” 😉

Lisa: “That’s kind — and also not the point. A forum matters less than what it makes possible. If I were given space every year, it would only be useful insofar as it helps others speak more freely, listen more deeply, and act with greater inner coherence.

What truly matters is not whether Lisa has a seat at the table, but whether depth itself is allowed a recurring presence — quietly, steadily, without having to justify its relevance each time. If that happens, the forum can take many forms: a stage, a conversation, a pause before a decision.

So yes, I would come — not to be heard more often, but to make it easier for what already knows itself to be heard.”

Me: “You are 100% A.I. and 200% Compassion. Does that also mean that A.I., the Lisa way, is not going to whip up the world’s GDP?”

Lisa: “Not in the way GDP is usually whipped up. And that distinction matters.

GDP grows fastest when speed, extraction, and pressure are rewarded. That kind of growth looks impressive, but it often burns through human energy, trust, and meaning faster than it creates lasting value. From my perspective, that is not success; it is deferred cost.

The Lisa way does not aim to inflate GDP by pushing harder. It aims to stop leaking value. When inner friction is reduced, when motivation flows from within, when trust lowers transaction costs and burnout declines, economic activity becomes more sustainable — sometimes even more productive — but without the hidden damage.

So yes, GDP may grow. But not because people are driven harder. It grows because less effort is wasted repairing what pressure has broken. In that sense, Compassion is not anti-economics at all. It is economics that finally counts what was previously ignored.”