Larry Victor re: new book : ‘Creating a Sustainable Future’

2005-10-21

Richard Moore

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Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 11:15:25 -0700
From: Larry Victor
To: Richard Moore <•••@••.•••>
Cc: Jim Bell
Subject: Re: New book : re : Creating a Sustainable Future

Richard and Jim:  Excellent book.  Below is an entry I made in
a discussion on my NU_Group on Omidyar.Net, were there had
been a dialog on creating "real world structures".

-------------------------

CREATING A SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY AND FUTURE ON OUR PLANET: The
San Diego/Tijuana Region, a Case Study, by Jim Bell
http://www.jimbell.com/Book2/Book2.pdf 

This book is an excellent example of a concrete project to
create a concrete, significant REAL WORLD STRUCTURE.  It is of
the magnitude of the exemplar project that David and I
discussed in our early dialog on what to do about the entire
New Orleans region - that took place a few weeks before
Katrina.  Jim's plan is not new. A simpler variation was being
proposed by researchers at the University of Arizona in the
early 1970s when I first came to Tucson.  Proposals of a
similar nature have been made continually since (and probably
before) the first Earth Day in 1970.  Creating REAL WORLD
STRUCTURES are easy, ONCE there is societal approval and
resources allocated. Creating such large REAL WORLD STRUCTURES
goes back to antiquity.  Humans seem to be able to create
given the power and the resources.

However, there are two critical factors missing.  One is the
additional task to organize a population to approve the
project and to make available the labor and resources. Even if
such a project were to be done bottom-up by the people doing
the work, and not trying to move governments to contract
corporations to do the job, a major project (actually  more
complex and difficult than the project to create the "real
world structure") to bring a society to a position to
undertake such a project is needed. How does Jim Bell imagine
a scenario for manifesting his project?

The second problem is that existing power establishments often
don't want such projects to succeed.  Even if the elite might
approve of the project in principle, that its success would
destabilize their system of control - if not by creating
pockets of direct competition, but also by demonstrating the
viability of alternatives to their rule. Establishments may
permit (but not support) bottom-up efforts IF they would
defuse popular unrest, but would resist them when it appeared
that the bottom-up efforts might grow in competency and spread
to others.

The Allende social system for Chile was such a bottom-up
project of great sophistication - involving not only the
workers and average persons but also talented technical 
expertise from across the globe to design a fair and
scientific (cybernetically viable) economy for all.  It had to
be brutally oppressed, and was.

We fail to recognize and accept that many of our leaders WANT
what is happening, it is according to THEIR plan. All is not
the result of mistakes or ignorance, but of explicit intent.
Most who rise to positions of power today are not "good"
people, but people who approve of power & violence, deception
& conspiracy, exploitation & greed, and are open to employ
persons who enjoy killing other humans. I call such persons
"bad". My vision of NU is a world where "bad" people are
unlikely to develop from childhood (we have yet to learn how
"bad" people come to be) AND where our societal structures are
not such as to attract and actually reinforce "badness". To
successfully create a better world ALL relevant factors and
domains must be considered. The end objective is a new system
of real world structures. What I suggest is that designing and
creating them is not the only challenge, nor the most
difficult. NU_Group, in my view, is attempting to work on the
challenges of how to create organizations to seaf projects
that propose to create real world structures.  The other
issue, about strong opposition by the established elites is
one I also have given considerable attention. I believe that
an exponential growth of NU in a way NOT to directly confront
establishments can lead NU to eventually replace, rather than
compete with,  existing power structures - but this is a
complex domain that will require much dialog elsewhere.

Reading Jim Bell's book and thinking again on the issues above
leads me to think a viable strategy may be developing a
synergy between 1) creating real world structures and 2)
creating those orgs that will seaf the projects that create
real world structures.  I will refrain from the semantic
argument that the orgs of 2) are ALSO real world structures.

--------------------

You may be interested in following what we are attempting to
do on NU_Group, and possibly participate. You will need to
join Omidyar.net (free). Onet was created by Pierre Omidyar
(inventor of eBay) to further his interest in facilitating
synergy between social entrepreneurs, and has recently made
this complex platform open to the public. Nu_Group is the
product of a few months work by David Braden and myself,
starting within the platform of Onet, but given its planetary
goals, must move on to other platforms.  NUG is rough and
prmitive, but a start.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR JOINING ONET AND NU_Group

  JOINING OMIDYAR.NET

    Go to  http://www.omidyar.net/home/
    
    Near the top, left  click on  Join us now.
    
    The new window will ask you to enter your email address twice.
     Click Sign-Up. You will be emailed a temporary password.
    
    It will take them a little few minutes to send you your
    password by email.        There will also be clickable url on
    the email, click it and enter in the Sign-In space your email
    address and the password.
    
    Now, PLEASE create a primitive Profile, that is where you will
    enter your name, so we can find you.  You can add more later.
    
    You should find information on how to do this from the webpage
    you will start with.
    
    You should also want to change your password to something you
    can easily remember.
    
    There are a number of ways to learn about Onet.

  JOINING NU_Group

    Click "Organizations-General",  then click on NU_Group; will
    take you to "home" (middle brown tab bar for group),
    
    Find  [JOIN} on the home page to join the Group.
    
    Click on the "workspace" tab,  then click on "Add" in Watch
    List on the left panel, this creates a bookmark to NU_Group
    
    There are many paths within NU_Group: EXPLORE.  Guides for
    NU_Group are under development.
    
    Down First Page is "FOR ALL NOVICES TO OMIDYAR.NET" which
    briefly orients you to composing in workspaces.


Hope to see you there,  Larry


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