Chapter 29: The Transition – Guiding Principles and Criteria

This writing contains a lot of what can be described as ideology. A clear ideology or set of guiding principles, priorities, and goals is important. Some form of faith is also very beneficial. Yet all too often at every scale, from vast civilizations to the inner workings of an individual human being, even the wisest, most sensible and compassionate ideology or religion can become an oppressive dogma, a mold that is forced upon people by others, by society or even by one's own self, blindly causing horrific harm. Such a mis-application defeats the intention of such an ideology or belief system. No ideology, religion or belief system is immune to that possibility.

This is why Karl Marx wrote that "Religion is the opiate of the People" and strove to eliminate it from the human psyche. He had seen religion used to keep people compliant to a long series of oppressive regimes. The same pattern is being repeated today as much as ever. Every religion has been used and abused to perpetrate and justify oppression and atrocities against human beings, animals, and the environment.

Every religion has suffered such harm from other religions. The Communism conceived by Marx and Engels was in its own turn twisted and distorted into oppressive expressions that completely negated its intention. The same is true of Democracy.

Especially during the Cold War but also since, some of the most brutal and oppressive dictatorships imaginable have been supported and even installed by force in the name of Democracy and Freedom, and also in the name of Communism and Socialism. All too often the business interests of gigantic corporations have been promoted in the name of Democracy and Free Enterprise, both at home and abroad, by riding rough-shod over the lives of whole countries, countless human beings and even the ecosystems that keep the planet habitable.

Yet without some guiding principles, we tend to degenerate into chaos, to be dominated by bullies, or both. Anarchy is not to be feared or avoided either. We must not equate anarchy with chaos. When we humans are sufficiently mature to pull it off, anarchy may well be the highest form of human society. Anarchy is what we might achieve when we as individuals and as a species are mature and evolved enough that we no longer need governments to make things run, coordinate things, or protect people from each other. Anarchy simply means the absence of any ruling body, government or institution. In its worst-case scenario, it is indeed chaos, the Wild West, the northern reaches of Pakistan. In its best case, it is a truly enlightened thriving human Community centered on wisdom and well-being. We do have a ways to go yet before we will be ready to attempt Anarchy; but if we survive our current destructive instability, maybe eventually we will be ready for true Anarchy.

In the meantime what kinds of rules of thumb and guidelines might we use to steer ourselves in ever better directions? For that matter, how do we define "better?" A few good criteria would be:

1) to strive to implement a system designed to work for everybody in terms of quality of life, safety, well being, empowerment, etc, based on our clearest current understanding of how we as human beings naturally function and respond in different situations and scenarios. This includes actively expanding research to attain deeper understanding.

2) to strive for a system that reinforces symbiosis, synergy, and free co-operation rather than competition or predation of some upon others, between individuals or groups, and between individual and society in a peer-based, rather than hierarchical, organization.

3) to strive for sustainability with quality of life. This includes but is not limited to environmental sustainability: favoring technologies and modes of operation that minimize waste and depletion of natural resources; utterly eliminating planned obsolescence and artificially created and sustained demand for consumption of disposable goods for the sake of "economic growth;” diversification of energy sources and technologies; a shift towards widespread small scale food production and power generation and away from centralized large scale generation; products and services designed for ease of use, upgradeability, user serviceability and user satisfaction rather than maximization of sales, profits and stock prices; seeking to create a positive quality of life for each and all rather than forcing and reinforcing a culture of constant drive for the next style, gadget or status symbol.

This will involve the elimination of Capitalism and profit motive and replacing its motivations with an ethic of striving for excellence and quality of life for all. The new Paradigm will change the defining criteria, goals, reinforcers and incentives to ones that serve human happiness, well-being, empowerment, synergy, and thriving. This will also reduce workload and stress. The emphasis will be upon achieving these goals for each and for all.

For example, clothes will be made to be comfortable, strong and long-lasting. The fashion industry will be mostly replaced with raw materials available for individuals to create their own personal fashion statements. Once everybody is clothed, textile production will be able to operate at a more relaxed pace to keep up with real, not artificially stimulated, demand and need. The same will apply in every sector.

Of course technology will continue to generate new innovations. The quality of products will soar in the absence of the ethos we have today in the business world, where a company must not be content to be profitable. It must keep growing, the rate of growth must constantly increase as must profit margin, market share and stock price. This applies, even if it means deliberately manufacturing inferior products that are designed not to last, as a way to force people to keep buying more. In the new Paradigm, focus will be on utility, aesthetics, and quality of life.

We will also focus on reducing energy consumption through emphasis on lower-consumption technology such as passive solar architecture, in which the physics of materials and design tend to keep a building’s ambient temperature within a selected range with little need for heating or cooling.

4) to minimize and eliminate hierarchical social structures as much as absolutely possible, in favor of peer-based synergistic, symbiotic structures. It is an established fact that humans have a tendency to abuse authority to various degrees. In any hierarchy, even if the highest-up is a truly good leader (which we can't take for granted), at some point in the chain of command there will always be persons who can't resist making the lives of people under them miserable, lording it over them, micromanaging. Openness and honesty are almost always suppressed because nobody wants to get in trouble for a mistake or even the perception of a mistake. People tend to distrust each other and act accordingly. Since we know that humans tend to "go south" in such setups, doesn't it make sense to try to minimize or eliminate hierarchical structures?

Many studies have demonstrated that hierarchical social structures are incompatible with the human psyche and nervous system, and inevitably lead to escalating social dysfunction to the detriment of all members of the community. Capitalism is currently the most epidemic form of enforced hierarchy, but it is by no means the only example. Current and recent research has demonstrated ever more conclusively that hierarchical social structures inherently bring out the worst in us.

The cited study acknowledges that there are two paths by which a person usually comes to a position of influence and power. One is by bullying and manipulating. The other way is by being compassionate and supportive towards one’s fellows. Yes, those qualities do tend to bring a person who exhibits them profusely, into a position of leadership and influence. The paradox is that once one is in such a situation or role, one rapidly begins to lose those qualities as the compassion circuitry in the brain shuts down. This was measured directly. Multiple controlled experiments and empirical observations show that once a person of compassion, empathy and kindness finds themself in a position of power, they become more arrogant, bullying, insensitive, harsh and inclined to seek more power. There is obviously variation among individuals in their susceptibility to this phenomenon. There may be extremely rare individuals who are nearly or completely immune, and at the other end of the spectrum there are individuals who become Hitlers or Pol Pots. Most of us are probably somewhere in between. But it would appear that there are few, if any, who are immune.

It is not generally a case of monsters who start out as monsters. It is more often a case of good people becoming destructively distorted by being in a position of power. This does not necessarily always involve becoming a dictator or the CEO of a corporation. It can happen in a functionary at a corporate or government office, who has the power to facilitate or obstruct the needs of members of the public who come to their counters. It can affect a Private who gets promoted to Sergeant. It can emerge in a shift supervisor at a convenience store.

In other words, in order to reinforce and strengthen the qualities of empathy, compassion, solidarity, civic-mindedness and even true leadership and forge a culture of empowerment and mutually-supportive symbiosis, we must eliminate or drastically minimize the establishment of permanent and defined hierarchies. While the positive qualities mentioned above will still result in some individuals developing a high degree of influence and regard among their peers, we must be very careful to avoid codifying this dynamic by translating it into an actual hierarchy with titles and differentiated levels of rights and respect, institutionalizing it and effectively setting it in stone. If such an individual begins to lose those positive qualities after becoming influential, their level of influence will naturally decline while others with those qualities in greater degree will become more influential. Last month’s high influencer who subsequently became arrogant and bossy, will experience reduced influence or “power.” The compassion circuitry in their brains will re-engage. They will never be put in a position to become an institutionalized power addict and abuser. We can expect a healthy, naturally shifting rotation of people being natural leaders. It will also be beneficial to include this scientific knowledge in the educational curriculum, in order to empower all members of the community to be more alert to observe, identify and help remedy these dynamics in themselves and each other.

5) to maximize each person's ability to contribute to their society/community by empowering each individual to develop their talents, passions, and abilities in the context of a community that actively sustains, supports, and benefits from their development, innovation and productivity.

6) to foster a pluralistic range of socio-economic paradigms. Then the mainstream paradigm will be democratic both socially and economically; but some small-scale, limited accommodation can be made for individuals who are temperamentally incompatible with the new mainstream paradigm. Communities where capitalism is practiced on a small scale could thrive as long as limits are put on how big they can get and how long they can last, with protections in place to ensure that such communities do not exploit or victimize people and other communities that do not share their paradigm.

7) to establish a constructive mechanism, culture and encouragement of ongoing conscious re-evaluation of modes of operation, in order to retain what is working while seeking alternatives to what is not working in terms of human happiness and well-being. We will avoid reinforcement of what is not working and make changes when and where necessary. If something is working for some but not others, then we will seek something that works for all parties, or else create differing mutually symbiotic paradigms that can allow different subgroups to thrive without negatively impacting each other.

8) to redefine concepts of ownership to guarantee and safeguard the sanctity of each individual’s or family’s relationship to their home and the items that they personally use, while eliminating the possibility of one party owning land or other resources used by another party and restricting, blocking or otherwise controlling access. We will also define as publicly or commonly owned, all resources shared by all of the community such as roads, energy infrastructure, manufacturing facilities, distribution centers, water, communications media, hospitals and so forth. The concept of the “commons,” which functioned well for a long time, will be revived in a new incarnation. Those engaged in production and distribution of goods and services will democratically or consensually operate and run facilities, under the transparent view and direction of the people. As mentioned earlier, any persons who currently own more than one property will be required to choose one as their residence. The other properties will become property of such former renters or employees as live or worked in them or else become open for occupancy. People whose work or lifestyle requires frequent travel will not be negatively impacted, as all former hotels, motels and extended-stay facilities will be freely available. Former exclusive luxury facilities will be open for all members of the community to enjoy, administered similarly to how public parks are administered.

As discussed earlier in this writing, all land not currently in use will be the common property of all of the people and therefore accessible to all. We will create legal processes for a person or family to acquire the right to live, or a production team to acquire the right to produce, on such land, subject to reasonable limits on the size of such parcels and requirements to do no reasonably avoidable damage. There will be no cost barriers to compliance with such requirements, since the need for currency will be eliminated.

9) to guarantee the right of every human being to free and unobstructed access to a reasonable place to live, food, energy, medical care, education, transportation, tools and all other necessities and desired resources.

10) to eliminate currency as a requirement for anything at all, and as a barrier of access to anything.

11) To clearly define where and how the boundaries of the freedom of one person ends and that of another begins. Laws will need to be clarified, possibly in the form of Constitutional amendments, specifying these rights and clarifying that one’s rights are absolute with respect to one’s own person and life, but do not extend to others. In other words, one will be free to pursue or follow one’s aesthetics, religion, and other beliefs but never to impose them on another, nor to use them as a justification for interfering with the freedom and access of another or compromising their dignity, safety or rights.