I'm feeling a bit bruised from the mild raking over the coals
I've received from some political activist readers. I can understand
this criticism: I've been so fortunate in my life that it's been easy
for me to work around the political and economic obstacles I have faced
in my life. My whole life has been, compared to that of most,
incredibly easy.
At the same time, I think the criticisms that
have been made of my recently espoused 'Love Conversation Community'
philosophy-of-everything are unfair and a bit unfounded. Although this
will be exceedingly difficult (I've been writing this article for three
days, and keep scratching it out and starting over) it's important that
I give it a try. So here goes:
I believe that:
Whether
you want to change the political or economic system, save the whales,
stop global warming, reform education, spark innovation or anything
else, the answer is in how meaning,
and understanding of what needs to be done, emerges from conversation
in community with people you love, people who care.
Generally,
when that understanding is allowed to emerge, the consensus seems to be
that, as Bucky Fuller noted, "You never change things by fighting the
existing reality. To change something, build a new [working] model [of a better way to live] that makes the existing model obsolete", a model that others can follow.
And
while many doubt that such models are scalable i.e. that they could
become pervasive in our society and actually replace what's
dysfunctional, I believe that (a) Margaret Mead is right in saying
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." and (b) when our civilization inevitably collapses later this century, such working models are likely to be essential to the building of a new, viable society.
If
you don't share these beliefs, I am not going to be able to convince
you of anything. It took me a long time getting here, and a lifetime of
experiences and all the study in my Save the World reading list
to understand this, but if your worldview is different from mine, if
you're not ready to appreciate what I believe (or vice versa), then
we're wasting time and energy debating -- go save the world your own
way and I wish you every success.
If you do 'buy' the beliefs
above, but think I'm wrong-headed in how I'm going about acting on
these beliefs, then please bear with me; that's what I'm now going to
try to explain.
The criticisms I have received on my recent articles generally fall into two categories:
- That
this 'build new models based on love conversation and community'
approach is naive, romantic, impotent, and/or an abrogation of the
progressive's responsibility to confront and defeat our corrupt and
horrifically destructive political, social, educational and economic
systems, and
- That polyamorism is a red herring, a distraction from what urgently needs to be done, and a self-indulgence.
Let me try to address the first one first.
Progressives
have been trying to confront the existing power structures for
centuries. These power structures are based on and sustained by
hierarchy -- centralization, inequality, the use of force against those
who do not obey those with power. We are taught from birth to play our
designated role in the hierarchy, whether that be in the red, orange or
yellow band in the graphic above. We are taught to know our place. If
we are brought up conservative, we are encouraged to strive to be
closer to the centre, to 'succeed' in moving higher up the hierarchy
(picture the graphic above as being a pyramid, with the red as the peak
towering over the 'lower' rings around it). If we are brought up
progressive, we are encouraged to work 'within the system' for greater
justice, to make the hierarchy a little less uneven in wealth and
power, and 'fairer' for those who work hard to move within it as they
wish.
Criticism #1 above comes, I think, mainly from those who
are 'caught' in the light green band, the semi-marginalized, the
disaffected and conflicted liberal/progressives and conservatives who
have been tossed out or partially disentangled themselves from our
dysfunctional and ruinous civilization, the technophiles who dream of
something better but can't quite unplug from the mainstream 'power
grid', the libertarian idealists who think that individualism is the
key (and can't understand why all those other
individuals can't get with their program), the co-opted (mostly young)
counter-culturals who are really just feeding the Man, and those who
because of personal misfortune or lack of opportunity haven't had the
opportunity to Just Walk Away from this hierarchy to the very Edge.
The
hierarchy survives the disaffection of the light green band by feeding
the myth that it can evolve, that it is open to revolution. So we have
petitions and demonstrations. The 'light greens' are the Howard Deane
and Barack Obama supporters, the ones who believe that we can find
replacements to prevent collapse before The End of Oil and The End of
Water, who believe that there is a political solution to global
warming. They are the ones fighting for regulations to prevent
corporatist oligopoly, massive global corruption, the wrenching despair
of global poverty, and the despoiling of our planet, ever hopeful that
numbers alone will bring them victory. They are the ones who think the
right to clean air, water, food, and soil, to free speech, to security
from despots, torturers, rapists, murderers, thieves and criminals, to justice, can be ensured through laws and law enforcement.
I ache for these people. I was one of them most of my life. I love their ideals. It should
be possible. They have occasionally won great and important victories,
briefly 'beat' the system. And if you compare civilization today to
what it was at its worst, a few hundred or a few thousand years ago,
there is the illusion that we are making progress, that we are moving
inexorably in the right direction. The Man wants those in the light
green band to believe -- their hope pacifies them, keeps them
distracted, keeps them co-opted, participating, keeps them from Just
Walking Away. The Chinese built the Great Wall early in our
civilization not to keep the Mongol hordes out, but to keep the newly
enslaved and dubious peasants, the pawns of the new civilization, in.
To keep them from Just Walking Away.
But if you compare today to
the way we lived before civilization, before what Daniel Quinn calls
'The Great Forgetting', you can quickly see that there has been no
progress. It's a dream. From this distance, from a prehistoric
perspective, from The Edge, you can see that our civilization, like all
the civilizations that preceded it, is an exercise in untrammeled
excess, careening over the cliff to its own collapse. We're skidding at
breakneck speed on sheer black ice into a chasm. Those in the red,
orange and yellow bands can't see it, won't
see it. Those in the light green bands are scrambling frantically to
grab the steering wheel, the brakes, the accelerator, trying to get it
back under control, yelling at the rest of us to "Do
something!". But those of us on the Edge, in the dark green, know it is
far too late. We only have a little while before the crash, so we might
as well enjoy our time, in love, conversation and community, as best we
can. While we are physically in that spinning, hurtling, out-of-control
vehicle that is civilization, in our minds and hearts we have Just
Walked Away.
Activist Barbara writes "I assume you have
abandoned your efforts on the social/political front and wish you all
success in your personal life". She is a victim of The Man -- her
disease is much more debilitating than mine, though both are diseases
of civilization's excesses. I completely appreciate her position, and
why she feels this way. But I have not abandoned my efforts on the
social/political front. I am building new models of how to live and
make a living, based on conversation in small community with people I
love, models of how a 'political' and 'social' and 'educational' and
'economic' 'system' should work, and can
work. I don't know if they can work on any scale before civilization's
collapse -- I'm just a local model builder. I doubt it, in fact. But
that won't stop me building them. This is who I am and this is my
Purpose. These models will not save the world, because I don't think it
can be saved. But they will enable us, here, now, to make a meaningful
life together, to learn, to discover, to share joy, and perhaps to
create a legacy for the seven generations to follow, some of whom will
live or be born after
civilization's collapse -- some models that they just might find useful
as they build in the ruins left from the catastrophic destruction we
have, with the noblest of intentions, wrought on our lovely fragile
blue-green planet.
Our civilization will have one, and
possibly two, legacies. The first will be the Sixth Great Extinction of
life on this planet. It is already well underway, and accelerating at a
rate we are only just beginning to realize.
The second, if we
create it, in love, conversation and community, will be some working
models of what we might have done differently if we'd only known in
time. They will be the only important learning of 30,000 years of
astonishing and ruinous civilization -- the learning from our mistakes.
We sit here, those of us on the Edge who I love so dearly, so
ecstatically, amidst the Dark and Gathering Sameness of the World, building these models, quietly, joyfully, in the hope that, one day, they might be of use.
(Tomorrow
-- I'll tackle criticism #2, that polyamorism is a self-indulgence and
not necessary to effective self-sufficient 'model' communities.)
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
