tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29589752460431149992024-03-13T22:22:10.010+00:00Selected documents and articlesby Richard Moore (rkm) of Wexford Ireland — <a href="mailto:rkm@quaylargo.com"><u>rkm@quaylargo.com</u></a> — See also: <a href="http://governourselves.org/"><u>http://governourselves.org/</u></a>rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2958975246043114999.post-37803537643091866282012-08-02T11:04:00.000+01:002017-03-06T06:50:25.787+00:00The Transformation Project (ver 1.3)<b>URL</b>: <small><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.ie/2012/07/transformation-project.html">http://rkmdocs.blogspot.ie/2012/07/transformation-project.html</a></small><br />
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<b>Contents</b><br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.ie/2012/07/transformation-project.html#envisioning_better_world">Envisioning a better world</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.ie/2012/07/transformation-project.html#vision_development_principles">Principles of vision development</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.ie/2012/07/transformation-project.html#vision_development_weekends">Vision-development weekends</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.ie/2012/07/transformation-project.html#telling_the_story">Telling the story of the conversation</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.ie/2012/07/transformation-project.html#community_invitation_weekends">Community-invitation weekends</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.ie/2012/07/transformation-project.html#weaving_the_threads">Weaving the threads of conversation</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.ie/2012/07/transformation-project.html#achieving_self_organization">Achieving self-organization</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.ie/2012/07/transformation-project.html#map_not_territory">The map is not the territory</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.ie/2012/07/transformation-project.html#means_are_the_ends">The means are the ends</a></li>
</ul>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="envisioning_better_world"></a><br />
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<big><br />
<b><big>Envisioning a better world</big></b><br />
This project is motivated by the belief that a much better world is possible. A world where society is in balance with nature, rather than destroying nature. A world organized around what people need and want, rather than around creating wealth for the few. A world in harmony rather than a world plagued by conflict and war. A world where people have a real voice in how their societies operate.<br />
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This project is also motivated by the observation that the current systems of society cannot be fixed. A better world calls for a whole new way of organizing things, making decisions, allocating resources, dealing with economics, etc. We need a total transformation of society: a whole new operating system for Spaceship Earth.<br />
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This project is inspired by a process found in nature: the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. A butterfly is not a caterpillar that grows wings; it is a completely new creature, with a totally different biological operating system, created out of the raw materials of the old creature.<br />
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The creation of the butterfly is orchestrated by a relatively small number of special cells, <i>imaginal cells</i>. These special cells carry the blueprints for growing the new organs, and they carry the vision of the final butterfly form. Furthermore, they have the ability to gradually bring the rest of the cells into the process of building the butterfly. <br />
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The goal of this project is to create an analogue of imaginal cells: some kind of process that can develop the blueprints and vision of a better world, and which can gradually bring everyone (the 99%) into the process of transforming society.<br />
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A plan has been developed for pursuing this goal, based on the application of proven methods and principles. This plan can be carried out by a small project team, only a dozen or so people, with the right skills, and a great deal of commitment. The plan calls for the team to organize a series of events aimed at launching the process of blueprint development and better-world envisioning. <br />
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These are seed events, following a pattern that can be easily replicated, so that the ongoing process can become self-organizing. The project team is not seeking to organize the process of transformation; rather it seeks to sow the seeds of self-organizing transformation.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="vision_development_principles"></a><br />
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<b><big>Principles of vision development</big></b><br />
In developing a vision for a better world, there is certainly a role to be played by people with specialized knowledge. If we want to come up with a better bridge design, experienced bridge engineers clearly have a critical contribution to make. But perhaps we don’t want or need a bridge! The ultimate source for a vision of a better world is us ordinary people: <i>What kind of world do we really want?</i><br />
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The first principle of vision development is that <i>it needs to begin as a conversation between people with specialist knowledge on the one hand, and ordinary people on the other</i>. A dialog, exploring the boundaries and overlaps between what can be done, and what is desired. The specialists can provide creative scenarios, of systems that could be developed and projects that could be carried out; the rest of us can say which scenarios we like and don’t like, which ones need to be explored further – and we can contribute our own creative ideas to the conversation as well. <br />
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In seeking to arrange such an ongoing conversation, there are three primary considerations to keep in mind. First, there is <i>inclusiveness</i>: we need to include the full spectrum of specialist thinking in the conversation, and we need to include the concerns of all the rest of us as well. Second, there is <i>efficiency</i>: it behooves us to approach the conversation in a way that minimizes overhead and maximizes rate of progress. Finally, there is <i>quality</i>: the individual conversations need to be structured in a way that enables everyone present to participate, and that taps into the full creative potential of the group. <br />
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In partial response to these considerations, the second principle of vision development is <i>the principle of the representative microcosm</i>. This is a principle that responds to all three of our primary considerations, and it is the same principle that lies behind the twelve-person jury system. Twelve randomly selected citizens, if they agree on a unanimous verdict, can be expected to reach the same verdict that the general population would have reached, if everyone had the time to sit through the trial and deliberate on the evidence.<br />
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A jury serves as a representative microcosm of the whole community. Long experience has shown that twelve is a small enough group that their deliberations tend to converge in a reasonable time. And experience has shown that when twelve people are selected randomly from a community, that brings into the deliberations most of the sentiments and concerns that prevail in that community. The requirement of unanimity ensures that all of those sentiments and concerns are taken into account in reaching a verdict.<br />
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The principle of the representative microcosm means that we can convene relatively small conversations, and those conversations can be inclusive of the concerns and thinking of a larger population. And if those conversations lead to unanimous conclusions, we can expect that the concerns and thinking of the larger population have been reasonably represented. The efficiency benefits provided by this principle are considerable, and the project plan makes heavy use of this approach. <br />
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There is more that is needed however, as regards both efficiency and quality. Assembling the right microcosm is the essential first step, and unanimity is an essential objective, but there remains the question of process. A conversation can be productive, or it can be unproductive, depending on the dynamics of the conversation. There are proven processes, facilitation methods, that can greatly enhance the quality of group conversations. Processes that make sure all concerns get taken into account, processes that tap into the full creative potential of the group, and processes that move the conversation efficiently along.<br />
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The third principle of vision development is <i>appropriate process</i>. For any given conversation, of any given size and duration, it is essential to make use of best-practice process methods, appropriate to that particular conversation. If people are investing their valuable time in these conversations, they will want their time to be used efficiently, and they will want their concerns to be taken into account. And if we want to make maximum progress with vision development, we will want to tap into the full creative potential of those who are assembled. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="vision_development_weekends"></a><br />
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<b><big>Vision-development weekends</big></b><br />
The project team will organize a series of weekend events, each event aimed at advancing the vision-development conversation. These events have two parts: a two-day council session (involving people with specialized knowledge), followed by an evening public meeting in the community where the council is being held. The council’s job is to come up with a practical future vision for some area of concern, and the public meeting is where the all-important conversation occurs, between ‘ordinary’ people and ‘special-knowledge’ people. <br />
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Each weekend is focused on a given question, something that needs to be better understood, so that the vision-development process can move forward. People are invited to the council who have knowledge and/or ideas to contribute to the given question, and the question is given a hypothetical framing.<br />
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For example, suppose the basic question is, “What is the best monetary system?” The question would be framed something like this: “If we were building an ideal world, what monetary system would you recommend for that world?” The idea is to focus on imagining the butterfly world, and not get stuck in the box of what might be a good solution today, in the caterpillar world. Almost anything we can imagine is probably doable: the task of a vision-development weekend is to imagine what we really want, guided by an understanding of what appears to be feasible. <br />
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The council session, lasting the better part of two days, uses a particular process, Dynamic Facilitation (DF). A council might have anywhere from 5-20 participants, and 12 would probably be the expected average. We need enough people to provide a representative microcosm of the knowledge and ideas that are relevant to the question under consideration. If there are a lot of distinct viewpoints, then we need a lot of participants. <br />
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The DF process is ideally suited to our purposes for such a session. DF is very good at getting everyone to fully express their diverse ideas and concerns, and DF is very good at getting people to work together, creating a new answer, a new approach, that finds the synergy among the ideas, and finds ways to deal with all the concerns. <br />
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DF is a powerful, proven process, that is able to tap into the full potential creativity of the council. The outcomes of DF sessions are typically characterized by participants as The map is not the territorysignificant breakthroughs’, and participants typically express considerable enthusiasm and energy around ‘their creation’. A feeling much stronger than mere unanimity-of-viewpoint. <br />
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Following the council session, there is a break for food and rest, and then the council participants show up at the public meeting. The meeting kicks off with talks from each of the participants, relating their experience of the session, and presenting what they came up with. Their enthusiasm typically shines through in such DF-council talks, and this tends to engage the audience, leading to energetic breakout conversations afterwards.<br />
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The people who come to the public meeting are hearing ideas that are hot off the press, from the folks who spent the weekend coming up with those ideas. These aren’t stale theories of experts, these are fresh ideas, developed during a weekend of conversation, and the conversation is still open – after the talks, it’s the public’s turn to join in. There are appropriate processes for this part of the weekend as well, perhaps World Cafe, or Open Space, or something else, depending on circumstances. <br />
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With the council, we’re bringing in a representative microcosm of creative thinking in a certain area; with the public meeting we’re bringing in a representative microcosm of the general population, perhaps with a bit of local-specific bias. The weekend is serving, more or less, as a representative microcosm of the whole society, proceeding with our ongoing conversation, involving people with specialist knowledge and the rest of us, as we continue to develop our vision of the world we really want. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="telling_the_story"></a><br />
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<b><big>Telling the story of the conversation</big></b><br />
Each of our microcosm conversations is intended to be part of a larger, ongoing conversation, which is being carried out on behalf of the whole society. This means that a record needs to be made of each weekend event, so that future conversations can benefit from the work that has already been done. The record needs to show the conclusions that were reached, and the flow of ideas that led to those conclusions, and the record needs to be available online, so anyone can review it. <br />
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A raw, detailed record of each council conversation is created by the facilitator, who writes each person’s comments down on flipcharts, as part of the DF process. Flipcharts may or may not be used during the public meetings, but in any case some kind of notes will be taken, so that we’ll have a raw, detailed record of that part of the conversation as well. <br />
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This detailed record will then be summarized into a storyboard, telling the story of the flow of conversation, leading up to the conclusions reached. In a DF session, the facilitator sometimes creates such storyboards, as part of the session, so that participants can see the story of their conversation so far. Often some kind of diagram works well, or a dialog-map, where idea-bubbles are connected by arrows.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="st_imier"></a><br />
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Here’s an example of a conversation record, from a DF session that was held in St-Imier, Switzerland, this past June. The first seven slides are a storyboard made afterwards by the facilitator, and the rest of the slides show the raw flipcharts from the session, in the order they were created, including a dialog-map summary that was made midway through the conversation:<br />
<small><a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/118065480084621199769/albums/5756628106427551617?banner=pwa" target="_blank">http://tinyurl.com/7ugfvde</a></small><br />
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If there is time available in a given weekend to take photos of the detailed notes and upload them, that would be worth doing, so that a detailed record of the conversation can be available for future reference. It is essential, however, that a storyboard summary always be created, so that the work can be carried forward to future conversations. For topics that are very complex, skilled artistry may be needed to create a storyboard that makes the topics clearly understandable to anyone who might be interested. Sometimes a clever cartoon does this best, or some kind of creative diagram. <br />
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Some people understand best by seeing, and others by hearing. So that the conversations can be most readily understood, each storyboard slide show will also be made available as a short video, with a narrator providing a clear verbal explanation of the material on each slide. <br />
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A project website will be maintained, where all of the conversation records will be freely available. There will be a description of what each conversation is about, along with links to the storyboard slide show, the video, and if available, the detailed notes. A meta-storyboard, and a narrated version, will also be maintained on the site – a storyboard that explains what the project is about, and that tells the story of the overall conversation so far, as it has flowed from one weekend to another. <br />
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Anyone who watches the narrated meta-storyboard will get a clear overview of the project, how the overall conversation has gone so far, and a clear overview of the evolving vision as it currently exists. Anyone can then delve into the weekend records to see more details about topics of interest.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="community_invitation_weekends"></a><br />
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<b><big>Community-invitation weekends</big></b><br />
When the vision begins to have a reasonable degree of coherence, the team will begin convening a second series of weekend events, in parallel with the first series. The second series of events are focused on bringing communities into the conversation. For this second kind of event, the council will be made up of citizens selected randomly from the community itself. <br />
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The facilitator will begin by telling the story of the conversation so far, by taking the council through the meta-storyboard slides, explaining them in her own words, and answering any questions that come up. The council will then be invited to join in the conversation, and where they go from there is entirely up to the folks in the council.<br />
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Certainly there are lots of people, in this time of crisis, corruption, and austerity, who are in some sense ‘ready for change’. We can see evidence of this in the Arab Spring uprisings, the global Occupy Movement, the austerity protests in the EU, etc. And because of the way the vision has been developed, by the representative-microcosm principle, some of those in the council are likely to resonate with the vision. At the same time, most people would probably be quite dismissive of the suggestion that ‘we can change the world’. <br />
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We can expect a wide range of views in the council, regarding the possibility of change, the desirability of change, the nature of the vision, etc. Such a diversity of views brings ‘juice’ – energy – to the DF process. The process leads people to dig down and identify the assumptions and concerns that underlie their thinking. <br />
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Eventually – and this is the proven ‘magic’ of DF – the council will begin to work as a team, seeking a perspective that takes all the concerns into account. For those unfamiliar with such processes it may be hard to believe, but the council will almost certainly emerge with a unanimous viewpoint on the evolving vision, and on the question of whether it would be worthwhile to participate in the ongoing conversation. <br />
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A lot of work is required, on the part of the council, to reach such a unanimous perspective. Work of a kind that would be very difficult for a larger group to engage in. But since the council has been selected locally and randomly, that unanimous perspective is very likely to resonate with the community generally, when the council members report to the public meeting, and explain the thinking they went through.<br />
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The council serves as a kind of ‘booster rocket’, taking the community to a level of engagement with the envisioning process that would probably have been impossible to achieve in a public meeting on its own, even if it lasted the whole weekend. When the weekend is over, we’ll have an in-depth understanding of how the community responds to the envisioning process, and we will have given it our best shot, as regards making a case for the process to the community. <br />
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As this second series of weekends gets underway, we will be getting the first reliable ‘market tests’ of the feasibility of our project. The first series is valuable in terms of advancing the vision, but due to its hypothetical framing, it doesn’t give us a reliable indication of whether people are ready to engage seriously in a change-seeking project. <br />
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A major turning point will be reached when some community embraces the ongoing conversation, and the people use their public meeting to continue the conversation – to bring their own concerns and ideas into the envisioning process. If we can’t succeed in reaching this turning point, then the project will need to be written off as yet another learning experience. If we do reach this turning point, then the project will have begun for real: the people would be starting to take ownership of the transformation project and of the envisioning process.<br />
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The storyboards of the community-invitation weekends will be an invaluable resource. If the project isn’t being accepted by communities, we’ll have a detailed account of the thinking and sentiments behind the rejection. From this we can make intelligent decisions about making the project more effective, about how we might achieve our major turning point. <br />
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If we do succeed in reaching the turning point, and communities do begin joining in the vision-development process, then their storyboards become the record of an ongoing public conversation, a conversation where the people themselves are creating the vision of the future they want to create.<br />
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Once some community has joined in, we’d begin to have other successes, at least in similar communities, who could be expected to respond similarly. As the number of participating communities grows, we’ll eventually include a representative-microcosm, meaning the concerns of the general society have been brought in. That will be a second major turning point, and after that we could expect the project to spread rapidly.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="weaving_the_threads"></a><br />
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<b><big>Weaving the threads of conversation</big></b><br />
The first series of weekends are framed as hypothetical exercises in ‘imagining an ideal world’, and they are intended to be an efficient way to develop a coherent and inspired first-draft vision. The second series of weekends are framed as serious invitations to communities to join in the conversation, and how the project proceeds after that will be guided by how communities respond to the invitations.<br />
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If communities are not joining in, then the project team will be focusing its attention on trying to understand why, and on thinking of things they can try, that might overcome the reasons for rejection. Perhaps more progress needs to be made in the first series, to make the vision more concrete. Or perhaps the story of the project needs to be presented in some more inspiring way. The team can interview random people after the public meetings, and listen carefully to what they say about their response to the project. <br />
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The project lives or dies, based on whether the first turning point can be achieved, when some community accepts the invitation, and joins in the conversation. If that success is achieved, then the project team will be building on what’s worked, and as the conversation proceeds, they will be thinking about what kinds of events will most advance the transformational process.<br />
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The transformational process has a horizontal thread – bringing in more communities and more people in each community, and it has a vertical thread – the development of the vision and the blueprints. The community-invitation weekends are mostly – but not exclusively – about the horizontal thread, while the vision-development weekends are mostly – but not exclusively – about the vertical thread. <br />
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As regards horizontal growth, it would make sense, at first, to randomize and regionalize the selection of communities for the weekend events, regardless of what kind of event it is or what its focus is. This would be the fastest way to bring in a good representative microcosm of communities generally. <br />
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Once that is achieved, it would make sense to go to those communities that show the most interest in the project, and are most willing to support it, as in providing a venue for the event and accommodations for the team, and dealing with the local invitation and promotion process. The more work the team can offload locally, the greater the leverage of team effort relative to horizontal growth.<br />
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As regards vertical development – the evolution of the vision and blueprints – it makes sense to be guided by the question: <i>What are we most in need of understanding better?</i> At first, this will lead to questions about the vision: <i>How will we handle X in our ideal world, and how will we make decisions about Y?</i><br />
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But as the vision begins to crystallize, we will be guided to questions about how to achieve the vision. If our vision is self-sufficiency via diversified and sustainable organic agriculture, for example, then how do we transition from current methods and crops, in a way that makes sense economically, keeps people employed, and keeps food on our tables at a price we can afford?<br />
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The guiding question helps us build a serviceable bridge from the world we have, to the butterfly world, and the building of the bridge proceeds from the butterfly end. Eventually we will get to the final question: <i>How do we actually begin to cross the bridge – to begin implementing the blueprint that we all (the 99%) have agreed on?</i> I suggest that a people united in this way, in quest of transformation, and knowing exactly what they want, will be able to find an answer to that final question.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="achieving_self_organization"></a><br />
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<b><big>Achieving self-organization</big></b><br />
As stated at the beginning of this document, the proposal is to pursue this project with a small team, a dozen or so. The role of the team is to launch the project, to get the first series of weekend events underway, and to make a start on the second series. While doing so, they will be evolving protocols / methods / procedures, for making contact with communities, organizing weekends, producing storyboards, organizing the work of the team itself, etc. <br />
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If the project is to grow beyond the pilot stage, and become a real movement, then sooner or later more people will need to be brought in, people who are willing to take an active role in moving the project forward. A small team can carry things only so far on its own.<br />
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If this project makes any sense at all – if there is latent support in the population for such a transformational project – then we should begin to see some energy and enthusiasm emerging among the people who have been participating in the launch weekends. If that happens, then presumably some of them would be enthusiastic and energetic enough to be open to making an active contribution to the project.<br />
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Assuming that people do become available to help move the project beyond the pilot stage, there remains the question of how it would be best for the project to grow. What we want ultimately is for the project to be self-organizing, to grow organically, without needing the prompting or guidance of any special leadership group. <br />
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Certainly training will be involved in growth: more people learning how to facilitate, how to organize one of the weekends, how to produce and upload storyboards, etc. In order to make this training into a self-organizing process, we could ask everyone who goes through the training to agree to train others at some later date, on a bro bono basis, for some agreed number of sessions.<br />
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When we achieve our turning point – when communities start joining in the conversation – we can make a similar deal with such communities. We can ask them to take responsibility for carrying the message of the project to one or two nearby communities, and getting those new communities to host a weekend session. In that way horizontal growth could become self-organizing.<br />
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When there are a sizable number of people with the various team skills, and when there are a sizable number of communities participating in the project, I suggest that the self-organizing process will evolve from there on its own energy. <br />
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As the backwards bridge is being built, communities will want to continue participating in the conversation, by hosting additional weekend events. And soon it will be obvious that a conference needs to be organized, where people from different communities do some envisioning together, with the help of appropriate processes. And so on, a dynamically evolving process will emerge.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="map_not_territory"></a><br />
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<b><big>The map is not the territory</big></b><br />
It goes without saying that this project is very unlikely to unfold exactly as I have described it here. I’ve presented a sequence of scenarios about weekend events, council outcomes, public responses, vision development, etc. Each scenario is based on real-world experience with events and processes, but such scenarios can only be approximations, at best, of what will actually happen on the day. And the more scenarios we string together, the more uncertainty we bring into the overall project plan.<br />
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The value of the plan is that it gives reason to believe that the desired outcomes can be achieved. It provides concrete proposals for how to move the project forward at each anticipated stage of development. Without some credible hope that there may be light at the end of the tunnel, there would be little motivation for people to join the project team, or for people to participate in the events.<br />
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In fact, the plan needs to be seen as a dynamic, evolving document. As the project proceeds, the scenarios will be tested. The very first weekend event will undoubtedly bring many surprises. Based on what actually happens, the scenarios will need to be updated and reorganized to reflect what we’ve learned. The plan gives us a map, enabling us to intelligently enter the territory of transformation. As we explore that territory, we’ll be revising the map to match the reality of what we encounter.<br />
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Similarly the ‘vision’ and ‘blueprints’, which the project is aimed at producing, need to be seen as dynamic, evolving documents. In fact the storyboards will be evolving from the very beginning, each weekend event adding its contributions. This evolving process will not stop when we-the-people are ready to begin following the path outlined in the storyboards. <br />
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Just as with this project, the path of transformation will bring surprises along the way. Unexpected problems and unforeseen opportunities will surely be encountered. The initial vision gives us a reason to embark on the path, and the initial blueprints show us where the path starts, but the storyboards will need to be updated, and our vision of the new world will evolve, as we pursue the dynamically unfolding path.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="means_are_the_ends"></a><br />
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<b><big>The means are the ends</big></b><br />
In envisioning a better world, the most difficult problem is envisioning a workable system of governance that is based on the will of the people, and that can prevent would-be power seekers from gaining a foothold. History has clearly shown that the phrase ‘power corrupts’ is not just a cliché, but a proven principle in human affairs. Only an inclusive, participatory, democratic process can be relied upon to serve the interests of people generally.<br />
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Unfortunately, no one seems to know what a participatory democracy would look like, or how it would function. Some people refer to classical Athens as a direct-democracy model, but that was a slave-based society, governed by a minority of male property owners, not an example of an inclusive process. The deliberations of that minority are more comparable to a board of directors meeting than they are to a democratic process. Besides, the scale of that process was a single city-state, not a society on a modern scale.<br />
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Switzerland may be the closest approach we have today to a democratic society, and the Swiss themselves are generally confident that they’ve got the ‘real thing’. Theirs is however a representative system, where power is delegated, and there are hierarchical forces at work, principally the banking and pharmaceutical sectors, that have a strong influence on public affairs. The referendum and initiative processes in Switzerland are a mixed bag, from a democratic perspective, as special interests can and do make use of them for their own purposes. And it is questionable how long Switzerland will be able to retain the level of democracy it has achieved, as it is being increasingly pulled into an orbit of compliance with the very undemocratic European Union. Would-be power seekers have established clear footholds in the Swiss political landscape.<br />
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Participatory democracy is a ‘vision’ for which we have no ‘blueprint’. And it’s actually less than a vision, because we don’t have a clear vision of how it would work in practice – and we don’t even know if real democracy would be possible in a modern-day society. And yet, it is inclusive participatory democracy we must have, if we want a better world, a world “organized around what people need and want”, a world “where people have a real voice in how their societies operate”, and a world that can “prevent would-be power seekers from gaining a foothold”.<br />
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Participatory democracy, particularly for a large-scale society, is largely unexplored territory. We have no examples to look at, and there seems to be little available in terms of theoretical models. Indeed, I’d say that what we came up with in our St-Imier weekend session is pretty much state-of-the-art, as regards theories of participatory democratic processes. <br />
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In fact, we can count that St-Imier session as the first vision-development event of this project, on the topic of ‘envisioning real democracy’, and we already have a <a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/118065480084621199769/albums/5756628106427551617?banner=pwa" target="_blank">storyboard</a> of that event available online for reference! In a very real sense, the project is already underway. An unexpected step into project territory came first, and a provisional map, this project plan, is only now being developed – after reflection on that microcosm experience in St-Imier. <br />
<br />
Over time, the envisioning-real-democracy thread can be developed, but more important, I suggest, is the process of the project itself, particularly when it reaches the self-organizing stage. The project is aimed at facilitating the emergence of an inclusive, society-wide conversation. The weekend-event formula can hopefully get us started, but where that process will evolve cannot be predicted. However, if we end up with a self-organizing way of maintaining a coherent, inclusive, society-wide conversation, we will more or less have achieved a participatory democratic process. The means are the ends.<br />
<br />
<i><small>Richard Moore<br />
Wexford, Ireland<br />
2 August 2012<br />
</small></i><br />
</big>rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2958975246043114999.post-56976807808386525512010-11-21T09:46:00.001+00:002011-05-31T10:31:05.386+01:002012: Crossroads for Humanity<small>URL: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/toc-2012.html" target="_toc">http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/toc-2012.html</a></small><br />
<blockquote><i>This is a work-in-progress. Comments welcome.</i><br />
Richard K. Moore <small><a href="mailto:rkm@quaylargo.com">rkm@quaylargo.com</a></small><br />
</blockquote><big><br />
<b><big><big>Contents</big></big></b><br />
<big><br />
<big><b>Part I:</b> <i>The nature of the global crisis</i></big><br />
<blockquote><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/10/prolog-1.html" target="_doc"><b>Prolog</b></a><br />
<br />
<small><b><big>1</big></b> <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html" target="_doc"><b>Prognosis 2012</a><br />
<i><font color="#666666">the elite agenda for social transformation</font></i></b><br />
<ul> <li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html#backround" target="_doc">Historical background — <i>the establishment of capitalist supremacy</i></a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html#end_growth" target="_doc">The end of growth — <i>capitalists vs. capitalism</i></a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html#carbon" target="_doc">The carbon economy — <i>controlling consumption</i></a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html#terrorism" target="_doc">‘The War on Terrorism’ — <i>preparing the way for the transition</i></a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html#dark_age" target="_doc">Prognosis 2012 — <i>a Neo Dark Age</i></a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html#postscript" target="_doc">Postscript</a></li>
</ul><b><big>2</big></b> <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html" target="_doc"><b>The Grand Story of humanity</b></a><br />
<ul> <li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html#origins" target="_doc">Our primate origins</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html#intelligence" target="_doc">Origins of intelligence</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html#stories" target="_doc">The story world</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html#innocence" target="_doc">A Golden Age of innocence</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html#early_civs" target="_doc">Early civilization</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html#alpha" target="_doc">The return of the alpha male</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html#class" target="_doc">Origins of class</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html#eden" target="_doc">Leaving Eden</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html#orthodoxy" target="_doc">Orthodoxy and empire</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html#science" target="_doc">Science wobbles the gyroscope</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html#grand_story" target="_doc">The Grand Story of humanity</a></li>
</ul><b><big>3</big></b> <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/story-of-hierarchy.html" target="_doc"><b>The story of hierarchy</b></a><br />
<ul> <li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/story-of-hierarchy.html#city_states" target="_doc">City-states: the first exploitive hierarchies</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/story-of-hierarchy.html#paths" target="_doc">Paths that could have been followed</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/story-of-hierarchy.html#republics" target="_doc">Paths that failed: the story of a republic</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/story-of-hierarchy.html#dynamics" target="_doc">The dynamics of hierarchy</a></li>
</ul></small></blockquote><br />
<big><b>Part II: </b><i>A grassroots response to the crisis</i></big><br />
<blockquote><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/10/grassroots-response.html" target="_doc"><b>Prolog</b></a><br />
<br />
<small><b><big>4</big></b> <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/11/localism.html" target="_doc"><b>The emergence of localism</b></a><br />
<ul> <li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/11/localism.html#dawn" target="_doc">Always darkest before the dawn</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/11/localism.html#self-suff" target="_doc">Achieving greater self-sufficiency</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/11/localism.html#revitalizing" target="_doc">Revitalizing the local economy</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/11/localism.html#awakening" target="_doc">Awakening grassroots energy</a></li>
</ul><b><big>5</big></b> <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/development-framework.html" target="_doc"><b>A framework for achieving economic transformation</b></a><br />
<ul> <li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/development-framework.html#development" target="_doc">Development as a focus for transformation</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/development-framework.html#investment" target="_doc">The role of investment</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/development-framework.html#management" target="_doc">Managing the development process</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/development-framework.html#milestones" target="_doc">Milestones of development</a></li>
</ul><b><big>6</big></b> <b>Facilitating the emergence of democratic empowerment</b><br />
<blockquote><b>Abstract</b>: <i> The previous chapter presented a framework for economic development, but only at an abstract level. In any particular community, there is a lot of planning to be done, and many choices to be made, in order to achieve the potential of the framework. In this chapter we look at how local citizens can be invited to participate in the planning process, and how this participation can grow into a full-fledged democratic process at the community level.</i><br />
<!--
<a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/local-grounding.html" target="_doc"><b>Facilitating community awakening</b></a><br />
<ul> <li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/local-grounding.html#local_perspective" target="_doc">The local perspective</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/local-grounding.html#facilitating_process" target="_doc">Facilitating the process</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/local-grounding.html#harmonizing_activism" target="_doc">Harmonizing local activism</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/local-grounding.html#community_conversation" target="_doc">Bringing the community into the conversation</a></li>
<li><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/local-grounding.html#building_coherence" target="_doc">Building community coherence</a></li>
</ul> --><br />
</blockquote></small></blockquote><br />
<big><b>Part III: </b><i>Global transformation as an organic process</i></big><br />
<blockquote><small><br />
<b><big>7</big></b> <b>The emergence of community empowerment</b><br />
<blockquote><b>Abstract</b>: <i>When a community has created a resilient and prosperous local economy, and has developed processes that maintain community coherence while enabling ongoing community evolution, then we can say that the community has empowered itself to govern its own affairs. <br />
Local elections become a process where a slate of officials are elected unanimously, and the functions of the official government are effectively integrated into the community’s self-governance processes, as was always supposed to be the case in a democratic society — the government responding to the will of the people.</i><br />
</blockquote><b><big>8</big></b> <b>A viral model of cultural transformation</b><br />
<blockquote><b>Abstract</b>: <i>The basic premise of the localization movement has always been that society could be transformed by transforming one community at a time, as regards achieving sustainability, local self-sufficiency, etc. Expanding on that premise, if community empowerment can be achieved in a few seed communities, we could expect that widespread interest would develop in other communities. <br />
The model, particularly the processes that enable community coherence, might with some real likelihood go viral, leading to a grassroots cultural transformation on a society-wide basis. Only some such viral process, based on some appropriate seed, can hope to transform a society which has become so tightly controlled from the center by unaccountable elites.</i><br />
</blockquote><b><big>9</big></b> <b>An organic global society</b><br />
<blockquote><b>Abstract</b>: <i>The coherence that exists in our current societies is imposed from the center, by laws, taxes, government policies, etc. It is a coherence based on uniformity and conformance to rules. In a natural ecosystem coherence emerges spontaneously through the voluntary interaction of autonomous organisms. Organic coherence is based on diversity and on spontaneous responses to changing circumstances. <br />
An empowered community operates as an organic system, its coherence emerging through the voluntary interaction of autonomous citizens. If every community in the world were empowered in this way, and if each community is an autonomous political unit, then we would have an organic global society. Coherence in such a society emerges from the voluntary interaction of autonomous communities. It is a coherence based on diversity and on spontaneous responses to changing circumstances.</i><br />
</blockquote></small></blockquote><br />
</big></big>rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2958975246043114999.post-86629571816645070592010-10-13T21:33:00.004+01:002011-05-31T10:23:18.718+01:00Ch 4: The emergence of localismURL: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/11/localism.html" target="_doc"><small>http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/11/localism.html</small></a><br />
<br />
Richard K. Moore<br />
<a href="mailto:rkm@quaylargo.com">rkm@quaylargo.com</a><br />
Last update: 13 October 2010<br />
<br />
Table of Contents: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/toc-2012.html" target="_toc"><i>2012: Crossroads for Humanity</i></a><br />
<br />
<hr><big><br />
<a id="dawn"></a><b><big>Always darkest before the dawn</big></b><br />
In Part I we were looking at the origins of the global crisis, which are ultimately political in nature. Although these origins are not widely understood, the symptoms of the crisis are readily visible to all. One of the most visible of the symptoms is the resource crisis: resource limits, overuse and misuse of resources, resource-related conflicts, and the resulting destruction of our natural life-support systems. <br />
<br />
Some people saw the resource crisis coming years ago. A worldwide environmental movement has been active since at least 1962, after Rachael Carson’s <i>The Silent Spring</i> was published to wide acclaim. This movement has focused on lobbying for environmental protections, and for stronger regulation of corporations. The movement has had a number of successes, as when the Environmental Protection Agency was first established in the USA. But over time the movement has become less effective, the regulatory agencies have been corrupted by corporate influence, and the dark clouds of crisis loom ever larger.<br />
<br />
But hark! At this darkest time, promising new initiatives are emerging. While the environmental movement may have faltered, environmental consciousness has spread throughout the society. And in the face of government ineffectiveness, activists are turning their attention toward grassroots solutions to the crisis. <br />
<br />
From the early days of the environmental movement, we have had the notion of ‘think globally and act locally’. This translated mostly into individual life-style choices, such as driving and consuming less, recycling and bicycling, installing double-glazed windows, etc. The new wave of activists are interpreting ‘act locally’ in a more empowered way: they are working to mobilize whole communities around the goal of achieving sustainability at the local level. <br />
<br />
This new wave of environmentalism is non-confrontational and more or less apolitical, unlike the feisty old wave, and yet the new wave represents a much more radical response to the resource crisis. These activists realize that environmental regulations are simply not enough, even if they could be achieved. A total transformation is needed in the way we use resources and in the way we run our economies. If every community could go through a transition process, and achieve sustainability locally, then the whole society would be transformed. <br />
<br />
The total economic transformation of our societies is a very radical agenda indeed. If we look back in history for movements with equally radical agendas, we find only violent revolutionary movements, and mass political movements. Our new wave of environmental activists are not at all radically minded, in that traditional political sense, and yet they find themselves on a very radical path, a path toward social transformation. How do we account for this novel emergence of politically innocent, and yet potentially effective, radicalism?<br />
<br />
I suggest that this new kind of radicalism comes from a fundamental shift in consciousness on the part of leading-edge activists. That shift is not toward radicalism itself, rather it is a shift from ‘asking government to solve our problems’, to ‘figuring out what we can do for ourselves’. Activists were drawn toward this new consciousness, as it became increasingly clear that governments were simply not facing up to the crisis, and that no amount of political activism was going to wake them up.<br />
<br />
As long as activist energy is directed towards influencing governments, only small things will be asked for. In order for initiatives to have any hope of success, they must be framed within the context of overall government policy, and they must not be making ‘unrealistic demands’. Thus stifled in their options, the very imagination of activists ends up being constrained to incremental hopes and proposals. <br />
<br />
But once activists turn their attention to grassroots solutions, their imagination, their visions, and their creativity are unleashed. Instead of limiting their thinking to ‘achievable reforms’, they begin to ask, ‘How can the problem actually be solved?’ Once that bold question is asked, sensible people can often find answers, even if governments can’t. <br />
<br />
The community is the natural place to pursue grassroots initiatives, and the techniques of sustainability have been pioneered by intentional communities, ecovillages, permaculture farms, etc. This new wave of environmental localism is simply bringing the available tools to bear in a place where they can make a real difference in mainstream society. While governments aren’t listening, communities might be persuaded to pay attention — to ideas that can benefit them. This seems to be a quite sensible strategy for moving toward sustainability, one community at a time.<br />
<br />
It is not only environmentalists who have turned their attention to the local, as a focus for effective activism. The crisis is multi-faceted, extending to economic collapse, unemployment, homelessness, etc. And in every such area of crisis, governments show the same inability to respond effectively. <br />
<br />
Activists who have ideas for creating employment, or responding to some other area of crisis, are increasingly seeing the community as the best place to apply their ideas and their energies. As these energies converge on the community, we are beginning to see the emergence of a generalized localization movement.<br />
<blockquote>Around the world, there is a growing movement to pull back from the relentless march of corporate globalisation by re-rooting economic and social activities at the community level. From the burgeoning popularity of farmers’ markets and food co-ops to the revitalisation of community banking, people are organising themselves to reclaim the economy from large profit-driven corporations and instead build sustainable, local alternatives.<br />
— Anna White, “<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/10-6" target="_ref">Why Local Economies Matter</a>”<br />
</blockquote> Anna White talks about a ‘growing movement’, but unfortunately the growth is horizontal rather than vertical. More and more activists are getting involved, in a growing number of communities and a variety of initiatives, but in each community the actual benefit of the initiatives has remained marginal. <br />
<br />
There might be a weekly farmer’s market, for example, and it might be crowded with happy farmers and happy customers. But in terms of the overall food business in the community, the farmer’s market usually handles only a negligible percentage. The early adopters get on board, for some percentage of their food purchases, and the program never grows much beyond that. <br />
<br />
Localization activists are motivated by a vision of transformation, and their initiatives do have transformational potential. However none of these initiatives, apart from a few notable exceptions, has found a way to escape from marginalism and really begin to have a significant effect on any community’s economy, or to move any community significantly closer to sustainability.<br />
<br />
Let us now take a closer look at the various initiatives, in order to understand the nature of the obstacles preventing greater progress. In the next chapter, we will then take on the challenge of figuring out how these obstacles might be overcome. The various localization initiatives can be categorized under three primary threads of activity:<br />
<ul><li>achieving greater self-sufficiency</li>
<li>revitalizing the local economy</li>
<li>awakening grassroots energy</li>
</ul><a id="self-suff"></a><big><b>Achieving greater self-sufficiency</b></big><br />
These initiatives are oriented around making the most of local resources, reducing consumption of resources generally, and seeking to minimize dependence on goods and services sourced from outside the surrounding region. To the extent these efforts succeed, the community could be shielded from disruption by global resource scarcities, or by a collapse in society’s supply chains. <br />
<br />
Among the specific initiatives are campaigns to encourage certain individual lifestyle choices, such as buying from local shops, riding bicycles, installing better insulation, and all those other things that environmentally-minded people have been doing for quite some time, on the basis of the principle, ‘think globally and act locally’. <br />
<br />
The new-wave activists have extended the initiatives to group undertakings, such as urban gardens, farmer’s markets, local energy production, and local currencies to encourage local shopping.<br />
<br />
As regards the lifestyle-choice initiatives, the obstacle to greater progress is clear. The immediate benefits to the individual from making such choices are marginal, there are costs and sacrifices involved, and only a limited number of people are sufficiently motivated by long-term concerns to join in. <br />
<br />
In the case of the group undertakings, there are two different obstacles preventing the initiatives from having a more significant impact on the local economy. In some cases, as with Farmer’s markets, the obstacle is the same as above: not enough immediate benefits to attract widespread participation. <br />
<br />
In other cases, we see a different kind of obstacle. In these cases activists have found a way to generate widespread participation. But in doing so they have narrowed the scope of their initiatives to the point where even widespread participation has only a marginal impact on the local economy. Examples of this are <a href="http://www.berkshares.org/whatareberkshares.htm" target="_ref">Berkshares</a> and the <a href="http://transitiontowns.org/" target="_ref">Transition Towns</a> movement.<br />
<br />
Berkshares are a community currency that has been introduced into the Berkshire region of Massachusetts. Local residents can purchase Berkshares at a discount, 100 Berkshares for $95. They can then spend those Berkshares as if they were dollars, at merchants who have chosen to participate. Such a merchant can trade in 100 Berkshares and get back $95. The net effect is that merchants are offering a 5% discount to local residents, in order to increase their business volume, and in order to encourage a community spirit of ‘shop locally’.<br />
<br />
This is an attractive enough proposition that many local businesses and residents are participating. This has succeeded in increasing the percentage of local shopping, and the local residents are benefitting from the 5% discount. Those are certainly good outcomes, but in terms of moving toward local self-sufficiency or sustainability, the net result is marginal.<br />
<br />
The Transition Towns movement is focused specifically on the need to reduce energy consumption, based on the belief that oil is getting scarce and that society’s supply chains are going to break down. The movement has a step-by-step plan for communities, based on educating the people in the community about the need to reduce energy usage, working with local authorities, and developing a multi-year <i>Energy Descent Action Plan</i>, with the overall support of the community. <br />
<br />
The town of Totnes, in the UK, seems to be the most advanced of the Transition Towns, having launched their project in 2006. They have an Energy Descent Action Plan, with 39 projects on the go, and the activity has generated more than £8,000 income for the community. They also have a local currency, the ‘Totnes Pound’, and out of a population of less than 8,000, over 3,000 have signed up as supporters of the project.<br />
<br />
These are impressive achievements in terms of community organizing, and yet, with all that local support and activity, and four years of effort, the income generated has amounted to only about £1 per resident. And the Action Plan, at this point, is actually just a plan to create a plan, which in turn will <i>hopefully</i> outline a path to becoming somewhat more sustainable by the year 2030. <br />
<br />
This has been an admirable effort by the activists and the community, and in many ways the project is an ongoing success story. But again, in terms of moving toward local self-sufficiency or sustainability, the net result is marginal. <br />
<br />
<a id="revitalizing"></a><big><b>Revitalizing the local economy</b></big><br />
These initiatives are oriented around stimulating the local economy, putting people to work, and seeking to create local prosperity — while minimizing dependence on the outside economy or outside investment. These objectives are complementary to the self-sufficiency objectives above, but the emphasis is on stimulating economic activity, rather than on reducing imports to the community. <br />
<br />
The primary revitalization initiatives have to do with <i>local currencies, local funding entities</i>, and <i>co-ops</i>. <br />
<br />
<i><b>Local currencies</b></i><br />
In the previous section, local currencies were seen as a way to encourage buying from local businesses. Here we are emphasizing something else: the ability of local currencies to enable a greater level of local economic activity, than can be supported by the locally available dollars. <br />
<br />
<small><i>Note: for simplicity, I’m using the term ‘dollars’ for the local official currency, but of course this might really be Euros, Pounds, or whatever, depending on where the community is located</i></small>. <br />
<br />
With discount-based local currencies, such as Berkshares, some degree of increased economic activity can be generated, but that is limited to a small percentage increase over what could be supported by available dollars. In order to move beyond that, another kind of local currency is needed, an <i>independent</i> currency, such as <a href="http://www.transaction.net/money/ithaca/index.html" target="_ref">Ithaca Hours</a>, <a href="http://www.transaction.net/money/timedollars/index.html" target="_ref">Time Dollars</a>, or <a href="http://www.transaction.net/money/lets/" target="_ref">LETS</a>.<br />
<br />
Independent currencies are separate currencies in their own right. Units are not typically purchased for dollars, but are issued on some other basis. And units are not typically exchangeable for dollars; their value is defined by the goods and services that can be accessed with them. Independent currencies have the potential to support a vibrant local economy, even in a dollar-impoverished community.<br />
<br />
Discount-based currencies and independent currencies each appeal to different constituencies, and for different kinds of transactions. As we saw with Berkshares, discount-based currencies are appealing to established merchants, as a way of increasing their business volume. However established merchants are not likely to be interested in accepting independent currencies, because they are unlikely to be able to buy their supplies of goods using such a currency. <br />
<br />
Independent currencies are appealing to ordinary people, as a way to exchange goods and services among one another. Someone might earn units by giving haircuts, and then use those units to buy bread from someone who bakes. For these kinds of transactions, a discount-based currency offers no benefits over using dollars directly.<br />
<br />
The reason discount-based currencies have only a marginal effect on the local economy — despite widespread participation — is that discounts are inherently limited as regards the the benefits they can provide. In the case of independent currencies, the benefits have been marginal because not enough people have participated thus far, and the transactions involved have tended to be of marginal value.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Local funding entities</b></i><br />
A local funding entity could be a local bank, a local credit union, or some kind of local entity that is able to invest in local projects and enterprises. In order to serve the purpose of revitalizing the local economy, the funding entity needs to have a certain ethic about its operations. In particular, the entity needs to be dedicated to revitalizing the local economy, rather than dedicated to maximizing its own return on investment.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_union" target="_ref">Credit unions</a> are very beneficial to communities. They are owned by their members, and their mission is to serve their members rather than maximize their profits. They tend to offer better terms on both loans and savings accounts than banks do. And since credit unions don’t make speculative investments, they survived the recent financial collapse relatively unscathed. <br />
<br />
Banks, if they are established on an appropriate basis, can also be very beneficial to their communities. If we consider the state of North Dakota to be a ‘community’, then the <a href="http://www.banknd.nd.gov/" target="_ref">Bank of North Dakota</a> demonstrates the ability of a bank to insulate its community from external financial problems. <br />
<br />
This bank is owned by the state of North Dakota, rather than by private investors, and it is dedicated to promoting the economic welfare of its citizens and businesses, rather than maximizing profits. As with credit unions, this bank came through the financial collapse in very good shape: <a href="http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/03/how-nation%E2%80%99s-only-state-owned-bank-became-envy-wall-street" target="_ref"><i><small>How the Nation’s Only State-Owned Bank Became the Envy of Wall Street</small></i></a>.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the most impressive example of how a bank can benefit its community can be found in Mondragon, Spain, as explained in the excellent documentary film, <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7565584850785786404#" target="_ref"><i><small>The Mondragon Experiment</small></i></a>, and in the article, <i><a href="http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/long_mondragon.html" target="_ref"><small>The Mondragon Co-operative Federation: A Model for our Time?</small></a></i>. This bank was created for the specific purpose of developing the local economy, and in particular to fund and launch worker-owned production co-ops. <br />
<br />
The bank not only provides funding, but it helps people with entrepreneurial ideas to develop a business plan, and to set up a sound management team. The bank then stays in touch with the enterprise, providing counseling, and making additional funding available, when that makes good business sense. The bank acts as a friendly partner and mentor in such enterprises, and the economic success of the Mondragon system has been remarkable. <br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.grameen.com/" target="_ref">Grameen Bank</a> demonstrates another way that local communities can benefit, using the mechanism of <a href="http://www.grameen.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=108" target="_ref"><i>microcredit</i></a>. Grameen makes small loans to people in poverty, creating self-employment for income-generating activities and housing for the poor. Prof. Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank, received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work. Grameen has shown that people are not poor due to a lack of talent or enterprise, but because of a lack of opportunities.<br />
<br />
One of the most promising proposals for a local funding entity is the <a href="http://commongoodbank.com/home/" target="_ref">Common Good Bank</a>. This bank has been designed from the very beginning as a vehicle to support democratically-managed community development. The plan is to have local divisions of the bank in participating communities, and in each community the depositors would decide what the bank should invest in. Bank profits are to go to schools and suitable non-profit organizations, and some loans will be micro-loans, as with the Grameen Bank.<br />
<br />
The most remarkable element of this banking scheme is a very special kind of local currency, called <a href="http://commongoodbank.com/localmoney" target="_ref"><i><i>Local Money</i></i></a>. This is a kind of independent currency, in that it can be issued for free, but it has the virtues of a discount currency, as it can be exchanged for dollars — and there isn’t even a discount. Such a currency would be appealing to everyone in the community, including the local merchants.<br />
<br />
Local Money is an extension of the principle of fractional reserve banking. All banks, under this principle, can issue loans in excess of their actual reserves, on the theory that most loans get repaid, and the bank won’t be caught short. In essence, money is created when a loan is issued, and the bank profits from the interest on this newly created money. It’s a very profitable scam for the banks. Local Money transforms that scam into something beneficial to communities.<br />
<br />
Units of Local Money can be issued as loans, or as grants to community projects, or as part of the remuneration for bank workers. These units can then be used to buy things from local merchants, or exchanged for services. The value of a Local Money unit is based on the stable, inflation-free value of some basic local commodities, benchmarked regularly against the dollar. The bank will accept units and exchange them for dollars, based on the current valuation.<br />
<br />
Needless to say, the stability of this scheme depends on fiscal prudence in the issuing of Local Money. Just as with national currencies, careful control of the local money supply is called for. The money supply must be kept in balance with the volume of trading taking place in the community. If the money supply is too great, inflation results; if the money supply is too small, the operation of the local economy is unnecessarily restrained. In addition, the amount of Local Money in circulation must be kept in balance with the bank’s dollar reserves, because of the convertibility guarantee.<br />
<br />
Provided that Local Money is prudently managed, the scheme has great potential for stimulating development and prosperity in the community. Wherever there are untapped talents, or undeveloped economic potential, Local Money can be made available to put that talent to work and realize that economic potential. <br />
<br />
We might recall here that, according to Benjamin Franklin, the main reason for the Revolutionary War was the fact that Britain outlawed the issuance of local currency by the Colonies. Local currencies had enabled prosperity in the Colonies, and the Bank of England was not benefitting. <i>It’s not nice to mess with central bankers</i>.<br />
<br />
There is one pitfall for the Common Good Bank’s scheme. If severe inflation occurs in the dollar economy, the convertibility guarantee cannot be maintained. If the value of the official currency plummets, and Local Money retains its value, the bank wouldn’t have sufficient reserves to handle exchanges, particularly if people panicked and started a dollar-exchange run on the bank.<br />
<br />
If such inflation did happen, it would be a good idea for the bank to sponsor a public viewing of Jimmy Stewart’s, <i>It’s a Good Life</i>. <br />
<br />
I say that only partly in jest. The fact is that in a period of severe dollar inflation, assuming that Local Money has been in use for a reasonable length of time, local people would be happy they have a currency that is working for them. They would have every reason to continue to honor it, and little incentive to exchange for a national currency that is in trouble. They would be likely to accept a change of policy, where exchanges for dollars would be limited based on need, and on the dollar reserves available to the bank.<br />
<br />
To sum up this section on local funding entities, we can see that the effect of such entities has gone far beyond the marginal in many cases. With Mondragon, the Grameen Bank, and the Bank of North Dakota, we have seen that a well-managed and well-conceived local funding mechanism can provide very significant benefits to its ‘community’.<br />
<br />
In the Common Good Bank’s scheme, we see a very well thought out synthesis, bringing together proven elements into a package designed specifically for facilitating community empowerment. With their Local Money, they have combined the virtues of a independent currency with the powerful monetary model that is routinely abused by central banks, but that can also be a potent enabler of community prosperity, if used wisely. <br />
<br />
The Common Good Bank provides a good model of local finance, but there are drawbacks to the centralization aspect of the model, where each community operation is established as a branch of the central Common Good Bank. <br />
<br />
Clearly this offers convenience and simplicity to the community, in setting up a local system, but it inhibits local innovation, and it makes the whole scheme highly vulnerable to co-option or disruption at that one central point. Community empowerment would be better served by adapting the model to local circumstances, and implementing it locally, perhaps in a more lightweight form than an officially registered bank.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Co-ops</b></i><br />
There are several kinds of co-ops, including worker-owned co-ops, consumer-owned co-ops, and co-ops whose members are other enterprises, such as a marketing co-op for local farmers. Co-ops provide both economic and cultural benefits to the community, and to co-op members.<br />
<br />
Culturally, co-ops bring local people into a collaborative relationship, and they give them experience in managing their own ‘community affairs’, within the microcosm of the co-op. In these ways co-ops help build a sense of community, and a sense of empowerment, among community residents.<br />
<br />
The initial funding for co-ops typically comes at least in part from the members themselves, which minimizes start-up indebtedness, and motivates the owner-members to make a success of the venture. And without non-participating investors, a co-op has the flexibility to operate on a break-even basis if that best serves the interests of the members and the nature of the co-op. In these ways, the co-op form is complementary to the goals of local self-sufficiency and community empowerment.<br />
<br />
Consumer co-ops are a means of leveraging buying power, getting goods at wholesale prices, being able to control the quality of the goods, and being able to choose the suppliers. When people shop at a local co-op, wealth isn’t being drained from the community, as it is when they shop at corporate outlets. And the co-op can give preference to local suppliers. Unfortunately, while cheap foreign imports are still so readily available through corporate outlets, consumer co-ops can have a hard time competing in the local marketplace.<br />
<br />
Co-ops whose members are enterprises can be leveraging either buying power or marketing budgets, depending on which side of the supply chain the co-op is operating on. These kinds of co-ops can be of considerable benefit to small local businesses, increasing their competitiveness by reducing their costs, while at the same time providing them with broader access to suppliers and markets.<br />
<br />
Local worker-owned co-ops can be very beneficial to both the workers and the community, particularly if the members were formerly unemployed or under-employed. In these cases, the worker benefits significantly, and the community economy also gains from the productive contribution of formerly wasted local talent. Local talent is a local resource, and as with all local resources, if it can become more productive, that contributes to both community prosperity and community self-sufficiency.<br />
<br />
Mondragon provides not only a successful model of local funding, but also a very successful and highly evolved model for worker co-ops, as described in the documentary video referenced above. They have developed a set of guidelines, and organizational mechanisms, that make for a very healthy enterprise. <br />
<br />
Under their system, the management team is empowered to do its job on a day-to-day basis, while at the same time the owner-workers are effectively represented at every level of the organization, ensuring that the co-op is managed in the best interests of all concerned. Ongoing communication across the levels of the organization is maintained, by means of various councils. <br />
<br />
A participatory spirit of ‘being on the same team’ is very important to the sound functioning of a worker-owned co-op, and at Mondragon they have learned that this spirit becomes difficult to maintain if a co-op grows too large. Rather than adding a new division to an existing co-op, for example, it often makes more sense to spin off a new autonomous co-op. <br />
<br />
A sense of team participation not only makes for productive and efficient operation, but it makes it easier for members to work out an equitable arrangement in bad economic times as well: <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-new-economy/mondragon-worker-cooperatives-decide-how-to-ride-out-a-downturn" target="_ref"><i><small>Mondragón Worker-Cooperatives Decide How to Ride Out a Downturn</small></i></a>. <br />
<br />
<a id="awakening"></a><big><b>Awakening grassroots energy</b></big><br />
In the various localization initiatives we have looked at so far, the community itself has been a more or less passive participant in the process. The activists provide the energy, the programs are largely pre-defined, and the folks in the community need only decide whether or not to participate.<br />
<br />
Those initiatives have been about <i>teaching things to the community</i>, and advising local people about what they <i>should be doing</i> as a community. There is another thread of initiatives that are about <i>listening to the community</i>, and helping the local people to find out what they <i>want to be doing</i> as a community.<br />
<br />
Rather than programs, these initiatives involve various processes that are aimed at creating an environment where people can work together more productively and creatively than typically occurs in discussions or meetings. <br />
<br />
There are a wide variety of such processes, appropriate to different situations, with varying degrees of effectiveness, and with varying degrees of overhead involved. A comprehensive catalog of community-oriented processes can be found in the Co-Intelligence Institute’s <a href="http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_ComunityProcesses.html" target="_ref">toolbox of processes for community work</a>. <br />
<br />
As this book continues, we will be looking at various of these initiatives and processes, as we are considering situations where each might be relevant. For now I’d like to introduce one particular initiative that has achieved remarkable results, as regards:<br />
<ul><li>finding common ground</li>
<li>generating sensible proposals</li>
<li>awakening the energy of the participants</li>
</ul><b><i>A case study: Wise Democracy Victoria</i></b><br />
One very promising initiative has been unfolding over the past few years in the city of Victoria, British Columbia. A group of local citizens came together under the name <a href="http://wisedemocracyvictoria.blogspot.com/p/mission-and-history.html" target="_ref"><i>Wise Democracy Victoria</i></a>, and they have convened a series of <i>Wisdom Councils</i> in which local residents have participated. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-wisdomcouncil.html" target="_ref">Wisdom Councils</a> were invented by Jim Rough, of Port Townsend, Washington, based on practices that evolved out of his consulting work in industry. The participants in a Wisdom Council are selected randomly from the local population, much like jury members are selected. The Council then convenes for one or more days, using a process Jim developed, called <i><a href="http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-dynamicfacilitation.html" target="_ref">Dynamic Facilitation</a></i>.<br />
<br />
In this process, the facilitator’s job is to give their full attention to whoever is speaking, and encourage the person to fully express what’s on their mind. The facilitator repeats back the main statements, and writes them down on a flip chart, so that everything said is clearly understood by everyone. <br />
<br />
The facilitator makes no attempt to push the group toward reaching conclusions, but just helps the group follow its own energy. In a Wisdom Council there isn’t even a topic for discussion: the participants themselves gradually converge on what they want to talk about.<br />
<br />
Wise Democracy Victoria has posted detailed descriptions of their series of three Wisdom Councils on this website: <a href="http://wisedemocracyvictoria.wetpaint.com/" target="_ref"><small>http://wisedemocracyvictoria.wetpaint.com/</small></a>. Included are videos, newspaper reoprts, reference information, and statements that were created by each of the three Councils. The website offers this summary:<br />
<blockquote><small>Wisdom Councils precipitate energy, enthusiasm and HOPE for the Future:<br />
Past participants have indicated that the experience was transforming and energizing because they felt that their voices could actually make a difference!<br />
<i>Like a match in a haystack, the ‘latent energy of democracy’ is there, ready to be tapped. It only takes a few people at the right time and the right place. You can help provide the spark!</i><br />
Three Wisdom Councils have now been successfully convened in Victoria, including the first in Canada and one in the close-knit neighbourhood of Fernwood. In each case the Council members have prepared an amazing statement of community spirit!<br />
Even though the council members did not know one another prior to meeting and came from a wide diversity of backgrounds and experiences, in each case they have prepared a powerful, unanimous statement.</small></blockquote>If you look at some of the videos and statements you will see that this summary does not exaggerate the remarkable outcomes of the Councils. There is indeed a ‘latent energy of democracy’ that can be woken up when people know that their voices can really make a difference, and they are in an environment where they are encouraged to express themselves. <br />
<br />
Following each of the Councils, a public meeting was held where the Council participants reported on their experience and their unanimous statement. From the videos of these reports we can see that the participants didn’t just ‘agree on a statement’, rather they are all very enthusiastic about the ideas they have created together. Their enthusiasm spills over to the folks at the public meeting, and for one promising evening, following each Council, the latent energy of democracy comes alive in the room.<br />
<br />
These Wisdom Councils provide a very important proof-of-concept. They have demonstrated that ‘ordinary people’ in communities are capable of finding common ground and collaborating effectively, if they are in an appropriately supportive environment. These Councils have demonstrated in microcosm that people have a natural energy for participatory democracy, that there is indeed a ‘latent energy of democracy’ embedded in human nature.<br />
<br />
Jim Rough’s hope for Wisdom Councils is that the whole community would respond with enthusiasm to the outcomes of a council, not just those at the public meeting. Unfortunately, such a response has not been forthcoming, despite considerable local promotion and publicity of the councils. As with the other threads of localization, it has proven difficult to escape from marginalism, as regards awakening grassroots energy.<br />
<!--
Unfortunately, these promising evenings are always followed by a let-down. Experiencing the possibility of participatory democracy is energizing, but there’s nowhere to go with that energy. When the event is over it’s like when an enchanting movie is over; you go back into the real world, with just a memory of an appealing world that you wish could be real.
Every attempt was made in Victoria to get the community interested in the Councils, first in Victoria as a whole, and later in the neighborhood of Fernwood. There were announcements and public meetings of various kinds, both before and after the events, and there was some good newspaper coverage. The hope was to generate public enthusiasm around the potential of particpatory processes in giving people a greater voice in public affairs. Again, a let-down, as the public response was relatively insignificant.
How that energy might be awoken in a whole community, and how direct democracy might operate effectively on the community level, are still unanswered questions. Those questions are in fact a central theme of this book, and we’ll be returning to them in the next chapter and beyond.
Meanwhile, the Wise Democracy Victoria folks have managed to get the local government interested in the potential of ‘wise democracy’ processes. The City of Victoria recently sponsored two Citizen Insight Councils, which are like Wisdom Councils, except they have a predefined topic to explore. This is happening as part of the city’s public engagement strategy, as they are reviewing the city’s Official Community Plan.
With city sponsorship, these Councils got a lot more attention than the Wisdom Councils did, and they may have a beneficial impact on city planning as well. The <a href="http://wisedemocracyvictoria.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html" target="_ref">recommendations</a> that emerged from the Councils are very sensible and creative. <br />
<br />
Using these processes in the context of public engagement with government, is in many ways a very good thing. It gives Councils an opportunity to have greater impact on communities than was happening otherwise; it raises public awareness about democratic processes, and it is a very effective way of providing public input to local government that is of high-quality and that has a considerable claim to democratic legitimacy.<br />
<br />
That path, however, tends to take the processes away from the core direction of the localization movement, which is about transforming our societies beyond what governments are able or willing to pursue. To the extent processes are devoted to advising government, only ‘realistic’ proposals can be entertained. And the proposals are recommendations only. <br />
<br />
Perhaps in the case of Victoria, the local government will entertain ideas that can really make a difference. It will be very interesting to see the new Community Plan when it comes out.<br />
--><br />
</big><br />
<hr><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/development-framework.html"><font color="#3333CC"><i>on to Chapter 5</i></font></a> …<br />
<br />
rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2958975246043114999.post-20900710305778259332010-10-10T12:23:00.014+01:002011-05-31T10:27:21.747+01:00Part II: A grassroots response to the crisisLast update: 13 October 2010<br />
<br />
Table of Contents: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/toc-2012.html" target="_toc"><i>2012: Crossroads for Humanity</i></a><br />
<br />
<big><br />
<b><big>Prolog</big></b><br />
<br />
The conclusions reached in Part I are rather stark. Chapter 1 concluded that we are headed for a planned dystopia if things are allowed to continue as they are; Chapter 2 traced our current predicament back to the origins of civilization itself, and Chapter 3 identified the core systemic problem: hierarchical governance always becomes tyrannical.<br />
<br />
These conclusions may seem exaggerated, or even bizarre, to many readers. The evidence for those conclusions, however, is quite clear. I see myself in the role of the child who pointed out that the emperor has no clothes, not someone who has done unique historical research. I suspect these conclusions are seldom entertained primarily because they are so frightening: what hope do they leave for us? Nonetheless, that is our situation. And real hope only becomes possible when the reality of our situation is recognized.<br />
<br />
Our only real hope is to turn the pyramid upside down from the grassroots, by finding our collective empowerment in our communities, and creating real democracy for the first time since our civilizations began. And in fact more and people are turning their attention to the local as a place to deal with the problems of society. In this part of the book we will be exploring the question of how the emergence of empowered communities might be facilitated.<br />
<br />
Chapter 4 surveys the localization movement, in its various aspects, and examines why its impact on communities has so far been marginal. Chapter 5 presents a framework for achieving economic empowerment, based on a synthesis of the various ideas that are being put forward by the localization movement. Chapter 6 explores how local democratic processes can be developed in conjunction with pursuing economic empowerment.<br />
</big><br />
<hr><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/11/localism.html"><font color="#3333CC"><i>on to Chapter 4</i></font></a> …<br />
<br />
rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2958975246043114999.post-26227585995874799292010-10-08T11:55:00.015+01:002010-10-10T21:45:53.060+01:00Part I: The nature of the global crisisLast update: 10 October 2010<br />
<br />
Table of Contents: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/toc-2012.html" target="_toc"><i>2012: Crossroads for Humanity</i></a><br />
<br />
<big><br />
<b><big>Prolog</big></b><br />
<br />
Civilization is facing a myriad of crises, from financial collapse to environmental collapse, from chronic warfare to eroding civil liberties, and the list goes on. In this part of the book we will be examining the nature of the overall crisis. Chapter 1 looks at where things seem to be headed; Chapter 2 looks into how things got that way from a broad historical perspective, and Chapter 3 looks at the nature of the problem from a systems perspective.<br />
</big><br />
<hr><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html"><font color="#3333CC"><i>on to Chapter 1</i></font></a> …<br />
<br />
rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2958975246043114999.post-23257905263880879202010-08-24T17:16:00.012+01:002010-10-14T01:43:55.851+01:00Ch 5: A framework for achieving economic transformationURL: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/development-framework.html" target="_doc"><small>http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/development-framework.html</small></a><br />
<br />
Richard K. Moore<br />
<a href="mailto:rkm@quaylargo.com">rkm@quaylargo.com</a><br />
Last update: 14 October 2010<br />
<br />
Table of Contents: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/toc-2012.html" target="_toc"><i>2012: Crossroads for Humanity</i></a><br />
<br />
<hr><big><br />
<a id="development"></a><big><b>Development as a focus for transformation</b></big><br />
<blockquote><b>Abstract</b>: <i>In this chapter, community development is identified as a natural focus for community transformation. Development not in the capitalist sense of seeking returns, but in the sense of making the most of resources within the contraints of sustainability, developing value-adding enterprises, finding productive work for everyone, and generally improving the local quality of life. What is understood about national economic development provides models for how community development can be best pursued.</i><br />
</blockquote><br />
<a id="investment"></a><big><b>The role of investment</b></big><br />
<blockquote><b>Abstract</b>: <i>Every development project needs some level of initial investment. This is true of building a factory, starting a business, or developing a community’s economy. The greater the investment is, the more ambitious the project goals can be. In the case of community development, the investment should come from local citizens, who will expect to get their investment back, but whose ‘profit’ will not be interest, but rather the privilege of sharing in an improved quality of community life, and the knowledge that they contributed when it mattered most.</i><br />
</blockquote><br />
<a id="management"></a><big><b>Managing the development process</b></big><br />
<blockquote><b>Abstract</b>: <i> The ideas in this section are based heavily on the very successful Mondragon project, extended by the Local Money concept from the proposed Common Good Bank. A local co-op bank is seen as the appropriate vehicle for managing the initial investment funding, investing in and supporting development initiatives, and managing the community money supply wisely, as regards both dollars and local currency. As community coherence emerges, the community itself will increasingly control its own development / evolutionary process.</i><br />
</blockquote><br />
<a id="milestones"></a><big><b>Milestones of development</b></big><br />
<blockquote><b>Abstract</b>: <i> The development of a community economy, just like the development of a national economy, always goes through identifiable stages, each with its own unique characteristics. At the beginning there is an emphasis on funding new initiatives, later there there may be an emphasis on developing trading partners, etc. At each stage, investments must be directed where the most leverage is provided in that stage, and the money supply must be kept in balance with the level of economic activity appropriate to that stage.</i><br />
</blockquote></big><br />
<!--
<a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/local-grounding.html"><font color="#3333CC"><i>on to Chapter 6</i></font></a> …<br />
<br />
<br />
-->rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2958975246043114999.post-77254999838479352072010-03-29T14:53:00.040+01:002010-10-11T19:13:32.057+01:00Ch 3: The story of hierarchyURL: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/story-of-hierarchy.html" target="_doc"><small>http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/story-of-hierarchy.html</small></a><br />
<br />
Richard K. Moore<br />
<a href="mailto:rkm@quaylargo.com">rkm@quaylargo.com</a><br />
Last update: 11 October 2010<br />
<br />
Table of Contents: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/toc-2012.html" target="_toc"><i>2012: Crossroads for Humanity</i></a><br />
<br />
<hr><big><br />
<a id="city_states"></a><b><big>City-states: the first exploitive hierarchies</big></b><br />
In a hierarchal society there are a few at the top, who make the big decisions — and everyone else, who are obliged to abide by those decisions. If the interests of those at the top are aligned with the interests of the general population, hierarchy can be a somewhat reasonable mode of organization. The few are able to reach coherent decisions efficiently, and the many can get on with the business of society.<br />
<br />
In our very first hierarchical societies — herding bands ruled by a warrior chief — we had such an alignment of interests. The chief and the band shared the goals of obtaining the best pastures for their herds, and protecting their territory from competing bands. A strong chief improved their combat prowess, and the system worked well for the chief and band alike. <br />
<br />
The chief enjoyed many privileges, compared to the rest of the band, yet his role was essentially beneficial to the band, not exploitive. He got the biggest slice of the pie, and his lieutenants did well too, but overall the pie was divided reasonably equitably.<br />
<br />
Our second generation of hierarchical societies emerged when herding bands conquered and enslaved early agricultural societies. The few at the top were now exploiting the majority of the population, and most of the pie was now being shared by the new upper class, the members of the conquering tribe. The slaves did all the hard work and grew the food, and subsisted on crumbs from the pie that their labor created.<br />
<br />
From our modern perspective, this was a radically different kind of society than either of its ancestor societies, the herders and the agriculturalists. We can appreciate that this was the beginning of exploitive hierarchy, something that has cursed us ever since. This is a perspective that would have made sense to the slaves of that time as well. They had become slaves on the very lands they had once proudly called their own. For the first time, the interests of those at the top were no longer in alignment with the interests of the general population of the society.<br />
<br />
From the perspective of the conquering tribe, however, the new societies were in many ways very similar to the original herding societies. The chief — now king — was still the undisputed ruler, and he still shared the pie more or less equitably with his fellows, the members of the conquering tribe. <i>The difference was that the slaves had now taken the place of the herds</i>. <br />
<br />
Throughout history, slaves have always been looked on as subhuman by their masters. To the conquering tribe, this first generation of slaves was simply a better source of food than the herds had been. A greater supply of food could be obtained, and without the need to stay on the move looking for green pastures. Slaves were property, just like the herd animals had been, and they could perform many other kinds of labor as well, besides just food production. The slaves were not people: they were multi-purpose beasts of burden.<br />
<br />
From the perspective of the conquerors, the internal structure of society had not changed radically — because the slaves were not part of society. Such was the nature of the early city-states that arose in Mesopotamia. Historians consider these slave-based societies to be the beginning of Western civilization.<br />
<br />
The new kings were in their hearts still warrior chiefs, but with food surpluses at their disposal, and a more solid base of operations to work from. They could now deploy armies on missions of conquest, to capture more territory and more slaves.<br />
<br />
Once these city-states were established, they were characterized by regular warfare. Archeological excavations reveal that the cities were destroyed and rebuilt time after time, falling to successive waves of conquest. <br />
<br />
The same dynamics of growth applied to city-states as applied to the herding bands. A larger city-state had a relative survival advantage, and there were still the benefits of alliances. In this way early empires developed, where one supreme ruler managed to gain control of a larger domain, including a collection of cities and their hinterlands. <br />
<br />
Thus was born the mainstream thread of Western Civilization. A similar story can be told about the rise of Chinese civilization, or the Incas and Aztecs, all of which followed a similar evolutionary pattern.<br />
<br />
This thread continued, with ever-larger societies, and ever-greater complexity. And always there have been the few at the top, exploiting the population as they would a herd of cattle, with the help of a stratified class structure. In that way we have reached the situation described in our first chapter, where a small clique is seeking to dominate the whole globe, while culling the herd in the process. <br />
<br />
<a id="paths"></a><b><big>Paths that could have been followed</big></b><br />
The mainstream evolutionary path we have followed was not inevitable. Hierarchy was not an unavoidable consequence of developing more complex societies. There were societies that showed us other paths, moving toward scale and complexity while avoiding hierarchy.<br />
<br />
For example, as described in the previous chapter, there were what Riane Eisler called the <i>Early Civilizations of Europe</i>. These societies developed partnership cultures, rather than hierarchies, to deal with the complexities of civilization. Their cities lasted thousands of years without being destroyed by warfare. <br />
<br />
This is not surprising, because an agricultural society is inherently adverse to warfare. A farmer wants nothing more than peace and stability, so he can grow and harvest his crops. When the farmers are slaves, however, other forces are controlling their destiny. <br />
<br />
Another example is provided by the Sioux Nation, one of the Native American tribes. The Sioux were made up of fierce warrior bands, with horses and hunting territories, in many ways similar to the warrior bands we discussed above. Like them the Sioux were plagued by ongoing conflicts among the different bands, competing for the best territories. <br />
<br />
Instead of this leading to ever-larger bands under absolute-ruler chiefs, the Sioux found another solution — based on dialog. They worked out a system of councils, where representatives of the various bands could meet and work out their differences by reaching consensus. This is where we get the image of a <i>pow wow</i>, and smoking the peace pipe around the campfire. This was a stable system, which continued up until the Europeans invaded and destroyed the Native American cultures.<br />
<br />
If the early herding bands had invented such councils, or if they had not conquered the early agricultural societies, mainstream civilization might have evolved on a non-hierarchical basis. Unfortunately, once exploitive hierarchies came into existence, they were destined to prevail — by virtue of their ability and motivation to mobilize and deploy military force. The pursuit of exploitation — the knowledge of good and evil — was our toxic <i>Fall from Grace</i>.<br />
<br />
<a id="republics"></a><b><big>Paths that failed: the story of a republic</big></b><br />
1776 was a pivotal year. In that year Thomas Paine published <i>Common Sense</i>, Adam Smith published <i>The Wealth of Nations</i>, and the <i>Declaration of Independence</i> was signed in Philadelphia. These events were related to one another in important ways.<br />
<br />
<i>The Wealth of Nations</i> presents a very cogent argument for the benefits of an economy based on market forces. In fact, the argument is based on the existence of strong market regulations, but that part of the argument has generally been ignored. With the regulations omitted, Smith’s argument has been used as propaganda for totally unregulated markets — <i>laissez-faire</i> capitalism. Without regulations, capitalism inevitably leads to monopolies and cartels, the very things that Smith most adamantly opposed, and which his regulations were intended to prevent. <br />
<br />
<i>Common Sense</i> was essentially an argument against the necessity of hierarchical governance. Paine made a strong distinction between <i>society</i> and <i>government</i>. He argued that society, what we might call <i>civil society</i>, does not require some monarch to manage it. Just as Smith explained how markets are self-organizing, Paine was explaining how societies are self-organizing. <i>Common Sense</i> broke all existing publication records, and was read on street corners throughout the colonies, as most people could not read. <br />
<br />
The Declaration of Independence was signed nine months after Common Sense was published. The Declaration was both the articulation of a political philosophy, and the declaration of an intent to overthrow the rule of the Crown in the American Colonies. <br />
<br />
The political philosophy claims that citizens have the right to replace their government if that government is failing to serve the interests of the people, and if that government fails to respond to petitions for the redress of grievances. The Declaration does not refer to <i>Common Sense</i>, but the philosophy would have made little sense to colonists if Paine’s thinking was not widely familiar to them. <br />
<br />
Prior to the publication of <i>Common Sense</i>, the majority of colonists were not in favor of independence. They had strong complaints, and were calling for better treatment and for representation in Parliament, but they wanted to remain under the protection of the Crown. <i>They believed a monarch was necessary for an ordered society, just as a captain is necessary on a ship</i>. <br />
<br />
<i>Common Sense</i> is perhaps the most successful revolutionary document ever written, as it succeeded in persuading an entire population that a radically different form of governance was possible. Paine planted the seed of independence, and after nine months of gestation that seed gave birth to a colony-wide revolutionary spirit. Without <i>Common Sense</i> the Declaration of Independence would have fallen on deaf ears, and the elite signatories would never have found the courage to sign it.<br />
<br />
In actual fact, the colonies were already essentially self-governing. There were no Royal administrations or large garrisons in the colonies, only a Governor in each colony who represented the authority of the Crown. Each colony had some kind of representative assembly that had the responsibility for day-to-day governance. The leading elites in the colonies knew they could continue governing successfully if the Governors were expelled and the ties to the Crown were severed. <br />
<br />
The colonial elites did not need <i>Common Sense</i> to awaken their revolutionary spirit. They were already governing the colonies, and they had long been yearning for independence. Their reasons, however, had more to do with economics than with the rights of man. This brings us back to Smith, and <i>The Wealth of Nations</i>. <br />
<br />
Smith’s ideas did not have an electric effect on society, as Paine’s did. Nonetheless, <i>The Wealth of Nations</i> stands along side <i>Common Sense</i> — as the canonical embodiment of a successful revolutionary manifesto. <br />
<br />
On the surface, Smith was expressing revolutionary ideas in the realm of economics, about the advantages of freer markets. But at a deeper level, Smith’s ideas led also to consequences in the political realm. Markets could not be freed without undermining the interests of traditional ruling elites. If the entrepreneurial spirit emerging out of the Industrial Revolution was to find its full expression, that could only lead to the destabilization of existing power structures based on noble lineage and inherited wealth. <br />
<br />
Both Smith and Paine, each in their own way, were challenging the existing world order. They articulated two revolutionary threads, one economic and one political, both of which implied a radical shift in how power would be distributed in society. The two threads came together in the colonies, leading to a temporary alignment of interests between colonial elites on the one hand, and the general colonial population on the other.<br />
<br />
The general population was responding to <i>Common Sense</i>, and they wanted an end to elite domination — by either the distant Crown or by local elites. The colonial elites, on the other hand, were motivated by the economic opportunities that would open up to them following independence. <br />
<br />
They would be able to develop industry, free from restraints decreed by the Crown. They would be able to trade freely, without being forced to go through British ports and pay British tariffs. And a whole continent would be available to conquer and exploit, without needing to share the spoils with the Crown. The colonial elites were eager to expel the Crown from the colonies, but they had no intention of allowing their own privileged positions in the colonies to be undermined.<br />
<br />
While <i>Common Sense</i> and <i>The Wealth of Nations</i> were both sincere expressions of revolutionary sentiment, the Declaration of Independence was a deceptive piece of propaganda. It capitalized on Paine’s ideas, translating them into bold rebellious phrases. It sent a message to the colonists: <i>We are on your side. We will be your bold leaders. We have put our own necks on the line for freedom and independence!</i><br />
<br />
Yes, they put their necks on the line — but only after there was general support for independence. And yes, they would be the bold leaders — because they didn’t want any kind of spontaneous leadership to emerge from the common people — what they contemptuously referred to as <i>the rabble</i> and <i>the mob</i>. And yes they would be on the people’s side — up until the time independence was achieved.<br />
<br />
After independence, the thirteen colonies became thirteen sovereign States, bound together by the <i>Articles of Confederation</i>. Each State had a governing assembly, elected by the people, and a reasonable level of democracy prevailed. The assemblies represented grassroots interests — the power of the local elites was being undermined. Something had to be done! And so a conspiracy was hatched, a conspiracy known as the <i>Constitutional Convention</i>.<br />
<br />
The Convention was chartered by the States, and was given the task of drafting a Constitution that would be returned to the States for review. It would only come into force if all thirteen States approved it. The Convention was to act on behalf of the States, not on behalf of the people directly. It had no standing, no authorization, to act on behalf of the people.<br />
<br />
The Convention amounted to a <i>coup d’état</i>. The members of the Convention were all members of the original colonial elite; they met in secret, and they grossly exceeded their authorized powers. They began their Constitution with the words, <i>We the people</i>, which they had no right to do, and they declared that the Constitution would be approved if only nine of the states approved it, which they also had no right to do. Not only that, but the Constitution was rigged so as to ensure the elites would retain their privileged positions, and the forces of grassroots democracy could be held in check:<br />
<blockquote>In Federalist Paper #10, James Madison argued that representative government was needed to maintain peace in a society ridden by factional disputes. These disputes came from “the various and unequal distribution of property.” “Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.” The problem he said, was how to control the factional struggles that came from inequalities in wealth. Minority factions could be controlled, he said, by the principle that decisions would be by vote of the majority.<br />
So the real problem, according to Madison, was a majority faction, and here the solution was…to have “an extensive republic,” that is, a large nation ranging over thirteen states, for then “it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other…The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States”.<br />
<small>— Howard Zinn, <i>A People’s History of the United States</i>, p. 96</small></blockquote><br />
The Constitution did not even contain protections for the rights of the people. The Bill of Rights was added only because popular opposition would have otherwise prevented adoption. Nonetheless, the Constitution had much to be said in its favor. There was a carefully worked-out balance of powers, aimed at preventing the usurpation of power by any one branch of government. And the powers of the Federal government were strictly limited, with the thirteen States retaining a great deal of local autonomy. <br />
<br />
The Constitution was an admirable attempt to tame hierarchy, to prevent undue concentration of power at the top. At the same time, as cited above, it was also an attempt to prevent genuine democracy, the ‘undue’ influence on government from ordinary people, ‘the mob’. As history has shown, the protections against popular influence have been quite successful, while the protections against concentration of power at the top have failed utterly. <br />
<br />
Not only has the Federal government usurped power over every aspect of society from the States, but also the Bill of Rights has been in effect declared null and void. The United States has become the very thing that both the ordinary colonists and the colonial elites most feared — a despotic tyranny exercising arbitrary powers over the people. <br />
<br />
No King of England ever exercised such control over the daily lives of his subjects, or declared publicly that he had the right to imprison or kill any citizen, with no need for due process, as the government in Washington has recently declared. The Declaration of Independence speaks as loudly to us today as it did to the colonists in 1776:<br />
<blockquote><i>We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. <br />
— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, <br />
— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.<br />
</i></blockquote><br />
<a id="dynamics"></a><b><big>The dynamics of hierarchy</big></b><br />
As we can see from the American experience, it is very difficult to tame hierarchy. It would be hard to imagine a more carefully crafted attempt, than the Constitution. Even its guards against influence from below, though undemocratic, would tend to stabilize the structure. And yet the attempt at taming failed. <br />
<br />
When a hierarchy exists, it presents a focus of power that power-seeking individuals and cliques can over time turn to their advantage. In times of crisis, for example, there is always a case to be made that the crisis can be resolved most quickly by giving more powers to those at the top. Thus was lost the Roman Republic, and crises have played a central role in the concentration of power in Washington, and the same story could be told of many other nations as well. <br />
<br />
Of what ultimate value are written constraints on a hierarchy, such as a constitution, when the only enforcer of those constraints is the hierarchy itself? No matter what is written, or what is sworn on oath, people remain people, subject to the weaknesses and vices of people. People are sometimes amenable to bribery, and people sometimes conspire to achieve their own advantage. Little by little the constraints are eroded, and the process is always cumulative. <br />
<br />
The old saying, <i>power corrupts</i>, is familiar to all of us because it has so often throughout history proven to be true. It is true not only of individuals, but of institutions as well, and of governments. An agency such as the IRS can be just as tyrannical as any despot. A nation with overwhelming power, whether it be Imperial Britain, Nazi Germany, or modern America, tends to act with impunity toward other nations, initiating wars when it sees an advantage in doing so.<br />
<br />
Just as water seeks its own level, power in hierarchies tends to concentrate toward the top. The tendency of people to seek their own advantage provides the force, a force as true and constant as the force of gravity itself. Each generation of rulers seeks to enhance their own prerogatives just a bit, whether for good reasons or ill, and in either case they leave in their wake a government where power has been just that bit more concentrated.<br />
<br />
The same dynamics can be found in all hierarchies, not just in governments, more or less in proportion to the size of the hierarchy. Corporations, government agencies, intelligence services, even volunteer organizations, are subject to intrigues, power-grabs, covert arrangements, misallocation of funds, etc. The problem is made worse by the fact that those who most desire power, and who are the most ruthless, are the very ones who tend to work their way to the top of hierarchies. <br />
<br />
In the opening to this chapter, I suggested that a hierarchy could be a reasonable form of organization — if the interests of those at the top are aligned with the rest of the people involved. But as we saw in the case of America, such alignments of interest are short-lived. The temptations and prerogatives of power eventually prevail. <br />
<br />
And then there are the dynamics that operate among hierarchies. Those dynamics have not changed since the days of the warrior bands all those millennia ago. Hierarchies tend to seek their own advantage, much like people do, and thus there is a competition leading to bigger and more powerful hierarchies. The mechanisms of conquest and alliance-building can be seen among corporations and agencies, just as it can be seen among nations, and as it was seen among warrior bands. <br />
<br />
Hierarchy always breeds greater hierarchy; every hierarchy provides a position of power for some clique, and power always corrupts, sooner or later. In an age of technology, the inevitable outcome of the hierarchical social model is a tyrannical world government, of one flavor or another. It was always just a matter of time, as was the end of growth.<br />
</big><br />
<hr><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/10/grassroots-response.html"><font color="#3333CC"><i>on to Part II</i></font></a> …<br />
<br />
rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2958975246043114999.post-70044943221614971322010-03-14T15:41:00.011+00:002010-10-10T21:47:22.739+01:00Ch 2: The Grand Story of humanityURL: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html" target="_doc"><small>http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html</small></a><br />
<br />
Richard K. Moore<br />
<a href="mailto:rkm@quaylargo.com">rkm@quaylargo.com</a><br />
Last update: 10 October 2010<br />
<br />
Table of Contents: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/toc-2012.html" target="_toc"><i>2012: Crossroads for Humanity</i></a><br />
<br />
<hr><big><br />
<a id="origins"></a><b><big>Our primate origins</big></b><br />
Our species ancestors were similar to all other social primates. We were a social species, organized into territorial bands, which were led by an alpha male. Like all territorial species, we engaged in skirmishes with neighboring groups, in order to maintain our territories, or on rare occasions to steal better territories from weaker bands.<br />
<br />
These kinds of skirmishes involved fatalities, but they were quite different than warfare. Warfare is a sustained endeavor, where the adversaries seek to either destroy or conquer the other group. That kind of intra-species warfare does not exist in the animal kingdom; there is nothing to be gained by it.<br />
<br />
By about 200,000 years ago we had become fully human, genetically the same as today, our brains fully developed. We continued to live in small territorial bands, and continued with the same kind of economy as other primates, which in the case of humans we call hunter-gathering. We continued to engage in skirmishes over territory, but warfare and conquest made no sense with our hunter-gatherer economy, just as it made no sense for our ancestors. <br />
<br />
There were three fundamental differences between early humans and their primate ancestors. The first was our markedly superior intelligence, the second was our complex languages, and the third was our abandonment of the alpha-male leadership principle. <br />
<br />
Anthropologists have found that hunter-gatherer societies are egalitarian, and that decisions are made by some kind of consensus process. Perhaps we were unusual among primates, and were already egalitarian then. In that case, language would have developed in order to support our egalitarian process. Or perhaps we were unusually communicative as primates, developed language, and then we found that collective decision making proved to be a more effective strategy than relying on the judgment of a single leader.<br />
<br />
<a id="intelligence"></a><b><big>Origins of intelligence</big></b><br />
One of the great mysteries of our evolution is our intelligence. Why are our frontal lobes — and our cognitive intelligence — so much more developed than in any other species? Theories have been put forward that try to explain our intelligence in terms of survival characteristics, but those theories aren’t very persuasive. <br />
<br />
Some, for example, have suggested that warfare — with its need to develop a smarter strategy than the enemy in order to survive — explains our intelligence. This makes no sense at all, because we were already fully human long before warfare came on the scene.<br />
<br />
Others have suggested the challenges of being a predator as a cause. This makes little sense either, as we were already successful predators as primates, and no other predator has needed to develop such a big brain. <br />
<br />
Still others say we needed high intelligence to escape predators. The fact is that once we learned to pick up big sticks, predators avoided us. And the picking up of big sticks — the invention of the club — must have come very early; it is only one step up from the sticks chimpanzees use as tools. <br />
<br />
A group of proto-humans with clubs, and later spears, was not something any predator would have tangled with. Predators don’t seek battles with prey that might injure them, they seek prey that turns and runs. Predators knew to respect us from early on. Even today, a young Masai girl can protect a herd of cattle on the African plains simply by standing there with a spear. <br />
<br />
Seeking a survival explanation for our intelligence is like seeking a survival explanation for the beauty of a butterfly or flower. We can relate such things to sexual preference, and hence to the evolutionary process, but we are talking about an elaboration of form that goes far beyond the demands of mere survival. Our use of language is a similar elaboration, and intelligence is very closely linked with language.<br />
<br />
If you observe the development of a chimp infant, compared to a human infant, you don’t see much difference in cognitive skills at first. The big differences start to emerge when the child begins to use language. <br />
<br />
Consider the cognitive complexity involved with language. Not just the parsing, but the process of extracting meaning, and associating that with experiences and existing understandings. And the creating of sentences that will have the intended effect in the mind of a listener. The use of language is the tip-of-the-iceberg of a whole universe of cognitive processes that go along with it. That universe lies in our enlarged frontal lobes.<br />
<br />
Intelligence and language co-evolved. Language is the elaboration of experience into the realm of the abstract and the imaginary. The use of language expands the size and complexity of the universe that our minds must deal with. Not only is there <i>what is</i>, but what <i>might be</i>, what <i>could never be</i>, what is <i>planned for later</i>, what <i>might have been</i>, and so on. This complex imaginary world takes up lots of neurons. <br />
<br />
In a very real sense, the evolution of our cognitive intelligence has been the evolution of our communication with one another. Our intelligence is not related to survival, but rather to <i>socialization</i>. Intelligence does not represent an adaptation to the world, but rather an adaptation to a language-using society.<br />
<br />
Once we had our intelligence, however, we also gained survival advantages. We could find ways to survive in a wider range of environments than our primate ancestors. With our enriched imaginations, we could invent tools and weapons, find uses for herbs and plants, etc. Our intelligence made survival in the world much easier, but it was not a need for easier survival that led to our intelligence. <br />
<br />
<a id="stories"></a><b><big>The story world</big></b><br />
Because of language, we are involved in two different complex worlds, the world outside our heads, and the world inside our heads. The outside world is the real world, and I call the inside world the <i>story world</i>. I call it that because it seems to be organized in terms of stories.<br />
<br />
Every sentence is a story, where some subject does some action to some object, and every paragraph is a slightly longer story. With Chinese ideograms, each symbol tells a little story. When we have conversations we tell stories to one another. Our dreams come as stories. We learn through stories. When we want to know the truth of current events, we tune in to our favorite channel to get the <i>real story</i>. Even a mathematical proof follows the story form, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, marked by <i>QED</i>, just like <i>amen</i>, <i>the end</i>, or <i>that’s all folks</i>.<br />
<br />
Indeed, our very concept of <i>understanding something</i> is being able to <i>tell its story coherently</i>. And our concept of <i>what is true</i> is closely related to the concept of <i>coherent story</i>. A mathematical proof is valid if it tells a coherent story. A suspect appears guilty if he cannot give a coherent story as an alibi. Witnesses are trusted if their story is coherent. Even our concept of <i>being sane</i> is closely linked to being able to speak coherently, which is the same as being able to tell coherent stories. <br />
<br />
Because story-processing skills are so central to our understanding, and to our functioning in society, it is not surprising that we get pleasure out of practicing those skills by listening to stories. In general, pleasure is an adaptive mechanism that draws us to what we need. Baby lions love to wrestle, thus learning the moves they will need as adult hunters.<br />
<br />
Language and stories are not just about words. The same cognitive machinery supports other modalities. Music is a language, and a tune is a story. Art is a language and a painting is a story. Physics is a language and a theory is a story. Food preparation is a language, and a meal is a story. Each language must be learned before its stories can be told or appreciated.<br />
<br />
I suppose all of this can be summed up by saying that we think, understand, create, and communicate in terms of stories, in one mode of language or another. As I write, my concern always is to be telling a coherent story in a coherent sequence. Coherence in a story is like digestibility in a meal.<br />
<br />
Because we have specialized in the story way-of-knowing, we don’t feel we understand anything until we know its story. From a very early age we begin asking questions, wanting to hear stories that explain our experience to us. As our experience of the world expands, our need for stories expands. Eventually, we all get to the big questions: <i>What is the meaning of life?</i> and <i>Where did we come from?</i><br />
<br />
Our modern societies do not give us satisfying answers to these big questions, and we’ll talk more about that later. Early human societies, however, did have stories for all the big questions. Anthropologists find that every tribe has a creation story, a story about the sun and moon, and stories that ‘make sense’ of nearly every aspect of the tribe’s experience. <br />
<br />
We call such stories myths and superstitions. But to the societies involved, the stories are the unquestioned truth about the world, passed down from the beginning of time. In the same way, a person today <i>knows</i> that matter is made of atoms, even though we have no direct experience of atoms, because of stories we have been told in the sacred language of science.<br />
<br />
<a id="innocence"></a><b><big>A Golden Age of innocence</big></b><br />
That, then, is the prolog to our story. The curtain to our main story opens about 200,000 years ago. At that time, as individuals, we were exactly like we are today, with the same genetics, the same intelligence, the same level of imagination and creativity, and using languages with the same grammatical complexity and expressive richness as those we use today.<br />
<br />
As Homo sapiens sapiens we then entered our First Golden Age as a species. Our basic needs (food, shelter, and security) were easily attended to, relative to other species. We enjoyed a harmonious and egalitarian life style, and we spent many hours each day sitting around sharing stories with one another. Our ability to tell and remember stories and songs enabled us to pass on ideas, observations, and knowledge from one generation to the next, and this dramatically transformed the nature of our relationship to time and to the universe.<br />
<br />
Our cognitive memory could now extend indefinitely into the past, as it became possible for us to experience in our fertile imaginations events that had happened generations before, as we listened to the stories of elders. It became possible for us to perceive patterns that spanned more than one lifetime, extending even to the precession of the equinoxes, and the ebb and flow of glaciers. <br />
<br />
Australian Aboriginal tales, for example, accurately describe landscapes that still exist today, but have been submerged under the sea ever since the last ice age receded thousands of years ago. Every tribe developed and evolved a <i>Grand Story</i> — its own history.<br />
<br />
Thus the nature of our cultures, our understanding of our place in the universe, and our understanding of the meaning of our lives, came to be embodied in the Grand Story of our tribe. For humans there has always been an isomorphism and an interplay between cultural evolution and story evolution. Our cultural evolution sets our stories spinning, and our stories act a cultural gyroscope, a kind of inertial guidance system that can maintain social stability and coherence across millennia, even as circumstances might change dramatically.<br />
<br />
Every once in a while, then as now, unique individuals would emerge, individuals who through unusual cognitive insight, or metaphysical perceptiveness, achieved a level of wisdom that qualitatively exceeded that of the human norm. Such individuals were able to inject elements of their achieved wisdom into their tribe’s Grand Story, and thus did our cultures themselves evolve toward ever-increasing collective wisdom. Our First Golden Age was characterized by wisdom and harmony — harmony with nature and harmony and egalitarianism among one another in our bands.<br />
<br />
But there was an innocence to our wisdom and harmony. Our harmony with nature, for example, was not a matter of choice but of necessity. Our survival, and our level of prosperity, depended on how well our cultures harmonized with our environment. We did not have the power to control nature, so we had no choice but to harmonize with it. <br />
<br />
As a matter of fact, when opportunities arose where we could move out of harmony with nature, and still prosper, we typically exploited that situation. For example, when humans first migrated to Australia, there was so much game available that we hunted much of it to extinction. As the available game animals diminished, we were forced to re-harmonize our cultures with our surroundings.<br />
<br />
Similarly, it was relatively easy for us to maintain harmony with one another, because we didn’t have the power to exploit one another. Everyone had to hunt and gather just like everyone else. The economics of the hunter-gatherer life style did not produce excesses that would enable a ruling group to sit around and give orders instead of contributing. Without power, we had little temptation or opportunity to stray from our harmonious ways.<br />
<br />
And again, when special circumstances arose, we sometimes lost our ability to maintain harmony. For example, when there were very rich fishing areas, with easily available food surpluses, hierarchy and conquest sometimes emerged, but fortunately remained localized.<br />
<br />
Thus our first Golden Age was protected by a shield — the shield of <i>lacking power</i>. Our wisdom and harmony were innocent, because we didn’t have the power to be otherwise. <br />
<br />
And that’s how things were for nearly all of us until about 10,000 years ago. <br />
<br />
<a id="early_civs"></a><b><big>Early civilization</big></b><br />
When agriculture and herding were discovered, a little over 10,000 years ago, we found ourselves with powers that we had previously lacked. We no longer needed to depend only on what our surroundings naturally provided. We could plant crops and make our surroundings more productive. And we could keep animals in herds or pens, increase their numbers, and we didn’t need to bother hunting for them when we were hungry. We now had power over nature, the ability to modify our surroundings to better suit ourselves.<br />
<br />
With these new powers, we soon were able to create surpluses. It became economically feasible for some of us to produce the food for the tribe, and others of us could spend our time in other ways. Specialization became possible. Formerly we all followed the same trade — that particular kind of hunter-gathering that our particular culture employed. <br />
<br />
With specialization it became possible for the same tribe to have several trades, food production being only one of them. Someone might, for example, specialize in making tools for farmers, which could then be exchanged for food. Specialization increased the efficiency of our economies once again, in addition to the increase provided by agriculture and herding.<br />
<br />
These new powers, in and of themselves, did not destroy our Golden Age. In fact, at the beginning, they made our Golden Age even more golden. We were able to maintain harmony with nature as long as our agriculture and animal husbandry practices remained sustainable. And we were able to maintain harmony in our cultures due to our cultural gyroscope — our Grand Stories — that had always told us that harmony was part of our nature as humans. During this period we continued with our harmony and our wisdom, while also enjoying the benefits of an increasingly efficient economy, and an increasingly complex culture.<br />
<br />
This final, swan-song episode of our first Golden Age is what Riane Eisler refers to as <i>The Early Civilizations of Europe</i>, in her ground-breaking anthropological masterpiece, <i>The Chalice and the Blade</i>. While this glorious era lasted, we were able to combine harmonization and wisdom with civilization. We built cities, developed specialization and writing, enhanced our cultures and our wisdom, and were at the same time able to avoid warfare and dominance-based cultural patterns.<br />
<br />
This is the era whose memory is weakly echoed in myths like <i>Shangri-La</i>. We can still view original artistic representations of this era at the palace of Knossos, an architectural structure known to the Greeks as the Labyrinth. <br />
<br />
Unlike surviving art from other past civilizations, that of Knossos includes no representations of warriors or conquest. Instead we see scenes of people enjoying themselves, dolphins cavorting under the sea, and other very pleasant and beautiful scenes. When viewing this art, tears come to one’s eyes over our great loss as a species, as one realizes the enormity of our subsequent cultural decline.<br />
<br />
As long as our newly empowered economies remained sustainable, and as long as our Grand Stories told us that harmony with our fellows was part of our nature as humans, then our new powers did us no harm, and benefited us in many ways. Unfortunately, certain of our newly evolving cultures — the ones focusing on herding — began to move away from harmonization, as did their Grand Stories. The reasons for this involved economics.<br />
<br />
<a id="alpha"></a><b><big>The return of the alpha male</big></b><br />
Consider the economics of a hunter-gatherer society. The society operates within its own exclusive territory, where it has access to a variety of food sources, depending on the season. Methods of food preservation, such as drying and salting, were discovered early, increasing the amount of useable food from the territory. The groups regulated their population by various means, sometimes including the practice of infanticide. In these various ways, hunter-gatherer societies were sustainable, and had the capacity to survive in bad years within their territories. <br />
<br />
Early agricultural societies operated on more or less the same principles, still within exclusive territories, except they had more food available from the same size territory. They continued to hunt and gather, and they had their crops as well, so larger populations became sustainable. Fixed settlements emerged in agricultural societies, whereas hunter-gatherers tended to use portable or temporary shelters, as they roamed about their territories in search of food.<br />
<br />
The territories of both kinds of societies tended to be stable over long periods of time. In good years and bad, they would manage to survive within their territories, based on their variety of food sources. Only under unusual circumstances, such as changing climate, would groups migrate, or seek to displace other groups.<br />
<br />
The economics of early herding societies differed in fundamental ways from the two other kinds of societies. Herders had only one primary source of food, their animals. If conditions were bad for their herds, and good pastures were hard to find, they didn’t have alternative food sources to fall back on. Thus, competition for territories occurred much more frequently among herding societies, than among hunter-gatherers or agriculturalists.<br />
<br />
Competition for territories is quite a different thing than border skirmishes, which are mainly aimed at maintaining stable borders by displaying strength. When two tribes are fighting for the same pasture, in a year when pastures are scarce, then combat prowess becomes a primary survival requirement. As we know from history, disciplined hierarchical combat units have a marked advantage over less coherent adversaries. <br />
<br />
As success in combat became more important in this way, the cultures and Grand Stories of these herding tribes began to honor strong warrior chiefs, and began to honor the hierarchical patterns of dominance that enabled such chiefs to effectively command their warriors in battle. Thus did the alpha-male pattern re-enter our evolutionary path, for the first time since we became fully human. These cultures became hierarchical rather than egalitarian.<br />
<br />
When you have hierarchical bands, each led by a strong warrior chief, and which engage in fierce combat with one another, then there is a natural dynamic toward enlargement of the bands. For one thing, if two bands are of unequal size, then the larger one would be more likely to win a battle between the two. So there is a survival value in bigger bands, which would tend over time toward larger bands on average. But an even more potent force would tend toward enlargement: the obvious advantages provided by alliances.<br />
<br />
An astute warrior chief would naturally think about alliances: making deals with other chiefs so that they could triumph together, when battles became necessary with other bands. Chiefs who were in alliance with one another would then share their jointly won green pastures among one another’s bands in some negotiated way. <br />
<br />
Clearly, out of such alliance-building processes, one chief is going to emerge eventually as a big chief — the one who is most clever about forging alliances to his own advantage. In this way a warrior chief comes to have several bands under his hierarchical control, with the subsidiary chiefs as his generals. These are the very dynamics that led (in much more recent times) to the emergence of Genghis Khan, who eventually became master of the largest empire history has ever known.<br />
<br />
<a id="class"></a><b><big>Origins of class</big></b><br />
Humanity was at this point split into three evolutionary threads. First, there were all those who were still pursuing hunter-gathering, and there are still some of those today. Second, there were those who started down the path of agriculture, and were developing the first permanent settlements and the first cities, still within the harmonious Golden Age paradigm, and who did not engage in warfare with one another. <br />
<br />
Third, there were the herders, out there on the steppes, operating under the dynamics of hierarchy and dominance, with big chiefs emerging, with fierce and well-organized warriors at their command. And they had horses, making them formidable from a military point of view.<br />
<br />
Our Golden Age had not ended yet however. The herders were living under hierarchy, but a warrior chief was not an exploiter of his band. He was its respected leader, whose strength was essential to the survival of the group. His role was comparable to that of an alpha-male in a primate band, who is the protector of his band, not its exploiter. <br />
<br />
These bands did however introduce the principle of male dominance into human cultures for the first time. And in the pantheons of the Grand Stories of these tribes there was always a supreme male god who rules the rest of the pantheon, while in the pantheons of earlier Grand Stories, there were always male and female characters of comparable power, and they represented the forces of nature and the universe.<br />
<br />
This overall scenario, with the three threads of humanity, was not stable. If you’ve seen the film, <i>Seven Samurai</i>, recall the scene early on where the warrior band stops their horses on the hill, and surveys an agricultural village below them. They discuss whether to raid it now, or to come back after all the crops are in. The villagers have no defense, and can only hope the band doesn’t return. <br />
<br />
That scene, writ large, was the overall scenario facing humanity at this point in our story. It was only a matter of time before the herders would raid, and eventually conquer, the agriculturalists. And that was when our first Golden Age was truly over; that was our Fall from Grace.<br />
<br />
For when the herders conquered a village or a city of agriculturalists, they did not integrate the agriculturalists into their herding culture, nor did they integrate themselves into the agriculturalist culture. Instead, the herders enslaved the agriculturalists, creating an entirely new kind of culture and society, one that had never existed before, and one that had no evolutionary precedents.<br />
<br />
For the first time ever we had a class-based society. At the top is the ruling clique: the chief and his generals. Then we have the members of the conquering tribe, who have now become a privileged class. Under that are the enslaved agriculturalists, the peasant class, the ones who till the fields and do all the other hard work. Thus was established the perverse, exploitive paradigm that has characterized civilization ever since. Apart from the early era, where civilization blossomed in our first Golden Age, civilization has always been about exploitation of the many by the few.<br />
<br />
I cannot think of any non-human species whose dynamics are based on intra-species exploitation. There are cases, for example with certain kinds of ants, where one species enslaves and exploits another. But within a species, exploitation would be very bad for species survival. In all social species, mutual aid and concern has been a central survival characteristic. The advent of this new hybrid society, based on the exploitation of the many by the few within a species, was a perversion not only of human culture, but also of the evolutionary life principle itself.<br />
<br />
<a id="eden" target="_ref"></a><b><big>Leaving Eden</big></b><br />
Let us now bring into this discussion our earlier thread, about Grand Stories, and cultural gyroscopes. With the advent of this new hybrid society, the gyroscopes of both incoming cultures were knocked awry. Neither of their Grand Stories reflected the dynamics of the new combined society. If the new hybrid culture was to have the support of a stabilizing gyroscope, then a new Grand Story would need to be invented — a Grand Story customized for an exploitive civilization.<br />
<br />
In the Western branch of civilization, the new Grand Story begins with Genesis. The story is set in Mesopotamia, where agriculture was first developed in the West, around 8,000 BC, and where hierarchy was eventually imposed, by about 4,000 BC. The first three chapters of Genesis are allegory, describing the creation of the universe and the Fall from Grace. These chapters came from Babylon, and were adopted by the Hebrews during their period of captivity there.<br />
<br />
The Golden Age itself is represented by the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve represent all the hunter-gatherer cultures, and the Garden represents the harmonious relationship between those cultures and the natural world. Thus our Golden Age of innocence, and 200,000 years of our heritage, are dismissed in a single verse, Genesis 2:25: “They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” In the very next verse, the serpent is introduced! This enormous erasure is what Daniel Quinn calls <i>The Great Forgetting</i>.<br />
<br />
In the Grand Stories of Early Civilization, prior to the onset of hierarchy, the serpent represented the sacred god of fertility. Thus in Genesis, the serpent represents the temptation to pursue agriculture, to systematically tame nature for the first time. It is dangerous to mess with Mother Nature, and Eve is rightfully warned against crossing that line.<br />
<br />
The four thousand years or so of Early Civilization, while we were still in the Garden, is then dismissed in the 24 verses of Chapter 3. Only a few moments pass between the time they taste the fruit, and their banishment. This erasure deserves to be called <i>The Second Great Forgetting</i>.<br />
<br />
Cain the farmer and Able the herder represent the two cultural threads that emerged from hunter-gathering, and hence they are portrayed as the sons of Adam and Eve, the hunter-gatherers. <br />
<br />
Each hunter-gatherer culture had its own elaborate Grand Story, and all we are left with is a 56-verse summary, the first two chapters of Genesis. By the time we get to Chapter 3, we are already learning how we were expelled from the Garden. Although our earlier Grand Stories find no place in Genesis, they have not been erased from human memory. Our rich heritage is still accessible in the many mythologies that have been preserved from various cultures. <br />
<br />
The old pantheons of gods represented the various forces of nature, some characterized as male and some as female. The Grand Stories told about the gods, and these tales explained how a balance is achieved among the forces of nature. The stories explained our place in the scheme of things, in balance with the rest of nature. The serpent was a central figure in most of these pantheons. In Greek mythology he is known as Hermes.<br />
<br />
In the Garden of Eden story, the serpent symbolizes the pantheons of our Early Civilization cultures. He is demonized in the story, thus demonizing all previous gods, and opening the way for a new, all-powerful, male god. Yahweh curses the serpent and condemns him to crawl in the dust, and thus Yahweh is established as the one and only true god, master of the universe.<br />
<br />
This new monotheistic Grand Story changes our relationship to nature, our relationship to divinity, and it changes our understanding of nature itself. Instead of a dynamic balance of interacting forces, nature becomes hierarchical, under the command of a single divine mind. Instead of merely respecting and honoring the various gods, as we did earlier, we now find ourselves subservient to the new all-powerful god. And instead of being in balance with the rest of nature, we are now told, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it”. <br />
<br />
In only 80 verses, the first three chapters of Genesis, our entire world was turned upside down. A pattern of dominance is established, with us subservient to Yahweh, and nature subservient to us. Thus the pattern is set for dominance in society, under the control of an alpha male. These 80 verses establish an all-time record for history’s most effective and damaging piece of propaganda.<br />
<br />
This new Grand Story makes it quite clear that we were better off in the Garden, in our harmonious innocence, in our state of grace. There is no pretense that what followed has been a cultural improvement. The onset of hierarchical civilization is correctly identified as being our Fall from Grace. <br />
<br />
The story also tells us that we cannot return to the Garden, and that it is our own fault we cannot return, because we failed to follow Yahweh’s commands. Thus it is our own fault that we find ourselves in bondage under the new hierarchical regimes that have been imposed on us. <br />
<br />
The Garden of Eden story is a transition story, an explanation to the conquered of why their own Grand Story must be abandoned, and why — through their own fault — their nature is to be in subjugation. The story tells them they are sinful — that there is something wrong with them — because they ate the forbidden fruit. Therefore they have no standing to challenge the hierarchy that dominates them. They need the hierarchy to take care of them and keep them from going further astray. And it is a transition story that masquerades as a creation story, in order to conceal from us our true nature and our true destiny. <br />
<br />
Consider for a moment the Santa Claus myth. This is a myth that is to be taken as truth by children, and which adults know is only a myth. The Garden of Eden story is like that. It is to be taken as truth by the peasants, while the ruling elite know it is only a myth. In the story we read, “Therefore Yahweh God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken”. Elites know they have never had to stoop to till the ground. <br />
<br />
<a href="orthodoxy" target="_ref" id="orthodoxy"></a><b><big>Orthodoxy and empire</big></b><br />
The co-evolution of cultures and of their Grand Stories did not stop when we left the Garden. Nor did the psychological power of Grand Stories ever diminish, even though our minds had escaped from the parochialism of our primordial hunter-gatherer bands. To this day we understand who we are, and what our nature is, by what our Grand Stories tell us is true. There are however some very important differences between the Grand Stories since the Fall, and those that co-evolved with our cultures prior to the Fall.<br />
<br />
The Grand Stories prior to the Fall evolved as an organic folk process. For the most part they were passed on unchanged from generation to generation, as exemplified by the accurate thousands-year-old knowledge the Aborigines have of long-submerged landscapes. Additions might be made to the stories, if for example a band migrated to a new territory, thus adding another chapter to their story. Or respected elders might change the story just a bit, reflecting newly acquired knowledge or gems of wisdom. <br />
<br />
But no one ever sat down and composed a Grand Story, not before the Fall. A Grand Story carried the accumulated memory and wisdom of a band, and it was passed on with reverence, as a treasured heritage, from one generation to the next.<br />
<br />
In the Garden of Eden story, with its propagandistic elements, we see for the first time an episode of a Grand Story being consciously composed in order to better serve the interests of elite subjugation. It was written in very early post-Fall days, was known to the Babylonians, and this composed opening episode of Western civilization’s Grand Story still holds power over us today. <br />
<br />
Nearly everyone I talk to — whether they be Christians or atheists, progressives or conservatives, new-agers or scientists — rejects the possibility of direct democracy, because they believe we are flawed, or that we need to become enlightened, and that we are incapable of governing ourselves. These kinds of myths are conditioned into us in many ways as we grow up, but the root of the conditioning is still embodied in the Garden of Eden story, which is told to most of us as children.<br />
<br />
The Bible has been the dominant Grand Story of Western civilization until relatively recent times. It consists of two books. The Old Testament is simply the post-Fall Grand Story of the Hebrew tribe, who were a spin-off from the Sumerians, one of the earliest of the post-Fall hybrid societies. The book was consciously revised c. 1300 BC so as to better suit the hierarchy of the time. The Old Testament praises the virtues of a male-dominated hierarchical society, honors warfare and war-like virtues, and of course features the mythical God character, a warrior-chief writ large, as the all-powerful King of the Universe.<br />
<br />
This character serves two important functions. First, he makes us feel powerless and insignificant, and second, he makes us believe that when we go forth to slaughter and conquer, he will be on our side. This book is superbly well suited for keeping us in subjugation and to facilitating wars of conquest. Any contradiction to this story is known as blasphemy, and for many centuries blasphemy was a capital crime throughout the Christianized world. Elites have always understood that control of the Grand Story is their primary means of controlling us. <br />
<br />
The New Testament has a very interesting history, and provides an excellent example of carefully crafted propaganda, as an element of a Grand Story. The history of this book begins of course with Jesus, an actual historical figure, whose main mission seems to have been to undermine hierarchy, wake people up to their subjugated status, and spread a new Grand Story based on love, compassion, personal empowerment, and the direct experience of divine reality. A very dangerous fellow indeed, and he was soon disposed of by the local hierarchy.<br />
<br />
But alas for them, the new Grand Story was so appealing and so powerful that it led to a social movement (early Christianity) that was a continual headache to Roman authorities. Within a century or so after the death of Jesus, this social movement had departed drastically from the original message of Jesus, and had become an intolerant messianic cult, growing rapidly, using the words of Jesus as a come-on to recruiting new members, and controlled by an orthodox hierarchy who had suppressed the experience-of-divinity aspects of Jesus’ teachings.<br />
<br />
To the Roman hierarchy, Christianity was more and more being seen as a subversive political movement, challenging and undermining the authority of Rome. The orthodox hierarchy was by this time mainly concerned with its power over those who had been Christianized, the theology being mainly important as an instrument of maintaining that power — again, the Santa Claus phenomenon.<br />
<br />
Given the trouble that these two power hierarchies were causing for one another, it is not surprising that they got together in 325 AD, at the <a href="http://www.serendipity.li/nicaea.htm" target="_ref">First Nicene Council</a>, to join forces for their mutual benefit. There were two main outcomes from the Council. <br />
<br />
The first that was that Christianity was to become the officially enforced religion of the Roman Empire, bringing it under the political (but not religious) control of the Emperor, and ending the conflict between the two hierarchies. Second, the Council was used as an opportunity to deal with competing theological interpretations that had arisen, and to agree on a single, orthodox story of Jesus and his teaching, which was to become the New Testament.<br />
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Christianity as we know it, as a powerful world-class religion, backed by an orthodox Grand Story (the Bible), can be dated from this Council. From the beginning, then, Christianity has been closely associated with empire and with state hierarchy. Indeed, for many centuries, after the fall of the Roman Empire and up until 1648 (the Peace of Westphalia) when nationalism began to arise, the Catholic Church itself was the overarching political power in Europe. And in the various European wars throughout the centuries, the soldiers of both sides have been told that God is on their side.<br />
<br />
<a id="science"></a><b><big>Science wobbles the gyroscope</big></b><br />
As regards matters which relate to what we would now call science and engineering, the church hierarchy turned to Aristotle, and his writings became essentially a third book in the orthodox Grand Story of humanity, along with the two books of the Bible. As the scientific movement began to emerge, c. 1600, the theories of Aristotle came increasingly under challenge as new scientific discoveries were made. The scientific community was in fact beginning to develop its own Grand Story, based on the scientific method. The hegemony of orthodox doctrine, as the exclusive Grand Story of Christendom, was beginning to unravel.<br />
<br />
As the scope of scientific discovery broadened, particularly after the discoveries of Darwin and Mendel, the Grand Story offered by science became a full-fledged competitor to that offered by religion. Indeed, there has been an ongoing rivalry to capture the public mind, with scientists generally considering religion to be superstition. The ever-evolving Grand Story offered by science, however, fails to provide answers to the most important questions that Grand Stories need to deal with, if they are to be psychologically satisfying, such as the meaning of life and the universe.<br />
<br />
Orthodox theology continues to be the Grand Story for millions of people, partly because of the unsatisfying nature of the story offered by science, and partly because religious parents typically subject their children to intensive religious indoctrination from an early age. This is a difficult cycle to break, as the Soviets found out when they tried unsuccessfully to eliminate religions after the Russian Revolution. Once a Grand Story is firmly implanted in an impressionable mind, it typically cannot be dislodged, particularly if no satisfying alternative is on offer.<br />
<br />
Our modern society, for better or worse, has no unifying Grand Story. We are divided as to what we believe. In fact, divisiveness regarding beliefs has become one of the primary control mechanisms employed by elites these days. That and television. The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy put it this way:<br />
<blockquote><i>Television, the drug of the Nation Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation</i><br />
</blockquote>Drug is a very apt characterization of television. It doesn’t try to indoctrinate us into one particular story, that is now out of date. Instead, television offers a continuous drip feed of what Guy Debord refers to as <i>The Spectacle</i>. We sit there hypnotized, watching entertainment, news, documentaries, or whatever, the content doesn’t really matter. The real point is that we are watching television instead of living. <br />
<br />
Is there really any difference between sitting in front of a television, or spending your time smoking in an opium den? In both cases, we’re basically trying to escape from the emptiness of our lives, lives made empty partly because we have no Grand Story that gives meaning to our lives, and partly because all of our friends are at home watching their own televisions.<br />
<br />
<a id="grand_story"></a><b><big>The Grand Story of humanity</big></b><br />
Joseph Campbell was one of the leading scholars on the subject of mythology. He talked about how modern society lacks a relevant mythology, a mythology that answers the big questions, about the meaning of life and the universe, and answers them in a way that makes sense to modern humanity. He felt we needed a new mythology, something that would give us a healthy psychological framework, so as to deal with the modern world.<br />
<br />
However, the attempt to create a new mythology would be like trying to put grapes back on the vine. We know about science now, and we can’t go back to a literal belief in metaphorical representations of reality. Those kinds of things served us well millennia ago, but we can’t go back there, not without closing our eyes and pretending.<br />
<br />
In our first Golden Age, our Grand Stories were our best attempt at understanding who we are, where we came from, and what is the meaning of our lives. We included in these stories the knowledge and wisdom we had accumulated, and the important episodes from our history. These stories were not fabrications invented to achieve social harmony or psychological health. They were the truth as best we understood it.<br />
<br />
The religious Grand Story and the scientific Grand Story have one thing very much in common. They both cut us off from 97% of our Grand Story as humans, and from an understanding of our Golden Age. Religion does that intentionally, whether or not current theologians are aware of that, in order to more easily subjugate us to hierarchy. Science does the same thing out of arrogance, out of its groundless assumption that that everything can be explained in materialist terms, and that everything not published in a refereed journal is superstition.<br />
<br />
As far as scientists are concerned, nothing much interesting happened prior to c. 1600. Science is an elitist cult with blinders on, defining reality as that which can be accurately measured with its limited instruments that are restricted to the material realm. They are looking for the keys by the lamp post where the light is good; they aren’t looking where the keys were lost. The keys were lost some six millennia ago, and they won’t be found with a telescope or a test tube. They can only be found within ourselves, but scientists won’t venture inside — that wouldn’t be objective.<br />
<br />
The only Grand Story that can function effectively for us is our story, as a species, as we best understand it. That is what I have been endeavoring to convey, as best I understand it. Of all the things I’ve talked about, the most important is the fact that for the past 6,000 years we have been in bondage, and for about 200,000 years before that we enjoyed a Golden Age, where we were not in bondage, and we lived in harmony with one another and with nature. <br />
<br />
As I see it, there is not really much worth talking about other than, how can we escape from bondage? Rearranging prison chairs is no more productive than rearranging deck chairs.<br />
<br />
The saga of our species is an adventure, an adventure that we are meant to participate in, to co-create, not to watch on television. It’s an action story, where the villain has tied us up in the basement, and our business is to get free and escape — otherwise our children and their children will be in bondage as well. It’s an adventure that unfolds on a canvas measured in millennia, but it’s not history — it’s right now. And it’s not far away — it’s right here where I am, and it’s right there where you are.<br />
<br />
In our primordial innocence, back in the Garden, we talked to one another, we listened to one another, and we were quite capable of getting along and dealing with the problems of life together. In fact, it wasn’t very difficult at all, and we spent a good part of our time just hanging out, chatting, singing, or dancing around the fire. We have lost none of these capacities; we have simply forgotten that we have them, and have therefore not attempted to exercise them.<br />
<br />
The tree of life is far more bountiful now than ever before. We have powers, with our technology and our science, that our ancestors could never have dreamed of. We were never banished from the Garden; we were abducted from the Garden by those who ate the forbidden fruit of exploitation, and turned our powers against us. We are guilty of no sin, there is nothing flawed about us, and we can return to the Garden whenever we wake up and choose to do so. We are no longer restrained by chains, but only by our own timidity, and our lack of confidence in our own good sense and that of our fellows.<br />
<br />
We cannot change the part of our Grand Story that lies in the past, but we need to know that story so that we can know who we are, where we came from, and what our life is about. We now know why the forbidden apple is poisonous to us, even if we were not the ones who did the tasting. We are no longer innocent, but we can return again to harmony and wisdom, wiser from our experience in bondage, and knowing that the first thing we need to do is to build a strong fence around the forbidden tree.<br />
<br />
Look not to the officials of Babylon for assistance in our return to the Garden, for they are neither our protectors nor our representatives — they are the servants of our exploiters. Yank your television from the wall, just as Neo yanked the cable from his skull, and see for the first time the real world, which has been all around you all the time, while you’ve been entranced by The Spectacle. The time has come to click your heels together three times and return to your real home.<br />
<br />
The drama that matters is the drama that is around us every day. We, along with our friends and neighbors, are the actors in that drama, and there is no script and no director; real life is improv. It is up to each of us and all of us to create the next episode of our Grand Story. <br />
<br />
The first step is to begin listening to the stories of those around us, and to share our own stories. That is how we learn who we are and where we came from. Then we can begin sharing our dreams with one another, and that is how we can learn about the meaning of our lives. Finally, we can begin working together, to take control of our own destinies, to pursue our dreams, and to cast off the yoke that we have been carrying for 6,000 years. <br />
<br />
Our second Golden Age awaits us.<br />
</big><br />
<hr><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/story-of-hierarchy.html"><font color="#3333CC"><i>on to Chapter 3</i></font></a> …<br />
<br />
rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2958975246043114999.post-78368700853518540962010-02-26T15:42:00.023+00:002011-04-05T09:35:30.445+01:00Ch 1: Prognosis 2012<b><i><big>The elite agenda for social transformation</big></i></b><br />
<br />
URL: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html" target="_doc"><small>http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/prognosis-2012.html</small></a><br />
<br />
Richard K. Moore<br />
<a href="mailto:rkm@quaylargo.com">rkm@quaylargo.com</a><br />
Last update: 10 October 2010<br />
<br />
Table of Contents: <a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/toc-2012.html" target="_toc"><i>2012: Crossroads for Humanity</i></a><br />
<big><br />
<blockquote><i>Whatever the exact date, all the threads will come together, geopolitically and domestically, and the world will change. It will be a new era, just as capitalism was a new era after aristocracy, and the Dark Ages followed the era of the Roman Empire. Each era has its own structure, its own economics, its own social forms, and its own mythology. These things must relate to one another coherently, and their nature follows from the fundamental power relationships and economic circumstances of the system.<br />
<br />
The accuracy of the prognosis, as prediction, is of course impossible to know in advance. However each part of the prognosis has been based on precedents that have been set, modus operandi that has been observed, trends that have been initiated, sentiments that have been expressed, signals that have been given, and actions that have been taken whose consequences can be confidently predicted</i>.</blockquote><br />
<a id="backround"></a><b><big>Historical background — <i>the establishment of capitalist supremacy</i></big></b><br />
When the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, in the late 1700s, there was lots of money to be made by investing in factories and mills, by opening up new markets, and by gaining control of sources of raw materials. The folks who had the most money to invest, however, were not so much in Britain but more in Holland. Holland had been the leading Western power in the 1600s, and its bankers were the leading capitalists. In pursuit of profit, Dutch capital flowed to the British stock market, and thus the Dutch funded the rise of Britain, who subsequently eclipsed Holland both economically and geopolitically. <br />
<br />
In this way British industrialism came to be dominated by wealthy investors, and capitalism became the dominant economic system. This led to a major social transformation. Britain had been essentially an aristocratic society, dominated by landholding families. As capitalism became dominant economically, capitalists became dominant politically. Tax structures and import-export policies were gradually changed to favor investors over landowners. <br />
<br />
It was no longer economically viable to simply maintain an estate in the countryside: one needed to develop it, turn it to more productive use. Victorian dramas are filled with stories of aristocratic families who fall on hard times, and are forced to sell off their properties. For dramatic purposes, this decline is typically attributed to a failure in some character, a weak eldest son perhaps. But in fact the decline of aristocracy was part of a larger social transformation brought on by the rise of capitalism.<br />
<br />
The business of the capitalist is the management of capital, and this management is generally handled through the mediation of banks and brokerage houses. It should not be surprising that investment bankers came to occupy the top of the hierarchy of capitalist wealth and power. And in fact, there are a handful of banking families, including the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, who have come to dominate economic and political affairs in the Western world.<br />
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Unlike aristocrats, capitalists are not tied to a place, or to the maintenance of a place. Capital is disloyal and mobile — it flows to where the most growth can be found, as it flowed from Holland to Britain, then from Britain to the USA, and most recently from everywhere to China. Just as a copper mine might be exploited and then abandoned, so under capitalism a whole nation can be exploited and then abandoned, as we see in the rusting industrial areas of America and Britain. <br />
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This detachment from place leads to a different kind of geopolitics under capitalism, as compared to aristocracy. A king goes to war when he sees an advantage to his nation in doing so. Historians can ‘explain’ the wars of pre-capitalist days, in terms of the aggrandizement of monarchs and nations. <br />
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A capitalist stirs up a war in order to make profits, and in fact our elite banking families have financed both sides of most military conflicts since at least World War 1. Hence historians have a hard time ‘explaining’ World War 1 in terms of national motivations and objectives. <br />
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In pre-capitalist days warfare was like chess, each side trying to win. Under capitalism warfare is more like a casino, where the players battle it out as long as they can get credit for more chips, and the real winner always turns out to be the house — the bankers who finance the war and decide who will be the last man standing. Not only are wars the most profitable of all capitalist ventures, but by choosing the winners, and managing the reconstruction, the elite banking families are able, over time, to tune the geopolitical configuration to suit their own interests. <br />
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Nations and populations are but pawns in their games. Millions die in wars, infrastructures are destroyed, and while the world mourns, the bankers are counting their winnings and making plans for their postwar reconstruction investments. <br />
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From their position of power, as the financiers of governments, the banking elite have over time perfected their methods of control. Staying always behind the scenes, they pull the strings controlling the media, the political parties, the intelligence agencies, the stock markets, and the offices of government. And perhaps their greatest lever of power is their control over currencies. By means of their central-bank scam, they engineer boom and bust cycles, and they print money from nothing and then loan it at interest to governments. The power of the banking elites is both absolute and subtle...<br />
<blockquote><i>Some of the biggest men in the United States are afraid of something. They know there is a power somewhere, so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.<br />
— President Woodrow Wilson<br />
</i></blockquote><br />
<a id="end_growth"></a><b><big>The end of growth — <i>capitalists vs. capitalism</i></big></b><br />
It was always inevitable, on a finite planet, that there would be a limit to economic growth. Industrialization has enabled us to rush headlong toward that limit over the past two centuries. Production has become ever more efficient, markets have become ever more global, and finally we have reached the point where the paradigm of perpetual growth can no longer be maintained. <br />
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Indeed, that point was actually reached by about 1970. Since then capital has not so much sought growth through increased production, but rather by extracting greater returns from relatively flat production levels. Hence globalization, which moved production to low-waged areas, providing greater profit margins. Hence privatization, which transfers revenue streams to investors that formerly went to national treasuries. Hence derivative and currency markets, which create the electronic illusion of economic growth, without actually producing anything in the real world.<br />
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If one studies the collapse of civilizations, one learns that failure-to-adapt is fatal. Continuing on the path of pursuing growth would be such a failure to adapt. And if one reads the financial pages these days, one finds that it is full of doomsayers. We read that the Eurozone is doomed, and Greece is just the first casualty. We read that stimulus packages are not working, unemployment is increasing, the dollar is in deep trouble, growth continues to stagnate, business real estate will be the next bubble to burst, etc. It is easy to get the impression that capitalism is failing to adapt, and that our societies are in danger of collapsing into chaos.<br />
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Such an impression would be partly right and partly wrong. In order to understand the real situation we need to make a clear distinction between the capitalist elite and capitalism itself. Capitalism is an economic system driven by growth; the capitalist elite are the folks who have managed to gain control of the Western world while capitalism has operated over the past two centuries. The capitalist system is past its sell-by date, the banking elite are well aware of that fact — and they are adapting.<br />
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Capitalism is a vehicle that helped bring the bankers to absolute power, but they have no more loyalty to that system than they have to place, or to anything or anyone else. As mentioned earlier, they think on a global scale, with nations and populations as pawns. They define what money is and they issue it, just like the banker in a game of Monopoly. They can also make up a new game with a new kind of money. They have long outgrown any need to rely on any particular economic system in order to maintain their power. Capitalism was handy in an era of rapid growth. For an era of non-growth, a different game is being prepared.<br />
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Thus, capitalism has not been allowed to die a natural death. First it was put on a life-support system, as mentioned above, with globalization, privatization, derivative markets, etc. Then it was injected with a euthanasia death-drug, in the form of toxic derivatives. And when the planned collapse occurred, rather than industrial capitalism being bailed out, the elite bankers were bailed out. It’s not that the banks were <i>too big</i> to fail, rather the bankers were <i>too powerful</i> to fail. They made governments an offer they couldn’t refuse. <br />
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The outcome of the trillion-dollar bailouts was easily predictable, although you wouldn’t know that from reading the financial pages. National budgets were already stretched, and they certainly did not have reserves available to service the bailouts. Thus the bailouts amounted to nothing more than the taking on of immense new debts by governments. In order to fulfill the bailout commitments, the money would need to be borrowed from the same financial institutions that were being bailed out. <br />
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With the bailouts, Western governments delivered their nations in hock to the bankers. The governments are now in perpetual debt bondage to the bankers. Rather than the banks going into receivership, governments are now in receivership. Obama’s cabinet and advisors are nearly all from Wall Street; they are in the White House so they can keep close watch over their new acquisition, the once sovereign USA. Perhaps they will soon be presiding over its liquidation.<br />
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The bankers are now in control of national budgets. They say what can be funded and what can’t. When it comes to financing their wars and weapons production, no limits are set. When it comes to public services, then we are told deficits must be held in check. The situation was expressed very well by Brian Cowan, Ireland’s government chief. In the very same week that Ireland pledged 200 billion Euro to bailout the banks, he was asked why he was cutting a few million Euro off of critical service budgets. He replied, "I’m sorry, but the funds just aren’t there". Of course they’re not there! The treasury was given away. The cupboard is bare.<br />
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As we might expect, the highest priority for budgets is servicing the debt to the banks. Just as most of the third world is in debt slavery to the IMF, so the whole West is now in debt slavery to its own central banks. Greece is the harbinger of what is to happen everywhere.<br />
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<a id="carbon"></a><b><big>The carbon economy — <i>controlling consumption</i></big></b><br />
In a non-growth economy, the mechanisms of production will become relatively static. Instead of corporations competing to innovate, we’ll have production bureaucracies. They’ll be semi-state, semi-private bureaucracies, concerned about budgets and quotas rather than growth, somewhat along the lines of the Soviet model. Such an environment is not driven by a need for growth capital, and it does not enable a profitable game of Monopoly. <br />
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We can already see steps being taken to shift the corporate model towards the bureaucratic model, through increased government intervention in economic affairs. With the Wall Street bailouts, the forced restructuring of General Motors, the call for centralized micromanagement of banking and industry, and the mandating of health insurance coverage, the government is saying that the market is to be superseded by government directives. Not that we should bemoan the demise of exploitive capitalism, but before celebrating we need to understand what it is being replaced with.<br />
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In an era of capitalism and growth, the focus of the game has been on the production side of the economy. The game was aimed at controlling the means of growth: access to capital. The growth-engine of capitalism created the demand for capital; the bankers controlled the supply. Taxes were mostly based on income, again related to the production side of the economy.<br />
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In an era of non-growth, the focus of the game will be on the consumption side of the economy. The game will be aimed at controlling the necessities of life: access to food and energy. Population creates the demand for the necessities of life; the bankers intend to control the supply. Taxes will be mostly based on consumption, particularly of energy. That’s why they’re pushing for carbon taxes and carbon credits.<br />
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Already in Britain there is talk of carbon quotas, like gasoline rationing in wartime. It’s not just that you’ll pay taxes on energy, but the amount of energy you can consume will be determined by government directive. Carbon credits will be issued to you, which you can use for driving, for heating, or on rare occasions for air travel. Also in Britain, the highways are being wired so that they can track how many miles you drive, tax you accordingly, and penalize you if you travel over your limit. We can expect these kinds of things to spread throughout the West, as it’s the same international bankers who are in charge everywhere.<br />
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In terms of propaganda, this carbon-credit regime is being sold as a solution to global warming and peak oil. The propaganda campaign has been very successful, and the whole environmental movement has been captured by it. In Copenhagen, demonstrators confronted the police, carrying signs in support of carbon taxes and carbon credits. But in fact the carbon regime has nothing to do with climate or with sustainability. It is all about micromanaging every aspect of our lives, as well as every aspect of the economy.<br />
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If the folks who are running things actually cared about sustainability, they’d be investing in efficient mass transit, and they’d be shifting agriculture from petroleum-intensive, water-intensive methods to sustainable methods. Instead they are mandating biofuels and selling us electric cars, which are no more sustainable than standard cars.<br />
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With food prices linked to energy prices, and agriculture land being converted from food production to fuel production, the result can only be a massive increase in third-world starvation. Depopulation has long been a stated goal in elite circles, and the Rockefeller dynasty has frequently been involved in eugenics projects of various kinds. Genocide through imposed poverty is already a model being pursued successfully in Africa, and biofuels are systematically expanding that program.<br />
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Just as taxes on tobacco don’t stop smoking, cap-and-trade markets will not stop oil consumption. There will be an illusion of carbon reduction, based on phony accounting, where replacing a rainforest with a plantation is counted as a positive, when it should be counted as a negative. No one is talking about replacing highways or cars, and new oil fields are still being opened up.<br />
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The fact is that elites are not concerned about global warming. They know it’s not really a problem. Even I was able to figure that out, simply by looking at the publicly available temperature data: <i><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/climate-science-observations-vs-models.html" target="_ref">Climate science: observations vs. models</a></i>.<br />
<br />
<a id="terrorism"></a><b><big>‘The War on Terrorism’ — <i>preparing the way for the transition</i></big></b><br />
The so-called War on Terrorism has two parts. The first part is a pretext for arbitrary abuse of citizen’s rights, whenever Homeland Security <i>claims</i> the action is necessary for security reasons. The second part is a pretext for US military aggression anywhere in the world, whenever the White House <i>claims</i> that Al Qaeda is active there. <br />
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I emphasized the word ‘claims’ above, because the terrorism pretext is being used to justify <i>arbitrary</i> powers, both domestically and globally. No hard evidence need be presented to Congress, the UN, or anyone else, before some nation is invaded, someone is kidnapped and tortured as a ‘;terrorist suspect’, or some new invasive security measure is implemented. When powers are arbitrary, then we are no longer living under the rule of law, neither domestically nor internationally. We are living under the rule of men, as you would expect in a dictatorship, or in an old-fashioned kingdom or empire. <br />
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<b>Part 1: Preparing the way for a new social order</b><br />
In a very real sense, the terrorism pretext is being used to undo everything that The Enlightenment and the republican revolutions achieved two centuries ago. The very heart of the Bill of Rights — due process — has been abandoned. The gulag, the concentration camp, and the secret arrest in the night — these we have always associated with fascist and communist dictatorships — and now they are not only functioning under US jurisdiction, but being justified publicly by the President himself.<br />
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Is there really a terrorist threat to the homeland, and would these measures be a sensible response to such a threat? People are strongly divided in their answers to these questions. Quite a bit of hard forensic evidence has come to light, including links to intelligence agencies, and my own view is that most of the dramatic ‘terrorist’ events in the US, UK, and Europe have been covert false-flag operations, providing the pretext needed by elites to pursue their agenda. <br />
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From an historical perspective this would not be at all surprising. Such operations have been standard practice — modus operandi — in many nations, though we usually don’t get proof until years later. For example, every war the US has been involved in has had its own phony Gulf of Tonkin Incident, or its Weapons of Mass Destruction scam, in one form or another. It’s a formula that works. Instant mobilization of public opinion, prompt passage without debate of enabling resolutions and legislation. Why would the War on Terrorism be any different? <br />
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As regards motive: while Muslims have only suffered as a result of these dramatic events, our elite bankers have been able to create a police-state infrastructure that can be used to deal with any foreseeable popular resistance or civic chaos that might emerge as they prepare the way for their post-capitalist future. <br />
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With the collapse, the bailouts, and the total failure to pursue any kind of effective recovery program, the signals are very clear: the system will be allowed to collapse totally, thus clearing the ground for a pre-architected ‘solution’. Ground Zero is the metaphor, with the capitalist economy as the Twin Towers. And the toxic derivatives show us that the collapse is a controlled demolition. <br />
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By ‘total collapse’ I mean things like major disruptions in essentials, such as food, water, electricity, or fuel. If there’s a war with Iran, for instance, the gulf shipping lanes would be blocked, and global oil supplies would be seriously curtailed. If the war escalates, there would be much more serious disruption. Or there could be a collapse of the currency, so no one is able to buy food. A ‘terrorist attack’ could take out key hubs, and bring down electrical power and communications. A total collapse means there’s a collapse of civil order, requiring the implementation of martial law.<br />
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Maintaining order in a time of collapse, when for example there might not be enough food to go around, will be a nasty business. People may get quite unruly if their families are starving. Harsh measures may be required. In order to deal with a collapse scenario, Washington has come up with a new disaster-response protocol, that we saw tested in New Orleans and in Haiti. <br />
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The protocol begins with the assumption that there will always be civil disorder, and that establishment of robust martial-law control is the first priority. Thus the first-responders are battle-hardened troops or mercenaries, trained and equipped for insurgencies, rather than doctors and rescue teams, bringing food and water and medical supplies. <br />
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The protocol continues with the premise that every disaster should be seen as a <a href="http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine" target="_ref"><i>Shock Doctrine</i></a> opportunity...<br />
<blockquote><i>What can we gain out of this disaster? What can we get by with, under cover of disaster, that we normally couldn’t get by with? Do we want to clear out the riff-raff and redevelop the place? Do we want to reduce the size the local population?<br />
</i></blockquote>When the Shock Doctrine potential is identified in the situation, then that becomes the order of business. Providing assistance to the victims may or may not be part of the business, as we saw in New Orleans and in Haiti. <br />
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In New Orleans the objective was to clear out the ‘riff-raff’, and in Haiti it was population reduction. When people are pinned under rubble in an earthquake, the first 48 hours, and 72 hours, are absolutely critical points, as regards survival rates. When the US military systematically blocked incoming aid for those critical hours, turning back doctors and emergency teams, they systematically sealed the fate of many thousands who could have been saved.<br />
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The remainder of the protocol has to do with media coverage. The problem is to show the disaster on TV as it happens, without people noticing how grossly it’s being mishandled, from a humanitarian perspective. This is the most difficult part of the operation — the psy-ops part — and in both New Orleans and Haiti the media coverage accomplished what it was intended to accomplish.<br />
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Total collapse, plus the Shock Doctrine, is an ideal formula for re-engineering society. Consider how Japan and Germany were socially and politically transformed by the postwar reconstruction process. Those were exercises in social engineering, as were the preceding transformations under Mussolini and Hitler. Although the outcomes were quite different, in each case a total collapse / defeat was the preamble to reconstruction. <br />
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A total collapse of the capitalist economy is simply the application of a proven formula, but on a global scale. The second part of the formula will be some new social order, or perhaps some old social order, or some mixture. Something appropriate to a non-growth, command economy.<br />
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That’s Part 1 of the War on Terrorism: it has enabled the creation of the police-state infrastructures required to deal with the collapse of society, and to provide security for the reconstruction process. <br />
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<b>Part 2: Preparing the way for global domination</b><br />
So far we’ve been looking mainly at the West, and the plans of Western elites regarding a post-capitalist regime. We now need to bring Russia and China into the picture. Both nations have resisted being tamed by the Western banking elite. They still make their decisions on the basis of their perceived national interests. They are also working very closely together, economically and militarily. <br />
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If the world goes on, business as usual, it is only a matter of time before China eclipses the West economically, and Russia and China together dominate geopolitics. Strategic thinkers have long talked about the ‘Grand Chessboard’, about how Eurasia, with its land mass, population, and resources, is the natural power center of the world. In a very real sense, their time has come.<br />
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However, for obvious reasons, this business-as-usual scenario is not to the liking of our Western banking elites. They intend to intervene in the natural course of events, as they have so often in the past, as they did with the two world wars. They do not intend for their power base to be eclipsed by Russia and China. <br />
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The US has surrounded Russia and China with military bases, and it is setting up a ring of anti-missile systems around their borders. Meanwhile the Pentagon is spending trillions developing a first-strike capability, with space-based weapons systems, control-of-theater capability, forward-based ‘tactical’ nukes, etc. The anti-missile systems are an important part of a first-strike strategy, reducing the ability of Russia or China to retaliate.<br />
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These elaborate military preparations are not in response to any threat from Russia or China. Those two would be quite happy to see a stable, multi-polar world. They’d be quite happy to support substantial nuclear disarmament globally. The Pentagon’s war preparations mean only one thing: the Western elites are not going to give up their position of global dominance.<br />
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The War on Terrorism has been essential in justifying the astronomical military budgets required for these massive military deployments. Besides, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are themselves part of the encirclement strategy, as well as serving to control oil sources and pipeline routes.<br />
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There may or may not be a World War 3, but all of these preparations make it clear that our banking elite intend to preside over a global system, by hook or by crook. If they wanted a peaceful arrangement, a splitting of the third-world pie, so to speak, it could have been easily arranged at any time. It is only our elite bankers who are obsessed with world domination.<br />
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It is possible that nuclear war is a ‘desired outcome’, accomplishing depopulation, and making the collapse even more total. Or perhaps China and Russia will be given an offer they can’t refuse: <i>Surrender your economic sovereignty to our global system, or face the consequences</i>. <br />
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One way or another, the elite bankers, the masters of the universe, intend to preside over a micromanaged global system. The collapse project is now well underway, and the ‘surround your enemy’ project seems to be more or less completed. From a strategic perspective, there will be some trigger point, some stage in the economic collapse scenario, when geopolitical confrontation is judged to be most advantageous. It’s a multi-dimensional chess board, and with the stakes so high, you can rest assured that the timing of the various moves will be carefully coordinated. And from the overall shape of the board, we seem to be nearing the endgame.<br />
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<a id="dark_age"></a><b><big>Prognosis 2012 — <i>a Neo Dark Age</i></big></b><br />
2012 might not be the exact year, but it’s difficult to see the endgame lasting much beyond that, and the masters of the universe love symbolism, as with 911 (both in Chile and in Manhattan), KLA 007, and others. 2012 is loaded with symbolism, eg. the Mayan Calendar, and the Internet is buzzing with various 2012-related prophecies, survival strategies, anticipated alien interventions, alignments with galactic radiation fields, etc. And then there is the Hollywood film, 2012, which explicitly portrays the demise of most of humanity, and the pre-planned salvation of a select few. One never knows with Hollywood productions, what is escapist fantasy, and what is aimed at preparing the public mind symbolically for what is to come. <br />
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Whatever the exact date, all the threads will come together, geopolitically and domestically, and the world will change. It will be a new era, just as capitalism was a new era after aristocracy, and the Dark Ages followed the era of the Roman Empire. Each era has its own structure, its own economics, its own social forms, and its own mythology. These things must relate to one another coherently, and their nature follows from the fundamental power relationships and economic circumstances of the system.<br />
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In our post-2012 world, we have for the first time one centralized global government, and one ruling elite clique, a kind of extended royal family, the lords of finance. As we can see with the IMF, WHO, and the WTO, and the other pieces of the embryonic world government, the institutions of governance will make no pretensions about popular representation or democratic responsiveness. Rule will be by means of autocratic global bureaucracies, who take their marching orders from the royal family. This model has already been operating for some time, within its various spheres of influence, as with the restructuring programs forced on the third world, as a condition for getting financing. <br />
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Whenever there is a change of era, the previous era is always demonized in mythology. In the Garden of Eden story the serpent is demonized — a revered symbol in paganism, the predecessor to Christianity. With the rise of European nation states, the Catholic Church was demonized, and Protestantism introduced. When republics came along, the demonization of monarchs was an important part of the process. In the post-2012 world, democracy and national sovereignty will be demonized. This will be very important, in getting people to accept totalitarian rule...<br />
<blockquote><i>In those terrible dark days, before the blessed unification of humanity, anarchy reigned in the world. One nation would attack another, no better than predators in the wild. Nations had no coherent policies; voters would swing from one party to another, keeping governments always in transition and confusion. How did they ever think that masses of semi-educated people could govern themselves, and run a complex society? Democracy was an ill-conceived experiment that led only to corruption and chaotic governance. How lucky we are to be in this well-ordered world, where humanity has finally grown up, and those with the best expertise make the decisions.<br />
</i></blockquote>The economics of non-growth are radically different than capitalist economics. The unit of exchange is likely to be a carbon credit, entitling you to consume the equivalent of one kilogram of fuel. Everything will have a carbon value, allegedly based on how much energy it took to produce it and transport it to market. ‘Green consciousness’ will be a primary ethic, conditioned early into children... <br />
<blockquote><i>Getting by with less is a virtue; using energy is anti-social; austerity is a responsible and necessary condition.<br />
</i></blockquote>As with every currency, the bankers will want to manage the scarcity of carbon credits, and that’s where global warming alarmism becomes important. Regardless of the availability of resources, carbon credits can be kept arbitrarily scarce simply by setting carbon budgets, based on directives from the IPCC (<a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/" target="_ref"><small>Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</small></a>), another of our emerging units of global bureaucratic governance. Such IPCC directives will be the equivalent of the Federal Reserve announcing a change in interest rates. Those budgets set the scale of economic activity.<br />
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Presumably nations will continue to exist, as official units of governance. However security and policing will be largely centralized and privatized. Like the Roman Legions, the security apparatus will be loyal to the center of empire, not to the place where someone happens to be stationed. We have seen this trend already in the US, as mercenaries have become big business, and police forces are increasingly federalized, militarized, and alienated from the general public.<br />
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Just as airports have now been federalized, all transport systems will be under the jurisdiction of the security apparatus. Terrorism will continue as an ongoing bogey-man, justifying whatever security procedures are deemed desirable for social-control purposes. The whole security apparatus will have a monolithic quality to it, a similarity of character regardless of the specific security tasks or location. Everyone dressed in the same Evil Empire black outfits, with big florescent letters on the back of their flack jackets. In essence, the security apparatus will be an occupying army, the emperor’s garrison in the provinces.<br />
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On a daily basis, you will need to go through checkpoints of various kinds, with varying levels of security requirements. This is where biometrics becomes important. If people can be implanted with chips, then much of the security can be automated, and everyone can be tracked at all times, and their past activity retrieved. The chip links into your credit balance, so you’ve got all your currency always with you, along with your medical records and lots else that you don’t know about. <br />
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There is very little left as regards national sovereignty. Nothing much in the way of foreign policy will have any meaning. With security marching to its own law and its distant drummer, the main role of so-called ‘government’ will be to allocate and administer the carbon-credit budget that it receives from the IPCC. The IPCC decides how much wealth a nation will receive in a given year, and the government then decides how to distribute that wealth in the form of public services and entitlements. Wealth being measured by the entitlement to expend energy.<br />
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In a fundamental sense, this is how things already are, following the collapse and the bailouts. Because governments are so deeply in debt, the bankers are able to dictate the terms of national budgets, as a condition of keeping credit lines open. The carbon economy, with its centrally determined budgets, provides a much simpler and more direct way of micromanaging economic activity and resource distribution throughout the globe.<br />
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In order to clear the way for the carbon-credit economy, it will be necessary for Western currencies to collapse, to become worthless, as nations become increasingly insolvent, and the global financial system continues to be systematically dismantled. The carbon currency will be introduced as an enlightened, progressive ‘solution’ to the crisis, a currency linked to something real, and to sustainability. The old monetary system will be demonized, and again the mythology will contain much that is true...<br />
<blockquote><i>The pursuit of money is the root of all evil, and the capitalist system was inherently evil. It encouraged greed, and consumption, and it cared nothing about wasting resources. People thought the more money they had, the better off they were. How much wiser we are now, to live within our means, and to understand that a credit is a token of stewardship.<br />
</i></blockquote>Culturally, the post-capitalist era will be a bit like the medieval era, with aristocrats and lords on top, and the rest peasants and serfs. A definite upper class and lower class. Just as only the old upper class had horses and carriages, only the new upper class will be entitled to access substantial carbon credits. Wealth will be measured by entitlements, more than by acquisitions or earnings. Those outside the bureaucratic hierarchies are the serfs, with subsistence entitlements. Within the bureaucracies, entitlements are related to rank in the hierarchy. Those who operate in the central global institutions are lords of empire, with unlimited access to credits.<br />
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But there is no sequestering of wealth, or building of economic empires, outside the structures of the designated bureaucracies. Entitlements are about access to resources and facilities, to be used or not used, but not to be saved and used as capital. The flow of entitlements comes downward, micromanaged from the top. It’s a dole economy, at all levels, for people and governments alike — the global regimentation of consumption. As regards regimentation, the post-capitalist culture will also be a bit like the Soviet system... <i>Here’s your entitlement card, here’s your job assignment, and here’s where you’ll be living</i>. <br />
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With the pervasive security apparatus, and the micromanagement of economic activity, the scenario is clearly about fine-grained social control, according to centralized guidelines and directives. Presumably media will be carefully programmed, with escapist trivia, and a sophisticated version of 1984-style groupthink propaganda pseudo-news, which is pretty much what we already have today. The non-commercial Internet, if there is one, will be limited to monitored, officially-designated chat sites, and other kinds of sanitized forums. <br />
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With such a focus on social micromanagement, and because of various indicators, I do not expect the family unit to survive in the new era, and I expect child-abuse alarmism will be the lever used to destabilize the family. The stage has been set with all the revelations about church and institutional child sexual abuse. <br />
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Such revelations could have been uncovered any time in the past century, but the media spotlight turned on them at a certain time, just as all these other transitional things have been happening. People are now aware that widespread child abuse happens, and they have been conditioned to support strong measures to prevent it.<br />
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More indicators... Whenever I turn on the TV, I see at least one public-service ad, with shocking images, about children who are physically or sexually abused, or criminally neglected, in their own homes. <br />
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And there’s a TV series about social workers, where they dramatize the conflicts between parental powers and the powers of the state, as regards children. There is a sense in which the series seems ’balanced’, in that social services sometimes makes mistakes. But the main message of the series is that social workers have ’good hearts’ and ’integrity’, and ’know about children’, whereas parents are a mixed bag, and are in some cases really bad.<br />
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It is easy to see how the category of abuse can be expanded, to include parents who don’t follow vaccination schedules, whose purchase records don’t indicate healthy diets, who have dubious psychological profiles, etc. The state of poverty could be deemed abusive neglect.<br />
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With the right media campaign, abuse alarmism would be easy to stir up. Ultimately, a ‘child rights’ movement becomes an anti-family movement. The state must directly protect the child from birth. The family is demonized...<br />
<blockquote><i>How scary were the old days, when unlicensed, untrained couples had total control over vulnerable children, behind closed doors, with whatever neuroses, addictions, or perversions the parents happened to possess. How did this vestige of patriarchal slavery, this safe-house den of abuse, continue so long to exist, and not be recognized for what it was? How much better off we are now, with children being raised scientifically, by trained staff, where they are taught healthy values. <br />
</i></blockquote>Ever since public education was introduced, the state and the family have competed to control childhood conditioning. In religious families, the church has made its own contribution to conditioning. In the micromanaged post-capitalist future, with its Shock Doctrine birth scenario, it would make good sense to take that opportunity to implement the ‘final solution’ of social control, which is for the state to monopolize child raising. This would eliminate from society the parent-child bond, and hence family-related bonds in general. No longer is there a concept of relatives. There’s just worker bees, security bees, and queen bees, who dole out the honey. <br />
<br />
<a id="postscript"></a><b><big>Postscript</big></b><br />
This has been an extensive and somewhat detailed prognosis, regarding the architecture of the post-capitalist regime, and the transition process required to bring it about. The term ‘new world order’ is too weak a term to characterize the radical nature of the social transformation anticipated in the prognosis. <br />
<br />
A more apt characterization would be a ’quantum leap in the domestication of the human species’. Micromanaged lives and microprogrammed beliefs and thoughts. A once wild primate species transformed into something resembling more a bee or ant culture. Needless to say, regular use of psychotropic drugs would be mandated, so that people could cope emotionally with such a sterile, inhuman environment.<br />
<br />
For such a profound transformation to be possible, it is easy to see that a very great shock is required, on the scale of collapse and social chaos, and possibly on the scale of a nuclear exchange. There needs to be an implicit mandate to ‘do whatever is necessary to get society running again’. The shock needs to leave people in a condition of total helplessness comparable to the survivors in the bombed-out rubble of Germany and Japan after World War 2. Nothing less will do.<br />
<br />
The accuracy of the prognosis, as prediction, is of course impossible to know in advance. However each part of the prognosis has been based on precedents that have been set, modus operandi that has been observed, trends that have been initiated, sentiments that have been expressed, signals that have been given, and actions that have been taken whose consequences can be confidently predicted. <br />
<br />
In addition, in looking at all of these indicators together, one sees a certain mindset, an absolutist determination to implement the ‘ideal solution’, without compromise, using extreme means, and with unbridled audacity. World wars have been rehearsals for this historic moment. The police state infrastructure is in place and has been tested. The economy is in the process of collapse. The enemy is surrounded with missiles. Arbitrary powers have been assumed. If not now, the ultimate prize, then when will there be a better opportunity?<br />
<br />
Our elite planners are backed up by competent think tanks, and they know that the new society must have coherence of various kinds. They’ve had quite a bit of experience with social engineering, nurturing the rise of fascism, and then engineering the postwar regimes. They understand the importance of mythology. <br />
<br />
For example there is the mythology of the holocaust, where the story is all about extermination per se, and the story is not told of the primary mission of the concentration camps, which was to provide slave labor for war production. And some of the companies using the slave labor were American owned, and were supplying the German war machine. Thus does mythology, though containing truth, succeed in hiding the tracks and the crimes of elite perps, leaving others to carry the whole burden of historical demonization.<br />
<br />
So I think there is a sound basis for anticipating the kinds of mythology that would be designed for leaving behind and rejecting the old ways, and seeing the new as a salvation. There is a long historical precedent of era changes linked with mythology changes, often expressed in religious terms. There will be a familiar ring to the new mythology, a remixing and re-prioritizing of familiar values and assumptions, so as to resonate with the dynamics of the new regime, and demonize the old.<br />
<br />
The nature of the carbon economy has been somewhat clearly signaled. Carbon budgets, and carbon credits, are clearly destined to become primary components of the economy. As we’ve seen with the elite and grassroots supported global warming movement, the arbitrary scarcity of carbon credits can be easily regulated on the pretext of environmentalism. And peak oil alarmism is always available as a backup. As elite spokespeople have often expressed, when the time comes, the masses will demand the new world order.<br />
<br />
The focus on control over consumption, resources, and distribution is implicit in the emphasis on energy limits, is latent in the geopolitical situation, as regards depletion of global resources, and is indicated by the need for a new unifying paradigm, as the growth paradigm is no longer viable. <br />
<br />
The nature of the security apparatus has been clearly signaled by the responses to demonstrations ever since 1998 in Seattle, by the increased use of hardened-killer mercenaries at home and abroad, by excessive and abusive police behavior, by airport security procedures, by Guantanamo and renditions, by the creation of a domestic branch of the army, dedicated to responding to civil emergencies, and by the way Katrina and Haiti have been handled. <br />
<br />
The limited role of national governments, being primarily allocators of mandated budgets, has been clearly signaled by long-standing IMF policies in the third world, and by the way the bankers have been dictating to governments, in the wake of the over-extended bailout commitments. The carbon entitlement budgeting paradigm accomplishes the same micromanagement in a much more direct way, and is the natural outcome of the push toward hard carbon limits. <br />
</big><br />
<hr><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/grand-story-of-humanity.html"><font color="#3333CC"><i>on to Chapter 2</i></font></a> …<br />
<br />
rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2958975246043114999.post-11066619175751458712010-02-21T11:00:00.001+00:002010-02-21T23:05:06.576+00:00Climate science: observations vs. models<i><b><big>the global-warming illusion</big></b></i><br />
<br />
Richard K. Moore<br />
<a href="mailto:rkm@quaylargo.com">rkm@quaylargo.com</a><br />
<br />
This document continues to evolve, based on continuing research. The latest version is always maintained at this URL:<br />
<small><small><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/climate-science-observations-vs-models.html" target="-blank">http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/climate-science-observations-vs-models.html</a></small></small><br />
<br />
You can click on any graphic in this document to see a larger image.<br />
<hr><big><br />
<b><big>Global temperatures in perspective</big></b><br />
<br />
Let’s look at the historical temperature record, beginning with the long-term view. For long-term temperatures, ice-cores provide the most reliable data. Let’s look first at the very long-term record, using ice cores from Vostok, in the Antarctic. Temperatures are shown relative to 1900, which is shown as zero.<br />
<br />
<small>Data source:<br />
<small><small><a href="ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/deutnat.txt" target="-blank">ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/deutnat.txt</a></small></small></small><br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Vostok Temperatures: 450,000 BC — 1900</small></center></b><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S24yfKH22XI/AAAAAAAAAcw/6ltqECYFY64/s1600-h/Vostok-450KBC-1900.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="302" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S24yfKH22XI/AAAAAAAAAcw/6ltqECYFY64/s400/Vostok-450KBC-1900.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
Here we see a very regular pattern of long-term temperature cycles. Most of the time the Earth is in an ice age, and about every 125,000 years there is a brief period of warm tempertures, called an <i>interglacial period</i>. Our current interglacial period has lasted a bit longer than most, indicating that the next ice age is somewhat overdue.<br />
<br />
These long-term cycles are probably related to changes in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit, which follows a cycle of about 100,000 years. We also see other cycles of more closely-spaced peaks, and these are probably related to other cycles in the Earth’s orbit. There is an <i>obliquity cycle</i> of about 41,000 years, and a <i>precession cycle</i>, of about 20,000 years, and all of these cycles interfere with one another in complex ways. Here’s a tutorial from NASA that discusses the Earth’s orbital variations:<br />
<a href="http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Sprecess.htm" target="-blank"><small>http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Sprecess.htm</small></a><br />
<br />
Next let’s zoom-in on the current interglacial period, as seen in Vostok and Greenland, again using ice-core data.<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Vostok Temperatures: 10,000 BC — 1900</small></center></b><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S246gGsDzxI/AAAAAAAAAc4/A1vG-cvxedE/s1600-h/Vostok-10KBC-1900.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="302" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S246gGsDzxI/AAAAAAAAAc4/A1vG-cvxedE/s400/Vostok-10KBC-1900.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
<small>Data source:<br />
<small><small><a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-icecore-2475.html" target="-blank">http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-icecore-2475.html</a></small></small></small><br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Greenland Temperatures: 9,000 BC — 1900</small></center></b><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S248wGIyOdI/AAAAAAAAAdI/cU2peKV8fhQ/s1600-h/Greenland-9KBC-1900.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="302" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S248wGIyOdI/AAAAAAAAAdI/cU2peKV8fhQ/s400/Greenland-9KBC-1900.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
Here we see that the Antarctic emerged from the last ice age about 1,000 years earlier than the Arctic. While the Antarctic has oscillated up and down throughout the interglacial period, the Arctic has been on a steady decline towards the next ice age for the past 3,000 years. <br />
<br />
As of 1900, in comparison to the whole interglacial period, the temperature was 2°C below the maximum in Vostok, and 3°C below the maximum in Greenland. Thus, as of 1900, temperatures were rather cool for the period in both hemispheres, and in Greenland temperatures were close to a minimum.<br />
<br />
During this recent interglacial period, temperatures in both Vostok and Greenland have oscillated through a range of about 4°C, although the patterns of oscillation are quite different in each case. In order to see just how different the patterns are, let’s look at Greenland and Vostok together for the interglacial period. Vostok is shown with a dashed line.<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Greenland & Vostok Temperatures: 8,500 BC — 1900</small></center></b><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S25jqa9lqRI/AAAAAAAAAdo/eY9V-s94C3U/s1600-h/Greenland-Vostok-8500BC-1900.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="303" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S25jqa9lqRI/AAAAAAAAAdo/eY9V-s94C3U/s400/Greenland-Vostok-8500BC-1900.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
The patterns are very different indeed. While Greenland has been almost always above the 1900 base line, Vostok has been almost always below. And in the period 1500-1900, while Greenland temperatures were relatively stable, within a range of 0.5°C, Vostok went through a radical oscillation of 3°C, from an extreme high to an extreme low. <br />
<br />
These dramatic differences between the two arctic regions might be related to the Earth’s orbital variations (See <a href="http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Sprecess.htm" target="-blank">NASA tutorial</a>). On the other hand, we may be seeing a regulatory mechanism, based on the fact that the Southern Hemisphere is dominated by oceans, while most of the land mass is in the Northern Hemisphere. Perhaps incoming heat, though retained by the northern continents, leads to evaporation from the oceans and increased snowfall in the Antarctic. Whatever the reasons, the differences between the two arctic regions are striking.<br />
<br />
Let’s now look at the average of Greenland and Vostok temperatures over the interglacial period:<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Average of Greenland & Vostok Temperatures<br />
8,500 BC — 1900</small></center></b><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S25C1y-FmfI/AAAAAAAAAdY/cva1krNrOo4/s1600-h/Avg-8500BC-1900.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="303" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S25C1y-FmfI/AAAAAAAAAdY/cva1krNrOo4/s400/Avg-8500BC-1900.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
Here we see that the average temperature has followed a more stable pattern, with more constrained oscillations, than either of the hemispheres. The graph shows a relatively smooth arc, rising from the last ice age, and descending steadily over the past 4,000 years toward the next ice age. Here’s the average again, together with Vostok and Greenland:<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Vostok, Greenland, and Average Temperatures<br />
8,500 BC — 1900</small></center></b><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S3AvF8Fjd4I/AAAAAAAAAe4/RZN5dHxeZb4/s1600-h/Greenland-Vostok-Avg-8500BC-1900.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="303" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S3AvF8Fjd4I/AAAAAAAAAe4/RZN5dHxeZb4/s400/Greenland-Vostok-Avg-8500BC-1900.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
Notice how the average is nearly always nestled between the Arctic and Antarctic temperatures, with the Arctic above and the Anatarctic below. It does seem that the Antarctic is acting as a regulatory mechanism, keeping the average temperature always moderate, even when the Arctic is experiencing high temperatures. I don’t offer this as a theory, but simply as an observation of a possibility.<br />
<br />
We can see that the average temperature tells us very little about what is happening in either arctic region. We cannot tell from the average that Arctic temperatures were 3°C higher in 1500 BC, and that glacier melting might have been a danger then. And the average does not tell us that the Antarctic has almost always been cool, with very little danger of ice-cap melting at any time. In general, the average is a very poor indicator of conditions in either arctic region. <br />
<br />
If we want to understand warming-related issues, such as tundra-melting and glacier-melting, we must consider the two polar regions separately. If glaciers melt, they do so either because of high Arctic temperatures, or high Antarctic temperatures. Whether or not glaciers are likely to melt cannot be determined by global averages. <br />
<br />
Next let’s take a closer look at Vostok and Greenland since 500 BC:<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Greenland & Vostok Temperatures<br />
500 BC — 1900</small></center></b><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S25JqjWybxI/AAAAAAAAAdg/AdHQqPYSt80/s1600-h/Greenland-Vostok-500BC-1900.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="303" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S25JqjWybxI/AAAAAAAAAdg/AdHQqPYSt80/s400/Greenland-Vostok-500BC-1900.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
Again we see how the Antarctic temperatures balance the Arctic, showing almost a mirror image over much of this period. From 1500 to 1800, while the Arctic was experiencing the Little Ice Age, it seems almost as if the Antarctic was getting frantic, going into radical oscillations in an effort to keep the average up near the base line. <br />
<br />
Beginning about 1800 we have an unusual situation, where both arctic regions begin warming rapidly at the same time, as each follows its own distinct pattern. This of course means that the average will also be rising. Keep in mind that everything we’ve been looking at so far has been before human-caused CO<sub>2</sub> emissions were at all significant. <br />
<br />
Thus, just as human-caused emissions began to increase, around 1900, average temperatures were already rising sharply, from natural causes. There has been a strong correlation between rising average temperature and CO<sub>2</sub> levels since 1900, arising from a coincidental alignment of three distinct trends. Whether or not rising CO<sub>2</sub> levels have accelerated the natural increase in average temperature remains to be seen.<br />
<br />
We’ll return to this question of CO<sub>2</sub> causation, but first let’s look at some other records from the Northern Hemisphere, to find out how typical the Greenland record is of its hemisphere. This first record is from Spain, based on the mercury content in a peat bog, as published in <i>Science</i>, 1999, vol. 284. Note that this graph is backwards, with present day on the left.<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Spanish Peat-Bog Temperatures<br />
Present day — 2,000 BC</small></center></b><a href="http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Martinez-Cortizas-1999.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="271" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S11jZXQdfcI/AAAAAAAAAaI/EBP8cgPyYb4/s400/spanish-peat-bog.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
This next record is from the Central Alps, based on stalagmite isotopes, as published in <i>Earth and Planteary Science Letters</i>, 2005, vol. 235.<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Central Alps Temperatures<br />
0 AD — Present Day</small></center></b><a href="http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Mangini-2005.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="338" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S11mOv8qcGI/AAAAAAAAAaQ/gDs0hwClQrQ/s400/CentralAlps-0AD-present-Mangini-2005.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
And for comparison, here’s the Greenland record for the most recent 4,000 years:<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Greenland Temperatures<br />
2,000 BC — 1900</small></center></b><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S25tIsDNfNI/AAAAAAAAAdw/FhiySw8iD6I/s1600-h/greenland-2KBC-1900.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="302" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S25tIsDNfNI/AAAAAAAAAdw/FhiySw8iD6I/s400/greenland-2KBC-1900.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
While the three records are clearly different, they do share certain important characteristics. In each case we see a staggered rise, followed by a staggered decline — a long-term up-and-down cycle over the period. In each case we see that during the past few thousand years, temperatures have been 3°C higher than 1900 temperatures. And in each case we see a steady descent towards the overdue next ice age. The Antarctic, on the other hand, shares none of these characteristics. <br />
<br />
In the Northern Hemisphere, based on the shared characteristics we have observed, temperatures would need to rise at least 3°C above 1900 levels before we would need to worry about things like the extinction of polar bears, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or runaway methane release. We know this because none of these things have happened in the past 4,000 years, and temperatures have been 3°C higher during that period.<br />
<br />
However such a 3°C rise seems very unlikely to happen, given that all three of our Nothern Hemisphere samples show a gradual but definite decline toward the overdue next ice age. Let’s now zoom-in on the temperature record since 1900, and see what kind of rise has actually occurred. Let’s turn to Jim Hansen’s latest article, published on realclimate.org, <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/2009-temperatures-by-jim-hansen/" target="-blank"><i><small>2009 temperatures by Jim Hansen</small></i></a>. The article includes the following two graphs.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S2HaObLjlSI/AAAAAAAAAag/zKcYyoX8VKo/s1600-h/Hansen09_fig4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="176" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S2HaObLjlSI/AAAAAAAAAag/zKcYyoX8VKo/s400/Hansen09_fig4.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
Jim Hansen is of course one of the primary spokespersons for the human-caused-CO<sub>2</sub>-dangerous-warming theory, and there is some reason to believe these graphs show an exaggerated picture as regards to warming. Here is one article relevant to that point, and it is typical of other reports I’ve seen:<br />
<small><a href="http://fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/government/fraud/us_government/news.php?q=1263670673" target="-blank"><i>Son of Climategate! Scientist says feds manipulated data</i></a></small><br />
<br />
Nonetheless, let’s accept these graphs as a valid representation of recent average temperature changes, so as to be as fair as possible to the warming alarmists. We’ll be using the red line, which is from GISS, and which does not use the various extrapolations that are included in the green line. We’ll return to this topic later, but for now suffice it to say that these extrapolations make little sense from a scientific perspective.<br />
<br />
The red line shows a temperature rise of .7°C from 1900 to the 1998 maximum, a leveling off beginning in 2001, and then a brief but sharp decline starting in 2005. Let’s enter that data into our charting program, using values for each 5-year period that represent the center of the oscillations for that period. Here’s what we get for 1900-2008:<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Changes in Average Global Temperature<br />
GISS<br />
1900 — 2008</small></center></b><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S26D5AIIV9I/AAAAAAAAAeI/3l997ncq1X8/s1600-h/Average-1900-2008.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="302" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S26D5AIIV9I/AAAAAAAAAeI/3l997ncq1X8/s400/Average-1900-2008.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
In order to estimate how these average changes would be reflected in each of the polar regions, let’s look at Greenland and Vostok together, from 1000 AD to 1900.<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Greenland & Vostok Temperatures<br />
1000 — 1900<br />
Vostok shown with dashed line</small></center></b><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S26FmCCRVAI/AAAAAAAAAeY/iegxJtdYQsk/s1600-h/Greenland-Vostok-1000-1900.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="302" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S26FmCCRVAI/AAAAAAAAAeY/iegxJtdYQsk/s400/Greenland-Vostok-1000-1900.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
Here we can see that in 1900 the Antarctic was warming much faster the Arctic. As usual, the Antarctic was exhibiting the more extreme oscillations. In the most recent warming shown, from 1850 to 1900, the Arctic increased by only 0.5°C while the Antarctic increased by 0.75°C. As regards the average of these two inreases, the Antarctic contributed 60%, while the Arctic contributed 40%. If we assume these trends continue, and changes in global average are reflected in the polar regions, then we get the following estimate for temperature changes in the two polar regions:<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Greenland & Vostok Temperatures<br />
1900 — 2008<br />
(based on apportioning GISS changes,<br />
60% to Vostok, 40% to Greenland)<br />
Vostok shown with dashed line</small></center></b><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S26SvV2sOdI/AAAAAAAAAeg/f1rhvIxKd3c/s1600-h/Greenland-Vostok-1900-2008.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="302" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S26SvV2sOdI/AAAAAAAAAeg/f1rhvIxKd3c/s400/Greenland-Vostok-1900-2008.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
This is only approximate, of course, but it is probably closer to the truth than apportioning the changes equally to the two polar regions. Let’s now look again at Greenland and Vostok together, for the past 4,000 years, with these apportioned GISS changes appended.<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Greenland & Vostok Temperatures<br />
2,000 BC — 2008<br />
Extended by GISS data<br />
Vostok shown with feint line</small></center></b><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S3Te7YTQRSI/AAAAAAAAAfA/GgrJYzY97So/s1600-h/Greenland-Vostok-2KBC-2008.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="302" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S3Te7YTQRSI/AAAAAAAAAfA/GgrJYzY97So/s400/Greenland-Vostok-2KBC-2008.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
We see here that both polar regions have remained below their maximum for this period. The Arctic has been nearly 2.5°C warmer, and the Antarctic about 0.5°C warmer. Perhaps CO<sub>2</sub> is accelerating Antarctic warming, or perhaps Antarctica is simply continuing its erratic oscillations. In the Arctic however, temperatures are definitely following their long-term pattern, with no apparent influence from increased CO<sub>2</sub> levels. <br />
<br />
The recent warming period has given us a new peak in the Greenland record, one in a series of declining peaks. If you hold a ruler up to the screen, you’ll see that the four peaks shown, occuring about every 1,000 years, fall in a straight line. If the natural pattern continues, then the recent warming has reached its maximum in the Northern Hemisphere, and we will soon experience about two centuries of rapid cooling, as we continue our descent to the overdue next ice age. The downturn shown in the GISS data beginning in 2005 fits perfectly with this pattern.<br />
<br />
Next let’s look at the Greenland-Vostok average temperature for the past 4,000 years, extended by the GISS data.<br />
<br />
<b><center><small>Average of Greenland & Vostok Temperatures<br />
2,000 BC — 2008<br />
Extended by GISS data</small></center></b><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S26isTIMGxI/AAAAAAAAAew/_6OlaqW4cOo/s1600-h/Average-2KBC-2008.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="303" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S26isTIMGxI/AAAAAAAAAew/_6OlaqW4cOo/s400/Average-2KBC-2008.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
Here we see a polar-region subset of the famous hockey stick, on the right end of the graph — and we can see how misleading that is as regards the likelihood of dangerous warming. From the average polar temperature, we get the illusion that temperatures are warmer now at the poles than they’ve been any time since year 0. But as our previous graph shows, the Arctic has been about 1.5°C warmer during that period, and the Antarctic has been about 0.5°C warmer. And even the average has been nearly 0.5°C warmer, if we look back to 2,000 BC. So in fact we have not been experiencing alarmingly high temperatures recently in either hemisphere. <br />
<br />
Dr. Hansen tells us the recent downturn, starting in 2005, is very temporary, and that temperatures will soon start rising again. Perhaps he is right. However, as we shall see, his arguments for this prediction are seriously flawed. What we know for sure is that a downward trend has begun. How far that trend will continue is not yet known. <br />
<br />
So everything depends on the next few years. If temperatures turn sharply upwards again, then the IPCC may be right, and human-caused CO<sub>2</sub> emissions may have taken control of climate. However, if temperatures continue downward, then climate has been following natural patterns all along in the Northern Hemisphere. The record-setting cold spells and snows in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere this winter seem to be a fairly clear signal that the trend is continuing downwards.<br />
<br />
If so, then there has been no evidence of any noticeable influence on northern climate from human-caused CO<sub>2</sub>, and we are now facing an era of rapid cooling. Within two centuries we could expect temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere to be considerably lower than they were in the recent Little Ice Age. <br />
<br />
We don’t know for sure which way temperatures will go, rapidly up or rapidly down. But I can make this statement:<blockquote>As of this moment, based on the long-term temperature patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, there is no evidence that human-caused CO<sub>2</sub> has had any effect on climate. The rise since 1800, as well as the downward dip starting in 2005, are entirely in line with the natural long-term pattern. If temperatures turn sharply upwards in the next few years, that will be the first-ever evidence for human-caused warming in the Northern Hemisphere.<br />
<br />
<b><big>The illusion of dangerous warming arises from a failure to recognize that global averages are a very poor indicator of actual conditions in either hemisphere</big></b>.<br />
<br />
If the downward trend continues in the Northern Hemisphere, as the long-term pattern suggests, we are likely to experience about two centuries of rapid cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, as we continue our descent toward the overdue next ice age.</blockquote><br />
As regards the the recent downturn, here are two other records, both of which show an even more dramatic downturn than the one shown in the GISS data:<br />
<br />
<center><b><small><small>University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH)<br />
Dr. John Christy<br />
UAH Monthly Means of Lower Troposphere LT5-2<br />
2004 - 2008</small></small></b></center><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S0-kOEe10EI/AAAAAAAAAX4/pW1CfkNFZ1c/s1600-h/uah-monthly-anomaly-z.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="174" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S0-kOEe10EI/AAAAAAAAAX4/pW1CfkNFZ1c/s320/uah-monthly-anomaly-z.png" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
<center><b><small><small>Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA (RSS)<br />
RSS MSU Monthly Anomaly - 70S to 82.5N (essentially Global)<br />
2004 - 2008</small></small></b></center><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S0-khAt87vI/AAAAAAAAAYA/jyt2Nsc_nqI/s1600-h/rss-msu-2007-2008-delta.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="172" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S0-khAt87vI/AAAAAAAAAYA/jyt2Nsc_nqI/s320/rss-msu-2007-2008-delta.png" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<big><b>Why haven’t unsually high levels of CO<sub>2</sub> significantly affected temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere?</big></b><br />
<br />
One place to look for answers to this question is in the long-term patterns that we see in the temperature record of the past few thousand years, such as the peaks separated by about 1,000 years in the Greenland data, and other more closely-spaced patterns that are also visible. Some forces are causing those patterns, and whatever those forces are, they have nothing to do with human-caused CO<sub>2</sub> emissions. <br />
<br />
Perhaps the forces have to do with cycles in solar radiation and solar magnetism, or cosmic radiation, or something we haven’t yet identified. Until we understand what those forces are, how they intefere with one another, and how they effect climate, we can’t build useful climate models, except on very short time scales.<br />
<br />
We can also look for answers in the regulatory mechanisms that exist within the Earth’s own climate system. If an increment of warming happens on the surface, for example, then there is more evaporation from the oceans, which cools the ocean and leads to increased precipitation. While an increment of warming may melt glaciers, it may also cause increased snowfall in the arctic regions. To what extent do these balance one another? Do such mechanisms explain why Antarctic temperatures seem to always be balancing the Arctic, as we have seen in the data? <br />
<br />
It is important to keep in mind that CO<sub>2</sub> concentrations in the atmosphere are tiny compared to water-vapor concentrations. A small reduction in cloud formation can more than compensate for a large increase in CO<sub>2</sub> concentration, as regards the total greenhouse effect. If there is a <i>precipitation response</i> to CO<sub>2</sub>-warming, that could be very significant, and we would need to understand it quantitatively, by observing it — not by making assumptions and putting them in our models.<br />
<br />
Vegetation also acts as a regulatory system. Plants and trees gobble up CO<sub>2</sub>; that is where their substance comes from. Greater CO<sub>2</sub> concentration leads to faster growth, taking more CO<sub>2</sub> out of the atmosphere. Until we understand quantitively how these various regulatory systems function and interact, we can’t even build useful models on a short time scale. <br />
<br />
In fact a lot of research is going on, investigating both lines of inquiry — extraterrestrial forces as well as terrestrial regulation mechanisms. However, in the current public-opinion and media climate, any research not related to CO<sub>2</sub> causation is dismissed as the activity of <i>contrarians</i>, <i>deniers</i>, and <i>oil-company hacks</i>. Just as the Bishop refused to look through Galileo’s telescope, so today we have a whole society that refuses to look at many of the climate studies that are available. <br />
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From observation of the patterns in climate history, the evidence indicates that regulatory mechanisms of some kind are operating. It’s not so much the lack of a CO<sub>2</sub>-effect that provides evidence, but rather the constrained, oscillatory pattern in the average polar temperatures over the whole interglacial period. Whenever you see contrained oscillations in a system, that is evidence of a regulatory mechanism — some kind of thermostat at work. <br />
<br />
<br />
<b><big>Direct evidence for climate-regulation mechanisms</big></b><br />
<br />
I’d like to draw attention to one example of a scientist who has been looking at one aspect of the Earth’s regulatory system. Roy Spencer has been conducting research using the satellite systems that are in place for climate studies. Here are his relevant qualifications:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(scientist)" target="_blank"><small>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(scientist)</small></a><blockquote>Roy W. Spencer is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. He has served as senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.</blockquote>He describes his research in a presentation available on YouTube:<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xos49g1sdzo&feature=channel" target="_blank"><small>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xos49g1sdzo&feature=channel</small></a><br />
<br />
In the talk he gives a lot of details, which are quite interesting, but one does need to concentrate and listen carefully to keep up with the pace and depth of the presentation. He certainly sounds like someone who knows what he’s talking about. Permit me to summarize the main points of his research:<blockquote>When greenhouse gases cause surface warming, a response occurs, a ‘feedback response’, in the form of changes in cloud and precipitation patterns. The CRU-related climate models all assume the feedback response is a positive one: any increment of greenhouse warming will be amplified by knock-on effects in the weather system. This assumption then leads to the predictions of ‘runaway global warming’.<br />
<br />
Spencer set out to see what the feedback response actually is, by observing what happens in the cloud-precipitation system when surface warming is occurring. What he found, by targeting satellite sensors appropriately, is that the feedback response is negative rather than positive. In particular, he found that the formation of storm-related cirrus clouds is inhibited when surface temperatures are high. Cirrus clouds are themselves a powerful greenhouse gas, and this reduction in cirrus cloud formation compensates for the increase in the CO<sub>2</sub> greenhouse effect.</blockquote>This is the kind of research we need to look at if we want to build useful climate models. Certainly Spencer’s results need to be confirmed by other researchers before we accept them as fact, but to simply dismiss his work out of hand is very bad for the progress of climate science. Consider what the popular website <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roy_Spencer" target="-blank">SourceWatch</a> says about Spencer. <br />
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We don’t find there any reference to rebuttals to his research, but we are told that Spencer is a “global warming skeptic” who writes columns for a free-market website funded by Exxon. They also mention that he spoke at conference organized by the Heartland Institute, that promotes lots of reactionary, free-market principles. They are trying to discredit Spencer’s work on irrelevant grounds, what the Greeks referred to as an <i>ad hominem</i> argument. Sort of like, “If he beats his wife, his science must be faulty”.<br />
<br />
And it’s true about ‘beating his wife’ — Spencer does seem to have a pro-industry philosophy that shows little concern for sustainability. That might even be part of his motivation for undertaking his recent research, hoping to give ammunition to pro-industry lobbyists. But that doesn’t prove his research is flawed or that his conclusions are invalid. His work should be challenged scientifically, by carrying out independent studies of the feedback process. If the challenges are restricted to irrelevant attacks, that becomes almost an admission that his results, which are threatening to the climate establishment, cannot be refuted. He does not hide his data, or his code, or his sentiments. The same cannot be said for the warming-alarmist camp.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><big>What are we to make of Jim Hansen’s prediction that rapid warming will soon resume?</big></b><br />
<br />
Once again, I refer you to Dr. Hansen’s recent article, <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/2009-temperatures-by-jim-hansen/" target="-blank"><i><small>2009 temperatures by Jim Hansen</small></i></a>. Jim explains his prediction methodlolgy in this paragraph, emphasis added:<blockquote>The global record warm year, in the period of near-global instrumental measurements (since the late 1800s), was 2005. Sometimes it is asserted that 1998 was the warmest year. The origin of this confusion is discussed below. There is a high degree of interannual (year‐to‐ year) and decadal variability in both global and hemispheric temperatures. <b><big>Underlying this variability, however, is a long‐term warming trend that has become strong and persistent over the past three decades</big></b>. The long‐term trends are more apparent when temperature is averaged over several years. The 60‐month (5‐year) and 132 month (11‐year) running mean temperatures are shown in Figure 2 for the globe and the hemispheres. The 5‐year mean is sufficient to reduce the effect of the El Niño — La Niña cycles of tropical climate. The 11‐ year mean minimizes the effect of solar variability — the brightness of the sun varies by a measurable amount over the sunspot cycle, which is typically of 10‐12 year duration.</blockquote><br />
As I’ve emphasized above, Jim is <i><b>assuming</b></i> there is a strong and persistent warming trend, which he of course attributes to human-caused CO<sub>2</sub> emissions. And then that assumption becomes the justification for the 5 and 11-year running averages. Those running averages then give us phantom ‘temperatures’ that don’t match actual observations. In particular, if a downard decline is beginning, the running averages will tend to ‘hide the decline’, as we see in these alarmist graphs from the article with their exaggerated ‘hockey stick’.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S2Sw71Zn6hI/AAAAAAAAAbg/eWnEx090sFM/s1600-h/Hansen09_fig2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target=_blank><img border="0" height="152" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWYveRtoZBA/S2Sw71Zn6hI/AAAAAAAAAbg/eWnEx090sFM/s400/Hansen09_fig2.png" width="400" /></a><br />
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It seems we are looking at a classic case of scientists becoming over-attached to their model. In the beginning there was a theory of human-caused global warming, arising from the accidental convergence of three independent trends, combined with the knowledge that CO<sub>2</sub> is a greenhouse gas. That theory has now become an assumption among its proponents, and actual observations are being dismissed as “confusion” because they don’t agree with the model. One is reminded again of the Bishop who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope, so as not to be confused about the ‘fact’ that the Earth is the center of the universe.<br />
<br />
The climate models have definitely strayed into the land of imaginary epicycles. The assumption of CO<sub>2</sub> causation, plus the preoccupation with an abstract global average, creates a warming illusion that has no connection with reality in either hemisphere. This mathematical abstraction, the global average, is characteristic of nowhere. It creates the illusion of a warming crisis, when in fact no evidence for such a crisis exists. In the context of IPCC warnings about glacers melting, runaway warming, etc., the global-average hockey stick serves as deceptive and effective propaganda, but not as science. <br />
<br />
As with the Ptolemaic model, there is a much simpler explantation for our recent era of warming, at least in the Northern Hemisphere: long-term temperature patterns are continuing, from natural causes, and natural regulatory mechanisms have compensated for the greenhouse effect of human-caused CO<sub>2</sub> emissions. There is no strong reason to believe that CO<sub>2</sub> has been affecting the Southern Hemisphere either, given the natural record of rapid and extreme oscillations — which often go opposite to northern trends. <br />
<br />
This simpler explanation is based on actual observations, and requires no abstract mathematical epicycles or averages — but it removes CO<sub>2</sub> from the center of the climate debate. And just as politically powerful factions in Galileo’s day wanted the Earth to remain the center of the universe, powerful factions today want CO<sub>2</sub> to remain at the center of climate debate, and global warming to be seen as a threat.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><big>What is the real agenda of the politically powerful factions who are promoting global-warming alarmism?</big></b><br />
<br />
One thing we always need to keep in mind is that the people at the top of the power pyramid in our society have access to the very best scientific information. They control dozens, probably hundreds, of high-level think tanks, able to hire the best minds, and carrying out all kinds of research we don’t hear about. They have access to all the secret military and CIA research, and a great deal of influence over what research is carried out in think tanks, the military, and in universities.<br />
<br />
Just because they might be promoting faulty science for its propaganda value, that doesn’t mean they believe it themselves. They undoubtedly know that global cooling is the most likely climate prognosis, and the actions they are promoting are completely in line with such an understanding.<br />
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Cap-and-trade, for example, won’t reduce carbon emissions. Rather it is a mechanism that allows emissions to continue, while pretending they are declining — by means of a phony market model. You know what a phony market model looks like. It looks like Reagan and Thatcher telling us that lower taxes will lead to higher government revenues due to increased business activity. It looks like globalization, telling us that opening up free markets will “raise all boats” and make us all prosperous. It looks like Wall Street, telling us that mortgage derivatives are a good deal, and we should buy them. And it looks like Wall Street telling us the bailouts will restore the economy, and that the recession is over. In short, it’s a con. It’s a fake theory about what the consequences of a policy will be, when the real consequences are known from the beginning.<br />
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Cap-and-trade has nothing to do with climate. It is part of a scheme to micromanage the allocation of global resources, and to maximize profits from the use of those resources. Think about it. Our ‘powerful factions’ decide who gets the initial free cap-and-trade credits. They run the exchange market itself, and can manipulate the market, create derivative products, sell futures, etc. They can cause deflation or inflation of carbon credits, just as they can cause deflation or inflation of currencies. They decide which corporations get advance insider tips, so they can maximize their emissions while minimizing their offset costs. They decide who gets loans to buy offsets, and at what interest rate. They decide what fraction of petroleum will go to the global North and the global South. They have ‘their man’ in the regulation agencies that certify the validity of offset projects, such as replacing rainforests with tree plantations, thus <i>decreasing</i> carbon sequestration. And they make money every which way as they carry out this micromanagement.<br />
<br />
In the face of global cooling, this profiteering and micromanagenent of energy resources becomes particularly significant. Just when more energy is needed to heat our homes, we’ll find that the price has gone way up. Oil companies are actually strong supporters of the global-warming bandwagon, which is very ironic, given that they are funding some of the useful contrary research that is going on. Perhaps the oil barrons are counting on the fact that we are suspicious of them, and asssume we will discount the research they are funding, as most people are in fact doing. And the recent onset of global cooling explains all the urgency to implement the carbon-management regime: they need to get it in place before everyone realizes that warming alarmism is a scam.<br />
<br />
And then there’s the carbon taxes. Just as with income taxes, you and I will pay our full share for our daily commute and for heating our homes, while the big corporate CO<sub>2</sub> emitters will have all kinds of loopholes, and offshore havens, set up for them. Just as Federal Reserve theory hasn’t left us with a prosperous Main Street, despite its promises, so theories of carbon trading and taxation won’t give us a happy transition to a sustainable world.<br />
<br />
Instead of building the energy-efficient transport systems we need, for example, they’ll sell us biofuels and electric cars, while most of society’s overall energy will continue to come from fossil fuels, and the economy continues to deteriorate. The North will continue to operate unsustainably, and the South will pay the price in the form of mass die-offs, which are already ticking along at the rate of six million children a year from malnutrition and disease. <br />
<br />
While collapse, suffering, and die-offs of ‘marginal’ populations will be unpleasant for us, it will give our ‘powerful factions’ a blank canvas on which to construct their new world order, whatever that might be. And we’ll be desperate to go along with any scheme that looks like it might put food back on our tables and warm up our houses.<br />
</big><br />
<hr>This document continues to evolve, based on continuing research. The latest version is always maintained at this URL:<br />
<small><small><a href="http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/climate-science-observations-vs-models.html" target="-blank">http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/climate-science-observations-vs-models.html</a></small></small><br />
The author can be reached here: <a href="mailto:rkm@quaylargo.com">rkm@quaylargo.com</a><br />
<hr>rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2958975246043114999.post-34833935518987074082008-01-17T08:47:00.000+00:002008-01-17T09:56:34.193+00:00Toward ademocratic society: inclusive dialog as a cultural movement<b>ALTERNATIVE FUTURES<i> and</i> POPULAR PROTEST XII</b><br />Manchester Metropolitan University, April 2-4, 2007<br /><br />Richard K. Moore<br />Wexford, Ireland<br /><a href="mailto:rkm@quaylargo.com">rkm@quaylargo.com</a><br /><br /><big><b>Abstract</b></big><br />This paper reports on, and theorizes about, a social movement with a rather unique and seemingly contradictory set of characteristics. It is ultimately a <i>revolutionary</i> movement, in that its anticipated outcome would be a total transformation of political and economic arrangements worldwide — yet, in its beginning stages, it is a movement with no stated platform, ideology, or strategy. As with any movement, there is an important role for <i>activist initiators</i>, yet those activists need have no vision of the movement beyond its initial stages. It is a movement that can be expected to develop considerable large-scale coherence, yet with no leadership cadre and no need to maintain overall agreement on objectives or strategy, at least not until its later stages. Although the movement ultimately threatens all existing centers of political and economic power, it has already begun and has generally been either ignored or received favorably by those authorities who have been aware of its activities. While it can be expected to meet eventually with strong establishment opposition, the movement promises to be resistant to known reactionary methods.<br /><br />The anticipation of how this movement is likely to unfold is based on a particular vision of human nature and social dynamics, and on an appreciation of the power of certain forms of <i>facilitated dialog</i>. This vision and this appreciation are quite contrary to existing <i>consensus reality</i>, and that is why the movement’s characteristics appear to be contradictory, initial participants are unlikely to appreciate how the movement is likely to develop, and establishments are unlikely to take the movement seriously before it achieves considerable, and hopefully unstoppable, momentum.<br /><br />The initial impetus for the movement arises from a wide-felt discomfort with <i>how things are going</i> in society, and from a wide-felt desire by people to have more control over their destinies. The ultimate outcome of the movement, as anticipated by the above-mentioned <i>vision</i> and <i>appreciation</i>, is the establishment of societies worldwide based on <i>direct, participatory democracy</i>. In some sense then, the outcome of the movement can already be suspected from its initial impetus. This<i> thousand mile journey</i>, however, is so seemingly out of proportion to its <i>first step</i>, that few can be expected to anticipate, or give credence to, the possibility of achieving the anticipated outcome.<br /><br />An appendix to the paper presents an <i>experimental framework for community democracy</i>, bringing together the ideas of leading proponents of this transformational vision.<br /><br /><b>Underlying perspective: our <i>problématique</i></b><br />We in the West are living within a self-perpetuating system whose basic paradigm is economic growth, defined in capitalist terms. The inherent wealth-concentration tendencies of this system have led to the emergence of elite establishments / clique-networks that dominate the affairs of governments, the political process, the media, the corporate world, finance, the intelligence services, etc.<br /><br />We have certain trappings of democracy, but in fact the political process is totally incapable of dislodging these establishments, nor are these establishments in any way motivated to modify their paradigm of growth, not even in the face of global warming, environmental decline, mass starvation, or whatever other ‘glitches’ are sure to arise in their ever-more profitable system, as measured by the collective asset base of establishment entities. We need to keep in mind that for the predecessors of these establishments, even continental-scale genocide has been an accepted means of keeping the system expanding (e.g., America, Australia).<br /><br />Our political systems are managed by a variety of techniques, such as all-the-same political parties, backer-beholden candidates, media-spun campaigns, lesser-of-evils logic, and even election fraud (e.g., Bush & Florida, Diebold voting machines). One of the most potent of these techniques is a divide-and-rule strategy: the encouragement of factional divisiveness. The more people can be divided into camps, the less chance there is that any kind of rebellious and unified grassroots voting block will emerge.<br /><br />From this perspective, the prospects for many social movements are quite unpromising. They often play, unfortunately, right into the game of divisiveness. The more movements there are, and the more radical they seem, the better the establishments like it. And if a movement gets too strong, there are ways to create counter movements, e.g., by demonizing the original movement in appropriate channels. When women’s liberation groups grew ‘too strong’ in the U.S., they were confronted by a well-orchestrated and well-funded counter-movement based on stirring up the fundamentalist camp. This is a game in which establishments have had long experience and have developed effective practices. With our movements we too-often replay old matches, using game plans whose flaws were found out in generations past, but only the other side remembers.<br /><br />Our problématique then has three parts. First, we have an imperative to dislodge these establishments from power, if we are to have any hope of avoiding passage through an apocalyptic collapse scenario. Second, we are confronted by the fact that most of our understood means of influencing public affairs are incapable of responding to this imperative. Finally, if ‘we’, whatever that means, found a way to effectively inject sanity into public affairs, how would we envision dealing with the challenges of shifting our system’s paradigm and creating sustainable societies?<br /><br />This paper outlines a comprehensive response to this problématique. The response addresses the issue of divisiveness, envisions a transformative movement that can evade known counter-measures, suggests a way of releasing the creative energy required to re-create our societies, and gives meaning to the notion of ‘we the people’ as a coherent and sensible political actor.<br /><br />The movement envisioned here turns out to be really a cultural movement rather than an agenda-oriented movement. We can see the spring shoots of this emerging movement in the third world, e.g., Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, and we can see it beginning to take root among a nexus of researchers, practitioners, activists, and citizens concentrated along the Pacific coast, from the Bay Area up to British Columbia. Some call it a ‘deep democracy’ movement, and it is characterized by an emphasis on local empowerment and decision-making, the reaching of consensus through inclusive dialog, and the identification of primary common interests that transcend divisiveness.<br /><br />I suggest that this kind of movement can be seen as a natural response to our problématique, a reflection that our deep psyches are beginning to understand what our situation requires, even while our ego brains are mostly confounded by our predicament. We of the postwar generation grew up having faith in our basic systems, as they seemed to serve us so well, and now even a child can see that those same systems are increasingly failing us, abandoning us, ignoring us. To whom can we turn for help? At a deep level we understand that help will not be forthcoming from the system or its institutions; <i>it is up to us to do something</i>. Instinctively, people are gravitating toward initiatives that can reify the notion of ‘us’, that can empower ordinary citizens to identify their collective interests and pursue them effectively together.<br /><br /><b>Dialog and <i>harmonization</i>: results in the microcosm</b><br />The state of the art is impressive, as regards the technology of group process and facilitated dialog. To most agenda-based movements this technology has not been of primary interest, apart from its role in internal operations (affinity groups, use of consensus, etc.). But for a movement oriented around collective empowerment, the technology of dialog is of central importance, as regards both means and ends. It is through dialog that ‘we’ can discover ‘us’, and it is through inclusive democratic dialog that we can hope to solve our problems together, in facing the challenges of our problématique. ‘Changing the way we talk to one another’ represents a transformation at the level of culture.<br /><br />In the Appendix to this paper I describe in reasonable detail how some of this technology works, so here I will describe only the kind of outcomes that can be produced with an impressive degree of reliability, given that certain <i>identifiable conditions</i> are satisfied.<br /><br />In particular, I would like to focus on the small-group context, involving up to about 16 participants. The identifiable conditions in this case are that the people in the group are faced by a common problem that they all feel urgency about, and would like to see solved. It is not a requirement that the people be in any sense like-minded, or that they share any agreement about how the problem might be approached. Indeed it turns out that diversity of viewpoints provides creative fuel to the dialog process.<br /><br />Given these conditions, sufficient dedicated time together, and appropriate facilitation, certain kinds of results can be reliably expected to follow, flowing out of the nature of human dynamics. A certain amount of time will be spent in ‘venting’ and ‘expressing’, and the facilitator’s job is to help this to occur in such a way that it is ‘heard’ by the group, and that people understand that they have been heard. Eventually, and perhaps episodically, a transition occurs in the nature of the dialog, and in the consciousness the participants experience toward one another. As people are able to really ‘hear’ one another, they begin to accept one another’s concerns as being legitimate, and they begin to see their problem in a new way. Not only do they want to see the problem solved, but they also want to see it solved in a way that addresses everyone’s concerns. They spontaneously begin to collaborate, transcending their incoming differences, in a process I refer to as <i>harmonization</i>.<br /><br />Most of us have probably experienced this kind of <i>harmonized dialog</i>, perhaps as part of a project team in our workplace. The work environment imposes focus on a shared goal — completing the project successfully — and it is relatively easy for team members to participate in an open, creative, problem-solving session around that shared goal. When discussing contentious social issues, however, harmonization is much more difficult to achieve. As a result, people typically gather together with ‘like-minded’ folks if they intend to discuss such issues. Rather than resolving the issues, such discussions tend to reinforce social divisiveness.<br /><br />When facilitation enables harmonization in a diverse group, around a difficult social issue, considerable latent creative energy is released. What were originally seen as ‘conflicting interests’ become instead ‘diverse viewpoints’, enriching the creative process rather than inhibiting it. Synergies are discovered among ideas that were seen to be opposed to one another, leading often to breakthrough solutions to seemingly impossible problems.<br /><br />The experience of harmonization, following perceived divisiveness, leads to the release of emotional energy as well as creative energy. Not only do the participants collaborate effectively, but they also tend to experience an emotional bonding, a palpable sense of <i>we</i>, a feeling of <i>collective empowerment</i>. Not only that, but participants often generalize this sense of empowerment: “If our group is able to get beyond our differences and work together effectively, why couldn’t any group do the same?” Collective empowerment in the microcosm leads to a realization that collective empowerment in the larger society might be possible.<br /><br /><big><b>Dialog and harmonization: initiatives aimed at the macrocosm</b></big><br />It is important to keep in mind that harmonization typically becomes achievable only when our <i>identifiable conditions</i> are met. Dialog is unlikely to resolve conflicts between <i>power-holders</i> and those adversely affected by the exercise of that power. Consider, for example, a scenario where a wealthy and influential developer meets with a citizen’s group that is totally opposed to a development project being planned by the developer. In this meeting there is no shared problem, but rather two different problems. For the citizen’s group, the problem is ‘how to stop the project’; for the developer, the problem is ‘how to placate the protestors’. Dialog under such conditions is very unlikely to progress beyond adversarial debate, or manipulative negotiation.<br /><br />Harmonization is therefore not a mechanism that can directly address the difference of interests that exist between our establishments and the people they govern, i.e., us ordinary people. What harmonization might be able to facilitate is the emergence of a shared consciousness among us ‘ordinary people’, a sense of ‘we’ that transcends existing social factionalism. In political terms this would be the equivalent of a supra-majority social movement, with the power of a decisive voting block, but organized around inclusiveness rather than a fixed agenda. This kind of inclusive ‘movement’ would be relatively immune to the kind of divide-and-rule tactics that establishments routinely deploy against agenda-based social movements.<br /><br />Diverse initiatives have been undertaken by various activist groups and organizations aimed at promoting dialog among ‘ordinary people’, in an effort to undermine social divisiveness, and in some cases to encourage grassroots activism. Here is a representative list of such organizations with their URLs:<br /><br />Study Circles Resource Center: <a href="http://www.studycircles.org/en/index.aspx" target=_blank>http://www.studycircles.org/en/index.aspx</a><br /><br />National Council for Dialog and Deliberation: <a href="http://www.thataway.org/" target=_blank>http://www.thataway.org/</a><br /><br />Conversation Cafes: <a href="http://www.conversationcafe.org/" target=_blank>http://www.conversationcafe.org/</a><br /><br />Open Space Technology: <a href="http://www.openspaceworld.org/" target=_blank>http://www.openspaceworld.org/</a><br /><br />Let’s Talk America: <a href="http://www.letstalkamerica.org/" target=_blank>http://www.letstalkamerica.org/</a><br /><br />Some initiatives, in addition to promoting dialog, emphasize the emergence of <i>collective intelligence</i> — based on the ability of dialog to facilitate deep listening and creative collaboration:<br /><br />Collective Wisdom Initiative: <a href="http://www.collectivewisdominitiative.org/" target=_blank>http://www.collectivewisdominitiative.org/</a><br /><br />Co-Intelligence Institute: <a href="http://www.co-intelligence.org/" target=_blank>http://www.co-intelligence.org/</a><br /><br />A few initiatives are more in line with the kind of cultural movement that is the subject of this paper:<br /><br />Center for Wise Democracy: <a href="http://www.wisedemocracy.org/" target=_blank>http://www.wisedemocracy.org/</a><br /><br />Wise Democracy Victoria: <a href="http://www.wisedemocracyvictoria.com/" target=_blank>http://www.wisedemocracyvictoria.com//</a><br /><br />These latter initiatives aim for more than simply reducing divisiveness or facilitating collective intelligence; they hope to achieve a significant transformation in the nature of the democratic process. They are seeking the kind of supra-majority consensus that this paper envisions, but they do not, apparently, hold a vision of a fundamentally more decentralized society. These initiatives are based on combining the principle of harmonization with the principle of the <i>social microcosm</i>. These principles are described in some detail in the Appendix. For now, I will summarize by saying that when a small random group of citizens (a social microcosm) engages in harmonized dialog, the proposals that they come up with are likely to find resonance in the larger society. If this process is repeated, and the general population is informed of the outcomes, there is hope that a general public consensus will begin to emerge, as regards identifying ‘the most important issues’ and how they might be approached.<br /><br /><big><b>Harmonization and localization: envisioning a global democratic society</b></big><br />My studies of history and current affairs have led me to the conclusion that democracy cannot be accomplished by means of elected representatives who are empowered to make decisions on behalf of their constituencies. Empirically, it is clear that ‘representative democracies’ have always managed public opinion, on behalf of establishment agendas, rather than responding to public will. And from a systems perspective, one can see that this is not surprising: competitive elections feed into factionalism, which in turn facilitates manipulation by elites. Furthermore, when public participation is limited primarily to periodic voting (for issues or candidates), there is no mechanism that enables ‘public will’ to come into existence. Even if an elected official wants to respond to ‘public will’, and many surely do, he or she has only a sea of diverse, and typically shallow, opinions to work from.<br /><br />Real democracy is about the people themselves making the policy decisions for their society. In order for this to be possible, there need to be dialog processes in place that enable a ‘will of the people’ to come into existence. Harmonization-based dialog offers hope that this can be accomplished. But scale is important here. The larger the social unit, the more difficult it would be to achieve and maintain a coherent social consensus. Real democracy is most readily achievable at the local level, in a <i>community</i> — a small town or a section of a city.<br /><br />Let us assume then, to pursue this hypothesis, that every community in the world is able to maintain a sense of ‘we the people’, an inclusive and coherent consensus regarding primary public policies. By ‘public policies’ I mean not only local community issues, but issues at all levels, up to and including global issues.<br /><br />Given this assumption, and the Appendix attempts to show how the assumption might be fulfilled, it would make sense for primary sovereignty to be vested at the community level. If a community operates with a sound democratic process, inclusive of all community viewpoints, and if that process is able to bring out the ‘collective intelligence’ of the community, then why should that community not run its own affairs, without coercion from outside?<br /><br />One can imagine exceptional circumstances, where a community becomes abhorrent in some way, and where some mechanism of outside intervention must come into play. I cannot go into detail here about such problems, but I will suggest that solutions can be found based on a response from neighboring communities, thus avoiding the need for a coercive central authority. I would also suggest that most forms of ‘community abhorrence’, e.g. exploitation or slavery, would be incompatible with an inclusive democratic process.<br /><br />There are other reasons as well that speak in favor of local sovereignty. The literature on sustainability and sound economic practices, for example, points toward a local focus. The feedback loops are shortest if decisions are made locally, enabling close monitoring of policy performance, and rapid mid-course corrections. And people in a community have a natural mutual interest in improving the local quality of life, and in managing the community in a sustainable way.<br /><br />My hypothesis, my ‘model of democracy’, is based on harmonization and local sovereignty. By means of harmonized dialog, each community runs its own affairs, and each community has a considered viewpoint about how larger-scale issues should be dealt with. We are then left with the problem of how to actually deal with larger scale issues. For this problem the model offers a fractal-based solution: we solve the problem at the regional level, and then apply the same structural formula to solve the problem at higher levels.<br /><br />At the regional level, delegations from communities meet from time to time, using harmonization dialog, to work out proposals to deal with inter-community issues, projects, and operations. These proposals then need to be ratified by the individual communities before they can take effect. Iteration may be required. In this way everyone’s voice is heard at both the community and regional levels, and there is no need for any centralized policy-making institution at the regional level. Continuing fractally, regions send delegations to the next higher level, etc., with no centralized policy-making institutions at any level.<br /><br />This has been a necessarily brief overview of a very complex subject. Much more would need to be said in order for the model to be fully exposed and available for serious consideration and critique. For anyone who might be interested in a fuller presentation, I refer them to my book, <i>Escaping the Matrix: how We the People can Change the World</i>, <a href="http://EscapingTheMatrix.org" target=_blank>http://EscapingTheMatrix.org</a>. My purpose here has been to convey the main ideas of the democracy model, in order to better understand the motivation behind the movement model that is the main topic of this paper.<br /><br /><big><b>Community empowerment as a cultural movement</b></big><br />Community activism, awakening civic consciousness, and organizing for community improvement are of course widespread phenomena. Thousands of activist groups and organizations pursue such activities on a regular basis. The basic idea behind our cultural movement is to inject harmonization dialog into this already alive locus of activism. The Appendix is in fact a document aimed at this activist audience, arguing that <i>enlightened dialog</i> is a powerful tool they should consider using.<br /><br />Already there are some communities in which this kind of activism is being pursued. In particular, in Victoria B.C. and Port Townsend Washington, the very kinds of dialog proposed in the Appendix form the basis of ‘wise democracy’ projects. The Appendix document is aimed at sowing the seeds of similar projects elsewhere. So far, however, no project has proceeded far enough to achieve ‘community awakening’ in a Western context. Nowhere has a community (apart from intentional communities) transcended its differences and achieved a sense of ‘we’, an inclusive consensus perspective. It may not even be possible to achieve such a goal, and thus the Appendix is called an <i>experimental</i> framework.<br /><br />Consider, however, what it would be like if such a goal were to be achieved in some community. I suggest that we could expect a very strong sense of empowerment and purpose in such a community. The community would be able to act as a single voting block, which would mean that the official local government would soon become fully aligned with the community’s emerging consensus. Within the limits of its local authority, the community would be in a position to act, to implement its emerging vision.<br /><br />Such developments would not go unnoticed by neighboring communities, or by community activists generally. The achievement would be recognized as a breakthrough model of community empowerment, and we could expect the experiment to be widely emulated elsewhere. With an existing model to point to, activists would have little trouble generating public support for, and participation in, similar endeavors. Thus a ‘community empowerment’ movement, based on harmonization dialog, could be expected to emerge spontaneously — once the first ‘awakened community’ comes into existence.<br /><br /> Within the context of local politics, one might refer to this as a political movement. But it wouldn’t be a political movement as they are generally understood. Its focus would be local, and each community would be concerned with its own issues. There would be no movement-wide leadership, and no movement-wide agenda, apart from community empowerment itself. Consensus would be achieved regarding local issues, but not about national or global issues. Indeed, any early attempt to inject such issues into the movement would probably result in a failure to reach consensus. For this reason, the movement-as-a-whole would be a cultural movement rather than a political movement. Its main effect would be to create and spread a culture of dialog and mutual-benefit collaboration, within a rapidly growing number of awakened communities.<br /><br /><big><b>Toward a democratic society: the expansion of movement consciousness</b></big><br />As the movement grows, and begins to take in whole regions, the consciousness of the movement could be expected to expand beyond local community issues. We can look here at the precedent of the Populist Movement, which achieved considerable success in the U.S. toward the end of the 19<sup>th</sup> Century. This movement also began primarily around local, self-help issues, but as it captured territory it naturally expanded its political goals. It succeeded in electing governors of states and representatives to Congress. It finally failed because, though considerably inclusive, it was primarily agenda-oriented, and fell eventually into the quicksand of partisan politics.<br /><br />As with the Populist movement, the community empowerment movement would ‘capture territory’, and would be able to elect fully aligned officials at all levels of government within that territory. This would be particularly significant in nations like the U.S. or Canada, where intermediate levels of government have considerable autonomy. As the movement is therefore able to ‘act’ with ever-expanding official authority, its ‘action aspirations’ would naturally expand. It would become concerned with regional issues, and eventually national and global issues. It would soon learn that the main obstacles to its further success are the establishments themselves, and the adversarial political system. At this point the movement could be expected to begin to see itself as a full-fledged ‘democracy movement’, a movement whose goal is the transformation of society and the elimination of elite hegemony. Unlike the Populist Movement, it would not be tempted to risk its survival by putting all its eggs in the basket of some particular policy agenda or election campaign.<br /><br />Somewhere in this process, though probably not early on, the movement would obviously come under some kind of attack by establishments. What forms this might take are difficult to predict. However, the movement would be largely immune to many of the standard forms of reactionary response. Decapitation of leadership is impossible when there is no leadership structure; divide-and-rule is impractical with an inclusive movement that brings in all segments of society (apart from top elites); infiltration and agent-provacateurism are ineffective against a movement with no secrets and a fully open process; outright suppression tends to be counter-productive in the face of an inclusive mass movement. One form of reaction that can be expected is media demonization campaigns. If this comes early on, it would only draw undeserved attention to the movement and would therefore likely be counter-productive. If it comes later, its chances of success would be minimal, given the inclusive nature of the movement. Success can of course not be guaranteed, but the prospects for this kind of movement appear to be favorable.<br /><br />As I have suggested, the characterization of this movement would change over time. It could be expected to naturally transform from a community empowerment / local-democracy movement into a society-democracy movement. From another perspective, it can be characterized, throughout its lifetime, as a ‘harmonization movement’. Thus it would be in the class of ‘cultural movements’, transforming the nature of our cultures from adversarial to collaborative.<br /><br />An interesting aspect of this movement is that theory and ideology play no significant role. No one needs to buy into the ideas in this paper for the movement to unfold as I’ve outlined. It is only necessary, if this analysis has validity, for local activists to begin organizing appropriate dialog events in their communities. The rest follows by itself. The final outcome could be expected to resemble the kind of democratic society envisioned above, as that would be the very structure that the movement itself would gravitate toward as it develops. History shows that in revolutions, the means become the ends: the structure of the revolutionary movement tends to become the basis of the structure of the new society, regardless of the nature of the movement’s rhetoric.<br /><br /><hr size="2"><br /><b>APPENDIX</b><br /><br /><bold><big>An Experimental Framework for Community Democracy</big></bold><br />5 March 2007<br /><br />Richard K. Moore - <a href="mailto:rkm@quaylargo.com">rkm@quaylargo.com</a><br /><a href="http://cyberjournal.org" target=_blank>http://cyberjournal.org</a><br /><br />Author: <i>Escaping the Matrix: how We the People can change the world</i><br /><a href="http://EscapingTheMatrix.org" target=_blank>http://EscapingTheMatrix.org</a><br /><br /><i>Latest version of this document online</i>:<br /><a href="http://cyberjournal.org/DemocracyFramework.html" target=_blank>http://cyberjournal.org/DemocracyFramework.html</a><br /><br /><blockquote><i>We've lived so long under the spell of hierarchy — from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses — that only recently have we awakened to see not only that 'regular' citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.</i><br />— Frances Moore Lappé, “Time for Progressives to Grow Up”<br /><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0526-28.htm" target=_blank>http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0526-28.htm</a></blockquote><br /><big><b>Introduction</b></big><br /><br />There are many definitions of <i>democracy</i>, most of them based on elections and representation, and most of which do not result in governments doing what the people really want or need. This paper envisions a direct form of democracy, in which the people of a community decide together, on an inclusive basis, the major policies and programs of their community. It is quite reasonable to ask if this is possible, and if it is desirable: Is it possible for the people of a community to reach consensus decisions? If so, would their decisions be wise ones? And would people have the time to participate, given how busy everyone seems to be.<br /><br />It would be foolhardy to claim outright that these questions can all be answered in the affirmative, and yet there is considerable reason to believe that this kind of direct democracy might be achievable — even when there are strong differences in the community. In the field of group process and facilitated dialog, there are proven methods that show remarkable results, as regards achieving agreement in very diverse groups and producing outcomes that are wise and sensible. There are even ways to solve the problem of available time! Can these processes be used in a community setting so as to enable the emergence of a sensible ongoing community consensus regarding local agendas?<br /><br />The purpose of this paper is to suggest an experimental framework for investigating this question directly, by applying these known methods in existing communities (towns or neighborhoods). The framework suggested here has been developed through discussions with some of the leading researchers and practitioners in this field. We have tried to select those dialog processes that show the most promise for <i>community awakening</i>.<br /><br />This framework could be described as ‘fostering dialog in the community’, but that refers only to the tip of the iceberg. The kind of dialog we are talking about here goes quite a bit beyond ‘sharing ideas’, and ‘achieving mutual understanding’. It is about going deeper, bringing out the most urgent concerns of the participants, and tapping their creative energies in addressing those concerns together. It is about awakening the collective wisdom inherent in a group, and facilitating the emergence of a sense of collective empowerment, a sense of <i>We the People</i> as an intelligent agency / actor in the community.<br /><br />Most important, this kind of dialog is about <i>inclusiveness</i>. It is not about ‘bringing together the enlightened’ nor about ‘educating the unenlightened’. It turns out that everyone, regardless of their beliefs or philosophies, has a ‘piece of the puzzle’, a ‘part of the answer’. Our society encourages us to fear the ‘other’, and to think in terms of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’. But consider this: <i>you don’t need to agree on religion to build a barn together</i>. Similarly, agreement on worldviews is not needed to work together to create real community and to make it a better place to live. As in ecology, diversity adds strength and richness.<br /><br />We’ve done our best in putting this framework together, but any real experiment will be breaking new ground, and we encourage any group pursuing such an initiative to remain open to whatever energy and direction emerges in their community as the experiment unfolds. Real democracy is not about a formula, but rather about the dynamic emergence of people’s participation in determining their own destinies together. This experimental framework is not meant to suggest the eventual form of that participation, but is intended rather to provide kindling to help ignite the emergence.<br /><br />We hope this framework may offer new hope, and effective tools, to community activists and concerned citizens everywhere. <i>We are all in this together, and it’s high time we begin working together from that consciousness</i>.<br /><br /><big><b>The Primary Tools</b></big><br /><br /><big><b>“Choice-creating” dialog and Dynamic Facilitation (DF)</b></big><br />Jim Rough, of Port Townsend Washington, developed a very powerful method of facilitation while working as a consultant for corporate clients. He calls this method <i>Dynamic Facilitation</i>, and it is now being taught and practiced widely, in corporate settings, communities, activist groups, etc. The kind of dialog that occurs in a DF session is unique in its combination of benefits, and Jim has given it a special name, <i>choice-creating</i> dialog, to distinguish it from ‘deliberation’, ‘problem solving’, ‘consensus’, ‘debate’, etc.<br /><br />Unlike many facilitation methods, which attempt to guide the conversation in certain ways, DF follows the spontaneous energy of the group. Rather than <i>taking turns</i> in any strict sense, the facilitator gives attention to whoever seems <i>most in need</i> of expressing themself at the moment. (Everyone does get their share of time eventually.) This process can seem very chaotic at times, and directionless, but at the end of the day <i>following the energy</i> turns out to be a very efficient way for the group to function. Efficiency, as measured by <i>quality of outcomes</i> per <i>time invested</i>, is one of the strong points of DF.<br /><br />By paying attention to those who have an urgency to speak, people are encouraged to speak about what is most important to them, and to speak from their hearts. In this way the participants begin to see one another as fellow humans, rather than as just ‘speakers’, or as ‘allies’ or ‘foes’. Even where strong differences / polarization exists, people are able to get past that. Eventually, the perspective of the group shifts to a mode I refer to as <i>harmonized dialog</i>. That is, the participants begin to see things this way: “We are all fellow human beings, and each of us has valid concerns that deserve to be considered. Our shared task is to seek solutions to our problems that take everyone’s concerns into account.”<br /><br />It may take a while to get to this stage of <i>harmonization</i>, and there may be backsliding at times, but when the group is operating in this way it is capable of doing some very creative work. When people are not using their energy to <i>defend their position</i> or <i>argue for their side</i>, that energy is released to creatively address whatever problems are on the table. When everyone is focusing on the same problem, with the same understanding of the concerns involved, then their combined creative energy and ideas add up to something greater than the sum of the parts. New synergies are discovered; ideas that seemed opposed can be arranged into new combinations and reveal new possibilities. This is what Jim means by <i>choice creation</i>. The outcome is that breakthrough solutions are often discovered in DF sessions for problems that seemed ‘impossible’ to solve — either because they were technically difficult, or because they embodied long-standing community divisions. DF helps to overcome both kinds of difficulties.<br /><br />When a group creates a solution together in this way, their support for the outcome is much stronger than with standard ‘consensus’. They don’t just agree on a solution, they are typically enthusiastic about what they have achieved together. Unanimity is not identified as a conscious goal, but emerges naturally from the dynamics of the collaborative process.<br /><br />For more information about DF:<br /><a href="http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-dynamicfacilitation.html" target=_blank>http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-dynamicfacilitation.html</a><br /><a href="http://www.thataway.org/exchange/resources.php?action=view&rid=1586" target=_blank>http://www.thataway.org/exchange/resources.php?action=view&rid=1586</a><br /><a href="http://www.diapraxis.com/dfmanual.html" target=_blank>http://www.diapraxis.com/dfmanual.html</a><br /><br /><big><b>The principle of the <i>social microcosm</i></b></big><br />The legitimacy of the traditional jury process is based on this principle. Twelve randomly selected citizens are intended to be a representative social microcosm of the whole community (<i>peers</i>). The assumption is that twelve is a large enough number to ensure that most of the significant sentiments and concerns present in the community will be present in the jury as well. The requirement of a unanimous verdict is intended to ensure that none of these sentiments and concerns are ignored in reaching the verdict. The hope is that the jury will reach the same verdict that the whole community would have reached, if everyone had time to consider the case in depth — and time to reach agreement. The jury, by the way, is the oldest institution in the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic democratic tradition, pre-dating the earliest parliaments. And twelve, as a ‘good microcosm size’, can be traced back to classical times.<br /><br />Consider then what would happen if twelve random citizens from a community were to engage in a Dynamically Facilitated dialog session. As with the jury, we can reasonably assume that most of the sentiments and concerns of the community would be present in the group. As DF enables the group to begin to operate in a <i>harmonized</i> way, all of those concerns will be taken into account as the group seeks creative solutions to some self-selected community problem, a problem that has urgency for the group, and presumably for the community as a whole. If the group succeeds in finding an agreed solution to that urgent problem, we can reasonably assume that the solution would make sense to the community generally, and perhaps even be received with enthusiasm.<br /><br />This principle of the social microcosm addresses the time problem involved in public dialog and self-governance. If microcosm groups are able to inject <i>sound ideas</i> into <i>everyday dialog</i>, that could greatly accelerate the emergence of a shared community perspective. It is much easier to make progress and reach agreement in discussions, of whatever kind or size, if there are some good ideas on the table. We anticipate that a positive feedback loop could be expected to develop, where <i>good ideas </i>from the microcosm spark <i>community enthusiasm & dialog</i> in the macrocosm. This interaction between microcosm and macrocosm could then lead to a convergence of public understanding and agenda — an emergence of <i>We the People consciousness</i> in the community.<br /><br /><big><b>Whole-system dialog: Wisdom Councils</b></big><br />These considerations, about DF and microcosms, are what led Jim Rough to his remarkable invention, the <i>Wisdom Council</i>. Twelve (or a few more or less) citizens are selected at random and invited to participate in an extended DF session (a Council), typically 1-4 days in duration. Jim calls this <i>whole system</i> dialog, as the microcosm is dialoging on behalf of the whole system, the whole community.<br /><br />If the Council event is publicized widely in the community, and its outcomes publicized — as called for in the Wisdom Council guidelines — that provides a channel for the <i>good ideas</i> to enter into <i>everyday dialog</i>. In addition, as part of the format, an open public gathering is convened following the Council session, where the participants tell their stories of their experiences in the session, and where the outcomes of the session are reported. The people are then invited to split up into breakout groups and discuss their responses to what they have seen.<br /><br />Many Wisdom Councils have been convened, in different parts of the world, and the results have been very promising. Some participants have spontaneously chosen the phrase “We the People” to express the sense of collective empowerment they experienced. There is an emotional dimension to the experience, even a sense of personal transformation, and the enthusiasm revealed in the Council members’ reports tends to be contagious: the public gathering often gets enthusiastic about the potential of dialog, and tends to ‘get it’ about We the People consciousness. The public event serves as a channel into everyday dialog not only for the ideas generated, but also for the enthusiasm and sense of empowerment experienced.<br /><br />So far, however, most of these Wisdom Councils have been one-off events. There has not yet been a series of Wisdom Councils in the same community, and no chance for a micro-macro feedback loop to develop. The core proposal of this experimental framework is to move forward with the Wisdom Council concept, and convene such a series, with due care given to informing the community and promoting the post-session public gatherings. Newspapers, public radio stations, kiosks, flyers — and websites — all can be used as channels into everyday dialog, depending on the size and nature of the community.<br /><br />For more information on Wisdom Councils:<br /><a href="http://www.wisedemocracy.org/" target=_blank>http://www.wisedemocracy.org/</a><br /><a href="http://www.thataway.org/exchange/categories.php?&cid=136&last_selection=category" target=_blank>http://www.thataway.org/exchange/categories.php?&cid=136&last_selection=category</a><br /><br /><big><b>Distributed dialog: the circle process</b></big><br />I’ve mentioned whole-system dialog and everyday dialog, referring to what happens in a Wisdom Council, and what might happen around the breakfast table, or in a lunchroom or pub. But consider this: if enthusiasm begins to emerge in a community, around empowerment and dialog, people are not going to be content for the dialog to be carried on entirely by proxy (microcosm groups), or in informal chats. People are likely to want to get together with others, perhaps in their homes or in cafes, and participate personally in <i>meaningful dialog</i> around the emerging issues.<br /><br />The <i>circle process</i> is a simple meeting format, not requiring a facilitator, that can deepen conversation, encourage listening, and minimize unproductive debate. A token, or <i>talking stick</i>, is passed around the room, giving each person a turn to talk each time the token goes around. Whoever has the token speaks, and everyone else gives the speaker their full attention.<br /><br />This process, though simple, may be difficult at first, as most of us are accustomed to chiming in whenever a response occurs to us regarding someone’s comment. It takes people a while to learn to still their minds and really listen. As people become comfortable with the process, a space of <i>deep listening</i> can be created. In this space, people begin sharing more deeply, from their hearts. When this happens the token can be set aside for a while, and people can speak when inspired to do so. If focus deteriorates, the token can be taken up again.<br /><br />Another core proposal of this experimental framework is to encourage the creation of circle-process events in the community. Groups of people might meet together regularly, perhaps in their homes, or circle events might be scheduled in public places, open to whoever shows up. Neighborhood circles would make sense, as a way to build a sense of community at the neighborhood level. And here again the principle of inclusiveness applies: if a circle includes diversity, rather than just the like minded, it is more likely to contribute to the development of an inclusive sense of community, where everyone’s concerns are respected.<br /><br />A more detailed discussion of circle groups and the circle process can be found on the co-intelligence website:<br /><a href="http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-listeningcircles.html" target=_blank>http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-listeningcircles.html</a><br /><br /><big><big><b>Supplementary tools</b></big></big><br /><br /><big><b>Open Space Technology (OS)</b></big><br /><br />Open Space occupies a middle ground between whole-system dialog and distributed dialog. It is a way of enabling a large group of people to self-organize a conference, or a community gathering. Anyone can volunteer to host a breakout session on any topic they choose, and people then join whichever sessions they prefer. As with Wisdom Councils, the participants choose their own topics, but with OS any number of people can participate, and many topics can be pursued in parallel. OS could be used to create a democratically enlightened version of a town hall meeting, thus providing a very direct forum for participatory democracy.<br /><br />In the standard OS format, the question of process is left up to each session host. We believe the effectiveness of OS might be enhanced by encouraging the use of the circle process in sessions, and by having facilitators on hand to help with more intensive sessions if invited to do so. Information about OS can be found on the web:<br /><a href="http://www.openspaceworld.org/cgi/wiki.cgi?" target=_blank>http://www.openspaceworld.org/cgi/wiki.cgi?</a><br /><a href="http://www.opencirclecompany.com/papers.htm" target=_blank>http://www.opencirclecompany.com/papers.htm</a><br /><br />In order for an OS event to be effective in a community, there needs to be a large number of people in the community who are enthusiastic about participating. This is more likely to be achieved after some <i>community convergence</i> has been created by the Wisdom Council process and by whatever other dialog has been going on. When there is sufficient interest, OS can be a very effective way to accelerate the process of community convergence. As with Wisdom Councils, OS events are most successful when sufficient time is allocated, 3-5 days being optimal.<br /><br />The investment of time required for Wisdom Councils and OS events might seem like a lot to ask, but that must be balanced against the kind of outcomes that can be expected. If long-standing community divisiveness can be overcome, and if chronic or acute problems can be addressed successfully, then the few days invested by the participants are negligible by comparison.<br /><br /><big><b>Other dialog processes</b></big><br />As stated earlier, this framework does not offer a fixed formula, but rather a starting point — <i>kindling processes</i>. As participation emerges in the community, we can expect process forms to evolve, and to be used in new ways. Besides those we have mentioned, there are many other processes that a community might want to adopt or adapt for various purposes. There are many kinds of facilitation and many formats in which they can be employed. A fairly comprehensive summary, with links to detailed information, can be found on the co-intelligence website:<br /><a href="http://www.co-intelligence.org/CI-Practices.html" target=_blank>http://www.co-intelligence.org/CI-Practices.html</a><br /><br /><big><b>Our Transformational Imperative</b></big><br />Let me begin with an excerpt from our opening quotation: “The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.”<br /><br />It is not that the system has problems, rather <i>the system itself is the problem</i>. Consider for example two of the symptoms: global warming and environmental degradation. In order to do anything effective about these symptoms, the whole basis of our economy would need to be transformed. Perpetual ‘economic growth’, as a paradigm, can only be achieved by continuing with high rates of energy consumption and the further devastation of our life-support systems. And yet there is no way that our political leaders could abandon the growth paradigm. It is built into the way corporations work, financial institutions operate, employment is provided, etc. etc. Our ‘leaders’ wouldn’t know where to begin making real changes, even if they were able to think in such terms.<br /><br />In the world of computer software, there comes a time when an operating system outlives its usefulness, and a new one must be written from the ground up. That is the situation we now find ourselves in as a global society. If the world is to be saved, we need to create a whole new basis for society — a new way of making decisions, a new way of addressing our problems, a new kind of economics, a new relationship to our environment. This new basis cannot be achieved by reforming the current system; we need to rebuild from the bottom up, from the grassroots.<br /><br />The achievement of democracy is not only about bringing power to the people, as opposed to wealthy elites. It is also about unleashing our collective creativity and resourcefulness so that we can begin the process of creating healthy societies. <i>We the People</i> are the only ones with the will and the capacity to undertake this necessary task. We have a responsibility to ourselves and future generations to address this task. Our first step is to <i>find one another</i>, to <i>hear one another</i>, to become a <i>we</i>, as a family is a <i>we</i>. Appropriate tools exist for <i>coming together</i>, and we need to begin learning how to use them.rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2958975246043114999.post-77967236690805854092008-01-12T02:37:00.000+00:002008-01-12T03:05:29.074+00:00Holocaust, Regionalism, and the End of CapitalismRichard K. Moore<br />4 January, 2008<br /><a href="mailto:rkm@quaylargo.com">rkm@quaylargo.com</a><br /><br />In Part 1 of this analysis, <a href="http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7693" target=_blank>“The Post-Bush Regime: a Prognosis”</a>, I developed these main themes:<br /><blockquote> • The neocon agenda has been seriously reined in by our ruling clique of elite financial players. We are in for a ‘new story’ – the ‘Gore Agenda’.<br /><br /> • As the Industrial North continues to consume more and more energy and resources, and as resources decline, mass die-offs in the Global South are inevitable: we can expect to see the globalization of African-scale famines.<br /><br /> • Our elite clique is in fact covertly expediting these die-offs by means of destabilization programs of various kinds. They are engaging in deliberate and selective genocide, as a way of managing the die-off process in the Global South.</blockquote><br />I would now like to bring in some economic considerations. Consider, for example, the state of the American economy. It is a total shambles: deeply in debt, operating at an astronomical deficit, and suffering from a chronic trade imbalance. The dollar is slipping in value, and could suffer collapse any time foreign holders start cutting their losses and dumping their dollars. On top of this we have the sub-prime mortgage crisis, which then led to a global crisis in the world of credit and finance. By all indications, the US economy is headed for a deep recession or worse.<br /><br />In fact, under the neocon regime, many of us were expecting a total economic collapse to occur, to be followed by martial law, perhaps even of the Gestapo variety. That seemed to be the whole point of the ‘anti-terrorism’ legislation and Homeland Security – to create the infrastructure of a fascist police state. My own view at the time was that these jackboot methods were the clique’s answer to an inevitable collapse. But with the neocon agenda reined in, and an optimistic new administration on the way, the prospect of martial law now seems distant. It doesn’t fit with the new story. It is no longer in the cards. <br /><br />This can only mean that our clique has found some other response to a collapse scenario, some other way to deal with an economy in shambles. And what other response really could there be, than to avoid a collapse altogether, and to instead engineer an economic recovery? That’s the only way that America can keep operating, in the absence of martial law. And besides, such a move provides a needed response to a critical political situation.<br /><br />Under the neocons, Americans have increasingly been not only in dissent with administration policy, but have been losing faith in the system altogether. The loss of Constitutional rights, CIA torture, voting irregularities – these kind of things strike at the very heart of what America has always pretended to stand for. <br /><br />It is never a good thing for rulers when folks start losing faith in the system, particularly if jackboot methods are not available. It would be a very good move for the clique to bring folks back onside, back to being happy campers. New-story rhetoric can help a bit, but only an economic recovery could bring back that feeling of, “Aren’t we lucky to be Americans!” That’s how the clique likes it. A content flock is an easily managed flock. So evidently, based partly on massive investment in Gore-agenda new technologies, we can look forward to a recovery program that will get America <i>back on its feet</i>. <br /><br />In addition to investments, I think it is clear that massive government interventionism in the economy will also be required for a recovery program to succeed. In these kinds of situations there is always an important role to be played by government-funded programs that get people into employment and spur economic activity. <br /><br />Given the dire state of our fundamental economy at the moment, these interventionist programs will need to be considerable, amounting to a kind of ‘mini-New Deal’. And as in the New Deal, we can expect some of these programs to be of a social-welfare nature. Funding some kind of universal health care program, for example, would be one way to get some economic activity going, and it would also help in bringing the masses back onside. Perhaps some kind of real solution to homelessness could be undertaken, and that would certainly be a massive undertaking.<br /><br />Even the Federal Reserve has been calling for increased interventionism, to deal with ‘irresponsible lending practices’. When we take into account that the Fed actively promoted such practices and thereby initiated the crisis, my guess is that the whole sub-prime fiasco was contrived in order to justify the kind of economic interventionism that will be needed to enable recovery.<br /><br />Given the growth in the biofuels marketplace already, it is clear that conversion to renewable energy sources is going to be one of the fast track, government-driven programs. Already the White House was directly involved in negotiating an agreement with President Lulu of Brazil, whereby Brazil will embark on a massive biofuels production program. <br /><br />The government has a lot of leverage, in controlling how aggressively biofuel production will be pursued. They could, for example, mandate that all gasoline and diesel must contain a higher percentage of biofuels, which would drive up the price of biofuels, and farmers would rush in to meet the mandated production level. This shift to energy renewables will not be left to market forces alone. We’ve gotten too many signals that ‘new energy sources’ is going to be one of the flagship programs of the new administration, and promoting growth in the biofuels market is by far the quickest and easiest way for the administration to achieve real successes in such a program.<br /><br />Biofuels are an attractive crop to Brazilian farmers, or to any farmer in the Global South who has suitable land. They can get a good price on global markets relative to other agricultural products. And every farmer loves a strong and reliable market for his products, and for biofuels we have that in spades – all those cars, trucks, ships, and planes running around in the world. If global energy prices go up, that's all the better for the farmers; the biofuel prices track up along with them. For Lulu, closing a deal with Washington for biofuel production scores easy political points with the whole farming sector. But what does it mean for Brazil? And how much do the farmers really benefit?<br /><br />For the Brazilian people, it means their ability to produce their own food will be reduced by the same amount that biofuel production increases. At the same time global food prices are rising sharply, due largely to biofuel production, so that importing food is no answer to the problem. If sufficiently many farmers switch to biofuel production, there will be famine and starvation in Brazil. If the new administration pushes really hard for more biofuel production, as it seems they will be doing, they are in effect waging a campaign to starve as many Brazilians to death as possible. <br /><br />When you take away a people's land, their source of sustenance, for your own use, you are condemning them either to death, exile, or virtual serfdom on the land that was theirs. This is true whether you occupy the land, as we did when we Won the West, or whether you gain control over the land by other means, such as a strong market price for biofuels. As we run our fuel-efficient cars, and our Industrial North, increasingly on biofuels, we are as surely invading Brazil as if we were doing it with covered wagons and the cavalry. To the extent we can maximize the conversion of suitable land to biofuel production, to that extent we are pursuing a path of genocide in the Global South.<br /><br />As regards the farmers, they will be little more than serfs, whether on their independent farms, or as laborers in industrial farming operations. As in all agricultural sectors these days, the farmer gets a subsistence price for his products, the consumer pays a premium price, and the middle men – the distributors and the financiers – get the lion's share of the profits from the overall transaction. The ultimate <i>biofuels vision</i> would turn the global South into one big biofuel plantation, and the only people living down there would be the plantation slaves and their bosses. Once again we'd have the Industrial North, and the Slave Plantation South, only this time the South would be producing something the North could use, instead of growing cotton for export elsewhere. <br /><br />Who knows, by following such an exploitive vision, it might actually be possible for the automobile, much improved, to survive peak oil. Given people's attachment to their cars, they'll be able to rationalize whatever is required to keep those cars purring along. <br /><br />Keep in mind that it was only a minority of pioneers in frontier America who actually encountered the Indians, and who thought that 'the only good redskin is a dead redskin'. The bulk of the population, back east, was comparatively liberal and sympathetic to the Indians. And yet they acquiesced in the systematic genocide, as their 'great nation' pursued its ‘eminent domain. In general liberal Northerners have adjusted very well to imperialist excesses of all sorts, particularly if they perceived themselves as being well off. If it means people can keep their cars, they won't be in any mind to connect the dots to mass famines 'down there', which the media will be only to eager to blame on unfortunate natural causes.<br /><br />I've been focusing overmuch on biofuels, I fear, as they provide such a rich picture of the nature of the Gore agenda. In fact, the appropriation of the resources of the Global South has been the hallmark of European imperialism from the beginning, and a fully exploited South would not be devoted exclusively to biofuel plantations. There would also be mines, oil wells, cattle and coffee plantations, slum factory zones, etc, each area producing whatever it is most efficient at producing. What is special about the biofuel program is that it signals a <span style="font-style:italic;">final assault</span> on the Global South, the launching of a <span style="font-style:italic;">final solution</span> to the problem of exploiting the resources of the South. <br /><br />Instead of interventions and intrigues, tinhorn dictators and market forces – instead of all these troublesome mechanisms of indirect resource management, we are now going for the jugular, the food supply. We are setting out to clear the land for our use, so that we can keep the engines of the Industrial North running. Most of the people on the land are for our purposes now redundant, what Kissinger – author of that infamous Government report (NSSM 200) on depopulation – allegedly refers to as “useless feeders”. <br /><br />We can see this final solution in operation already in Sub-Saharan Africa, where millions of children die each year from disease and starvation, and the genocidal process is helped along by destabilizing interventions of various kinds, while the media blames it all on droughts and tribal conflicts. With this new strife in Kenya we see the consequences of an ongoing intervention episode, as the Pentagon’s new AFRICOM command seeks an excuse for a foothold in the Horn of Africa.<br /><br />In the decades following World War II the Industrial North experienced a boom period, under capitalism, based on opening up the Global South ('Free World') to exploitation by capital generally, no longer restricted by the old colonial boundaries. Once again the North needs to find a way to more systematically exploit the resources of the Global South. The time has come, evidently, to take a final-solution approach to that exploitation.<br /><br />We need to be clear here: this is not a case of the people of the South being sacrificed so that the people of the North can survive. It’s not about over-population per se. The people of the South are being sacrificed so the North can keep its exorbitantly wasteful systems going, not only its flagrant over-use of long-distance transport, but equally its water & energy-intensive agricultural methods.<br /><br />While access to petroleum has been the most critical enabling factor in industrial societies for the past century, access to land in the South will become the most critical factor in the future. This will lead to a dramatic change in geopolitical dynamics: a resurgence of territoriality as a principle of economic well-being. If nation-sized plantation operations are necessary to keep the engines of the North running, then the nations of the North will be seeking to secure access to Southern territories, on a sufficient scale to supply their needs.<br /><br />In particular, rising food prices and rising food scarcities will motivate Northern nations to secure territories in the Global South, in order to provide food for their own needs. In general, the more the North depends on a large-scale transfer of resources from South to North in order to continue operating, the more the securing of Southern territories will become an economic imperative for nations in the North.<br /><br />Such a territorial focus will naturally lead to regionalism, and a thoroughgoing reversal of the tides of globalization. Already China is getting its region in order, with the SCO and related initiatives. China has long expressed the desire, nay the natural right, to regional hegemony, and it seems sincere in wanting only that; self-containment is a very long tradition in Chinese culture. In the expansion of the EU into the former Soviet realms, we see the creation of another viable regional block, even if it might have been created for other reasons, under an earlier game plan. Russia fits nicely into a game of territories, being so vast on its own, and with a wealth of resources that its neighboring blocks are eager to buy at market price. A reunion with some of the old Soviet Block to the south would make a lot of sense for both parties.<br /><br />Interestingly enough, this regional picture is in many ways similar to the world described by Samuel P. Huntington in his <span style="font-style:italic;">Clash of Civilizations</span>. In his scenario however, our own Anglo-American clique, along with the Pentagon, are supreme rulers of all, with each region being managed by a subservient ‘core state’. It seems that Russia and China have risen to peer status much quicker than Huntington imagined they could. “Today Iraq, Tomorrow the World!” does not seem to have panned out. I suppose when our grandkids study <span style="font-style:italic;">The Rise and Fall of the American Empire</span>, the PNAC document and Huntington’s book will be on the required reading list, under the heading, "their last great dream" – <span style="font-style:italic;">how they were going to conquer the world</span>.<br /><br />This brings us to the <span style="font-style:italic;">North American Union</span>, and the new <span style="font-style:italic;">Amero</span> currency. Canadians seem to be a lot more aware of the NAU than are folks in the US. To most Americans (by which I usually mean the US variety), the NAU is just another conspiracy theory – “If it’s not on TV, it couldn’t be true.” Canadians on the other hand have long felt colonized by the giant to the south, both culturally and economically. Particularly recently, with both free-trade treaties and heightened security malarkey, Canadians can see that they are becoming more and more integrated into a North American system of some kind. They have been much more alert to what's going on, and they've been tracking the somewhat covert progress of this other regional block, the North American Union, which is to be made up of Canada, the US, and Mexico, and which is to have a new currency, the Amero.<br /><br />Canada has lots of resources and relatively few people. It's got uranium, timber, water, wheat, claims to the Arctic and the newly opened Northwest Passage, and much else. Mexico brings to the party lots of cheap labor, lots of good agricultural land, some oil, and a variety of resources that can be more systematically exploited with the help of some investment in modernization. The NAU amounts to a colonial expansion on the part of the US, a bit like England absorbing Scotland, Wales, and Ireland in earlier days. On paper there might be some kind of equality in the arrangement, but in reality it will be the US operators and the US part of the economy that will get the lion's share of the benefits. For Mexico, the NAU may turn out to be a blessing nonetheless, if it spares them the holocaust being prepared for the Global South.<br /><br />Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution cause us to consider two alternative possible futures for South America. The Bolivarian alternative would be by far the best one for the people of South America. This alternative would lead to South America as a regional block in its own right, with its own relatively adequate resource base, oil and all. This alternative would however save South America from the fate of the Global South, and hence would seriously reduce the total resource base available for exploitation by the Industrial North. <br /><br />As much as I love and support Chavez, and pray for his noble democratizing efforts to succeed, I fear that a resurgence is very likely in covert interventions in the left-leaning South American upstart nations. Perhaps there will even be a return to the era of the dictators and the disappeared. The rest of the world, busy building their own regional havens, would be quite happy to tolerate US interventionism in South America – its traditional back yard – if in return Washington reduces its meddling in the rest of the world's affairs, hence another reason for the PNAC rein-in. <br /><br />Our clique cannot afford to let South America achieve its liberation. In a regionalized world, an Industrialized North America needs South America as its own regional share of the Global South, along with whatever it can grab in Africa and elsewhere. The Monroe Doctrine lives on. The new biofuel program in Brazil is the harbinger of the onslaught to come.<br /><br />Let us now consider the nature of a regionalized world, where the North is living off the resource base of the South, and where the South is partitioned into vast colonial territories – as in the old days of Grand Empire. We’re probably talking about a comparatively peaceful world, as each regional block would be a major nuclear power, and its Southern territories would in fact be essential to its ‘regional interests’. There would be no independent territories left in the South to squabble over, so we’d have the strategic stability of the Cold War, without the proxy wars that might bring in the potential for escalation.<br /><br />In our existing regime of comparatively small nations, where the critical resources (eg oil) are concentrated in a few places in the world, geopolitics has been oriented around ‘controlling the straits’ – competing to control the critical resources themselves and the access routes to them. Power struggles have been inherent in geopolitical dynamics. In a regionalized world, where the critical resources (ie land) are much more uniformly distributed, there aren’t any special straits to compete over. Competition and struggle are no longer an inherent part of geopolitical dynamics. <br /><br />What happens to the notion of economic growth in such a world? If the engines of the North depend on the resource flows from the South, and if the Regions of the North are not competing over each other’s Southern territories, then the rate of Northern resource consumption will need to fall to the level of available inputs. The paradigm of growth no longer makes sense. This implies there will be a major shift in Northern economic paradigms, and in the cultures themselves. <br /><br />Instead of capitalism, whose core dynamic is growth, we will evolve toward a more feudal kind of economics, where control over resources is the measure of wealth, rather than the value of growth-oriented investments. Northern societies will become more stable and static, and each generation won’t be faced with new infrastructures, based on new technologies, requiring people to learn new kinds of jobs, migrate to new locations, and adapt to new residential and transport patterns. <br /><br />To a large extent, our economies and cultures will come to resemble those of the Middle Ages. People will compete to rise in static hierarchies, and we may get a more class-based society, where children tend to follow in their parent’s footsteps. No doubt religions will change as well. Protestantism has always been closely linked to growth and capitalism, and we are likely to see a return to something more like the Medieval Church, organized hierarchically, and teaching its congregations to be good sheep rather than to exhibit the uppity Protestant Ethic. And at the top of our own regional hierarchy will be the descendents of our current clique, behaving like monarchs and aristocrats of old, rather than being manipulators behind the scenes.<br /><br />If we want to avoid this kind of future, and the holocaust that goes with, it is up to us to take the initiative to do so, us ordinary people. There is no inherent reason why we cannot create sustainable societies, in both the South and the North, and base our exchanges on mutual benefit rather than exploitation. Our real problems are not about economics or resources, but rather the fact that our societies, and their future paths, are controlled by cliques who are concerned only with their own self-interests.<br /><br />Our challenge, and the only way to achieve a sensible future, is to establish genuinely democratic societies, where the wisdom and will of the people can be manifested to guide the course of our societies. What prevents us from doing this is the fact that we are divided against one another, and the fact that we have no idea of what a democratic society might look like. We have no experience in that area. Our competitive electoral systems have nothing to do with democracy. They are instead efficient mechanisms to keep us divided and to enable power brokers at the top to control the political process. As voters, we are corralled into the hopeless dilemma of voting for the lesser of two evils.<br /><br />Our first task, if we want to move toward our own democratic empowerment, is to abandon the myth that we already live in democratic societies. Only then can we can begin to learn what democracy is about and how to achieve it. That’s been the focus of my own research and studies for the past five years or so:<br /> <a href="http://governourselves.blogspot.com" target=_blank>http://governourselves.blogspot.com</a>rkmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17292362461018220890noreply@blogger.com