 Many
of us, living in this world of unprecedented prosperity and wealth,
somehow sense that there is something terribly wrong. Everywhere we
look we see conflict, deprivation, violence, waste, suffering, greed,
destruction, hatred. This document is an attempt to understand why this
is, and what can be done by each one of us to make our communities and
our world a better place, a happier place.
A Better Way uses an
approach that has been used successfully by businesses for many years
to fix their problems, to overcome enormous obstacles and create
organizations that are now seen as exemplars, as models for others to
follow. This methodology has three parts:
- The Values Statement -- What do we believe in, and what is it we are trying to achieve?
- The Vision -- What would success 'look like' if we 'made ourselves over' and achieved these values?
- The Action Plan -- Practical steps to achieve the Vision, to get us from here to there.
A Better Way is designed
to be a living document. As we create it, together, it will change. We
will learn from our mistakes, and from our successes. As more and more
people become involved, and add their critical skills and creative
solutions to it, A Better Way will evolve from being a plan to being a collaboration, a movement.
In addition to the problem-solving methodology described above, A Better Way will also use a community creation methodology. This second methodology has five parts:
- Self-Organization -- Collaboratively agreeing on who needs
to do what by when, and volunteering for the roles we are each best
suited to fill.
- Design -- Taking the Vision down to a grass-roots level,
and applying both practical knowledge and bold innovation to specify
precisely how a Community living A Better Way would work.
- Resourcing -- Making the Communities economically viable,
finding what they need to succeed and distributing their products and
knowledge to those within and outside the Community
- Building -- Implementing and improving the design
- Connecting -- Drawing on people who can help in the above steps, and then showing others A Better Way.
You are probably skeptical. We must be hopeless idealists or naive to
believe that such a grass-roots transformation of our world is
possible. Except that it has already happened at least twice before.
The agricultural revolution at the dawn of our civilization transformed
our world from a hunter-gatherer society suffering from horrendous
starvation when over-hunting and climate change suddenly killed off
most of the large game on which primitive man depended. And the
industrial revolution transformed us again from a world in which
everything made for human use had to be painstakingly, unaffordably
constructed one-at-a-time through human labour. These revolutions were
not brought about by government, but by innovative farmers and
innovative artisans. We can do it again. A Better Way
is a social movement, which will in time become an economic movement
and finally perhaps a political movement as well. It's a movement that
starts with us and ends with us, all of us, as equals.
 This document is the first draft of the first part of A Better Way
-- it presents only the Values Statement and the Vision. Most people
will never read this version. They will read a version vastly improved
by collective effort -- including your
effort -- the result of the infusion and exchange and integration of
the ideas and knowledge and skills of a million people. Join us. There
is A Better Way.
The Values Statement
Since our first appearance on this planet three million years ago we
have striven to be happy. The things that make us happy, and give us
'well-being' are universal, and have never really changed. We call
these things 'values'. Here are the values that underlie A Better Way:
- Health: We believe that everyone deserves to be healthy,
and that the emphasis in our lives should be on prevention of disease,
illness and injury, by living a healthful life. We also accept that
health care is in part our personal responsibility.
- Home: We believe that everyone deserves a home, a place to
live, in a clean and comfortable environment, with sufficient
sustainable resources to make a living and not have to rely on others.
We appreciate that the place we each call 'home' is an important part
of who and what we are, and we respect the sovereignty of other
communities.
- Connection: We believe that, as social creatures, we have a
need to belong to a community in which we play an important and
meaningful part. We have a need for healthy relationships with the
families and friends we love. We recognize that we are at once
independent, with an inherent need to be ourselves, different and
unique, and yet inter-dependent, part of the social groups we elect to be part of.
- Discovery: We believe that everyone is driven to learn and
discover and create, in our own way, and that this process of discovery
is what forms our value systems and beliefs and makes us whole and what
we are. A part of that discovery is play, applying ourselves to
activities that teach us or simply bring us joy. Equally critical to
discovery is awareness, the sensitivity to be open and curious and full
of wonder and to feel a part of the whole community of all life on
Earth.
- Work: We believe that each of us needs to be a meaningful
contributor to the communities and societies to which we belong,
drawing on our distinctive skills, strengths and talents. We want and
need to work to help others, as they want and need to help us,
reciprocally, to achieve all of the values in this list.
- Peace: We believe that humans inherently seek to be at
peace with their fellow man and with all other creatures on our planet.
We believe peace is found by granting each person the freedom to pursue
their personal happiness, freedom from stress, and justice in resolving
disputes and conflicts, by each seeking to do no harm to others, and by
accepting the responsibility to ensure that everyone has the
wherewithal and opportunity to achieve the values in this list.
- Self-Esteem: We believe that self-esteem is essential to a whole and productive life.
All human activity is directed toward the achievement of these values,
yet we now live in a world filled with their opposites: Disease,
physical and mental suffering, homelessness and alienation, loneliness,
hatred, violence, enslavement and disconnection, ignorance, withdrawal,
tedium, narrow-mindedness and passivity, unemployment, aimlessness,
greed and selfishness, war, anger, lack of personal freedoms,
injustice, anxiety, hopelessness, disregard for others, fear and
despair and self-loathing. Where have we gone wrong? Our intentions
were good, but somehow we have lost our way. Some people believe that
man is inherently weak and evil can be overcome only by endless
struggle, but there is evidence everywhere that man is inherently good,
and we all want to do the right thing. But we're overwhelmed at the
size of the challenge, and we don't know what to do.
We humans are very adaptable. Despite all the horrors and failures all
around us, most of us have convinced ourselves we're making progress,
that it used to be worse, that it's not so bad. There are those who
believe it has to get much worse before enough people will be motivated
to do something to make it better. But when it gets much worse, we
adaptable humans will be able to convince ourselves that it's still
not really that bad, and that there's nothing we can do about it
anyways. Until it's too late. We need to realize that, although it's
not our fault, if we don't do something, now, we will just keep going
in the direction we are headed, towards a world with much more of the
'anti-values' enumerated in the previous paragraph.
So rather than blaming others for our failures, or throwing up our hands, let's instead create a vision of a world, a possible world, where our values are fully realized, and see if it's not too late to find our way there.
The Vision
Imagine a world that has
no nations, only communities, 'tribes' of people who have self-selected
to live together. Each tribe has only the number of people that their
community can comfortably and sustainably support. They are
self-sufficient -- they need not trade with or import goods from other
communities in order to allow their members to achieve the 7 Values.
They do trade their surpluses and their non-essential specialized
products in return for non-essential specialties from other
communities. Each community is self-governing -- there are no
politicians, and decisions are made by a consensus of the whole.
When you are young, you learn critical skills: How the world works,
including the study of nature and the study of your own and other
communities, and about human nature, the arts, sciences and technology;
and How to make your own way, including critical thinking,
self-reliance, self-discipline, how to 'make sense' of the world, how
to create, innovate, collaborate, accept responsibility, tell stories,
make a living, find like minds and create community. As a child you
learn these skills from the members of your own community, and from
self-study on the Internet, not in schools. As a teen-ager you travel
extensively to other communities, living with them and learning more of
these same skills and applying them through apprenticeships in work of
your own choosing -- work that draws on your natural talents, learned
skills, and things you enjoy doing.
Then you decide, from what you have seen, what community you want to
call home. When you're accepted into that community you share what you
have and what you know with the others in the community, and they in
turn share what they have and what they know with you.
Despite the importance of local community, this world is very
connected. Knowledge is freely shared over the Internet, and people use
it to create relationships and networks with others all over the world.
Technology allows your virtual 'presence' to be nearly as profound and
complete as your real presence, and allows you to look over the
shoulder of anyone, anywhere, in a rich and multi-dimensional,
multi-sensory way, so there is little need for physical travel.
In order to live within its means, each community works in highly
efficient, cooperative ways. There is no pollution, no waste. Because
everyone has the essentials of life and has been brought up to take
care of themselves and others, and because the community is small and
close-knit and owns everything communally, there is no stressful 'fear
of not having enough', no theft, no crime, little anti-social behaviour
and, through prevention, little disease. Because everyone is equal,
there is no greed, no abuse of power. As in the prehistoric human
communities and most animal communities, the 'work-day' is short -- an
hour per person is enough to provide for the community, and the rest of
the day is free for play, for study, for observation of nature, for
telling stories, for hobbies and sports -- for whatever you want to do.
This 'extra' time, and this community spirit, have allowed communities
to reconnect with the sacredness of place, and with nature, and with
their senses. As a result, communities have reintegrated with
wilderness, leaving the majority of their land to revert to its
'unimproved' natural state, and experienced a profound philosophical
and spiritual re-awakening.
If That's A Better Way, How Do We Get There?
There's that skepticism again: We hear you saying "It can't be done;
what are these guys smoking?" Just remember the agricultural and
industrial revolutions. The changes they wrought were every bit as
dramatic and astonishing as getting from today's society to the one
portrayed in the above Vision.
We're not saying it's going to be easy. We're placing a lot of faith in two very wise people who know a lot about changing things:
Bucky Fuller said: "You never
change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something,
build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
So we're going to build a model, one that transforms today's messed-up
world into the world of the Vision above. A model, by definition, is
miniature. We're going to build a few model communities. You don't tell people how to change, you show them. Let them kick the tires, try it out, adapt it, see if it fits them. People learn by doing,
not by reading or listening. These model communities are going to be so
amazing that everyone's going to want to live in communities modeled
after them. They'll walk away -- no, they'll run away from their existing rat-races and social and economic and political tyrannies to start their own.
Margaret Mead said: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing
that ever has."
So we don't need billions of people to get on board. Just a few, say a million, should do.
The Action Plan will have to be big. Lots of roles, lots of work, lots
of learning from failures and success. We'll need a lot of help to
create it, and a lot more to implement it. But knowing where we want to
get to is half the battle. And we'll draw on the Wisdom of Crowds and
the Power of Many to get there. A true collaboration, drawing on the
knowledge and ideas and skills of millions.
Oh, and another thing. John Kotter says there are two absolute
preconditions to effective change: A sense of urgency, and Executive
sponsorship. We need you to help create a sense of urgency.
Complacency, hopelessness, they're the real enemy. A sense of urgency
can overcome both of them. You're probably not sure whether it's really
that urgent yourself. There's a lot of people out there who will tell
you the world is OK as it is. There's a lot of people out there who are
paid to tell you it's
OK. If you're not ready, if you aren't convinced it's urgent, that it's
now or never, that inaction is not an option, then that's fine. We're
not going to argue with you. Come back when you're ready. We'll be
here, and we'll still need you.
And the Executive sponsorship? The highest order of all is on-side with
us. Nature, instinct, God, whatever you want to call it, Him or Her.
It's the wisdom in your bones, in the heavens, in the land. It was the
way we lived for our first three million years on Earth, and it's coded
in our DNA, and in every atom of every molecule in the universe. Just
listen, and you'll hear it.
That's all I have so far. First
step down a long and rocky road Home. Tell me what you think of the
Values Statement and the Vision, and the persuasiveness of the stuff
I've wrapped around it. What do we need to do to make this a Collective
document? How can I make it more accessible to conservatives,
libertarians, those with different 'frames'? When you think it's ready
I'll make it a Manifesto on ChangeThis! I'm lousy at selling and
implementing things, so I need a lot of help to make this salable and
to sketch out the big-picture implementation plan. What would the
high-level Action Plan look like? How should we organize to put it
together? How about the name 'A Better Way' -- is that better or worse
than The Green Movement? And what about the logo: I wanted it to be
simple, elegant, green. It's based on the torus, and on the ellipse
used to make representations of natural beings in Westcoast Indian art.
You can 'personalize' it by putting in its centre a photo or symbol,
like a cameo, of whatever personifies A Better Way for you. The example
above is a child photographed by Heap Han of DigitalHeap. The logo could be made into a broach, a bracelet, a conversation piece for telling others about A Better Way.
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