Randy Hencken joins The Seasteading Institute as Director of Communications

I am pleased to be The Seasteading Institute’s new Director of Communications and to work on this avant-garde venture with the industrious, accomplished and visionary team on staff, and the seasteading community at large. The Seasteading Institute is one of the few rays of hope for peacefully developing new governments. The immediate and ambitious legal, engineering, business, and theoretical goals will lay the foundation for the next great leaps in social-human evolution. With the assistance of our community, I plan to grow the seasteading movement by reaching out to those yearning for new governments, to entrepreneurs who will establish the first seasteads, to engineers who will design innovative methods of living on the ocean, and to futurists and anyone with a sense of adventure excited to lead the way to humankind’s new era.

Prior to getting involved with The Seasteading Institute I worked for MAPS. MAPS is conducting clinical research to develop psychedelic drugs into prescription medicines for use in psychotherapy to treat conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and death anxiety. While MAPS may be quite different from The Seasteading Institute, my roles at each organization are similar and I expect my prior experience will add value to my new position.

At MAPS it was my job to contribute to the mainstreaming of a non-mainstream idea, to grow public support for a fringe concept, and to generate positive media attention about the organization’s mission. We had tremendous success in this area. During my time at MAPS public interest and membership grew substantially and hundreds of news stories about our research were published or broadcast, nearly all of them friendly to our goals. Stories appeared in major media such as the New York Times, CNN, and Scientific American. One of MAPS’ major accomplishments has been changing the public rhetoric about psychedelic drugs. In contrast to the days when the media over sensationalized the dangers of psychedelics, today we are more likely to see media reports about psychedelics’ potential medical benefits.

It excites me to participate with you in mainstreaming the seasteading vision. I believe we can grow the movement by reaching across the political spectrum to anyone who is frustrated by the lack of innovation in modern political systems. This ought to be a large swath of people, because as they say, “if you aren’t frustrated, than you aren’t paying attention.” With seasteading as a viable option in the coming decades, we can look beyond the frustration of modern political systems. Peacefully exploring alternative methods of governance for the betterment of humanity is worthy of pursuit.

With your involvement, the organization will form alliances with engineers, businesspeople, lawyers, and everyone interested in this exciting vision of a better world. Fostering awareness and interest is an essential part of building our movement. Together, we will make the initial and important incremental steps to multiple larger floating cities. As we increase our outreach and grow our membership over the coming months and years, I am open to any ideas and assistance our community can provide.

In the recent member survey The Seasteading Institute conducted, members shared their desire for more communication and interaction with the organization. I am here to work with you, our supporters, so we can usher in the future of independent societies at sea.

It’s great to be on board,

Randy Hencken