Fundamental characteristics of a Society based on Equity

Magnus Hendrickson in Quillette argues for a contributive justice in social equity. I am in considerable agreement so my comments here are more to do with some of the transformations I see are required to mobilise society as a whole towards those ends:

1. Education should be founded on moral education i.e those characteristics that underline one’s opportunity to contribute to the community including a world view that we human beings are in the one boat, so to speak.
2. Education should be designed around the enactment of contribution / service from the earliest ages (3years) and enrolling both parents, teachers and others in the community contribution in action pedagogy required to facilitate the child’s and youth’s growth in contribution through their age related developmental stages.
3. Education teaches fundamental skills necessary to take part as a fully fledged member of society: reading, writing, basic mathematics.
4. Education provides access to advanced skills to realise the full potential contribution of the individual in society.
5. Education format design has 3 equal aspects: i) Basic through advanced learning of epistemologically objective subjects; II) progressive and community integrated service (experiential training) in family and community with specific responsibilities including team work and leadership; iii) development of the integrated individual with the ecology (human and natural) as might be facilitated through natural environmental access, agriculture, the arts, and trade skills including team work and leadership.
6. Economic models should be based in commons models e.g Henry George. In such modelling each human being is seen as having equal ‘ownership’ of the planets resources. Such ownership is as regulated by the elected government to realise that view, not as an economic equalisation of everyone but as a conservation of the commons for the long term future of the human optimal ecology. Within such modelling is required: i) an acknowledgement of the basic resources for every human being to participate fully in society e.g in today’s world not to have ready and reliable access to the internet is a poverty; II) economic behavioural modelling is enrolled to design economic policy including taxation that creates the appropriate incentives and disincentives that on one hand conserve the commons and on the other hand motivate the individual and business toward their optimal contribution, added-value, productivity, and legacy. Profit might be one incentive, status another – esp if being known as who-has-made-a-significant-difference to community. iii) Commons law (government regulation) aims to mange rent payable for access to resources (human and natural) on behalf of all constituents. In this way, who has more access to the commons returns some of the gains of that to the constituency as public services and infrastructures. In an economic sense the process provides incentive for individuals and businesses to realise innovations or higher value adding while amply recognising those people who provide untrained, technical or trade services i.e following a more rote skill training.
7. Government is founded on participatory democratic process at all levels, with education and election processes that amplifys the meritocracy of contribution or service to community, from local to national governance, not necessarily a meritocracy of the most profits or academic results, nor the most argumentative or trained political careerist. Although I would fully expect that people of strong intelligence and moral character some who also show acumen in business or science or arts or agriculture or social leadership.

Scarcity, Energy, Climate Solutions, and a New Civilisation

Andrew Nikiforuk of The Tyee, writes, “So, if our current civilization is to survive in any shape or form it needs to fundamentally rethink all energy spending, from how we harness it to what we use it for. As Michaux concludes in his number-crunching report, “replacing the existing fossil fuel powered system (oil, gas and coal), using renewable technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines, will not be possible for the entire global human population. There is simply just not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target set by the world’s most influential nations. What may be required, therefore, is a significant reduction of societal demand for all resources, of all kinds.”

Erin Remblance responds, “How we make that transition to lowered demand should be the most prominent discussion in our media, classrooms and households. Why is it nearly invisible?”

She goes on to note, “Years ago the great psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote a book about what happens to people in dehumanizing environments. Having survived two Nazi concentration camps, Bettelheim knew the subject well. Near the end of The Informed Heart, he offered this prescient observation. Jews who accepted the status quo and believed in business as usual perished. Those who did not believe in business as usual left before the Germans arrived, sailed to Russia or America or joined the resistance. Many survived. “Thus in the deepest sense the walk to the gas chamber was only the last consequence of a philosophy of business as usual,” wrote Bettelheim. It was “a last step in no longer defying the death instinct, which might also be called the principle of inertia.”

Now a widespread inertia prevents us from seizing control of our fate. We must do all we can to overcome that torpor. The implications are plain. Those communities that reject business as usual and cut their energy spending and all the materialist values that go with it, just might survive the long emergency and write a different ending to this story.

I have two responses to Erin’s points. They are my elaboration on the two key notions in her comments: Business as usual, and scarcity of energy.

I open talking about business as usual because seeing this clearly is the foundation of any transformation of civilisation, and technological and energy paradigm shift is pivotal in sweeping civilisation transformation along. (See particularly the copious and optimistic works of Jeremy Rifkin). What some have called ‘spiritual malaise’ and others “tranquilised obviousness”, business rarely is as usual, and if, like the history of European Jews, you punish a group regularly in small to harsh ways, I reckon they might just think the next bit of noise is just more of the same.

It does take quite a bit of training to be able to get up in the morning and take a fresh look at what’s happening, and that requires even putting yesterday in the past. It also requires being fully cognizant of our biases and mindsets. Anyone who says they don’t have any are doomed to play them out. What then do we hold to that gives us some predictive viability? First is cultivating an independence of thought, a detachment from the tribe whether professional, national, sub-cultural, or party as usual. And that is not antipathy, even the opposite, what others have called “indifferent love”. This stance supports an ability to: follow the evidence from several fields of science; hold doubt without discarding anything until resolved in evidence; and reviewing fully any arguments against. This ability for independent thought supports the interdependence of all independent thinkers for it is only in the recognition of true independent inquiry (search for truth) that a collective of thinkers can divine a greater magic.

This situation we find ourselves is a call to be so much more than we have ever been, so much more than we wound up being, individually and collectively. We will either rise to the call or we will fall. And whatever happens will be what happens. As the WWII holocaust found traction, Lydia Zamenhoff chose to go back to Poland from the USA in the face of immanent danger, she chose to support the last moments of her community and die with them. We don’t know how many hands she held but we do know she died with them. Those of us in the frontline of transforming this civilisation may well find ourselves in a future of ‘holding hands’. We must accept that this is one possible future.

In terms of policy, economics, and human behaviour, the basic economic reality of scarcity does work. Many people living in rural Australia grew up looking after water usage. If you have to make a meagre annual rainfall and a watertank last a year, you have watch usage like a hawk. On the other hand, if old people can’t afford heating in winter, they could die. Well, that’s a time honoured tradition. Australia has ineptly allowed gas companies to sell much of its gas, internationally, leading to scarcity and high prices for energy as we enter winter. I’m expecting an unusual winter death rate among the elderly this year. Feeding into an inflationary boom, those on more basic incomes can be expected to suffer housing dislocation. This in, perhaps, the wealthiest per capita nation on the planet.

Meanwhile the environmental impact of windfarms is already been felt and the next phase of renewable energy farms will not be given such an easy ride. The real difficulty is that we aren’t learning fast enough because, here in Australia, for the last 20 years 80% of our intellectual energy has been spent on arguing climate change denialism with our government. In the end, the example of the holocaust goes to one characteristic of modern politics so far – we are often very slow to the table. Timing being the essence, and we can’t escape the clear timing the IPCC have provided, we will damage our way out of this catastrophe. The question is, which is the lesser poison or the better trade off? Presumably the one that improves the chances of the ecosystem and human civilisation. There’s not much chop in voting for the view that 1 or 2 or 3 billion people can just suffer and die. There’s not much chop in loosing much more of the world’s ecosystems and species than we already have, because that will inevitably lead to the billions of people suffering and dying. The inextricableness of human development and a narrow range of climate and a particular variety of ecosystems, is conclusive. I support the work of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, the third and often overlooked leg of climate solutions. The scalability of technologies of removing CO2 from the atmosphere over the next decade is likely to have less impact and perhaps even a very positive total impact on ecosystems, than any other climate change solution, namely renewable energy development and population adaptation. To solve this crisis, to transform global civilisation so the next phase of human development is of a higher order of workability for people and ecosystems, we’ve got to work urgently together on all fronts, even if it means government ordered rationing.

The UK in WWII proved that a people faced by a single existential threat can adhere to austere rationing policies for several years. Even in the 1930’s the mathematical and nutritional knowledge was ample so that there were no cases on malnutrition in the UK during WWII. Today, we certainly have the capacity to design sophisticated systems for the allocation of energy, the development of renewables, the weaning from fossil fuels, and the equitable establishment of systems worldwide, together with an food security systems. What is still required is for nationalistic governments to get to the table put aside their extreme patriotisms for the future of humanity and the planetary ecosystems that support us.

We have a political choice: the easy choice or the hard choice. The easy choice is for all national governments to come to the table with good will to design global systems that will create both equity in resource access and as rapid a transition from fossil fuel energy as possible. The hard choice is to continue to bicker and terrorize each other.

Either choice will lead to the new civilisation, will lead to the transition off fossil fuels and to equitable distributions of resources. Even if making the hard choice, once a billion people have died and billions of others have suffered through the defensive and aggressive attitudes of extreme patriots, the billions of people of good will remaining,will see those extremists off. Such has been the way of history to date. Will this be the moment we will be able to put our past in the past and take the easy way, or will we insist that the past dictates our actions and only massive numbers of deaths will convince us that another model of governance and social organization is viable.?

A New Gratitude for Anti-Vaxxers & Climate Change Deniers

In The Fire Tablet, Baha’u’llah asks of God, “Coldness hath gripped all mankind: Where is the warmth of Thy love, O Fire of the worlds?” To which He, later in the exposition, replied, ” “Were it not for the cold, how would the heat of Thy words prevail, O Expounder of the worlds?”

While Baha’u’llah was lamenting the dearth of spiritual characterisation among the people of His time, there are implications here for acknowledging certain social realities and, how those realities provide the possibility for Baha’u’llahs’ core vision, “an ever-advancing civilisation”.

While the totalitarian sovereignty that ruled Persia and the Ottoman Empire in Baha’u’llah’s 19th century, allowed little in the way of dissent, the rapid uptake of His teachings support the rule of thumb that there are always about 10 % of people ready to push back on the status quo or move towards a more enlightened future.

There is a distinction between the 10% who push back on the status quo and the 10% who move towards an enlightened future. The 10% who push back are exhibiting, I think, an anti-authoritarian trait. The 10% who move towards an enlightened future are exhibiting an adventurous trait.

The anti-authoritarian trait leads to resistance to government regulation and individualism or tribalism. They are found among political conservatives and progressives, hippies and traditionalists, capitalists and marxists.

The adventuring trait leads to finding ways forward through, over, around, and underneath government regulation. The adventurer, likewise is found across all social world views.

There is an overlapping group with anti-authoritarian and adventurous traits. I will call these triple-A’s. These people, like the suffragettes at the late 19th and early 20th century, are the social spearhead of the world. Their anti-authoritarian stance has the government comes down hard on them, while their adventurous proclamations are castigated by the majority, Eventually, from their spearheading, cracks emerge in the traditional socio-political argument. More people start to support the enlightened view. Laws are improved, society changes. Eventually all but 10% of people proclaim “I always thought so. It’s just obvious.”

The triple-A shows a particularly courageous intelligence. In WWII, France, Holland, Belgium, Norway etc were mostly engaged through the small population of resistance fighters. These were from all ages and status in the communities and had one thing in common, a triple-A streak. Many of these fighters are honoured as heros of nations, today. In other part of the world, the triple-A leader has de-colonised their nation. Some of these, have, themselves, come to show a totalitarian mindset.

So, here’s the rub. We can’t have social change, we cannot resist the really nasty possibilities of political life, without anti-authoritarians. We cannot have an enlightened future, a new political possibility, without adventurers. We cannot have the undoing and the transforming without the triple-A. And this is not a rational thing. This is not someone gets up one day and say, “Today is a good day to become an adventurer or anti-authoritarian. This is a trait. Something fundamental to our evolution as social primates. It is not predictable who will be born with either trait. Most families will have someone born with one of these traits, given that they appear in about 20% of the population in one form or another.

People with any of these traits tend to find a home whenever there is a desperate existential moment for their society. They then are immediately in action and are able to play a vital role by either pushing back on capitulation or problem-solving to a new status. At less dire moments in society, the anti-authoritarian will link to whatever is around, like a rise in climate change acceptance, or a status quo like vaccination uptake. The adventurer, in the less dire today, will be dancing with the possibility of solving a problem for today and the future. Both anti-authoritarians and adventurers will tend to express their actions in terms of a rational construct. I think this is a post-enlightenment behaviour. However, the actions whether of an anti-authoritarian or adventurer or triple-A or an individual slap smack in the mainstream status quo, are simply an accident of inherent circumstances.

This is not to say that rational constructs are wrong in any way. Certainly, although the rational constructs will tend to be biased by the trait exhibited, the rational construct expressed through these traits are vital to socio-political well-being. In less dire periods in national life, these are the people who draw the lines in the sand for society and governments. As someone who is an adventurer, I hold to a particular line among those lines drawn by adventurers. Anti-authoritarians and other adventurers might draw lines differently to mine. However their lines do define my line in conversation with what I fear about politics and economics, and what I support about the development of human-ness, social capacity, democracy, science and problems-solving.

While I am fully aware of the political and power-grabbing humbug that is exploiting them, I have slowly developed a new gratitude for the anti-vaxx or climate change denial person. They provide the edges of the clearing of who I am, and, at that edge is also the question, what would I sacrifice and what for? I may never need to extend the clearing of who I am into the forest of I-have-to-put-my-life-on-the-line, but by listening to my more paranoid friends, I have more clarity where that is (and isn’t). And tomorrow, if the existential crisis arises, there’s a good chance they’ll be at my shoulder.

Want a New World?

Lifting the hood on the premises (context) for which we hold the planet and who we (human beings) are, shows us how politics (and other human activities like industries, bureaucracies, education, science, arts) came to be done the way it is done. And therein lies the fundamental barrier to a powerful response to our situation. Politics, having become done the way it is done, is now determined to survive, to continue, to resist all attempts to proceed otherwise, including the possibility of creating a new context for itself and the nations and the global society.

This is how the world works. This is the demonstration of Khun’s Theory about paradigm shifts. Human organisations are like organisms. They live everyday in a struggle for survival. No point railing against it as if what exists won’t struggle for all its strength to continue to survive. Wouldn’t you? Don’t you?

The vital other part, then, is to speak forth a new context. A new world could be inside the context for: the extraordinary, collaborative, problem-solving human; the governance and political framing of cooperativeness, collaboration and collective decision-making; the flourishing of the planet and the human being (the way industries, bureaucracies, education, science, arts are done).

Like any context, new context spoken clearly and routinely enough, immediately begins to be populated by content (technology and evidence) that strengthens itself. The paradigm shift requires that we, not attack old context, but create in language, new context which content draws energy away from the old content, simultaneously weakening the context. Just as the measures of well-being in relation to the old context are declining, so measures in relation to a new context might be seen to be on the egress, even if modestly right now. It’ll be a rocky road for a while, yet those who are given being by getting beyond the status quo context, will find they live a powerful life, all the same.

Egg Boy & Dissonance

He’s not a hero. He’s 16. There’s a well-understood developmental trajectory he is on, part of which means his action are not particularly well thought out. That ‘getting into action’ that youth, especially certain young men, are known for, often leads into danger. Egg boy got punched twice by the politician  and then jumped on and choked by two or thee much larger men (white supremacist supporters of said politician). Well it happened in a public space so egg boy had some safety net in the form of observers and a couple of supporters.

Of course it is just that jumping into action that gives youth their impact. Double that with strong ethical training some youth, world-wide have made amazing contributions. And their contributions make it clear that almost all youth can reach that standard of peaceful action for social change – true heroes.

I am impressed that egg boy and his friends are not just off chillin’ with their mates and ignoring society altogether, as if tomorrow will give us the world ‘we deserve’. And sure, from his point of view, no-one was getting hurt, just a politican’s pride. But anyone being attacked from behind doesn’t knows that, and that can make it dangerous for egg boy. His actions for me are more a signifier, a flare of retaliation that peaceful people tend not to stoop but that more than enough of us ‘wish to do’, as many of my friends attest.

It signifies how many are feeling angry and hurt about these anti-social messages and our all too primate desire to obliterate what is painful to us, that is intruding onto our territory, albeit that territory is abstract ‘the territory of peace and harmony’. My advice is to sit with that dissonance between what we stand for as peace lovers and our actual attitudes and behaviours when confronted by haters. Reaching for an excuse for why even small acts of violence can be defended is a natural response to dissonance but not necessary. My authentic experience is that I delight in egg boys action while also realising, with some shame, that even this mild violence undermines the cause towards peace, and supports the messaging towards violence, just as Anning’s vocal violence supported the Christchurch mosque killings. I sit with this dissonance, accepting this is who I am, and that who I will Be, will be an authentic integration of my primal nature and my higher nature. While there are many other sources of learning around the heroic, adult, approach, so many of which are unknown to popular media, we would do well to review the activism of Martin Luther King in making social change, to see how powerful and heroic is the peaceful approach.