---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 10:01:48 -0700 To: •••@••.••• From: Tom Atlee <•••@••.•••> Subject: Re: NGOs, Accountability & Democracy Dear Richard, How do you envision using localism to address the over-fishing of oceans, the damming or re-routing of rivers for the benefit of one area, the increasing likelihood of nuclear war, and the development of nanotechnology (just to name a few)? A LOT of people are turning to localism, and remarkable work is being done in that realm. I acknowledge and honor that. I just don't see how that approach adequately deals with the dangers to the global commons that are growing with each day. Coheartedly, Tom ------------------- Dear Tom, You are asking for an approach that "adequately deals with the dangers to the global commons that are growing with each day". I have suggested that localism and consensus are the keys elements of such an approach. When I use those terms, I am using them in the sense that was developed in The Zen of Global Transformation. That usage has also been developed in many previous postings. I'll summarize again for you here. There are two issues to be faced, as I see it. On the one hand we need some kind of vision of a system for a better world. On the other hand, we need some means of implementing that vision. My view is that localism and consensus, of a certain variety, have a central role to play in responding to both of those requirements. --- If we want to envision a better world, then it makes sense to get an accurate grasp on how deep the disease goes that we are trying to cure. Is the disease limited to the current clique in Washinton? Is capitalism the disease? Imperialism? Corporations? Corruption? The media? The financial system? My own investigations have led me to see the disease as going very deep into the roots of civilization itself. The disease I see is more or less the same one Daniel Quinn sees, as expressed in Ishmael and The Story of B. He focuses on the world-view aspects, while I focus on the political aspects. He talks about the Taker myth -- the view that humanity is destined to rule over and dominate the beasts of the land, the fish in the sea, and the birds in the air. I talk about the evolution of elite rule and hierarchies. We are both talking about the dramatic changes that occurred in human societies when they shifted from hunter-gathering to systematic agriculture and livestock raising. That shift was everywhere accompanied by a shift of world view and a shift of societal structure. The shift of world view, as Quinn points out, was from seeing ourselves as part of the fabric of nature to seeing ourselves as the rightful exploiters of nature. To this I would add that we also began to see ourselves as the rightful exploiters of other people, other tribes. For everywhere we have uncovered early civilizations, we have always found clear evidence of slavery. The shift of societal structure was from small, autonomous, egalitarian groups, to larger, hierarchical, authoritarian chiefdoms. Ever since then the development of civilization has been toward ever larger and more centralized hierarchies, ruled by ever more sophisticated and rapacious elites. Few would question this characterization -- if we took it up only to the Enlightenement and the advent of "democratic republics". But most people seem to be entranced by the Enlightement myths of democracy and freedom. That's why I put Jerry Fresia's "Toward an American Revolution" in its entirety on the cj website (http://cyberjournal.org). And that's why I frequently repeat myself in different words in these postings. The shift from monarchies to republics and elections was simply a shift from one elite regime to another. One ruled openly, the other indirectly. One simply demanded and enforced obedience. The other manipulates the political system, the economy, and the propaganda machinery to produce the outcome it desires. So as I see it, the disease is hierarchy and elite rule, and it goes back 13,000 years or so to the foundation of our first civilizations. We may look with favor on some of the consequences of this journey -- the benefits civilization has provided to some -- but the journey has been always flawed. It has always been characterized by the elite exploitation of the many. I believe that if we want to a world that is sustainable and livable, we must go back in our thinking to the point where civilization began, and consider what other paths of development are visible from that vantage point. How can we have a global society that is not structured hierarchically and which is not dominated by self-serving elites? We also need a shift of world view, as Quinn points out. Fortunately, we more or less have that already. All over the world most of the population seems to be aware of environmental destruction, global warming, ozone depletion, species extinction, etc. The constituency for a visible shift of world view toward sustainability and harmony with nature is here and just waiting for an opportunity to express itself effectively. The same can be said about constituencies for world peace, political harmony, and the application of societal resources toward the betterment of life rather than the accumulation of corporate profits. The Taker myth has been so concentrated in a tiny elite, that the rest of us in the West have begun to stop believing in it. We are beginning to see ourselves as part of the Taken, rather than one of the Takers. Third world peoples have seen that for a lot longer. I believe the time is ripe for a major shift of world view from exploitation to cooperation, as Brian Hill has often pointed out on this list. This shift in latent consciousness -- this potential paradigm shift in world view -- dovetails perfectly with the non-hierarchical structures that my investigations have led me to. If autonomy is centered on the local community, both politically and economically -- and if the predominate social ethic is one of harmony, sustainability, and consensus -- then I would (and have) argued that a natural and benign stability could be expected to develop. One argument is from a systems perspective, very much the same kind of argument Adam Smith presented in Wealth of Nations. If each community wants to be sustainable, then it will also desire that it's neighbors, trading partners, and whoever else it interacts with be sustainable as well. Otherwise their own sustainability could be at risk eventually. The argument goes along those kind of lines, with respect to world peace, management of global resources, etc. Adam Smith argued that the pursuit of economic self-interest would naturally lead to a beneficial economy -- if the economy operated under some specific constraints. And he seems to have been proven right. Wherever markets are dominated by small buyers and sellers operating in open competition, one sees productive economic exchange. I argue that communities pursuing their own enlightened self-interest -- as communities -- will similarly lead to a beneficial global society, a society without hierarchy and without authority. But a system argument is incomplete on its own. There needs to be something concrete to suggest some kind of empirical validation. An example or two, perhaps, of such societies functioning successfully on some non-trivial scale in the real world. I've actually got a few such examples, but I'll mention just one, which you may recall. It has to do with the transition from warring tribes to cooperating tribes. Our own civilization used hierarchy as the way to tie together larger societal units. The Plains Native Americans found another way to accomplish the same thing. They used consensus within each tribal unit, and they then used consensus when tribal delegates met in pow wow with associated tribes. By this process, they naturally found solutions to inter-tribal concerns that worked to everyone's best overall benefit. They were able to collaborate effectively when the need arose, without introducing central authority. Here we have a real-world example of a society that functioned well, based on local autonomy and consensus, and which was able to scale up one or two levels, from a small tribal unit to an entire Tribal Nation (eg. The Sioux Nation). Our civilization took the wrong path -- the path of hierarchy and elite rule. We now can see where it is leading and it was always leading. Certain tribal groups found another way to introduce collaboration among larger scale units. For my money, this offers us the richest vein if we want to dig for an understanding how a livable, sustainable world might be structured politically. --- That's how I see consensus and localism as playing a key role in a post-revolutionary world. But that doesn't help us accomplish a shift in the regime. How could we possibly get from where we are now, with massive inequality and economies dependent of rapid resource exploitation, to a harmonious world of cheerfully collaborating enlightened communities? And how can we ever dislodge the well-entrenched and all-powerful super elite who pull the strings of those who pull the strings of George Bush? The destruction of the global commons will continue as long as the current regime of centralized governments and capitalism continues. I have seen no strategy which has any chance of alleviating our situation while that system remains in place. Capitalist expansion, in the face of a finite environment, has reached the stage where elites can no longer afford liberal reforms, nor limits on their development plans. In the aftermath of 9-11 we can see how very determined US elites are to employ any means necessary in pursuit of their own designs on world domination during the endgame of the petroleum economy. They are introducing fascism at home and they have declared themselves above the law internationally. They have abandoned the last remnants of balanced coverage in their mass media, and now lie as blatantly as Goebbels ever did. I think it is pretty clear that top elites intend for this current US policy line to continue indefinitely. They have crossed a Rubicon and there can be no turning back. They will not permit the election of a President or Congress who might want to undo their handiwork. With their fear-mongering, flag waving, and incident creation & management capability, they have a pretty good chance of actually prevailing in elections with Bush-like candidates. But they must know they can't count on that. The popularity of Roger Moore's books and films -- in the midst of hyper patriotism and military conflict -- can be taken as a symbol of the doubt that must linger in their minds. They pulled off a successful vote scam when they brought Bush in, and there is every reason to believe that they are preparing more sophisticated scams for future elections -- as insurance against possible bad polling results on the day. With compulsory machine voting, and the software kept secret by a private company, the means of scamming an election are both simple and undetectable. If deemed necessary, it would be easy to track incoming tallies in real time, and make small adjustments on-the-fly to ensure that key districts tipped the right way, while minimizing the overall magnitude of mis-reporting. And media propaganda would be capable of making a right-wing victory seem at least plausible, even though a majority might each know privately that they voted the other way. I've noted in the past many parallels between the Nazis and the current Administration, particularly with 9-11 and its aftermath. Here's another, related to this vote-scamming issue. When Hitler was recruiting support from the highest German elite, such as Herr Krupp, he promised them, "When I am elected Chancellor, that will be the last German election." Krupp became a firm and invaluable supporter, seeing Hitler as a man who "had what it takes to lead Germany". I see us as being in that same scenario, but in a more sophisticated and less personality-centered version. This is one more reason, along with many others in previous postings, why we must give up any hope of progress through participation in the political process. Begging to elites will not alleviate our situation, nor will protesting to them, nor will organizing politically within the current system. --- I suggest that we need to back way up in our thinking about how change can happen, much as we backed up when we were looking at hierarchy and alternatives to it. As hierarchy has evolved, it has evolved anti-bodies (neutralizing strategies) for each new kind of popular uprising as it came along. We seem to have run out of approaches for which anti-bodies are not in place. In the final analysis, every person and every movement which has tried to fix the system throughout history can sing the refrain, "I fought the hierarchy, and the hierarchy won." We need a whole new approach to bringing about change, something outside the box of current or traditional activism and thinking. I believe that the consensus and decentralized aspects of the anti-globalization movement point the way to, again, a rich vein -- if we want to dig for an understanding of how radical global change can occur in a hostile and powerful political environment. But considerable digging is needed to get there. Some practices of the anti-globalization movement point the way, but they only point in a general direction, they are just a hint. I have come to believe (it feels more like 'seeing') that localism and consensus are the keys to building a new social structure within the walls of the existing regime. Ironically perhaps, the means and the ends amount to the same thing, only at different stages of development. It's localism and consensus all the way from start to finish. These ideas are the topic of the Zen Transformation book, and I won't say more about them here. I apologize for not having enough time to write a shorter response. Thanks for such a good question. best regards, rkm -- ============================================================================ For the movement, the relevant question is not, "Can we work through the political system?", but rather, "Is the political system one of the things that needs to be fundamentally transformed?" cyberjournal home page: http://cyberjournal.org "Zen of Global Transformation" home page: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ QuayLargo discussion forum: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ShowChat/?ScreenName=ShowThreads cj list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=cj newslog list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=newslog 'Truthout' excellent news source: http://www.truthout.org subscribe addresses for cj list: •••@••.••• •••@••.••• ============================================================================