GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION- WHY WE NEED IT AND HOW WE CAN ACHIEVE IT ________________________________________________________ Chapter 2: ENVISIONING A TRANSFORMED WORLD In order to explore the possibilities for a new world system, it is necessary to have some kind of value system or criteria by which to evaluate the possibilities. The value system I will be working from is very simple. I seek a world without warfare, and that is made up societies that are democratic, prosperous, and sustainable. I believe that such a world can be expected to evolve creatively to maximize human potential for everyone. And I believe, based on my investigations, that such a world is both possible and achievable. If the new societies are to be sustainable, then their economic systems must be set up to reflect environmental realities as faithfully as the current economic system reflects market realities. Instead of encouraging short term exploitation and continual growth, the economies must be be set up to reward long-term planning and the prudent use of resources. Whereas currencies today are controlled by hierarchical organizations and are based on the creation of debt, the currencies of transformed societies must be controlled democratically and must be oriented around facilitating productive exchange rather than facilitating the growth imperative and the accumulation of wealth by a few . If we want our economic systems to be sustainable and if we want peace among societies, then the dominant cultural paradigms of exploitation and dominion must be supplanted by the paradigms of respect and cooperation. These new paradigms must guide the relationship between each society and nature, and they must guide the relationship among societies. And instead of being based on exploitation and domination, international trade must be based on mutual-benefit exchange. If the new societies are to be democratic, then they must avoid all forms of hierarchical control, whether they be economic, political, religious, or social in their orientation. Not only must hierarchy be avoided within societies, but they it must be avoided as well in the relationship among societies. These "musts" arise from the fact that the dynamics of hierarchy always lead eventually to the concentration of power in a leadership clique. If such an empowered clique is allowed to develop, either within a society as part of inter-societal relationships, that could only serve to undermine democracy and interfere with the ability of societies to run their own affairs democratically and sustainably. If hierarchy is to be avoided within societies and among societies, then the local community must be the fundamental unit of political and economic sovereignty. Only at the community level is it possible for the whole population to dialog together face to face, consider its collective situation, and reach a democratic consensus on the best way forward. Early American politics was frequently based on Town Meetings, and the technology of such dialog events has improved immensely since then. On such a base a democratic society can be built. If we start with any larger unit than the community, then the system must be based on representation - but representation of a constituency which has not figured out what it wants. Such agenda-free representation inevitably leads to the kind of political corruption and power-brokering that plagues our current societies. Economically, the community level provides optimal conditions for regulating economic affairs sensibly and productively. Feedback loops are immediate and direct. Local residents have a natural motivation to respect and improve their own local environment, just as much as they are motivated to pursue economic prosperity. If the local people have the power to control their local environment and its resources, then they are in an ideal position to husband those assets in the most creative, sustainable, and productive way - and they are naturally motivated to do so. I believe that a sovereign community unit would be guided toward productive and beneficial economic operations by the same kind of "invisible hand" that Adam Smith described in reference to a market economy. From a systems point of view, these are the "constraints" or "design requirements" that must guide the development of our transformed society. I have identified these necessary constraints based on my examination of history and current events, as outlined in the previous chapter. In later chapters, I will develop further the ideas and observations outlined there - putting the ideas into context and providing substantiation for the conclusions reached. In this chapter, I would like to explore the consequences and implications of the constraints I have identified. I'd like to examine these questions: Is it feasible for a society, and a world system, to function under these constraints? What can we say about the nature of such societies and such a world system? Transformation of world view ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In order to achieve sustainable societies, it will be necessary for humanity's relationship with nature to become one of cooperation and respect rather than exploitation. The dominion myth cannot be allowed to poison our relationship with the Earth. Nature wants to be a generous and regenerative resource, and she is willing to share her bounty with us - but she cannot do her job unless we are sensitive to her needs and nurture her along. Somehow the wisdom of sustainability and cooperation with nature needs to be deeply embedded in the psyche of our new societies. One thing that would help us is a mythology that can resonate widely in the population and which can supplant the biblical dominion myth. Perhaps what we need is a story where we find out the serpent is the good guy, Adam and Eve return joyously to the Garden, and Jehovah repents his sinful ways. Presumably the inherent wisdom of such a myth could be expected to resonate with our primal inner natures, which evolved in cultures which respected and lived in harmony with nature for untold eons. In this regard we can take some encouragement from the fact that Wikka (a pagan religion oriented around nature spirits) is reportedly the fastest growing religion in the West. And deep ecologists like Elisabet Sahtouris, along with writers such as David Korten, are promoting the idea that we need to look at modern biology - emphasizing cooperation and creativity within nature - to find deep models for a transformed society. This kind of thinking, though perhaps more secular than spiritual, begins to reach mythological depth - just like Enlightenment thinking did in the late 1700s. It seems that humanity is in the process of creating the myths that will be necessary for its continued survival. Our species evolutionary wisdom is perhaps expressing itself. Another thing that would help support a sustainable society is an ethical framework that respects appropriate technology and sustainability. But guess what, isn't that a fairly dominant ethical framework already? Don't we recycle all over the Western world? Aren't efficient cars popular? Don't we watch two or three documentaries a week about cute species in remote areas, and don't we yearn for their survival? Don't we have Green Parties and hundreds of activist environmental organizations, and haven't we achieved some success getting environmental legislation passed? And the EU, isn't it showing lots of greenness in its ever-expanding regulatory regime - as a result of public pressure? When it comes to the important principle of sustainability, people generally are already on board ethically. There is no need for any mass conversion of consciousness to prepare people for participation in a sustainable society. Humanity is destroying the planet not because of the sentiments of the population, but because of the economic system they are forced to operate within. Economic Transformation ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ At present, the overall relationship of humanity toward nature is one of systematic exploitation. This exploitation is accelerating even in the face of widespread resource depletion and degradation. To a limited extent the increase in resource exploitation is driven by the need to feed growing populations. But it turns out that a more significant driver of the increase arises from the nature of our exploitation practices. Modern agriculture is a good example. From the standpoint of money, modern agriculture is acclaimed as maximizing the productivity per unit of investment. That's why MacDonald's hamburgers are so cheap. But modern agriculture achieves its profitability by extremely wasteful and imprudent exploitation of scarce water and soil resources that have higher value uses - in human terms and in the long term. And there are other ways to pursue agricultural productivity which avoid these kinds of adverse side-effects. If a society is going to be sustainable, then its economic system must implement that principle. The principle needs to be reflected in the financial system, in trade arrangements, and in the way people and enterprises are motivated to operate. I'll have more to say about this in subsequent chapters. For now let me emphasize two of the points I will develop later. The first point is that setting up such economic systems is not difficult from a technical point of view. We have countless examples to look at around the world today and throughout history - and there is a rich school of thought being developed and published by competent people that focuses on sustainable economics. The second point is that there are many solutions and they can co-exist. There can be market economies alongside collectively managed ones, and export-oriented industrial economies alongside self-sufficient agricultural economies. There can be different currencies and there can be efficient trade across currency boundaries. Trade can be non-exploitive. These things turn out not to be rocket science, but rather a matter of societal will. If we look at some of the Latin American responses to globalization - particularly the participatory budgets in Brazilian cities - we see how ordinary people can participate competently in sound economic practices when the political environment is supportive. If the opportunity to create a transformed world arises, humanity has adequate know-how and adaptability to set up appropriate economic arrangements to facilitate sustainable practices. The current dominance of neoliberal laissez-faire policies is not due to a lack of economic understanding, but rather reflects the ability of wealthy elites to set up economic regimes that serve their own narrow interests. Assuming we will be able to set up appropriate economic systems to support sustainability, how then do we make the transition from current practices to the new practices? Must we face food shortages in the interim? Will there be financial chaos while we change over to new banking systems, currencies, etc.? And then there's the big question: has global population reached the point where sustainability is simply impossible - without massive die-offs? These are non-trivial questions and we will explore them in more fully in later chapters. As regards the pressure of population levels, I suggest that the sooner we can begin sustainable practices the better we will be able to respond to those pressures. The longer we postpone the transition, the more diminished and degraded will be the resources available for us to respond with. As regards managing the transition, I suggest again that the principle of localism should be our guide. To put it baldly, I would begin the transition process by transferring title and control over everything in each community to that community. This implies that no one outside the community can retain ownership of anything in the community. All absentee-held property would transfer - without consideration - to the locality as a whole. All corporate offices and plants, government land and buildings, roadways, waterways, utilities infrastructures, etc., would become a resource of the local community to be managed and developed by the community in the long-term best interests of the community as a whole. If there is to be a wholesale transfer of ownership, then there must first be a preliminary transition phase - wherein ownership and control are passed from absentee hands to local hands. This preliminary phase would also need to deal with a financial transition. Suddenly all the big corporations and banks would no longer exist. Debts and assets recorded on accounts would become meaningless. Money itself would be just so much paper and metal. I am intentionally suggesting that a transformed economic system can best be established by first razing the current system right down to the ground. If the community is to have political and economic sovereignty, then it must have control over its money. This is why The City (London's financial center) doesn't want the UK to join the Euro zone - they know it's important to control their precious Pound Sterling. With that control, they can better coordinate their efforts to regulate inflation, interest rates, money supply, and other aspects of economic activity. In the case of local money, we find that once again our species wisdom is emerging just when needed. All over the world local currencies are coming into use - it's becoming an economic movement. In parts of Latin America, where IMF policies have made money scarce, local currencies have sprung up and productive exchange has begun to replace poverty and stagnation. I don't know how successful this movement will be in our current context, but I do know that this movement provides us with a considerable laboratory of experiments to learn from. One of the principles upon which local currencies operate is trust, or reputation. Let me illustrate this trust principle with an episode that occurred here in Ireland in the 1970's. There was a general bank strike. All the banks were shut down for an extended period - months - and there was no way to draw money out, no check cashing service, no ATM machines, etc. What people did was to keep right on doing business, and they'd write checks to each other for goods and services - and then would pass those checks on again when purchasing in turn. What developed here is a reputation-based regulation system. Obviously you would not accept a check signed by a vagrant in exchange for a new Mercedes. But you might accept such a check signed by the owner of the biggest hotel in town, and you would accept a check from your employer - or else you'd leave your job. Commerce proceeded, and when the banks opened they took in all the checks and everything generally balanced out. The folk market had successfully regulated itself. The technology of local currencies has developed sufficiently for our needs. It would not be difficult to establish local currencies and some efficient means of exchange among them - that's a minor problem on the overall scale of global transformation. With such a financial system in place, it would then be possible to transfer ownership to the communities and get on with business. Each community would be motivated to maintain the integrity and stability of its currency. In that way it enhances its own economic activity and its attractiveness as a trading partner. Such a distributed financial system would be naturally self-stabilizing. There is a lot more to think about as regards the process of transition and the wisdom of centering sovereignty locally. Our attention will return to those in later chapters. The question of local political sovereignty is the subject of the next section. Another question is "Who decides?" - to initiate a radical global transformation on the scale I have described. And I do mean global - another of my working hypotheses is that transformation must be global and nearly simultaneous. We'll get into that in the next chapter on the transformational movement. Political transformation ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Above I suggested that both economic and political sovereignty - and control over money - be centered locally, in the community, neighborhood, borough, or whatever. These are the kind of units involved in the very successful participatory budget processes in Brazil. At this scale, people can get to know and understand one another, they can dialog about their common problems both formally and informally, and they can develop a community consensus regarding their policy priorities. It is important to note that the efficacy of localism is being demonstrated "on the ground" in many parts of the world. There is empirical evidence for the hypothesis. Nonetheless, from a theoretical and common-sense perspective, there are important questions to be addressed. For example: "Why would we expect that the people who happen to live in the same community, and who may have quite different perceived interests, would be able to deliberate effectively as a community, take on difficult problems, come up with and agree on creative and effective solutions, and then implement those solutions successfully?" Anyone who's ever been to a town meeting or committee meeting, or participated in a large group project, might have reason to doubt this scenario. One might also suspect that politics and cliques would develop. Again permit me to refer to a subsequent chapter, this one devoted to group processes, facilitation, creative problem solving - and the emergence of collective wisdom, empowerment, and community bonding. That all may sound a bit new-age, but I am convinced that community solidarity and empowerment are reliably achievable. I hope my evidence and reasoning will make sense to you. One thing to keep in mind is that communities will not be in the position to assume sovereignty until after some kind of major shift in power relationships occurs - the equivalent of a successful popular revolution. Such a "revolution" would presumably be brought about by some kind of popular mass movement. Indeed, I believe the movement will need to be global and be supported by nearly everyone, for more than a simple majority. These ideas will be developed further in the chapter on the transformational movement. In a world where nearly everyone has just succeeded in overcoming history's most powerful regimes, we might expect that those people would be ready to collaborate enthusiastically with one another in building the transformed society that they had struggled to achieve. Another big question raised by localism is that of "wider scale issues". The community may be clearly motivated to respect its own commons and pursue its own destiny sensibly, but who looks after the global commons? Are there still nations, and if so, how do they run their affairs? What about fishing, whaling, pollution at sea, international waterways? And what about international peace? What about standard norms, such as prohibitions on slavery, non-sustainable practices, and exploitive economics? Who is responsible for things beyond the domain of a single locality? How do we deal with a rogue locality or region that, for example, begins stockpiling offensive weapons? Consider the birth experience of this locally-based world in which wider scale issues will become an obvious issue. This is a world in which nearly everyone has been mobilized by the movement, and has been participating or at least supporting and endorsing its aims and activities. Such a movement would be supported by trust networks, and it would develop means of coordinating its planning and activities. Presumably, if the movement manages to maintain its coherence, there would emerge a strong consensus regarding the basic principle it was struggling to achieve. Just as the French had "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity", so would the principles of democracy, sensible economics, and peaceful global collaboration be - in some poetic form - on everyone's lips. Under such conditions, we might expect the collaborative spirit of the movement to continue and to facilitate the establishment of deliberative frameworks and networks to deal with the management of the global commons. In our current system, each nation is motivated to exploit whatever resources it can get control of. If they don't do it, someone else will. In a world where each community orients its operations around prudent management, that is the new perspective they would bring to the larger societal arena. If the community depends on fish as part of its average diet, then it would support sustainable fishing policies globally - otherwise its own economy would be eventually unsustainable. And in the case of sustainability - if you lose it eventually then you never had it in the first place. The basic mechanics of bottom-up global deliberations are quite simple. First each community reaches a consensus on the issues of the day, and then they select a slate of delegates to represent that consensus - and the background sentiments of the community - at a regional council. Here we have representation with-agenda, in contrast to our current representation without-agenda. The regional council then reaches consensus and selects delegates for the next level. And so on up to a global council. This is a very simplified overview and we'll look at this in more detail in a later chapter. The important thing to note is that such a bottom-up process does not require the establishment of any government or other authority hierarchy. The councils meet at each level, publish their deliberations, and go back home to their communities and their occupations. No institution is created which can become a point of leverage for power seekers and would-be elites. Each community's agenda became part of the tiered consensus outcome, and each community would be motivated to support the policies and programs that emerged. Establishing global regulations and policies is one thing, but monitoring them and ensuring they are adhered to is is another. And the endorsement of common projects - such as a regional transport system - is one thing, and constructing and operating such a network is something else again. But again there are non- hierarchical, non-institutionalized means of dealing with such challenges. Consider this example of a regional transport system, let's say a rail network. If a community decided to support such a project, their consensus would need to take into account their contribution to the project as well as their benefit. Their resolution might go like this: "We support the regional rail project. We will provide a suitable route through our territory, pay for the materials on our segment of the track, and we will contribute two dozen experienced workers to help with all the segments of track passing through the communities in our surrounding bio-region." In a participatory democracy people learn to think in terms of responsibility as much as they do entitlements and the benefits of the commons. Projects which are adopted on a participatory, consensus basis, can be managed on a bottom-up voluntary basis. Crews would select a foreman from their ranks, based on experience, etc. There is no need for any hierarchical agency to be established. No one is being coerced - it is everyone's project. As radical as these ideas may be, I have been proceeding intentionally in a conservative manner. I've been trying to demonstrate the common sense behind the hypotheses I've been led to, using rational arguments and observations. But I invite you now to imagine the sense of empowerment and excitement we would experience if we were able to fashion our own destinies in collaboration with our neighbors and people everywhere around the globe. What a creative adventure that would be! We would be participating in the entry of the human species into self-aware maturity - after a multi-millennia detour down the dominion cul de sac. Think of the cultural renaissance that could be expected to accompany the economic renaissance and the political liberation. We would have stepped through the looking glass into a world where all things are possible, and where we are in charge. ________________________________________________________ -- ============================================================ If you find this material useful, you might want to check out our website (http://cyberjournal.org) or try out our low-traffic, moderated email list by sending a message to: •••@••.••• You are encouraged to forward any material from the lists or the website, provided it is for non-commercial use and you include the source and this disclaimer. Richard Moore (rkm) Wexford, Ireland _____________________________ "...the Patriot Act followed 9-11 as smoothly as the suspension of the Weimar constitution followed the Reichstag fire." - Srdja Trifkovic There is not a problem with the system. The system is the problem. Faith in ourselves - not gods, ideologies, leaders, or programs. _____________________________ "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 _____________________________ Informative links: http://www.globalresearch.ca/ http://www.MiddleEast.org http://www.rachel.org http://www.truthout.org http://www.zmag.org http://www.co-intelligence.org ============================================================
