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. 🌱
Cutroot - After you posted the above I got busy with writing. I read what you wrote, but found it overwhelming in scope, with so many questions raised all at once. It just felt like too much.
Perhaps, for the sake of having a conversation, you could offer one idea which you think might be helpful, somehow. Or ask one question which feels particularly important? Then we can see if we can work it through, bit by bit (?).
Hey, been meaning to stop by and follow up. Thanks for the reply.
Yea that was a bit of a brain dump. I was tired and feeling particularly frustrated at the time, which can send me off on tangents of many words with little said 🙂.
The main points here are really:
1. Many people in the world are at risk of, or currently suffering, breakdown in social structures that they have come to depend on to survive. Populations are concentrated, remote, and rely on imported resources. They can't survive the loss of import infrastructure.
2. Protecting people from violence and exploitation needs to address that dependency. Generally there is a project of organizing citizen movements that will concern themselves with producing and distributing essentials in a way that best fits their local circumstances.
3. It seems like there are many online communities that recognize the danger of breakdown in systems they depend on, and even view local autonomy as a good response. However, I rarely see evidence that any action is being taken, even when I get the impression someone is quite serious about the idea.
4. An online community dedicated to assisting its members in becoming locally active could be a wide reaching positive influence. Whether starting or joining a local initiative, having others online could offer support, accountability, and knowledge.
So my (2) 🙂 simple questions are:
1. Do the above points generally align with your goals and views?
2. Does it make sense to gather an initial group with the intention of elaborating and focusing those kind of ideas (keeping track of assumptions and obstacles to review later)?
A topic of interest to me is the major barriers in moving from online to local engagement.
"1. Do the above points generally align with your goals and views?"
Yes, generally.
2. Does it make sense to gather an initial group with the intention of elaborating and focusing those kind of ideas (keeping track of assumptions and obstacles to review later)?
Yes, generally.
While I'm personally very much interested in actual, local, practical application of the sort of political engagement I'm exploring here, and have been active in on-the-ground local projects to do so, I found it exceedingly difficult to make any meaningful progress at it. That's what turned my attention pretty strongly to trying to understand "Why?" Why is my micro-eutopian (Greek: micro = small. Eu = good. Topia = place) approach to social / political change not being more widely adopted ... anywhere? I came to believe the answer lies mainly in that the mainstream / dominant culture has no popular theory or story (discourse) of micro-eutopian social and political practice. So I was speaking Swahili to most people. They just didn't understand that when I advocated for widespread neighborhood-scaled permaculture and bioregionalist practices, gradually involving whole neighborhoods in the practice of collaboration and mutuality that I was wanting to help create a much different kind of culture -- one that could be sustainable but also socially just and ... well, good and beautiful.
My purpose was not understood. One woman even said "I don't have time for hobbies" after joining the community food forest Facebook group I started. That pretty much summed it up. She thought I was a hobbyist. I thought I was a non-violent revolutionary. So I started to write about non-violent revolution as political practice, just to shake up the imaginative and discursive space, and maybe make the impossible ever so slightly more possible.
"A topic of interest to me is the major barriers in moving from online to local engagement."
Yeah, you and everyone else. I wish I could say I know of really strong, good resources for this. But, really, I think you're going to have to find the ones that work for you. I do recommend joining Deep Transformation Network, though. We at DTN may eventually be able to at least direct folks to such resources, if not to be a network hub for such.
Thanks, this sums a lot up well. I was unaware of DTN, I'll definitely give it a look. And I do see the same challenges, in fact many people do not seem to understand that they are the culture, they can create and change it, or that there would be any reason to think about or do such a thing.
I'm still considering myself what has led to this, and how the ideas could be presented in the current context that would speak to existing culture and values in a way that may inspire people's imagination toward evolving local culture in ways they really care about. One thought is to demonstrate value for children and future generations as compared with present trajectory and lifestyle.
Hmm. It would be an exaggeration to say that I 'follow' Small Farm Future. But I do read there now and then, and have ready many of Smaje's blog posts. I also hope to read his book at some point. (So many books wanting my attention!)
I noticed that even though I intend to come read what you've been up to, I forget about this substack because I'm distracted by push notifications from other networks. Maybe you need a twitter account just to link to your posts here. If you want I can set one up and try to stay on it. Haven't checked if substack has RSS, but maybe I can code something that makes cross posts automatically. Maybe someone's already done it and it'd just need to get set up.
You can go right ahead and create a Twitter account, if you like. Thanks.
Also, I was surprised you were not a subscriber. Subscription is free. It will always be free. If you subscribe you will receive notices whenever a new post is published.
Cool, I will do that for you. I am still looking online for people who would like to join here and are like minded at least in their sincerity to explore positive change, vs stuck in political anger or nihilistic despair.
I do subscribe, just don't check my email often, it's an old account that i long gave up on filtering, and I let myself get conditioned to push notifications (something I'm trying to undo). 🤷♂️
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. 🌱
Cutroot - After you posted the above I got busy with writing. I read what you wrote, but found it overwhelming in scope, with so many questions raised all at once. It just felt like too much.
Perhaps, for the sake of having a conversation, you could offer one idea which you think might be helpful, somehow. Or ask one question which feels particularly important? Then we can see if we can work it through, bit by bit (?).
Hey, been meaning to stop by and follow up. Thanks for the reply.
Yea that was a bit of a brain dump. I was tired and feeling particularly frustrated at the time, which can send me off on tangents of many words with little said 🙂.
The main points here are really:
1. Many people in the world are at risk of, or currently suffering, breakdown in social structures that they have come to depend on to survive. Populations are concentrated, remote, and rely on imported resources. They can't survive the loss of import infrastructure.
2. Protecting people from violence and exploitation needs to address that dependency. Generally there is a project of organizing citizen movements that will concern themselves with producing and distributing essentials in a way that best fits their local circumstances.
3. It seems like there are many online communities that recognize the danger of breakdown in systems they depend on, and even view local autonomy as a good response. However, I rarely see evidence that any action is being taken, even when I get the impression someone is quite serious about the idea.
4. An online community dedicated to assisting its members in becoming locally active could be a wide reaching positive influence. Whether starting or joining a local initiative, having others online could offer support, accountability, and knowledge.
So my (2) 🙂 simple questions are:
1. Do the above points generally align with your goals and views?
2. Does it make sense to gather an initial group with the intention of elaborating and focusing those kind of ideas (keeping track of assumptions and obstacles to review later)?
A topic of interest to me is the major barriers in moving from online to local engagement.
So my (2) 🙂 simple questions are:
"1. Do the above points generally align with your goals and views?"
Yes, generally.
2. Does it make sense to gather an initial group with the intention of elaborating and focusing those kind of ideas (keeping track of assumptions and obstacles to review later)?
Yes, generally.
While I'm personally very much interested in actual, local, practical application of the sort of political engagement I'm exploring here, and have been active in on-the-ground local projects to do so, I found it exceedingly difficult to make any meaningful progress at it. That's what turned my attention pretty strongly to trying to understand "Why?" Why is my micro-eutopian (Greek: micro = small. Eu = good. Topia = place) approach to social / political change not being more widely adopted ... anywhere? I came to believe the answer lies mainly in that the mainstream / dominant culture has no popular theory or story (discourse) of micro-eutopian social and political practice. So I was speaking Swahili to most people. They just didn't understand that when I advocated for widespread neighborhood-scaled permaculture and bioregionalist practices, gradually involving whole neighborhoods in the practice of collaboration and mutuality that I was wanting to help create a much different kind of culture -- one that could be sustainable but also socially just and ... well, good and beautiful.
My purpose was not understood. One woman even said "I don't have time for hobbies" after joining the community food forest Facebook group I started. That pretty much summed it up. She thought I was a hobbyist. I thought I was a non-violent revolutionary. So I started to write about non-violent revolution as political practice, just to shake up the imaginative and discursive space, and maybe make the impossible ever so slightly more possible.
"A topic of interest to me is the major barriers in moving from online to local engagement."
Yeah, you and everyone else. I wish I could say I know of really strong, good resources for this. But, really, I think you're going to have to find the ones that work for you. I do recommend joining Deep Transformation Network, though. We at DTN may eventually be able to at least direct folks to such resources, if not to be a network hub for such.
But, hey, enjoy your hobbies! LOL.
Thanks, this sums a lot up well. I was unaware of DTN, I'll definitely give it a look. And I do see the same challenges, in fact many people do not seem to understand that they are the culture, they can create and change it, or that there would be any reason to think about or do such a thing.
I'm still considering myself what has led to this, and how the ideas could be presented in the current context that would speak to existing culture and values in a way that may inspire people's imagination toward evolving local culture in ways they really care about. One thought is to demonstrate value for children and future generations as compared with present trajectory and lifestyle.
Hmm. It would be an exaggeration to say that I 'follow' Small Farm Future. But I do read there now and then, and have ready many of Smaje's blog posts. I also hope to read his book at some point. (So many books wanting my attention!)
Thanks cutroot. That was a lot easier to make sense of and handle!
I'm spinning a few plates today and will respond as time allows.
Well done, though. That doesn't even hurt my head the way your last contribution did. Thanks! Nicely artriculated this time.
I noticed that even though I intend to come read what you've been up to, I forget about this substack because I'm distracted by push notifications from other networks. Maybe you need a twitter account just to link to your posts here. If you want I can set one up and try to stay on it. Haven't checked if substack has RSS, but maybe I can code something that makes cross posts automatically. Maybe someone's already done it and it'd just need to get set up.
You can go right ahead and create a Twitter account, if you like. Thanks.
Also, I was surprised you were not a subscriber. Subscription is free. It will always be free. If you subscribe you will receive notices whenever a new post is published.
Cool, I will do that for you. I am still looking online for people who would like to join here and are like minded at least in their sincerity to explore positive change, vs stuck in political anger or nihilistic despair.
I do subscribe, just don't check my email often, it's an old account that i long gave up on filtering, and I let myself get conditioned to push notifications (something I'm trying to undo). 🤷♂️