Opening question:
Do you have any ideas concerning how the various allied social movements can be amplified and integrated so as to become a revolutionary (non-violent, non-insurrectionary) potency in our world? (Notice I opted not to use the word ‘force’, which suggests confrontation.)
My opening question is optional here. I just want to encourage folks to talk amongst themselves here. That’s what this place is mostly for, after all.
Here are two questions for you, if you're interested in them.
What does this article get right about 'democracy'. And what does it not get quite right?
https://www.togetherincreation.org/single-post/2014/06/12/From-democracy-to-ecosystem-stewardship-and-ecogovernance
My very brief answer, for now, is that the article assumes that the impostor system of pseudo-democracy is posing as actual democracy, and therefore we cannot condemn actual democracy merely because there is an impostor posing as 'democracy'.
By no means would actual democracy resemble the sort of thing we see in most or all nation states which call themselves "democratic". But then, the features which would repair what isn't working in pseudo-democracies is by no means anything I could sum up here. That's a big project! And a long conversation. Shall we begin?
Appreciate your inspiration in creating this forum. As you noticed.. crickets.
I've been thinking about a lot of the same problems. We have been enslaved, abused, deceived, poisoned. We've been trained to reject our common sense.
When intuition screams that this is not a healthy world, the conditioning is activated, and we feel hopeless and powerless, often become angry and toxic towards our brothers and sisters.
Possessed by greed, humanity manifested a social machine with no conscience. It has grown like a fire, seeking only fuel to continue its spread. Now humanity's collective demons are knocking.
As you've pointed out, large percentages of the population exist in a state that is mortally dependent on resource extraction, processing, and distribution infrastructure that was not built with the majority in mind. It serves the machine.
When the machine falls, it will be due to its exhaust of cumulative imbalances finally triggering natural counterbalancing forces. That means we will not be able to survive on the corpse.
So we currently have the internet, which makes it possible to come together and benefit from a society of ideas. We may not have that for long - maybe the supporting infrastructure collapses, or the ruling class (those most possessed by the spirit of greed) decides to shut down discussion as more people become desperate and disillusioned.
I've seen a lot of people talking about what successful revolution would look like today. Online, it rarely seems to amount to anything for long. Probably local groups face a similar fate. So I think the very first thing to do if we want to mobilize is to understand the nature and origin of the forces that undermine efforts to organize.
My suggestion is to actively recruit people from other online forums, where similar sentiments are common but nothing cohesive ever emerges. Bring them together and lets work on understanding our obstacles.
My guess is that all major public forums, social platforms, and media outlets have been engineered to amplify doubt and confusion, particularly targeting demographics that exhibit revolutionary potential. So to gain any momentum, we first need to get people to join together and stay engaged, to rekindle a sense of hope and personal potency. As soon as we figure out how to make that happen, I would suggest creating and distributing a blueprint that others can follow to reliably create similar groups.
Then we've gotta get down to the real business. Two primary goals that I see.
1. Create local replacements for everything that we need to survive. Come up with plans to ensure security and stability. Probably the top issue is getting logistics in place to produce and distribute to everyone, and quickly recruiting those benefiting into a defensive role. That way when social and physical infrastructure collapses, especially in high population density regions, people are less inclined to turn on each other.
2. Understand the continually evolving fallout of the established system's attempts to survive. Take special note of developments that threaten our efforts towards the above goal, both in developing and implementing solutions, as well as our ability to successfully leverage those solutions at various stages of collapse. We need to have good answers and adapt quickly, because if people are cooperating to create local alternatives only to find they are unlikely to be useful, they will get demoralized and the initiative will dissolve. It will be harder to convince someone to give it a second try.
A philosophical question to you my friend, then I'm out. You say peaceful revolution, and I admire that. Too many revolutions simply become the next tyrant. My question is, given all you've seen.. if it appeared that the existing social and economic systems were heavily strained and on the verge of collapse, leaning horribly on the masses to keep from going down. In this case what responsibility do you think a person has to push it the rest of the way over? What if a successful effort to ensure collapse would cost many innocent lives, as infrastructure went fully offline? I don't have answers, this is a hard subject, just pointing out that we should be prepared to face this type of difficult choice. It would be good to have a general alignment in anticipation of that type of event, because they could create strong enough feelings to divide the group.
I'm gonna try and recruit some people, if you're in agreement I suggest you do the same. Lets get this place actively sharing, discussing, and refining ideas. Take care. 🌱