John I. Mackay
Author and ontologist
Black and white self-portrait of the author and ontologist: John I. Mackay seated at his kitchen table in 2026. This photo is dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No attribution required.
I'm an author and ontologist whose work begins with a simple observation: for all our technological wizardry, we remain fundamentally ignorant of ourselves. We can manipulate particles and code algorithms, yet we are baffled by our own capacity for creation and destruction.
My formal journey began in the late 1980s at James Cook University, where I learned to see the mechanisms beneath human behavior. That foundation led to a decade of practical work as an accredited mediator with the Dispute Resolution Branch of the Queensland Justice Department, where I learned first-hand how conflict and cooperation operate at the human level.
I retired to Thailand in 2016 with my wife and two of our three adult daughters. My writing traces a distinct arc. First came the Gospel of Being (2024), a compendium of 70 koans and expositions that claims the conference of difference as the process primitive—the first principle—of existence. This was followed by The conference of difference: an ontology of existence (2026), a 200,000+ word treatise that demonstrates how the conference of difference functions across the physical, vital, psyche, social, and abstract domains, and compares it to some 38 other ontologies of existence.
My latest work, Colocracy: a specification for collaborative government is the practical application of that ontology. It extends the first principle—the conference of difference—to the challenge of governing ourselves better, moving from the degenerative mode of competition to a co-petitive (collaborative) and generative mode of governance.
