___________________________________________________________ GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION : WHY WE NEED IT AND HOW WE CAN ACHIEVE IT (C) 2004 Richard K. Moore from: Part III - A MESSAGE TO WE THE PEOPLE THE LIBERATION OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS * Cultures and conditioning Animals are born with most of their behavior patterns already hard-wired in. Humans on the other hand learn their behavior patterns and beliefs -- their culture -- from their society. We are born with a programmable culture-unit rather than a pre-programmed behavior-unit. Psychologists recognize a measurable programmability-factor in humans which is most pronounced in infancy, declines gradually, and which falls off sharply after about age 13. This is why we have the phrase 'impressionable youth'. If a child is taught that Apollo carries the sun across the sky each day in a chariot, that will be accepted as unquestioned, literal truth -- as would be the tenets of any other religion. The adult can't say why he believes these myths, he simply 'knows they are true'. The unquestioned faith of the adult is the frozen programming of the child. The conversion of a pre-wired behavior-unit into a programmable culture-unit was one of our most important and unique evolutionary developments. It facilitated the emergence of early humans from the forest to pursue a wide variety of available niches. The rate of our cultural evolution could be measured in centuries or even generations -- rather than millennia. We soon left the other species behind like so many frozen statues in a pastoral tableau. Lions are still doing exactly what they were doing before humans came along. Meanwhile, we've gone on to build civilizations and acclimatize ourselves to their cultures. In our early days as Homo sapiens, each band or tribe gradually evolved its own culture, adopting a world view that supported the perceived requirements of its economic milieu. The culture grew out of the relationship of the tribe with its natural environment. These cultures were holistic, in that economics, skills, stories, songs, maturation rites, male and female roles, beliefs, cosmology, morals -- all of these things and more -- were of a whole fabric. Cultures were typically unique to each tribal group and remarkably stable over time, often including a mechanism for reliably passing on historical tradition orally. The stability of early cultures was largely due to the fact that children are programmable and that adults tend to rigidly retain the programming. People learn their cultures, and the meaning of the world, as youth -- and then as adults they simply see what they were told as being 'truth'. As a consequence, they pass on the same 'truth' to their children in turn. If children were more critical of what they were told, or if adults were more open to learning new truths, then cultures would be less stable over time. This combination of youthful programmability and adult rigidity was perhaps necessary for our early survival. But after civilization came along this became a primary means of subjugating populations. It became the basis of religion and of social conditioning. Anthropologists tell us that the first hierarchical societies were chiefdoms. These early chiefs claimed to be gods -- and were treated as such by their subjects. The children of the tribe were taught that the chief was a god, they took it as truth, and as adults their obedience was assured. Chiefs could use force to command allegiance, but their need to use force was greatly reduced by their status as divinities. To disobey or oppose the chief was not only a crime punishable by death, but a sacrilege as well. As long as each new generation was conditioned to this system of myths, then the chief and his heirs were able to maintain their ruling positions with minimum need for force. Thus from the very beginning of hierarchical societies, myths and conditioning have been used as tools of subjugation. As civilization has evolved, the means of conditioning the masses have become gradually more sophisticated. The basic challenge is to instill a fundamental world view that supports the continuance of the ruling regime. Once the world view is successfully installed, then the context of subjugation has been established. For most of the past 2,000 years, strong religious institutions, and strong social conditioning about faith and belief, have served as the primary means of inculcating a world view that would accept hierarchy, suffering, and political impotence as normal states of being. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's...", and so forth. This has been a rather stable conditioning system over these two thousand years, with occasional readjustments in response to political and economic developments, such as the Protestant Revolution which facilitated the emergence of nationalism. * Liberalism: today's mythology The Enlightenment (c. 1800) brought what was perhaps the greatest transformation in mythology since the first hierarchical societies. Discoveries in science were challenging the traditional religious mythologies, and the rising merchant class felt stifled by the hierarchies of aristocracy and the church. The result was a gradual transformation of Western societies from kingdoms to republics, beginning with the American and French Revolutions. Although religious doctrines have continued to play an important role, republicanism introduced a new dominant mythology: liberalism. From my American Heritage dictionary: liberal. 2. Having, expressing, or following views or policies that favor the freedom of individuals to act or express themselves in a manner of their own choosing. In this original sense of the word, liberalism included everyone who was opposed to absolute monarchy. While in current American usage 'liberal' refers to someone on the left half of the political spectrum, in its original sense 'liberal' would include nearly everyone in the modern world. We can see the vestige of this sense of the word in the term 'neoliberal', which is a right-wing agenda. There are two primary liberal myths. The first myth is that the individual is the sovereign unit in society, and the second myth is that the will of the sovereign individual can find expression through electoral representation. Neither of these myths makes any more sense, nor has any more evidence to support it, than the belief that Apollo carries the sun across the sky in a chariot. The myth of individual sovereignty is very appealing because we as individuals like the idea of being autonomous and sovereign. The myth appeals particularly to the juvenile urge that arises in the youth of all societies to rebel against the established order. Children have always messed about a bit, working out their selfish, not-yet-socialized urges. In large measure, the liberal cult of individualism is a case of cultural neoteny -- the retention of a juvenile tendency in the adults of our society. We are encouraged to compete as selfish individuals, to make our individual way in the world, to struggle one against another. This, we are taught, is freedom. Appealing as the idea of individual sovereignty might superficially appear to be, it suffers from the fact that it does not and could never exist in reality. Except for the rare isolated hermit, people have always lived, and always will live, within ordered societies. Societies have always had rules which must be followed, and punishments for rule breakers. Individuals have always had to conform to those rules, whether they be 'god given' or passed by legislatures. Most people don't even question the rules, but conform readily to them so as to make their lives go more smoothly. In fact, sovereignty is about making the rules, not following them. In the early days of civilization it was the kings that made the rules, and they were known as 'sovereigns'. Today it is legislatures that make the rules -- remote bureaucracies made up of corrupt power seekers, party hacks, and corporate proxies. Setting aside globalization and the WTO for the moment, the nation state is the unit of sovereignty in our modern world -- not the individual. The individual is compelled to obey the laws, to seek his or her fortune within the constraints laid down by elites, and can typically be coerced into going off and risking his or her life in imperialist wars. This is not sovereignty, this is slavery. We won't be sovereign, as individuals or in any other way, until we make the rules ourselves. This brings us to the second myth of liberalism: that democracy is achievable by means of competitive politics and elected representatives. The fact that history shows us no example of this myth being realized should raise doubt in the liberal, in the same way that the fossil record should raise doubt in those who believe literally in the biblical creation myth. In neither case, however, do the facts seem to dispel the myth that was implanted during the programmable years. No less should doubt be raised in the liberal by the actual performance of today's so-called democracies. In no way could anyone characterize the policies of our modern societies as being an expression of democratic will. Indeed, those who support the governments most loyally seem to have the least understanding of what those governments are actually up to. Accurate information is not made available to the masses, and their opinion is not requested when policies are being made... how could they possibly, through representation or not, be the source of actual social policy? How can an X in a box possibly convey the complex will of an allegedly sovereign human being? The idea is preposterous, as preposterous as any primitive superstition. * There is hope for the liberal Fortunately, there is hope for those who have been programmed into the cult of liberalism. There are effective deprogramming tools available. The harmonization process is one such tool. In the experience of a facilitated face-to-face gathering of diverse people, the recovering liberal can learn two liberating lessons at the same time. The first lesson has to do with the relationship of the individual to the group. When people learn to let down the defensive shell of personal prejudices, and allow themselves to enter a shared mental space, an exciting synergy emerges -- a collective wisdom that is much greater than the sum of the individual wisdoms. The individual is not submerged by this process, rather the individual is awakened and empowered by being really listened to. The experience is one of heightened personal power, enabled by ceasing to view power as a matter of dominance, but seeing it instead as a measure of our ability to achieve our goals -- an ability that is enhanced profoundly by seeking solutions in open and trusting cooperation with others. The recovering liberal learns from this lesson that the solitary individual is under-qualified to act as a sovereign social unit. We need the synergy of a larger group, or community, in order to have a context in which our own will can find expression and effective realization. In short: the group empowers the individual; the solitary individual is politically impotent and, relatively speaking, creatively impoverished. The second lesson has to do with the relationship of the individual to governance. The heart of this lesson is that ordinary people are competent to govern themselves. Our societies generally, and hence our socialization processes, give us only the models of collaborative and adversarial dynamics (as described in "Harmonization and the microcosm") for use in our interactions. As solitary individuals using these deficient processes we 'learn' that ordinary people aren't very effective in solving difficult problems together, or on reaching agreement on divisive issues. This conditioned learning reinforces the myth that we can only find effective political expression through representation, and by trusting in the professional hierarchy. In a harmonization session, the recovering liberal learns that ordinary people can work profoundly well together -- when they learn to engage in dynamics that enable their collective wisdom to emerge. The full meaning of this second lesson is not necessarily taken in all at once. At first it may be only a glimmer of a realization, in the context of a small group. But after even a single session, the programmed belief in the necessity of hierarchy can no longer be entirely sacrosanct. The wedge of liberation from hierarchy has been put in place. Further experience with harmonization can only drive the wedge forward, leading eventually to the realization that genuine grassroots participatory democracy is possible. In the end, the recovered liberal finds that his programmed beliefs were a subtle distortion of a larger truth. Yes the individual is the primary source of sovereign will in a democracy -- but that will can only find effective expression in a larger, cooperative political unit. And yes, political sovereignty should begin down at the grassroots of a democracy -- but the solitary individual is not quite viable as a foundation for that sovereignty. From the perspective of this larger truth, the natural synergy between localism and democracy begins to become apparent. It is in the local community that the sovereign individual can effectively participate, and it is the local community which is viable as the sovereign political unit at the grassroots of a democratic society. Thus the spreading of a culture of harmonization has two aspects. On the one hand it is a deprogramming campaign, aimed at the liberation of liberals of the left and right (victims our dominant subjugating mythology). On the other hand it is a positive movement aimed at establishing a culture suitable to a democratic society. Unlike every other culture which has characterized civilization, a culture of harmonization is not supportive of hierarchy. In that sense, it is the most revolutionary cultural development to come along since civilization itself. But there is even more to it than that. * Cultural evolution in a democracy Earlier I suggested that the emergence of a programmable culture-unit was a major step forward for humanity's cultural evolution. With that genetic innovation, Homo sapiens was able to evolve its cultures in drastically shorter time frames than can be accomplished by biological evolution. Our consequent ability to expand into new niches soon outstripped that of our competitor species. And yet, as I also pointed out, early cultural evolution was strongly limited by the automatic passing down of cultures from generation to generation, with change minimized. This stabilizing aspect of early cultural evolution was suitable to early societies, where changes in basic circumstances occurred relatively rarely. Early societies were strongly conservative, and rightly so. Our modern societies, particularly when undergoing a process of radical transformation, are much more dynamic affairs than those of early Homo sapiens. An even more rapid means of cultural evolution would be suitable for us. Locally-based democracy provides a suitable vehicle for that more rapid evolution. A democratic community can transform its culture simply by dialoging and adopting changes. Our programmable reality-unit moved the scale of cultural evolution from the realm of genetic changes into the realm of behavioral adaptation. Democracy accelerates the scale of cultural evolution further on into the realm of conscious cognition. As I've mentioned before, we can surely expect a global cultural renaissance. Early societies needed myths as an effective means of passing on successful cultural adaptations. Hierarchical societies needed myths in order to subjugate the people. A democratic society has no need of myths. People can believe in myths if they want to, that's their sovereign right, but the maintenance of a democratic society does not depend on everyone subscribing to any particular myth. This lack of enabling mythology is in fact the most revolutionary aspect of this particular cultural transformation. Not only are we going back to before civilization began (by abandoning hierarchy), but we are abandoning something that primates have always had: an inherited culture. Early Homo sapiens inherited his culture through conditioning, rather than genes, but it was inherited nonetheless, and it was typically rigid and only very slowly changing. For the first time ever, humanity will be free to define its own destiny, unencumbered by systematically conditioned false beliefs and superstitions. This 'defining our own destiny rationally' was part of the original Enlightenment vision, but it was in that case betrayed. To the elites who ran republican societies, keeping the people under control was the most important priority. Desirable cultural evolution under elites has been systematically minimized, being forced only by effective grassroots activism, or occurring fortuitously as a result of elite agendas. Meanwhile undesirable cultural evolution, as we've seen under neoliberalism, has been initiated whenever such has been required to enable further capitalist growth. As we launch into transforming our societies, free at last from elites and conditioned myths, we will most likely experience an initial, explosive 'speciation' of new cultures. This does not mean, however, that our democratic cultures will be plastic affairs, changing with every season and fashion. What it does mean is that our cultures will be free to co-evolve along with the economic, infrastructure, life-style, and other decisions we make as we transform our societies. In fact, we can expect our cultures to tend to stabilize over time due to the constraints of sustainability. Sustainability and stability go hand in hand. Sustainable agriculture, for example, tends to involve rotating through those crops which are most suitable for the local soil and climate. Hence one might expect regular cycles of agricultural activity to develop. Sustainable businesses would want to have markets and suppliers whose demands and productivity are relatively stable over time. Hence we might see a stabilization of business enterprises, perhaps somewhat akin to the medieval guild system, but guided by democratic principles. We also have reason to expect that our cultures will become more holistic, as were early human cultures. When our cultures are free to evolve, instead of being constrained by relatively rigid myths, the various aspects of our cultures are likely to converge toward some kind of mutual consistency. As we universally adopt sustainable practices, for example, we are likely to regain respect for nature at a spiritual level, as was characteristic of early human cultures. And as we become accustomed to using harmonization in our political affairs, we are likely to develop a more cooperative and loving ethic toward our fellow humans generally. As regards respect for nature in early cultures, it is true that exceptions can be found when tribes migrated to new territories. They often opportunistically exterminated vulnerable food species. But eventually equilibrium would be reached and respect for nature would become part of the culture. We can view industrialization as such a 'new territory', leading to the opportunistic decimation of nature. When we leave those exploitive practices behind us, as did early societies when the vulnerable species disappeared, we too can expect our world view to come into alignment with our new economic practices. * Democracy and personal liberation While liberalism promises personal liberty, it is under genuine democracy that we will experience personal liberty for the first time. Actually participating in the conditions that affect our lives will be not only politically liberating, but psychologically liberating as well. We have been in a dark prison for millennia, and emerging into the daylight of freedom will liberate our spirits in more ways than we can imagine. Like the lion in "Born Free", we will be able to discover our true natures as free beings. One of the things we will discover, in a society that is governed for the benefit of the people, is that we have been working entirely too hard. It is not our needs that force us to work ten hours a day or more, but rather the needs of capitalism. The scarcity that we experience in our lives is an artificial scarcity, required so that elites can extract astronomical profits from our labor. Indeed, a major problem for capitalism has been the 'excess production' enabled by industrial methods. If applied sensibly, modern technology can produce whatever artifacts we need with a small fraction of the effort currently devoted to 'work'. In a democratic society based on local sovereignty and ownership, we will find that we have lots of free time on our hands. Free time plus a liberated spirit is a formula for unleashing creativity. Not only will we experience a renaissance of creativity at the level of our societies, but art, poetry, music, science and all manner of personal creativity will be enabled as well. In our societies today, it is very difficult to be an artist. You must have a special talent and dedication in order to make a living by art in a society which does not assign much economic value to art. And if you want to pursue scientific inquiry, your are restricted to what will be funded by establishment institutions. When we don't need to spend most of our waking hours working to support elite's mega-wealth, then we will find there are artists and poets all around us. Indeed, some indigenous societies today do not have a special word for 'artist' or 'musician'. They understood that everyone has such talents. And when scientific inquiry can be pursued free of elite agendas, who knows what breakthroughs might be possible? Instead of being constrained by the needs of corporate profit making, our only scientific constraints will be those imposed by our democratic will. Rather than most of our research going toward developing weaponry and frivolous consumer products, our research can be guided by the needs of society and the pursuit of understanding. Many social visionaries today believe that 'personal transformation' on a massive scale is necessary before social transformation can be achieved. I suggest that this is a disempowering myth, a means of subjugation just like our other myths. It inhibits us from pursuing social transformation and it blames us, the victims, for a society that has in fact been fashioned by elites for their own benefit. This 'necessity of personal transformation' myth can be seen as a vestige of the myth of 'original sin'. The myth fails to recognize that the deficiencies in our current level of personal consciousness are due not to our inherent natures, but are largely the result of systematic conditioning. If the conditioning is removed, the path to personal transformation will be a far easier one. The conditioning can be removed by appropriate social transformation. If we put the cart before the horse (personal before social transformation), we are prevented from moving forward. The teachings of Buddha and Christ have been known for thousands of years, and yet massive personal transformation has not yet occurred. But as with all myths, this kind of obvious evidence seems to go unnoticed by those who subscribe to the myth. * Education in a democratic society In our current societies, the primary role of 'education' is to fill the youth with disempowering myths and to condition them to the practical requirements of a regimented society. Indeed, general public 'education' was not established until industrialism came along, requiring a literate work force who could understand and obey complex instructions. Before that, illiteracy had served as one more mechanism to subjugate the masses. In a democratic society, we can restore 'education' to the original meaning of the word. The word comes from 'educe', which means to "bring out or develop something latent or potential" (New Oxford Dictionary of English). Instead of force-feeding children myths and 'useful facts', we can seek to 'bring out' their innate wisdom and allow their learning to be guided by their innate curiosity. There have been educational pioneers who have applied such educational methods in today's societies, and the results have been remarkable. When children are programmed with myths, then as adults they are constrained by those myths. To the extent children are liberated from myths, they as adults will be that much closer to personal and psychological liberation. The full flowering of our new democratic societies will be realized by future generations, who have been freed in this way during their formative years of learning. We will envy them and, as I suggested earlier, we can only dimly imagine the personal and cultural renaissance that is likely to occur. At the same time, we must respect the right of families to raise their children according to their own family values, even if some of us consider those values to be based on unfortunate myths. For us to instill in children atheistic beliefs, for example, would be manipulative programming -- just as much as if we instill in them religious mythology. My own bias against religion has been clear from this material, but I would not impose that bias on others. I have faith that in a liberated, democratic society, a balance will be reached between those with religious convictions and those who lack or even scorn them. This too was part of the original Enlightenment vision, and this too was betrayed by elites who found that in secular 'democracies' religion could be exploited as a tool to divide and subjugate the masses. We can take hope from the experience of the Michigan gathering (in "Harmonization in the microcosm"), where by the process of harmonization, religious fundamentalists and outspoken liberals (in the leftist sense) were able to find common ground. ________________________________________________________ -- ============================================================ 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 "Global Transformation: Whey We Need It And How We Can Achieve It", current draft: http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/rkmGlblTrans.html _____________________________ "...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.indymedia.org/ http://www.globalresearch.ca/ http://www.MiddleEast.org http://www.rachel.org http://www.truthout.org http://www.williambowles.info/monthly_index/ http://www.zmag.org http://www.co-intelligence.org ============================================================