Dear Secret Governors,

The Logic of the CON

by Marlow Uptake-me

Today's Approach to Running Global Empire:

Hello. My name is Marlow Uptake-me. In this "open letter" I have the honor of addressing secret governors of the world. Surely they do not these few notes of advice but perhaps they will derive a small measure of cheer from my redundancies.

1. Do not waste your time. Trying to control everything, everywhere, is a fool's game -- hubris. Authoritarianism is irrelevant. Make use of chaotic and orderly societies with equal ease. Maintain a flexible network of "shock troops" composed of private militias and dependable fragments within the military forces of many nations. Use them frequently enough to keep them ready but infrequently enough that they are not expended (as national military often is) in ongoing security situations. Such situations provide excellent cover but so do dozens of other phenomena. Be opportunistic rather than managerial. Nature, society and technology are in constant, complex flux. Be a symphony conductor -- not a control freak.

2. Carefully manage the "barons." Those individuals and clans which excel in greed, pride & brutality are either a useful tool or a nuisance depending upon circumstances. They are constantly engaged in economic, propagandistic and para-military schemes to enhance their control of global resources. Their single-mindedness and advanced equipment make them into unique chess pieces who are all too ready to believe that they are the secret and natural governing power of all societies. This perception is widely believed by the general public and provides excellent cover for your own operations.

3. Your first line of defense is obscurity. The grander and more complex your insight into the function of global systems the greater will be the gap between your psychology and that of national and tribal "citizens." Your status, identity and behaviors will appear ambiguous, slippery, difficult to identify.

4. Your second line of defense is the hysterical avarice reaction. Wherever you alter society or shift resources there will arise a swarming of near-delirious human animals who convince themselves that their own concrete advantage lies in "charging to the hoop." All conspiratorial operations, seen through the veil of these individuals and their military allies, will appear as simple mammalian politics (i.e. "we were really over there to get the OIL").

5. Your third line of defense is the Public Story. Remember that you have the whole world to consider -- a single national myth is inadequate. You must create a deluding plausibility which functions trans-culturally and can be customized readily by all story-tellers. The classic technique involves utilizing the law of opposites. A secretive public commission, limited in the data it can access, will provide an official account which allows "business as usual" to continue. Simultaneously, various pieces of data should be seeded which readily permit the discover of "hard, sinister facts" by those people are the most concerned about "domination of Nature, Wealth, Healthy, Family & Truth by demonic (sic) forces."

6. Stay on the horse. Human political society, like the human brain, is divided into complementary halves. The so-called "Right and Left Wing" orientations of the political instinct define the mainstream behavior of the populations under your control. Ignorance of these potions, identification with these positions and the struggle to find a bipartisan center reflect weakness -- the horse is charge of the rider. Instead, treat these two creatures as useful tools and sources of information.

7. The political compass is not difficult to read. Conservative instincts appear to advise a separation of Social Duty from Bodily Pleasure & a return to historically primitive forms of collective intelligence (governance). Ignore this. They provide a pre-factual ("gut feeling") read out of where the population is moving. They reveal the target. The topic about which they are "excited," positively or negatively is the goal.

8. Conversely, Liberal instincts appear to promote a fusion of Social Space and Particularized Life Pleasures, combined with an intellectual attempt to birth new instincts. Ignore this. They provide an evaluation of the target and an estimate of the means of its efficient attainment. Their apparently "idealistic, moral" critiques reveal the best-fit means of reaching the conservative referent.

9. Practice long vision. You are the visionary pharaohs for all the world -- and must be careful not to sacrifice steady progress for temporary satisfaction. Toxic and intimidated populations are immediately attractive but are unstable and unreliable. Better service is provided by human populations that are educated, healthy, happy, flexible and relaxed. Remember that social and technological innovation approach unpredictability so these areas must feature in your plans as very flexible circumstances.

10. Do not be deluded by mechanistic theory and primitive authoritarianism -- a high-functioning Heart is essential for health, understanding and efficiency. Emotionally stagnant agents suffer erratic diseases, confused thought, misreadings of others, and an inability to integrate the body and mind effectively.

11. Take virtue seriously. Be Socratic. Investigate all ideas through rational, open-ended discourse. Deepen your own power and clarity by the contemplation and practice of the civic virtues. Praise these virtues wherever you go. By the radiation of virtue the human animals recognize and defer to their masters. Use civic virtues as the explanation for each of your actions.

12. Always be aware that your plans may originate at levels unknown to you -- the unconscious, the biosphere, the patterning effects of media, the astral world, etc. It is the hubris of the common man to believe that he is the "decider."

13. Spare as little effort as possible defending yourself from rumors. Whenever possible, simply agree with the delusions of your critiques and adversaries. Myths are exploded by playing into them and revealing the hidden impasse upon which they are constructed. Casual admission is a hallmark of social dominance.

14. Practice trans-cultural thought. Treat each human being as a "human being, per se." Place all alternatives in a common frame -- there are no negatives, only competing positives in varying degrees. Nothingness does not exist. It is a false idea associated with cynical, fascist and nihilistic types. Forget sin and practice the view that the world is a competition of virtues.

15. Keep the one global human imperial civilization in mind. Prepare every culture for merger. Prepare global bureaucrats for ever larger regimes of organization. Encourage technology companies in the belief that there are enormous "profits" to be made from laying the communication, transportation and military infrastructure of the global socius.

16. Let go of nostalgia. Permit social transformations.

17. Minimize trauma to populations. Natural and military massacres create retardation of social restructuring. So-called "benevolent liberal changes" to societies are more efficient means of decreasing population, generating obedience, etc. War is a friend but Death & Pain are not. A shepherd directs his flock but must minimize stress, disease, etc.

18. The World's Military forces need to be combined into and superseded by Global Para-Military Police Legions -- these are essential an order to Knights to defend the realm.

19. Make judicious use of psychoactive technologies. The myth of the perfect cyborg "slave-agent" is a figure of popular paranoia. All emerging technologies are more or less useful for particular tasks but the dream of total mechanical control is generally neurotic rather than practical. It is a low level dream of military bureaucrats and unsophisticated barons and describes their fear of not being able to depend upon their allies. It is the byproduct of mild emotional illness and faulty protocols for collective intelligence.

wild bitch electricity

Silence Dogood writes:

She has slowly taken over the world since the 1700s. Who is She? Electricity. This wild bitch lightning that Benjamin Franklin harnessed at the dawn of America -- She is the engine of everything & the patterner of the matrix in which we occur.

We read and live by electric lightning, entertain ourselves with digital screen, telecommunicate around the world, see into Deep Space & the quantum world while we are cooking with electric switches or sharing our hearts "online." The humble telegraph and the electric street-lamp have passed into radio and television and then global internet on portable devices. Almost everything that is done socially and privately in the "post-Industrial" societies is a direct function of the capacies and forms in which physical electro-magnetism is available for usage. The inner tendencies of electricity are writ everywhere in the social world and pervade all electronic media.

There is a regime inside electricity.

When Benjamin Franklin, the author of American Independence, began toying with electrical devices and kites to see if he could "turn lightning on or off" a Republic as born which has dominated international affairs ever since. As this new nation "turned on" the British Mercantile Empire... the greatest resource-and-power machine since Genghis Khan -- stood no chance against them.

Later Tesla & Edison gave America the greatest socio-electric matrix in history. Now people would begin to be raised within spaces and activities directly patterned upon the moves by which electricity is harnessed. There was some resistance from the dying remnants of European and Asian Imperial Nations (Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan) but the most electrical of countries readily dominated. China hunkered; Russia glowered.

After the securing of the Maoist Dynasty in China the decision was made to keep their philosophical principles pure while secretly learning to use all advanced "Western" technologies. Despite their principles the people who learned to use electric tools in the cities became a generation that wanted more education, individualism, free market & internationalism. Some argue that America has drifted toward Socialism and state control since its inception among rowdy pragmatic individualists on the New Frontier. Yet all the while the strong attempts at Socialist State Control were either failing and decaying or slowly drifting toward a more American style. In Europe the hybrid Socialist-Capitalist-Parliamentary-Democracy was doing the same thing... approximating the emerging social organization the is being "unpacked" through usage by us of standard electro-magnetism.

These are the characteristics of the dominant and still-emerging Global Society:

Connectivity, High Speed, Divisiveness, Dislocation, Aurality, Retro (atemporality), Ecological Ethics, Unreality, Liquidity, Triviality, Customization, Medievalism.

Such a world cries out for B.S!

Some relevant links

Here is a good basic introduction to some of the issues we are confronting.

A repost of the link about steady state economics.

For thos in western canada, here is a theoretician/practitioner of radical social freedom.

And a new concept of shelter, in theory and practice.

Also, these people.

Thoughts on Collective Intelligence and Decision-Making

Adapted from Pascal


My basic idea is that all intelligence is collective & all collectives are intelligent. The first part of this merely indicates that intelligence is known through relational behaviors -- whether among brain cells, social groups or metaphysical entities. The second bit says that intelligence is inherent in structures. It doesn't have to be produced but must instead be excavated and enhanced. In principle we need to inhibit the primitive expressions of intelligence, thereby forcing it to migrate to higher levels of efficacy. Collective intelligence is primarily about inventing protocols which obstruct the lower tendencies of group intelligence. We do not know all of the problems which we need to inhibit, but we do know several important ones.


1. Prevent autocracy.

If 10 units (individuals) of intelligence are present and only 1 unit makes decisions there is an obvious failure to harness the available potential. If that 1 unit is ridiculously wise & gifted then monarchy can succeed for a period of time. This is seldom the case. Historically the 1 has been simply the beneficiary of military & economic might, either directly or by mere heredity. This is an extremely poor model of collective intelligence and typically generates abysmal living-evolving conditions for the bulk of the population. One example of an attempt to obstruct this "dictatorial collapse" is the Tibetan system in which the Lord Lama is rigorously trained in humility, discourse, reason and the embrace of the intelligence of others. Another way is the Cyclical Democracy in which definite term limits create a situation of regular shifting leadership. Protocol rules must limit the Powers and Financial Remuneration of officials.

Note - Although autocracies, and the hierarchies they spawn, are generally understood to be counter-productive in the political management of societies they are still tolerated in much of the business communities -- which is imagined along a "private fiefdom" and "managerial aristocracy" model.


Lola writes:

We must be careful here not to fall into the trap of the converse- namely that the other nine may lack the intelligence embodied by the one, and so reduce the whole process down to their level. Always we must have a way of quantifying and mediating intelligence, so that positive contributions are maximized and negative contributions minimized.




2. Prevent majoritarianism.

Rule by the majority is more intelligent than rule by 1 -- but not always very much more intelligent. In a 51% to 49% split it is easy to see how the "winning position" excludes the intelligence of basically half of its participants. In a multi-party state, especially where voter turnout is periodically low, it is possible for a very small group to assert itself over the general well-being. This model of democracy is popular because it is widely comprehensible... along the lines of "team sports." This problem can be obstructed by rules which require the outcome to be "averaged" -- representing a central nexus of the collective hunch rather than temporary victory for one gang or another. Experiments conducted on group intelligence show that the averaged guess usually outperforms the dominant guess.


Lola writes:

The singular flaw with the implementation of universal democracy is the same problem which vexed the founders of America, ie. how to prevent mob rule. If an averaged decision is to be reached, then we must move beyond binary choices in our elective strategies. Propositions cannot be simply ‘yes/no’ affairs, they must exhibit subtle gradations of possibility, such as what we see on polling scales- strongly agree, moderately agree, not sure, moderately disagree, strongly disagree. Even beyond this, we should be able to devise methods whereby individuals can easily quantify their thought-process with extreme precision.
It is interesting to note that it is not a lack of intelligence that is the problem in society, but rather the implementation of outmoded systems which deliberately limit the amount of intelligence available, ie. binary voting.
Part of the reason for this is that up until now we have not had the socio-technical processing power to deal with decision potentials in anything but their most limited expressions. This limit has now been fully transcended by networked electronic communications.



3. Prevent swarming.

Humans, like all animals, exhibit swarm behaviour when they are actively taking their behavior cues from each other. Mobs are an example of this primitive form of group intelligence. Hollow fads are another example. In order to prevent this "herd" activity there must be a minimum degree of privacy and autonomy among the participants. The innovation of the private voting booth has been a tremendous boon to society -- since it is well known that people will not "vote their conscience" if they are in danger of being observed by their peer group. The desire to hold people accountable for their votes is natural but leads to partisanship, bartering, and the replacement of intelligence consideration by an attempt to strategically position oneself after the vote.


Lola writes:

A secret ballot and anonymous ballot are NOT the same thing! Secrecy breeds suspicion, in that it fundamentally denies transparency. Obviously it was necessary at one point in time in order to prevent coercion, but now it has outlived its social usefulness. An anonymous ballot is different in that being non-binary no ‘absolute’ position can be tied to any one individual. For example, you can never be 100% for or against any initiative or representative, meaning that the stakes for any representative or initiative are considerably lessened, thereby eliminating the need for secrecy and ensuring the constant distribution of power.
These decisions are anonymous also by virtue of the fact that the collective results are weighted, rather than additive; thereby creating a spectrum of policy that cannot be attached to any one group or party. Decisions are the collective output of data, not the specific preferences of individuals, and this data will be transparently available to anyone who wishes to see it, a process which we might suppose would created more honesty and social responsibility, whilst simultaneously defraying the possibility of retribution since no one position can ever become dominant.
However, having said all this, it is worthwhile asking the question as to whether such a diffuse system can produce reliable and actionable results, or whether it will be burdened by the failure of indecisions and lack of leadership.



4. Prevent consensus.

This strikes many people as counter-intuitive. However, the consensus involves a mixture of swarming and majoritarian impulse. As people maneuver each other and themselves toward "popular acceptability" they jettison a great deal of the individual intelligence that they originally brought the discussion. Thus the result is generally the establishment of an abstract swarm-autocrat. If 1 unit of intelligence is combined and averaged with another 1 unit the resulting average is directly shaped by both participants. Their intelligence is synthesized. On the other hand if they collectively come up with a position to which they both agree then we have a situation in which 1 new opinion is combined with another identical opinion. The result is each party is now operating with something like .5 of an opinion.

Note - This illustrates a general danger that arises when individuals think about groups. We tend to image the group as a large individual -- which it is not. Thus we arrange ourselves to get 1 Personal Opinion out the group. This is an error by virtue of its inefficiency. A group can produce potentially many times more than 1 person's opinion.


Lola writes:

This is a crucial insight, one which is invariably neglected when discussion of collective intelligence arises.
A group decision need not be monolithic, some middle-of-the-road porridge that in its attempts to please all tastes become unredeemably bland. The social space for the expression of intelligence is much broader and accommodating than we might suspect. The narrow options of binary decisions serve to restrict freedom and the possibility of expanded intelligence. This creates tension and conflict, as there will always be some group that feels marginalized and chooses to act anti-socially on those feelings.
Expanding the space for action, and broadening the possibilities inherent in any social structure act to diffuse these tensions, since everyone’ input is considered valid.
What this means is that our future social spaces will necessarily be multiple in character, composed of many different expressions all working together and influencing each other. A hyper-intelligent social space has room for all possibilities, without the need for compromises (provided those possibilities are ecological and sustainable, and not exploitative).




5. Prevent ignorance.

My slogan is "participation, not membership." It means that a diversity of competent participants produces more intelligent outcomes than similar processes engaged in by official members. Merely to be "in the club" of citizens should not be the requirement for democratic involvement. It is not tolerable for individuals to vote on the basis of ignorance. Election outcomes would be of superior quality where they open to informed citizens of other countries and closed to uninformed citizens of one's own nation. The means of inhibiting the effects of "ignorant members" is to provide an on-the-spot skill-testing entry exam. It must be simple enough to be fair, objective enough to avoid taking sides in the decision making, free & amenable to multiple re-takings. The goal is not to exclude but to require basic knowledge of those who are included. In political elections, for example, a simple matching procedure between candidates' names, pictures, and stated policies might be sufficient. Doubtless several styles of exam may be provided for individuals with different learning styles.

Note - This is also a means of obstruction "non-representation." Many political problems exist when whole segments such as women, blacks, children, etc. are blocked from participation. The justification for such blockage is that these parties are not competent. A simple competence test does away with all need to include or exclude on the basis of caste, race, etc.


Lola writes:

This action alone would go a huge way towards decentralizing the globe’s nation-states and their entrenched and destructive identities. We must simply recognize that on a single planet there is no such thing as a consequence-free decision. Everything we do affects every other part of the world. Our policies are directly and indirectly impacting other members of humanity, and our selfish notions of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘nationalism’ are no longer valid excuses for acting in ways that undermine the survival interests of other people and the planet itself.
The ability to participate in social decisions, both great and small is not an inherent right, but a privilege born of responsibility. Everyone who is proven to be competent has an obligation to participate, and to educate and nurture those who are not yet capable.
Of course, this prescription will clash wildly with the industrial west’s cherished notions of ‘free individualism’ (which is easily demonstrated to be a myth) and ‘democratic rights’. Unfortunately, there is no circumventing it. An open and free society is by its nature a fragile thing, easily swayed by the passions of the ignorant, and steered disastrously by the selfish-interests of the power-hungry. It must protect its openness by being inclusive yet maintaining basic standards.


6. Prevent predatory influences.

The most obvious example are the so-called "lobbyists." Social anxiety and greed are powerful, insidious motivators which must be -- to the best of our ability -- prevented from interfering with decisions. Even in the decision about how to best proceed toward wealth we can see that the group intelligence would be undermined by the ability of individuals to profit from the group's failure. Insider trading on Wall Street and sabotage in warfare are examples of this same difficulty. It can be obstructed with a combination of clear rules, vigilance and rigorous investigation. In a more extreme sense this is the rule which means that interested participants cannot perpetrate violence or intimidation upon each other.


Lola writes:

Again we come back to the idea of transparent yet anonymous. For instance, lobbying could be completely eliminated with a simple measure stating that all campaign contributions must be anonymous, or, better yet, go into a public fund which is equally allocated to all members. Further, all financial dealings would be a matter of public record, open to anyone who wanted to see them.


7. Prevent dualism.

There is a persistent human tendency to simplify problems by reducing them to "two choices." This is useful but becomes a problem when the choices are conceived as "two sides" rather than "two directions." A thermometer is functional because it tells us more then just Hot vs. Cold. We already know that part. What it tells us is where we are on a scale between Hotter and Colder. We can see that evaluations made on a gradient have much greater utility than do mere pro/con choices. Pollsters take advantage of this fact with simple multiple choice options ("Always / Sometimes / Seldom / Never" etc.). A group decision on the basis of "Should we have troops in Afghanistan?" will necessarily have less granularity, less precision, than a group decision based on "How many troops should we have in Afghanistan?" This latter question includes "0" as a option but does away with the implied All-Or-Nothing mentality.


8. Prevent aimlessness.

Consider the difference between the following three questions: "Choose an Individual from the following list," "Which person on the following list should be our next president?" "Which person on the following list will be the most competent president?" Decision making is a task. Many brains have difficulty perform a task if it is insufficiently specified. If they do not know exactly what to do they will begin guessing and quickly fall back on established habits and selfish interests. It will be a half-assed performance. In order to select a name off a list, or to make any kind of evaluation, I must have something against which to evaluate it. The third question contains an evocation of the virtue of competence. I can therefore check these individuals against must sense of what "competence" means. Without a very specific criteria I will not be able to provide myself with feedback during the decision making process. A choice is aimless when the individual participant lacks a standard against which to make the choice and/or when the individual is not provided with information about how to make a decision. A great deal of confusion could be avoided, for example, if voting ballots included the following suggestion, "Please take a minute to compare your knowledge of this topic against your emotional response and try choose as comprehensively as you can."

Note - The use of virtues in phrasing questions also helps to unify all participants in the ethical work of arriving at the optimal decision. Ethical behavior is largely a matter of practice and people must be reminded to access that part of themselves.


Lola writes:

The results of our decision process will only ever be as good as the methods we use to determine them. The more intelligence that goes into the start is directly proportional to the amount that comes out at the end. Good decisions can never be made on the basis of bad information. With that in mind, a concerted effort must be made to provide accurate and truthful information on all topics, and learning to see propaganda, obfuscation, and emotional appeals for what they are- attempts to cover over a gross lack of high-quality information.
One possible step would be to anonymize the candidate, making the focus issues and policies rather than personalities. People would provide their input on specific actionable proposals, thereby doing away with the need for politicians altogether.



9. Minimize secrecy.
The idea of "transparency" is the popular assertion of this point. Some things must be concealed, at least temporarily, for the common good. These must be actively debated and minimized. An intelligent group decision requires that participations can access as much or as little information as they deem necessary in order to make a choice. For example, our collective "guess" about the status of UFO phenomena is clearly inhibited by the fact that we cannot freely access the relevant classified military documents. Our average guess will be distorted by this secrecy. Likewise if we have to pay to acquire the basic facts of a situation then those who cannot pay are forced to provide an inadequate contribution to the collective intelligence. This harms everyone. Free and open access to the maximal number of information sources on the matter in question is a pre-requisite for intelligence decisions.

The Reintroduction of Relationality

The modern world is characterized by a complete breakdown in relationality, a dissociation of people from one another, themselves, and their environment. Every other problem can be seen and interpreted in light of this primary trauma. No one knows where the products that fill their lives come from, how they are made, or who makes them. Industrialization serves to anonymize products and processes, because the primary concern is economic efficiency. But this notion of the economy is itself pathological, albeit, it should be noted, of historical necessity. But having had been necessary or not, it is now time to move beyond its negative limitations, by introducing a new economic structure based on a radically different set of principles.
What is needed is an ecological economy; a self-limiting, stable system. An ecological economy seeks its increase through diversity rather than endless growth. Although growth is necessary, it is meant to pave the way to maturity, not be an end in itself. Any growth process which does not reach a point of satifying its basic parameters becomes a cancer. Maturity does not equal stagnation- change is constant, but must be translated into a deepening, not an expansion.
To reintroduce relationality into our products and processes is to automatically reintroduce it into our social structures, thereby undoing the harmful effects of industrialization.
When the food we buy is so heavily processed, packaged, and 'clean' that all traces of its biological origins are removed, then we have arrived at a point where our divorce from nature is complete. These actions, these metaphors of production, are not inconsequent- they produce changes both subtle and gross in our experience and in our being. An apple shrink-wrapped and displayed under constant flourescent lighting at so many cents per pound is not the same apple that is picked off of the tree. Biochemically they may be identical, but on a more abstract, intangible level they are profoundly different. These effects are felt most fully in the realm of our awareness, and the constant assault it endures adds up over years and decades, slowly eroding the potential for a full and true exppression of our humaness. We are being deliberately stunted and weakened in order to be controlled.
A populace psychically starved is unwilling and often incapable of asserting its most fundamental truth- that it is free. Freedom has always been the enemy of control, to those who would rule under the guise of efficiency and social necessity. But it has never been the case that the few have advanced the interests of the many better than they themselves could. Always we witness the pretext of unity, which becomes code for homogenity and compliance. There is no unity in the politically conservative sense, despite their best wishes and efforts- only unity through diversity, a principle of ecology. Therefore all forms of tribal thinking, from racism to nationalism, fail, because they refuse to confront what is, prefering to see things on the limited basis of how they desire them to be.
But all of this brings us back to questions of production, ie. how to create enough of what we need in the most ecological way possible. This is where the central problems of relationality lie. We must begin always with an inventory of ourselves- our needs, and our expenditures of time and energy. Everything is interlocked, and we must discern the patterns which shape our lives and have control over us. If we complain of a lack of time or money we must pursue these conditions to their heart, seeing that our time is consumed through trivial, meaningless work, and the money recieved through it spent in support of a system that generates the bondage of debt instead of the freedom to create. When we have taken account of ourselves this way, we will see how so much of what we do is not only counterproductive, but self-destructive and socially destructive.
We must reassert basic need, and live within it, rather than being betrayed by the artifice of want. Furthermore, we must all engage in the vital process of providing for the needs of each other, rather than shifting responsibility to remote and antihuman corporations. Yet we must always bear in mind that our most basic need is expansive, and cannot be confined to the false equality of a lowest common denominator. An equality of impoverished being is no achievement to be celebrated, but instead a betrayal of our noblest aspirations. Equality is always a matter of possibility and access, not of conditions and concerns. The inequality of resources in an ideally equitable society can only be addressed by shifting our view of the material processes around us. A forest then is not a resource to be argued over and exploited, but a living system to be entered into partnership with. Resource exploitation means using something up and producing unwanted waste- it is a unidirectional flow. Partnership means an equal exchange, a bidirectional flow of energy, information, and sensation. This is the heart of relationality.
There is enough for everyone because everyone's genuine needs are minimal. There are three foundational things which should and must always be free to all humans: healthful food/clean water, shelter, and energy. Everything beyond this is secondary, and must be negotiated collectively in terms of the overall benefits of fulfilling a want or desires versus the true costs and impact within the total human socioecosystem.
A simple adage is this: the minimal necessary freedom for all is the natural limit on the maximum possible freedom of any.
One can replace the term freedom with any other quality or concern, such as safety, material comfort, posessions, etc. Freedom is a good rubric in general because it contains through implication all other considerations. What this means in an expanded sense is that a society based on radical freedom is nonetheless not a society without rules or structure. It is not anarchy as conceived of in the naive popular sense. This kind of freedom contains its own limits, ones based on the realtionship between the group and the individual. Consequently, the greater the freedom of the group, the greater the freedom of the individual. The two are consonant with one another. No longer can a small elite weild such disproportionate power over the majority, nor can any irrational majority impose its will on other minorities.
A more pressing concern is in how we define the 'minimal necessity' of freedom. Freedom presupposes equality, an equality based on a lack of coercion. A society not based on coercion would be utterly unrecognizable to us, so completely inured are we to the daily manipulations of force both overt and covert. Equality implies that all actions are based on consent, a consent which is only valid if entered into with full and complete knowledge. It is for this reason that we can claim that a radically free society is a fully open society, where nothing is hidden, and all contracts and organizations are transparent. Of course, this can only flourish where profit motivations arising from competetion are removed. Likewise, in an open and free society there would be no private property, only private space. This is a critical distinction, which is not easy to grasp. It means that property is recognized as the means towards some social benefit, not merely the personal enrichment of an individual. Property must serve some function, not be an end in itself. Private space is that space which an individual constructs out of his own awareness, and which can be accessed only by invitation.
So how then do we regulate the distribution of differences? If we have ten plots of land of differing quality and value, and ten theoretically equal individuals, how do we determine who gets what in an open and free society without resorting to a centralized bureaucracy or tyranny? This point is central to the whole endeavour, and must be resolved before any real progress can be made.
The first step is in recognizing the nature of property or resources as the common inheritance of humankind. When we ask 'how do we dristribute the land' we are already presupposing that it is someone's to distribute, usually a government or a coprporation. But this is flawed reasoning. Rather we should reevaluate our incessant attempts to divide the world up into a multitude of bordered domains. In a free society there would not be ten plots of land- only land and ten individuals making claims upon it. It is here then that we hark back to our fundamental adage that 'the minimal necessary freedom for all is the natural limit on the maximum possible freedom of any'. In this way, the use of land, or any 'resource' for that matter, becomes a project to determine how best it can benefit the needs of all without regards to the limited wants of any. In practice this means that the most desirable land, ie. waterfront, agricultural, etc. cannot be controlled by any one individual, but must instead serve the needs of all. Such lands and resources would thereby be held in common trust, preserved from exploitation, but open to use by those who can generate the most benefit.

ADDENDUM

It could be persuasively argued that the best method of defending human life is by working to reverse all those tendencies in human and institutional nature which lead to aggression in the first place. In this view, the military would not simply be a fighting body of soldiers following orders, but an affiliated organization of agents capable of independent action and thought- decision-makers with the tools for social betterment, ie. skills in conflict resolution, engineering, education, etc. Of course, in a radically decentralized society, almost all members would have these kind of qualifications.
An open-source, free society would dissolve the traditionally rigid boundaries which demarcate one 'occupation' (no pun intended) from another. Everyone would bear the costs of their freedom- the responsibility for assuring the security and prosperity of every other member. In this way, there would be no distinctions between various 'classes' of profession, no external police force, no external judiciary, no external legislature, and no external military. These 'necessary activities' would be an intrinsic part of every social actor, rather than an extrinsic lever for controlling behaviour.

THE MILITARY vs MILITARISM

It was recently brought to my attention that out of my (understandably partial) list of social institutions that need to be remade along an open-source, user-directed structure, the military was notably absent.
I should now like to expend a few words in regards to this subject.
We can start, as we always should, by asking of any given thing, 'what is its role', what purpose does it fulfill? Further, what is its original intent, and how has its contemporary incarnation deviated from this supposed ideal?
And so, as to the issue of the military, we can state quite confidently that its original purpose is defense. It is the structural manifestation of the verb 'to defend'. This definition and understanding allows us tremendous flexibility in our further analysis and in the formulation of alternative expressions. To defend is not equivalent, either morally or technically, to attack. Defense, as understood philosophically in martial arts, entails any set of actions designed to unbalance or immobilize an opponent which proceed from a position of focused equanimity. True defense then can never consist of motivations based on revenge, loss of face, anger, righteousness, or any other debased emotional state. It must always remain a direct response to an immediate and grave existential threat, not merely "...the continuation of political activity by other means." (Clausewitz)
The military serves the purpose of defense by defending human life, not by extending government policies via force through the world. The military, above all other institutions, must uphold universal rights, not serve as the means of extracting economic advantages for elites. Of course, the current situation is exactly the opposite of this idealized perspective. Today's industrialized militaries are no longer in the business of defense (except in the most literal financial sense), but are engaged in an expansive form of corporo-political imperialism, and have been ever since the end of the second world war. The modern military is less concerned with upholding the law and maintaining the integrity of national borders than it is with trying to reshape the world forcefully to a set of dominant ideologies. Interestingly, despite its almost inconceivable material and technical superiority, contemporary armed forces have repeatedly been 'defeated' by small, decentralized guerrilla armies. When i say defeated, i mean only that they have, through their tenacity and idealism, managed to avoid domination, by bleeding away popular support in the aggressor country until continuation of the war becomes politically impossible.
These historical circumstances should be a clear indication that the 'grand narratives' of politically based warfare are wholly without merit, merely symptoms of the sickness of imperialism, dressed up in the dangerous garb of national pride.
So the problem is not, as some on the left have framed it, simply the military, but rather, as with so much else in the world, the ideological addition of those three little letters, ism, to the end of it.
A strong and properly organized military (both structurally and purposefully) is something deserving our support and respect. Militarism, on the other hand, should be condemned and rejected to the utmost by every aware thinking and feeling human being on this planet.

On Irrationalism

Irrationalism has two distinct meanings.

On the one hand, it refers to masses of men and women who are not yet adapted to the cultural skill of rational inquiry. It also refers to a smaller class of individuals who "believe" in the power of irrationality. These two categories blend, and reinforce each other.

The first group is growing. As the world's population skyrockets, so do the numbers of people in the least educated, least cultured places. Add to this a host of new communication tools which incline the pre-rational masses to a habit of exchanging and consolidating ignorant opinions. There is no sin in this -- only simplicity. These people are key unconscious actors of History. Perhaps we can reduce them as a percentage of the total human population but we will also need to account for them and not to deride them for their subtle primitivism. Their impulses may be useful and must be managed in a manner that renders them largely harmonious and generally beneficial. Some ancient rituals were used for this purpose. When mass irrationality has no constructive role in society -- it can then have only a destructive and corrosive role.

The faux-rational are a more interesting problem.

These people learn the "form" of facts & arguments but maintain an inner cynical distance toward these tools -- in effect, refusing the sting of reasoning. Prior emotional and social commitments are maintained, protected. They exhibit a perverse pleasure, or vanity, associated with the sense of "beating the system." Those who take reason and progressive ideals seriously are assumed to be "dupes" or to have broken instincts. There is also present in these individuals a physiological resistance to that peculiar emotional friction which is involved in the contact between old opinions and new data, between old commitments and sincere pondering.

There is an element of this in all of us.

Any effort to create a "bulwark of progressive social rationalism" must be reinforced by the proliferation of additional supportive tools. There must be therapeutic treatment modalities which attempt to purge the inner obstacles that resist the results of data & reasoning. This is especially critical since the defeat of many progressive political agendas may be directly attribute to the subliminal conservative sympathies within the bodies of progressive thinkers.

There must be a common call for serious independent pondering and experimentation. There is no final attainment of Reason but rather an attitude of perpetual progress toward greater impartial clarity. In order to proselytize this attitude, progressives must embody it. It must be lived and expounded with the seriousness of a moral duty. Such an attitude was associated in certain times and places in History with a culture that accords socio-political honor to those who are perceived as having the "deepest, most comprehensive understanding."

Social actors, as my colleague has written, must cultivate the courage to disregard the irrational -- but not the extent that the irrational is left unchecked to organize itself against the society of more coherent thinkers. They must not be excluded but rather taught a habit of evaluating themselves more appropriately. Society does not flourish unless those who are not wise know that they are not wise. And this knowledge must be experienced with natural shame rather than public opprobrium.

Irrationalism and the New Society

One wonders constantly how to respond to the seemingly ever-growing din of irrationality being propagated through our culture. It is as if the very ability to engage in civil discourse is decaying, collapsing under the weight of the fetid paranoia infecting it. Of course, there have always been strong currents of irrationality through our cultural history, but generally they have been held in check by being denied the legitimacy of a voice in the media or mainstream thought. It has always been a fringe phenomena- up until now. What we are witnessing on a grand scale is an intolerance for the very discursive mechanism which under-girds any productive civilization, that is, the open exchange of ideas, rather than the mere propagation and defense of ideologies.
Part of the reason this has become so entrenched is due to the sickness of epistemological relativism. When reality becomes nothing more substantial than opinion, then there is no longer any method of determining the truth of one position in relation to another other than by shouting match. But reality is beyond any opinion, consisting of a tangible, and consequential ontology. The search for truth is complex, and may in fact be fruitless, but this doesn't mean that the effort is without value, or that the truth is itself non-existent. When we approach questions of what is real based on a methodology of personal whim, either due to laziness or vulgar egotism, then we court a grave danger, preparing a fertile soil of credulity to receive the seeds of extremism which will eventually and inevitably bear a bitter crop of sorrows.
For no opinion can be more precious than one's own, and in the absence of the restraint provided by the self-awareness and humility born from encountering a greater reality, the certainty of one's convictions become an end in themselves, to be defended at all costs, and with whatever violence deemed necessary.
So what then is the antidote to this poisoned spasm of irrationalism? There are several recourses, the first of which is creating a bulwark of progressive social rationalism. Second, refuse to engage in 'debate' with irrationals based on 'facts'. Facts have no value or weight for epistemological solipsists because they are imaginary quantities- a set of real facts cannot refute artificial facts when there is no substantial foundation of reality to appeal to. Irrationalists lack the capacity to either discern, or submit their ideation to, a larger field of actuality. Instead, we must constantly work to uncover and erode the edifice of their delusion through intensive and constant questioning- getting them to define and explain every word, term, and 'fact', asking for verification of every claim, demanding rational justifications for their assertions, and refusing to accept their nonsense at face value. Debate merely serves to legitimize a position which is fundamentally illegitimate, and so serves no constructive purpose.
Thirdly, the tactics of marginalization must be employed, by recreating a free, open, and inclusive society. Irrationalists are by their very nature self-excluding, deriving validation through perceived victimization. They have no interest in being part of a functional society, only in creating schisms. They are destructive in their tendencies, never creative, defining their identity through constant opposition and their persecution complexes.
A rational society is best counter to irrationalism- like a noxious weed, it must be starved until it goes extinct.

Reading this IS the New Politics

When a system has become so corrupted that it cannot maintain its establishment functions, then there is no hope of recovery, only replacement. All current theories of government are outdated, based on social foundations that are obsolete and irrelevant. For government to function successfully in the modern age, it must embody a radically new structure, one based on an open-source, collaborative decision-making process.
So-called representational government is insufficient for the simple reason that millions of individuals with competing interests, intelligences, and personal histories cannot be adequately defined by a few broad categories of political ideology. Whenever individual power is ceded in favour of remote, elite 'leaders', corruption is the natural outcome. Any political organization, or business for that matter, built on secrecy is incapable of being held accountable for its decisions and actions except through legal force, a legal force it should be noted, heavily skewed in fovour of those very same wealthy elites.
But a alternate view of politics, founded on genuine freedom, boldly asserted and enacted, is possible. It has required the advent of mass personalized communication technologies to allow this radically new type of organizational structure to emerge. We are now in a dire race to stop the squandering of intelligence that characterizes our current forms of government.
The true function of government is not to enforce ideological conformity, but to protect the collective social structure and to facillitate the efficient flow of goods\information. Its purpose is to distribute effectively the collective wealth\intelligence of society so that all might benefit from it. Up until now government has had to centralize in order to secure these functions, necessarily becoming stronger than any of the groups it administers to. This power differential has lead to the worst forms of abuse and imperialism, as this centralized political organism pursues its own goals and ambitions without regard to the consequences of its actions or the wishes of its supposed constituents.
This situation is now wholly avoidable, yet does not require the kind of mass mobilization that chanracterizes political force historically. Almost everyone is already engaged in the forms of socio-political action that are the foundation of this new concept of governance. Polity and society are inseperable- they represent two aspects of a unified system of action. So, rightly, we can say that polity guides society, and society guides policy. Change one, and the other naturally follows. The only reason that social actions are seldom recognized as inherently political is because of the degree to which politics has alienated those who bear its brunt. Once a government no longer functions, having become both remote and intrusively bureaucratic, then it must be overthrown- not by armed revolution (which is premised on the moral failure of violence), but by better, more directed social actions. In this way, the renewal of social action itself becomes the new form of government, without the need for power struggles or compromise. To govern, ultimately, is to direct one's own actions towards certain goals. Government can never be a system external to those it affects- such a structure betrays immediately its own illegitimacy.
The main component in this shift/revolution is not technical, but conceptual- in other words, individuals must become aware of themselves as social actors rather than simply as social beings. This distinction is crucial, but not obvious, and bears some examination.
A social being is at best a limited identity, a convinient label for a set of beliefs and preferances in relation to other social beings. It is generally speaking a passive orientation, absorbing influences from culture and recreating them as self. Social beings experience themselves as at the mercy of overwhelming social and historical forces, powerless to alter them. Their only options are to react, through protest (engagement) or altered consumer habits (endorsement). Neither of these efforts produces results of significance because they lack the leverage needed to encounter power on its own terms. We must become aware of the potent myths which have sprung up as validations of the social being, and counter them with the hard reality, that the consumer is not king, the citizen is not in charge.
On the other end of the spectrum however, a social actor is the inverse of the dysfunctional social being. He\she presupposes (and expresses) an identity not as a thing shaped by culture, but as a process- a state of ever-shifting goals and perspectives, no single one of which remains dominant. The social actor is a study in flexibility, capable of subsuming their personal interests within a greater field of benefit, always towards an ever-expanding sphere of inclusion. At heart, all social beings are simply social actors unaware of themselves, and it is this degree of unawareness which stands as the only tangible difference between them. The social being lacks the ability to see himself as an actor, fully capable of not merely reacting to socio-political circumstances, but effectively directing them.
Unfortunately, this task of education is enormous, opposed by a myriad of forces bent on the promotion of selfish individualism and socially destructive tribalisms. These forces are generally economic; corporate organisms which derive benefit from fragmenting social cohesion, by relentalessly advancing the flattering myth of individualism. But let us not imagine that the dangers of rampant individualism can be averted through some species of vulgar collectivism. Quite the opposite in fact. And while the individual is not more important than the group, neither is the group more important than the individual. This apparent paradox is easily resolved once one begins to look at the world through the lens of social action rather than social being. The social actor is a being, but also more than that, in the same way that a group is made up of individuals, but at the same time embodies principals and functions greater than any single person. The strength of a group is characterized not by uniformity, but by diversity. The the greater the degree of individuality exhibited by its members, the more resourceful, resiliant, and flexibly intelligent that group will be. True individuality and they myth of individualism stand in stark contrast to one another.
Individualism holds that one is alone, the center of one's social universe, an egocentric view wherein one's personal desires (and the fulfillment thereof) are the paramount concern, at the expense of all other considerations, both social and ecological. Contrast this to the fully realized individual, who sees and understands clearly that he is an integral aspect of a cohesive network of relationality, and that his actions are never without consequence. This realization acts to temper whatever purely selfish motivations dwell within him, allowing them to be transformed into constructive social action which thereby benefits the whole as well as the individual. Indeed, the greatest benefits to the individual come from those actions which increase the functioning of the group. And yet, if we are to take the proposition of freedom seriously, this cannot be accomplished through coercion or by external pressures or threats. Rather it must emerge organically, as a response to a greater degree of self-understanding.
Where this leaves us then is in a position to formulate and enact a new 'social operating system', one based on open-source principles and values.
The goal is to establish alternative institutions to the corrupt ones now in place. These institutions will be economic (banks, financial structures, investment rules), productive (businesses, manufacturing, R&D), infra- and intra-structural (transportation, energy, structure), legal (arbitration courts, reward compliance, punish defiance, disciplinary), educational (school, university, knowledge and information management), etc., founded upon core principles, rather than static documents from an historically remote past. They will be upgradable, open-source (ie. fully transparent), and user-managed\mediated.

Jon Stewart: America's Most Trusted Reporter?

The Opposite of Pascal's Opinion:

Jon Stewart's comedy represents a sane, critical perspective on the ideological machinery of modern "news entertainment," -- and a voice against Right-Wing hysteria.

Study my actual opinion at:
...but NOT the Jaguar!

An Open Letter on Visual Culture

Here's is what I do NOT believe:

Human culture is becoming less verbal and more visual.

To read my actual opinion...

An Open Letter on The Politics of Serfdom

The Opposite of Pascal's Opinion:

The term "redneck" is inappropriate to describe Right Wing political interests -- since these are simply the rational assertion of the self-interest of free citizens. This is a sincere modern political stance which reflects an authentic religious disposition and a deep concern for the prosperity and security of the Nation. As in the example of the American Republican party these individuals stand up for the rights of "the little guy" against the manipulations of the Powerful.

There are no such things as "green-necks" since, by definition, those people who put the interests of planetary ecology, organic farming and local community values are progressive Liberal thinkers.

For my actual opinion visit Culturopathy's Echo

The Sound of One Hand Clapping (tm)

1.What is most critical to the overall progressive momentum of the human species -- sealing the catastrophic ruptures afflicting the most challenged areas of the world, OR causing the leading edge of humanity to go even farther forward?

Obviously it’s not an exclusively either/or type of situation, but, perversely, perhaps the best course of action would be to let the ‘failing states’ burn themselves out, and rebuild from the ashes. Intellectually this seems acceptable, but emotionally, morally, and aesthetically it is almost too horrible to contemplate. It takes far more energy and commitment to build something up than to destroy it, so in the long run, over the next 20 years, it will be critical to establish fully functioning, robust networks that can absorb the impact of destabilizing forces in the world. A visionary model, as lived through extrordinary individuals will be vitally important to the continuation of civilization. What is the nature of these individuals? They are information synthesizers and meta-distributers- in the parlance of P2P networks, they are the global ‘seeders’, cross-disciplinary loci of awareness, processing, communication, and action.

2.What sort of world will exist in 50 years if both the most liberating and regressive trends of today are carried forward together?

This is difficult to acertain, since so many unforseen factors can tip the balance in favour of one side or the other. I think an analogy to the early universe would be apt: we will see cooling and condensing ‘clumps’ of coherent intelligence emerge from the hot chaotic global state. Small groups of highly technologically sophisticated people will essentially ‘recolonize’ the wastelands left by the die-off of the regressives. This to my mind is the most likely scenario, and follows the same kind of development patterns seen after any historical mass extinction event. We just have to make sure that we are decentralized and portable enough to withstand the accelerating social breakdown.

3.What type of inner practice for individuals is most likely to steer their being in the direction of effective socio-political and ecological action?

If we are speaking of so-called ‘regualr’ folks, the best course of action i could suggest would be to undego a crash-course of self education via the internet. There is an astounding quantity of high quality freely accessible information out there, such that a moderately intelligent and open individual could have a solid foundation with about a years worth of intesive study. Once the knowledge base is in place, the next step is application of that knowledge through technological liberation, ie. the creation of genuinely sustainble systems of living, such as permaculture food production, micro-scale renewable energy harvesting, and ecological manufacturing via design-on-demand, digital fabrication, and good ol’ fashioned recycling and reappropriation. Then its a simple matter of spreading this knowledge/application through networking with other individuals, building up larger and larger sustainable structures.

4. Which 3 technologies, about to emerge, have the greatest potential to disrupt even our best anticipations and estimates of the overall situation?

I think those i covered in the last question are the biggest ones, but rapidly emerging fields like nanotechnology and open-source biology are going to be big. I think the dark horse in the race will be some form of strong AI in the next two decades, which will radically accelerate our design capabilities as well as information management. Human-machine interfacing is a logical outgrowth of nanotech coupled with strong AI, but it remains to be seen if this will be truly viable. A good book on the subject is Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near. Also, this shows some more intriguing fields of developemt.

5. Which saints, heroes, visionaries or events are among the most applicable symbols for the needs of any current transformative movement?

There are almost too many to count! And i think this is fundamentally the strength of this movement, that it doesn’t have any real leaders, but is a confederacy of equals, all working, all contributing. It is a systems approach that sees everything as inexorably linked together into a non-linear web of causality. For me the greatest sign is that this movement has already become so decentralized that no one person or organization can claim to speak on behalf of its goals and concerns. Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest details this phenomena, and i would direct anyone who is interested in these sorts of things to check it out for a fuller exploration of this process.

5 MORE FINGERS BUT NO FIST

1.What is most critical to the overall progressive momentum of the human species -- sealing the catastrophic ruptures afflicting the most challenged areas of the world, OR causing the leading edge of humanity to go even farther forward?

2.What sort of world will exist in 50 years if both the most liberating and regressive trends of today are carried forward together?

3.What type of inner practice for individuals is most likely to steer their being in the direction of effective socio-political and ecological action?

4. Which 3 technologies, about to emerge, have the greatest potential to disrupt even our best anticipations and estimates of the overall situation?

5. Which saints, heroes, visionaries or events are among the most applicable symbols for the needs of any current transformative movement?

An Open Letter in reponse to "CLARIFICATIONS"

Thank you for the "Clarifications" proposal -- I had a hunch that incrementally increasing the amount of disagreement in my posts might stimulate greater interactivity & self-definition within the blog.

#1) Do you believe we are headed for an ecological collapse?

I believe that we must act as if we are headed for a ecological collapse. Our science contains many ideological blindspots and still-primitive failures but this should not dampen our spirits. The true extent, nature & human leverage over the current biospheric situation is either catastrophic or irrelevant. We cannot say either with certainty but this voice, this Other voice speaks in our hearts, demanding that we move with urgency. And so we must.

#2) What is the correct form for human social structures?

This is too broad a question... and "correct" waits upon thorough testing. However, here is what my heart speaks -- trans-democracy, trans-capitalism, culture-religion, decentralized globalism, ecological ethics, permeable organic castes.

Politics must absorb, improve and willingly pass beyond current quasi-democratic regimes. Economics must produce a maximally safe and vigorous socialist-capitalism which must produce two rivals -- a flourishing, ethical market economy & a vast "free economy" of equivalent strength. Culture must reawaken to its function as religion. Planetary governance is balanced by technologically enabled decentralization of decision making -- at least into custodial cultural-ecology zones as suggested by the Dalai Lama for the Greater Tibetan Region. The biosphere, and the abstract mathematics of "naturalness" must become the ethical demand placed upon social action & flexible, developmentally-ranked organic castes/classes perform specialized functions incl. governance, technological development, military-policing, priesthood-coaching, ecological enforcement, etc.

#3) Can you describe the role of politics/government in the next 10-20 years?

Governments must begin to become both more activist & less controlling. National governments have to begin by shifting tone, up-taking the best available data, and pushing through as many regulatory modifications as possible. Nations must be streamlined, improved in health & intelligence and re-produced as capable of making the necessary changes. International good-will and crisis-response need to prompt potent international regulatory bodies that are empowered to act against violations. Financial regulation, ecological retooling & large-scale international military intervention are their obvious world-historical tasks. They must "starve and steer" the most self-destructive regimes while training their populations to become capable of addressing planetary-scale situations. This will necessarily involve an increase of seriousness and good cheer, transparency & pragmatism, flexible openness & an increasing planetary-imperial aesthetic.

#4) What is the best method of attaining reliable information?

Our knowledge of this subject must improve greatly in the years to come. For now, at the individual level, we must look to, and combine, the opinions of the experienced & the broadly minded -- placing special importance upon the conclusions of minds who integrate vast numbers of positions into coherence and also minds which produce unexpected positions. Logical thought and popular data must be combined with intuitive and physiological knowledge.

Interpersonally we can best rely upon the conclusions that are averaged results of voting-estimates, produced as a gradient marker in response to a specific query, by a maximally formally diverse and permeable set of participants who prove minimum acceptable coherence of communication and knowledge of the subject matter and who are able to process information and articulate their position anonymously and free from consensus or organized persuasion. And, increasingly, the services of mass-coordinating intelligence software operating at ultra-high speed to detect linear and non-linear patterns among humanly incomprehensible algorithms and data sets.

#5) What specific changes are needed, and how many will make them?

The list is vast. Here are just a few: implementation of simple, general, re-takeable entrance exams for democratic elections; mandatory application of multiple-intelligence testing in schools, government and businesses -- intellect, emotional intelligence, ethics, aesthetics, etc. -- and this information freely available online; mandatory meditative or contemplative practice in schools; removal of the security council veto from the United Nations; active inter-penetration of global military forces; decriminalization of drug use and partial decriminalization of drug sales. Drastic increase in investment for alternative and very alternative energy sources & water purification systems. Large scale public works programs laying down new electrical and transportation infrastructures in all nations. Widespread promotion of free video streaming for all materials. Municipal de-automobilization wherever possible. Proliferation of new and more tenacious recycling plants. Medical pathologization of problematic emotional conditions. Creation of an international eco-navy, or else the support of existing models such as "rainbow warrior." De-urbanization by all those who can manage it.

Who will undertake these and other tasks? As many as are emotionally impressed by the weight of planetary duty, or else who trust in the instincts of such people. This is a highly flexible percentage of the population, dependent upon the credibility, creative energy, urgency AND optimism of seers.

I will shortly post five alternate questions in order to elicit your articulate responses.

CLARIFICATIONS

I have the feeling that we may be getting into rather unproductive territory here, so i'd like to make the following proposal: we each ask and give short answers to a series of five questions designed to act as a kind of 'summing up' of our particular viewpoint.
I'll go first.

#1) Do you believe we are headed for an ecological collapse?

#2) What is the correct form for human social structures?

#3) Can you describe the role of politics/government in the next 10-20 years?

#4) What is the best method of attaining reliable information?

#5) What specific changes are needed, and how many will make them?

If you want, i can answer the same questions, or if you have alternates i'd be happy to tackle those.

A RESPONSE TO PASCAL

Optimism, like trust, has to be earned. It is not given, either philosophically or socially, that this is the position we should automatically take. The strains of this kind of ‘New Romanticism’ you are postulating will crash headlong into the hard realities before too long, in which case the ephemera of ideas will blow away like a mist, leaving only the observable certainties to be dealt with.
All this equivocation is, frankly, dangerous, in that it gives a false sense of our own capabilities. We are not nearly as clever as we think we are, and to pretend otherwise only confuses the situation.
Optimism is not simply the opposite of cynicism, it is a negation of reality. Hope is intangible, and generally useless- an empty void onto which we project our aspirations and desires.
A genuine knowing, one capable of producing change, attaches no conditions to itself, does not deign to define or label itself in any particular way. This is why IT reamins always untouchable, out of sight, incapable of being coerced into defending some particular position relative to our considerations.
In other words, neither up nor down.

You write, “Growth does not behave like a "cancer." A cancer is a regressive local establishment of patterning control which sequesters the body's resources in order to replicate itself in a manner that does not proceed toward the general Good.”
But this is exactly what our current models of economic growth demonstrate, which is why the problems that confront us exist in the first place. Of course growth is not an absolute, i never suggested as much, but to deny the obvious empirical patterns betrays a gross lack of familiarity with the situation at hand. Economic growth, as is practiced in all western countries, is based on maximizing profits through the externalization of the true social and environmental costs. It is therefore a model that is inherently anti-growth in the sense you propose.

“Conversely, social growth is the measure of our capacity to reorganize ourselves fluidly in the direction of spontaneously patterned coherence.”
This spontaneously patterned coherence is in every situation aborted by the machinery of our current structures. This is precisely what i have been arguing all along! We are actively being prevented from reaching our potential.
Organic growth and all of the positive attributes comensurate with it are being threatened by this industrial cancer.

"All life is a continuous reorganization of elements through consumption and redistribution controlled by the interplay of the communal structures. More life and better life consists of an increase of the potency of this capacity -- primarily at the social level. Improvements of quality depend upon improvements in the ability to handle quantity.”
And yet this is the very process which is in danger of falling apart. Coherence can only be maintained up to a certain threshold before instabilities set in which overwhelm the balance of positive forces. In a system where nothing any longer functions on a basic level, nascent social development structures are effectively destroyed. The process you speak of can only flourish in a stable evironment- the very thing which is now in question.
The earth is not a linear system. There are feedback loops in effect whose thresholds cannot be accurately determined, yet the overall trends, that is to say their directionality, are no longer open to debate. This has nothing to do with mere climate models or theoretical speculation, this is based on the observable data, and their conclusions are clear: our entire planetary system is entering a period of catastrophich decline, generated by human indistrial activity.

“The Right Wing correctly points out that we cannot be sure, that the mere fact of MASS CONSENSUS is not proof. Yet the Right Wing does not yet realize that the proposed changes are necessary anyway. To hell with climate change!”
Except that we ARE sure, for the reasons given above. Those who are aware must follow the imperatives of that awareness, and plan for a different kind of future. But let us not delude ourselves, or be mistaken as to what will almost certainly happen, which is the mass die-off of at least half the global population, if not more. At our present course, socially, politically, economically, industrially, this is the guaranteed outcome. A simple case of effect following cause.

Overall we are not at odds, you and i apporach the same ‘thing’ from two different positions- yours from an already realized future, mine from the all-too uncertain present. You see what MUST happen, and embody it, i see what IS happening and prepare for it.
Ultimately it is not a matter of who is right or wrong, but instead a matter of achieving the force necessary to join these two potentialities together.

THE MYTH OF DARK AGES

Planetary crisis is the only message we can hear. Our dumb animal nature responds to the popular warning cry -- taking up the call and passing it on. Stressing to our neighbors how "urgent" this matter really is...

Is it urgent? Yes -- but not for the popular reasons. It is critical for the formation of tomorrow's world that we human beings assume our appointed place as mass-scale ecological custodians. This is part of the eco-ethical, neo-Imperial planetary ethos which is everywhere being manufactured. This is the demand placed upon our hearts and mind AS IF the Biosphere herself were infiltrating culture & calling us to our world-historical Task.

But is this global warming? And are we the cause? And what can we do to reverse its effects? Or should we call it "climate change" since it could reverse itself unexpectedly and bring on the ice? Are our computer climate models correct? We simply don't know. Are we inputting the right variables? Again -- we have only our current guesses. While it is true that the "folk" do not take seriously many important factors, it is also true that the scientific "folk" equally ignore all those elements which they have not trained themselves to take seriously. The pulsating crystalline heart of the Earth? The interface between the magnetosphere and solar plasma fields? The relationship between bio-electricities and atmospheric chemicals? Who knows! Yet the "people" of science do not feel obligated to study the problem with all their options on the table. Aren't these the same pinheads who swallowed the Big Bang ideology without complaint?

It is important what they are saying? Or is it far more significant that they have achieved their greatest creative consensus ever? This is without a doubt the most potent scientific "WE" that planet Earth has ever seen?

The Right Wing correctly points out that we cannot sure, that the mere fact of MASS CONSENSUS is not proof. Yet the Right Wing does not yet realize that the proposed changes are necessary anyway. To hell with climate change!

I don't want to breath car exhaust in my cities.
I don't want smoggy sunsets, or to eat mutant toxic fruit or have children born with missing limbs.
I DO WANT the biosphere to function at full power with optimal regenerative coherence.

Why do I want this? She, herself, in me, wants this.

As we have webbed ourselves together electronically this imploring cry has become louder, clearer -- stronger. This is an historical fact of greater certainty than our climate models.

Those who are not yet adult enough to deal with the real situation, fraught with uncertainties, are not exempted from their world-historical duty. If they will not follow the carrot then they must race against the stick -- and so the lethargic multitudes come slowly to this idea that there is a SURVIVAL EMERGENCY. After all, they lack the energy to be motivated by anything else.

And: fine.

The closed heart, sealed in its enclosure of "human individuality," MUST be cracked open, must learn that "care for Earth" is the centerpiece of the New Faith, MUST be converted to the aesthetic-ethic of the Biosphere. Such is the demand of eco-ethical neo-Imperial Planetary Humanity which now comes upon at the hands of all parties on all sides of every social debate.

The Right Wing nuts are correct -- but their evaluations are backwards. It is a vast international conspiracy using dubious science -- but we MUST take new and dramatic action with the global biospheric situation as our reference point.

AGAINST: GROWTH DOES NOT EQUAL PROGRESS

Here's why growth is equivalent to progress --

The meaning of socio-economic growth is not an increase in mass since, quite obviously, the mass of available material on Earth is relatively fixed. Development can only mean reorganization of existing elements. Progress implies an improvement in our capacity to reorganize the available components. What can such an improvement mean? An increase in the speed, diversity, fluidity, mutuality, reliability & intelligence of our control systems. This is precisely what the general indicator of "economic growth" symbolizes.

Growth does not behave like a "cancer." A cancer is a regressive local establishment of patterning control which sequesters the body's resources in order to replicate itself in a manner that does not proceed toward the general Good. Conversely, social growth is the measure of our capacity to reorganize ourselves fluidly in the direction of spontaneously patterned coherence.

Nations with greater "growth" have historically been those in which slavery was abolished, women gained legal inclusion, famine & overt tyranny were abolished, diseases are combated, ecology becomes a significant concern and the cultural development of citizens arises as a potent demand. Alternatively, archaic regimes which are concerned with the "sustainability" of their way of life are generally tyrannical, repressive, regressive & lethargic.

The philosopher Karl Marx was well aware that his futuristic Socialist regime was not the contemporary adversary of growth markets but the inevitable outcome of their fulfillment. Of course this fulfillment is identical to the revelation and transcendence of the internal contradictions inherent in the system but it is still also an extension of the system. Only where "unchecked growth" reins have we see a proliferation of citizens who grow sensitive to the failure of unregulated markets, the toxic effects of greed, the need to expand our flow of socio-symbolic power beyond even the boundaries marked by our previous successes.

All life is a continuous reorganization of elements through consumption and redistribution controlled by the interplay of the communal structures. More life and better life consists of an increase of the potency of this capacity -- primarily at the social level. Improvements of quality depend upon improvements in the ability to handle quantity.

The very concept of an abundance economy signifies an increase of symbolic "mass" in which the old inequalities are abolished. Tomorrow even the slaves must live as kings -- and the kings must extend their desires to the point at which an even greater abundance emerges past the threshold of instability.

Sustainability is a foreign concept in all non-growth societies. It does not represent an alternative to growth but rather an outcome -- an operation of growth to the point that abundance becomes widely distributed. If this sounds like "top-down" trickle economics that is only because people fail to acknowledge that all effects, even the most "grassroots" take effect under the guise of top-down modifications.

THE TRUE IDEOLOGY IS MUCH MORE INSIDIOUS

The true mental zeitgeist of our age is an epidemic of cynicism. Today the average citizen is joined with the ideological theorist and the regressive elements in government, joined in a single great supposition: "Governance fails. Business-as-usual is toxic. Leadership is suspect. High hopes are thwarted by the need for approval from the irrational masses. Grand vision is mere propaganda."

It reminds me of the old joke about American Republicans: They believe that Government doesn't work and when they get into office... they prove it.

The worst regimes behave precisely as if they believed what the cynics and radicals proclaim -- the system does not and cannot function. It should not function! This viewpoint is a demand. This pervasive Operating System is complicit in the Great Crime. It normalizes the attitude which itself imprisons the change potential within our social mechanisms.

A leader stands before a great crisis, shrugs his shoulders, saying "What can I do? The people will not let me do anything! They system will not let me do anything!" This is the complaint of the progressive and of the cynic. This is the claim with which the fascist seizes control, the excuse offered by the monolithic state. It is the obscene chuckle shared by the regressive members of parliament. They all believe it.

It is the 'bad self esteem' of society. Though it thinks itself pragmatic, diagnostic, progressive, it accepts and reinforces the idea that the entire body of social functions cannot succeed. Is this not equivalent to a doctor examining a patient and saying, "Your brain "leader" says you want to be healed but I just don't see it happening. It's business as usual throughout the rest of your body -- so the only thing I can recommend is a radical dis-engagement with the structure of your body, setting your cells free to reform into cooperative networks... if they can."

And then the body oozes onto the floor...

GROWTH DOES NOT EQUAL PROGRESS

There was a news story today which perfectly captures the mental zeitgeist that i spoke about earlier, about the all-pervasive political/economic inertia that has infected the modern world.
The story dealt with the (unsurprising) refusal of countries at the G8 meeting to make ANY concrete commitments to drastically reduce carbon emissions.
‘"I know that in the past, the United States has sometimes fallen short of meeting our responsibilities. So let me be clear: Those days are over." Said Obama.
But by the end of the day... leaders of the most developed nations again declined to commit themselves to any specific actions now or in the immediate future to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming -- actions that would require increasing energy prices, raising taxes or imposing other unpopular economic measures on their people.’
Instead they made vague pronouncements about voluntary targets of 50% less carbon dioxide by 2050, far too little and far too late, even with sufficient political will, which was sorely lacking.
This is the epitome of short-sighted political self-interest; ‘leaders’ proving themselves unwilling to undertake any actions which might make them unpopular in the eyes of their ignorant constituents. How profoundly sad it is that we let these individuals of such narrow vision dominate the decision making process.
We have become psychologically locked in a perception that the most important economic measure is growth, and yet the kind of growth pursued by industrialized countries is fundamentally no different than the runaway cellular growth of a malignancy which eventually destroys its host. This is what human beings have become on this planet- a cancer, spreading unchecked.Real progress needs to be measured by a different set of values, ones less concerned with overall GDP and more with basic issues of sustainability and maturity. Of course, this would severely impact the business-as-usual mantra of free-market fanatics and globalization zealots, so nothing gets done, and every single living thing on this earth will have to bear the price of this incredible stupidity.