Chapter 40: Challenges and Pitfalls in the New Paradigm: How to Encounter Them and What to Watch Out For in Ourselves
Challenge:
The Transition will end the current dysfunctional modern feudal hierarchical socioeconomic power structures and replace them with symbiotic collaborative, democratic, and consensus-based social mechanisms. Yet we’ve all developed habits, conditioned response patterns and expectations that we’ve needed to survive in the current dysfunctional hierarchical environment. For a while, those old patterns and expectations will probably persist until we develop and master new responses and expectations appropriate to, and reinforced by, the new paradigm. There will be a learning curve. We’ll need to be alert to catch ourselves and each other thinking in terms of initiative or solutions coming from “above,” and gently remind ourselves and each other, as often as needed, that processes have changed, until the new patterns become second-nature.
We’ll do well to draw upon experience from known non-hierarchical social structures, such as kibbutzim and a number of other intentional egalitarian communities, countries, social experiments, and cultures. We’ll also learn from current psychological and sociological research and build upon that knowledge with fresh observations and ongoing experience and vigorous new research. As our knowledge and experience deepen, broaden and strengthen, it will generate new content in all levels of education, in order to best equip upcoming generations to thrive.
When more than one hypothesis or view arise and remain after thorough open analysis, they will be implemented temporarily on a small scale until we can see which, if any, work best. When more than one approach work well, they’ll either all be viewed as options, or the ideas will be integrated into models that include the best features of the various successful models.
We will transition from a static society, changing and evolving mainly through unconscious random events, fads, actions, reactions, and shaped by the imperatives of the socioeconomic paradigm, to a dynamic society, growing and evolving through honest, objective, conscious self-observation and regenerative feedback.
Challenge:
Going into Transition, we will do best if we strive to anticipate which human responses will likely strengthen and which could weaken us in setting up the new paradigm, and act accordingly.
Change is inevitable and often, as now, necessary. Yet it rarely comes easily. One part of us resists change and clings to the familiar, sometimes even when the familiar is toxic or harmful. This is equally true of us as individuals, and as groups and societies.
Another part of us seeks and embraces change. Both urges evolved over eons and serve us best under different circumstances.
Change demands more of us, and introduces more uncertainties, than maintaining the status quo. When how we do things is serving us well, empowering us individually and socially, yielding mutually-beneficial relationships and a norm of thriving and high human happiness and well-being, it’s best to keep doing the same, only refining and tweaking it to improve it. Resistance to change is an asset in that case. It’s worth exerting great efforts to resolve issues that come up in the society or in the relationship.
When how we do things is toxic, harmful, disempowering, destructive, dysfunctional, and causing us harm and unhappiness, the drive to bring change serves us well. It is what motivates us to repair what’s broken, to invent new ways of doing things that are likely to make things better, abandon the dysfunctional ways and make whatever efforts are needed to replace them with ways that serve us better.
Modern socioeconomic feudalism is harming us egregiously, doing potentially irreparable damage to our planetary home, and producing a norm of dysfunction, unhappiness, functional bondage for all but a very few, discord, strife, scarcity, unnecessary stress, waste, callousness, and misery. We must encourage and reinforce that in us that seeks change, and consciously, deliberately not encourage or reinforce the urge to resist change. If we ever find ourselves discouraged, doubting the Transition, or yearning for the old ways, we must be prepared to remind ourselves and each other, of how damaging modern feudalism is, reaffirm our ability to succeed in the new paradigm and our commitment to do the hard work needed for it (as with any change) to work. It will get easier with time, and it will be worth it. We will not be like an abused partner who escapes, only to return to their abuser when things get difficult. Turning back will not be an option. The stakes are too high!
Challenge:
Under the current paradigm, we’ve long been divided against each other along ethnic, religious, national, economic and other lines, as groups and as individuals. Such resentments, rivalries, and animosities have been reinforced for so long that they have a life of their own. Some go back generations. They’ve kept us divided and conquered, blaming each other rather than the socioeconomic paradigm, the “game” we’re forced to play to survive, for the stresses, injustices, traumas, and disempowerment that we’ve endured. Once we’ve freed ourselves of modern feudalism and initiated the new paradigm, at lease some of those animosities will tend to continue by sheer momentum.
All such groups and individuals have suffered violence, exclusion, disempowerment, abuse, deprivation, and other injustices by one another to one degree or another. This is one way that the modern feudal lords of the corporatocracy have kept their power over us: by creating chronic scarcity in a socioeconomic environment where the gain of one inevitably comes at the expense of another, disempowering us by keeping us scrambling against one another for the crumbs thrown into our midst. We have complied by playing the game as intended, unaware that we’ve been complicit in our own subjugation. We’ve struggled group against group, person against person, instead of uniting to fundamentally change the “game,” the underlying criteria, principles and guidelines that determine how we perform the interactions and processes that produce and distribute what we desire and need.
In the new paradigm, post-Transition, all individuals and groups will be able to thrive. The gain of one will benefit all. Every person and group will be empowered. We must be vigilant to recognize and choose to discourage and not reinforce or accept any and all perpetuation of interpersonal and inter-group animosity that carries over out of inertia. If we fail to, then we will lose all for which we will exert ourselves. The new paradigm will embody the principle of unity in diversity. None will be excluded or barred.
We must consistently remind ourselves and each other that the resentments and blame that we feel for one another, over past real and perceived wrongs, are really the chafing of the invisible psychological and sociological chains that have bound us in this old paradigm, programmed into us systematically through skillful manipulation by the lords of the corporatocracy to keep us compliant and playing the game driving their enrichment at the expense of our disempowerment. Rather than even look for blame, let us think in terms of learning from our mistakes, understanding them, and doing better.
Many of us have suffered, struggled, been disempowered, and otherwise been harmed under current modern feudalism. We may naturally feel an urge to go after the feudal lords who used, abused, took advantage of, and otherwise harmed us, to get revenge or payback. We absolutely must not! Modern feudal lords and modern serfs and peasants, have all been perpetuating the game by playing by its operational principles and rules. We’ve embodied the behaviors that are reinforced in this paradigm, in our ignorance and unawareness of the actual nature of the socioeconomic paradigm that we’ve operated under. We all share responsibility for keeping that dysfunctional paradigm going: us for playing the role of peasants/serfs and the modern feudal lords and their vassals for playing their roles. It takes quarterbacks, halfbacks, linebackers, defensive ends and all of the players in all of the positions, to make a football team, to make football happen. Any social, political, or socioeconomic paradigm or system is no different. The problem is not the players; it is the game that, by its very structure and operating principles, defines the roles that we’ve played. Who plays which role is irrelevant. There is no blame, which is itself a destructive, counterproductive concept that does far more harm that good in human affairs. The game is destroying us. The solution is to shut down the game and initiate a new one.
The new paradigm aims to empower every person to thrive in dignity, freedom, empowerment and fulfillment, and to establish a social environment that reinforces lifting each other up. Every person, including the former peasant, the former feudal lord, and the former vassal, has value. If any are oppressed, excluded, marginalized, or disrespected, then we all are. We will safeguard former serfs and peasants from former CEO’s and other feudal lords if they try to reassert their privilege and power by force. We will safeguard former feudal lords from former peasants trying to beat them down. We will rigorously forge a culture whose norm is to respect the humanity and dignity of every one of us, regardless of what role we played under modern feudalism.
Most modern feudal lords are addicts, addicted to wealth, privilege, opulence, and power over others. We can expect many or most of them to react badly, like any addict, to being deprived of the object of their addiction. We will not allow them to re-establish their lost positions or harm others; but we will treat them with the same firmness and compassion as we would treat a dear friend or family member with any addiction, providing therapy, rehabilitation, support, and counseling, while firmly but compassionately restraining them from harming themselves or others during their withdrawals.
Please keep in mind that, in the new paradigm, former modern feudal lords will have no means of lording it over or exploiting anybody. No good can be gained by persecuting or harassing them. The Transition and the new paradigm must never carry out or tolerate any kind of purge, ethnic cleansing, lynching, scapegoating, discrimination or other abuse of any person or group, by any person or group. We may not be able to prevent all people from such acts. Societies in the new paradigm must treat such behaviors as criminal behavior, an under no circumstances sanction, tolerate, initiate, or support it. Even if we are forced at some point to physically defend ourselves, we will do so with respect for the humanity of our opponents, and treat them with dignity if we must restrain them.
Challenge:
Going into a new undertaking is often daunting and challenging; yet if it’s initiated for the best of reasons, we humans can fall into a mindset of “once this is done, everything will be glorious and wonderful.” This is true for a new relationship, job, religion or socio-economic system.
We must stay always aware that this very natural mindset is unrealistic. Realistically, the new paradigm will vastly improve our lives in many ways, individually and socially, and solve many problems that have plagued us for a long time. We must, however, keep in mind that enacting the new paradigm will require a lot of hard work, patience, problem-solving, growing pains, learning curves, self-examination and perseverance mentally, emotionally, physically, socially, and individually. It won’t happen automatically like magic. It will take time to settle in, for the new normal to stabilize in day-to-day life and become second-nature to us.
The strategies of the Transition are intended to keep goods, services, and the functions of daily life flowing smoothly through the paradigm change and to minimize disruptions; but we can be sure that it will take us out of our comfort zones, just like happens with a new relationship, starting a family or business, or moving to a new location. We must anticipate this and embrace it, knowing that it will yield quantum improvements in every aspect of life that will more than justify the challenges involved. When the familiar is toxic and harmful, improvement and resolution necessarily mean venturing into the unfamiliar.
Let us go into the Transition and new paradigm with eyes wide open and prepared to experience feelings of uncertainty and strangeness, as we move from what we’ve known to what we’re creating. There will be mistakes made and learned from along the way, re-evaluations of some things, advances and setbacks. Let us ride them out and keep going until we settle into daily life in the new, empowering, symbiotic, thriving paradigm. It would be fatal to let the challenges and uncertainties discourage us into giving up or trying to go back to the old ways. Let us respond to those moments by redoubling our determination to succeed in replacing dysfunctional modern feudalism with an era of the greatest level of fulfillment, creativity, prosperity, happiness, quality of life, peace and harmony that humanity has yet seen in recorded history. The new paradigm will be self-re-evaluating and equipped to evolve into ever-better forms; this will become part of the culture. As with most worthy undertakings in life, the Transition and setting up the new paradigm will probably not be easy, but definitely worth it.
Challenge:
In the new paradigm, huge portions of our infrastructure will be restructured and reoriented according to new principles and criteria. Most functions such as food and power production and communications will shift from massive central facilities to widely-distributed small-to-midsized operations at the single dwelling, block, neighborhood, and regional levels. Community engagement and involvement will be key.
Some functions aren’t well suited for distributed small-scale implementation for practical reasons. Many factories, mines, foundries, and kinds of research, such as space exploration and high-energy physics, require larger, centralized facilities. Under current modern feudalism, most such facilities are run by huge corporations, competing with one another for profits and market share. In the new paradigm, such business entities will cease to exist or function. The people in them will remain and carry on with what they were doing, but with important changes. People and teams currently blocked by corporate rules and nondisclosure agreements from sharing information and expertise to collaborate across company lines, will unite into larger collaborative teams, which will reorganize themselves according to practical, functional considerations. All information, processes, and other technical expertise will be shared freely. Decision-making will be done by vote or, better yet, by consensus of all designers, engineers, assembly-line workers, cafeteria workers, and all other persons directly involved. All operations will be fully transparent and easily accessible to everybody online and by other means, and will be subject and responsive to public scrutiny, dialogue and feedback.
The priorities and design principles driving research, development, and production of goods and services will drastically from what they are now. Developers, engineers, researchers and others will be actively encouraged to share all of their knowledge, designs, skills, and processes. Their goal will be to combine the best features of what their former competing corporations produced, into lines of products that embody the best quality, durability, ugradeability, use-serviceability, customizability, robustness and user-friendliness of which the state of the art is capable. Instead the current inefficient, bewildering morass of competing inferior products and hype, we will enjoy one high-quality line of a given product type, including models and versions that actually match our expressed and observed needs. Environmental considerations will play a strong part as well; any environmentally damaging technology or designs will be dropped in favor of ones that are neutral or beneficial to the environment.
Members of the public will be able to use the public web sites to express their ideas, requests, preferences, needs, desires, suggestions, and feedback to production teams, who will do their best to produce goods and services that meet those needs, preferences and desires. All goods and services. The alienation between producers and consumers, and between employees and employers, will fall by the wayside. After all, generally speaking, we are all both producers and consumers!
The number of different models will decrease. Brands, of course will cease to exist. We won’t have choose between brands, but only between models, according to what we need and want, knowing that the quality will be the highest possible. There will be high flexibility to support customization. Products and protocols will be backwards compatible and easily upgradeable by using universal form factors and design standards. Carry-over models and specs from pre-Transition companies will be supported as well. Nobody will be pressured to give up or replace valued possessions; but when they do decide to replace them, they will get the highest quality.
New devices will have to be designed and built to be easily reparable, serviceable and upgradeable and inter-compatible as much as the technology allows. Industrial and commercial software will be modified to eliminate billing and all other financial functions, leaving only inventory management and tracking, logistics, load balancing and distribution monitoring functionality.
Production will be geared to supply the real needs of the people, plus a small reserve to cover breakage and population growth. Former retail stores will become public distribution centers for the same kinds of products that they currently sell.
People in government will have to be informed from the bottom up, to help and guide them in understanding the new parameters of the new environment of the new paradigm. They will have to learn to operate in the absence of corporate lobbies (or even of corporations) and of currency itself. There will be no stock market. The most basic concepts of “the economy” will change completely. Politicians’ jobs well become much simpler: to serve the will and well-being of their constituents and communities. Lawmakers will have their work cut out for them, redefining a lot of legal definitions and concepts, repealing now-obsolete laws, modifying others, and devising new ones to support the new democratic economy. Funding and budget will no longer be an issue, a bone of contention, or an obstruction. If the physical means exist to do a project, and it’s decided that it’s beneficial to do so, then it’ll be a simple matter of doing it. The only shortages will be actual, physical shortages, not the kind of artificial shortages that we see today.
With so much change and restructuring, some people will be “displaced” as their jobs will no longer exist. This includes anybody in the financial, insurance, real estate, and advertising industries, among others. This may cause anxiety, worry, or depression in some. However, in contrast to the current paradigm, affected people will see right away that displacement won’t negatively impact their survival, quality of life, well-being, degree of freedom or options. Education and re-training in new skills will, of course, be free. Occupationally displaced people will have wide-open options for finding new niches and vocations.
Yet losing or leaving one’s job can have unexpected psychological and emotional impacts, even when survival and quality of life aren’t impacted. Many people’s internal identity and sense of self are linked to their jobs. It can involve a sense of belonging, knowing what one’s role is in the one’s environment, and engagement with the larger community. Therefore we’ll need to ramp up support infrastructure for affected people, including counseling and therapy, advisors to help choose suitable new directions or adapt their existing skills to new environments. It’s important to establish a culture and norms of making sure that every member of the community feels and knows that they are valued, appreciated, and that their contributions are acknowledged.
These outreaches must start immediately with the Transition. It’ll take time to get them up and running, and more time to connect to people who need support, understand their needs and learn how to meaningfully help them to make the Transition and paradigm change as smooth and quickly as possible, with as little stress and anxiety as possible, in a supportive, not coercive or judgmental, milieu. We must ensure that no person is left behind or excluded.
Different sectors will make the paradigm shift at different paces, with different challenges. When we face those among us who will resist, reject, or even try to sabotage the Transition and new paradigm, we must respond with firmness, compassion, respect, and humanity. Such people can’t be allowed to impede the Transition, but they must be treated with respect. We’ll need to seek the balance to make sure that we neither become insensitively gung-ho and intimidating, nor allow such people to block or sabotage the Transition and new paradigm on the other hand.
Challenge:
The new central Web forum will integrate databases, social media, blogs, vlogs, online apps and more. It will build upon existing digital infrastructure and expand upon it. It will be open-source, and will serve functions of public dialog and discussion, suggestions, feedback, coordination of production to meet real demand, information dissemination, functioning as a kind of central nervous system in post-Transition societies. It will respond to all of us, not as an organ or control, but as an organ of communication and coordination.
This will be a huge project. We’ll need to encourage developers, programmers, and engineers to put major efforts into scaling and expanding existing and new digital infrastructure to be up to the task on a national and even global level.
This Webspace will have to be individually adaptive and easy to use for non-technically-oriented people, yet powerful enough to be useful for our most technically-talented citizens. Since development will follow the Open Source model, it will benefit from a vast pool of developers and evolve quickly, adapting easily to different countries and changing conditions.
Servers will follow a widely distributed, redundant model, rather than centralized server farms. All data will have multiple backups. This architecture will make the system robust in the potential event of natural disaster, sabotage, or other damage. Hardware will be “hardened” to resist solar storms and manmade electromagnetic pulse sabotage or accident. If you are a developer or engineer, you are invited to begin working on this as soon as possible before the Transition. If you’re not technical, don’t be concerned. We each have our contributions to make to our communities, and yours just doesn’t happen to be technological.
In case of an unforeseeable catastrophe, we will need lower-tech backup systems in case of catastrophic failure of the primary infrastructure and its redundancies.
Challenge:
The rest of the not-yet-Transitioned world will be apprehensive, confused, worried and distrustful during and after the Transition. Some treaties, alliances, and trade agreements will remain as they are; others will have to be reexamined, altered, and renegotiated according to the principles of the new Paradigm. This will require the utmost of sensitivity, openness, consistency, and wisdom.
We will stand utterly firm in our new paradigm principles, but perform negotiations in as non-confrontational a tone as possible. For example, we will not accept partnerships, agreements or treaties that involve supporting exploitation or abuse of people, environmental damage, or corporate control of enterprises in Transitioned countries. When we state our position, we will do so in a matter-of-fact manner, and offer suggestions and assistance to other parties willing to accept it, to negotiation partners who express difficulty in implementing our principles. We will strive to emphasize how working with the Transitioned country will benefit all parties.
We’ll need new procedural and operational implementations to facilitate trade between Transitioned countries and pre-Transitioned ones, designed to benefit all parties involved.
Facilities in Transitioned countries that are currently under foreign corporate control, will be freed and autonomously operating under control of all persons involved in their operations. We will not compensate such corporations with currency, nor will we apologize or negotiate a return to previous control. We will, however, strive to negotiate new protocols to enable former corporate feudal masters and former serfs to work together for mutual benefit. Remember that the former parent company will now be able offer superior products at drastically reduced prices in their own countries due to zero overhead in the Transitioned facility, giving them a strong competitive advantage.
It will be crucial that we express our principles and intentions clearly and consistently on the world stage, for all to see, and scrupulously align our actions with those principles. The world must see that we are respectful, stable, reasonable, and good for our word; we must demonstrate that we always seek the mutual good, rather than advantage over the other party.
Almost every country has enemies, who may see the Transition as a moment of weakness and vulnerability to be exploited. Defense forces will have to be on high alert during and immediately after the Transition. The Transition must not be allowed to become a distraction to them. They must be given to understand that the nation, its Constitution and institutions are intact and unperturbed.
Once the Transition is complete and the new paradigm is stabilized, the population will be equipped and trained in guerrilla warfare and appropriately organized. Any invader would have to fight not just the military, but the entire citizenry. Such a population will not be easily subdued or controlled. Local bullies will find it difficult to intimidate people.
Potential Pitfall:
Under modern feudalism, a common myth is that if you work long and hard enough, you will ascend the socioeconomic pyramid. It’s only a myth, of course; but like the myths of every place and time, it serves to keep people engaged in perpetuating the dominant paradigm. In the new paradigm, most people will experience increased motivation and engagement; but some will experience the opposite, since there’ll be no socioeconomic power structure to climb, no hierarchy, and no possibility of having power, or enjoying a higher standard of living, over others.
Since the quality of life will dramatically improve for almost all of us, most people will quickly realize this and respond with high engagement and enthusiasm.
Some, however, will cling to the old paradigm and find it hard to find a place in the new one. They will probably become depressed, unmotivated, discouraged, and hostile. We must respond to such people with firmness, compassion and respect. We will need to develop new therapeutic modalities to help them, drawing upon existing knowledge and therapies for Stockholm Syndrome, PTSD, and other traumatic experiences. We must never let such treatments become any version of the “re-education camps” infamous in dictatorships around the world.
We must never judge, disparage, or condescend to such people. We will strive to find new forms of positive feedback to replace the scarce, illusory “rewards” of modern feudalism without re-enacting that paradigm.
Don’t worry that these people’s disengagement will have a strong impact on our productivity or well-being as a society or as individuals. Most people will quickly take to the new paradigm as they experience its advantages. Their sustenance will take nothing from anybody. The workload of all sectors will decrease drastically with the end of the self-devouring cycle. Nobody will be working double shifts because of the disengaged.
Under current modern feudalism, those who don’t thrive are ridiculed, marginalized, disenfranchised, disrespected, and labeled as “losers.” In contrast, in the new paradigms, it’ll be vital to establish a culture of inclusiveness and empathy that enthusiastically acknowledges individual and group contributions to the community. That includes those who find it hard to adjust to the new paradigm. They will need our understanding, compassion, wisdom and patience.
Potential Pitfall:
Hierarchical social structures sometimes respond more quickly to some situations than the peer-based ones that will replace them. Decisions are made at the top and implemented reflexively down the chain of command. Peer-based processes may take longer, especially in the beginning when we’re all learning the new modes of interaction and decision-making. More dialogue is involved.
In some emergencies, especially in the beginning, this could be a difficult challenge.
In the new paradigm, we’ll have no arbitrary, artificial deadlines or made-up “emergencies” as we experience under the current modern feudalism with it’s self-devouring cycle. There’ll be no “market forces” generating chronic stress and pressure.
Yet there may still be a very few situations, such as natural disasters, fires or military aggression, that may not allow the time needed for peer analysis and decision-making. There are a few options in such cases.
One option is for all members of fire departments, squadrons, platoons, EMT’s, police, and other emergency responders, to drill until they become fully comfortable performing every function and develop such strong team bonds that no command structure is needed. This is achievable, and often happens spontaneously. The necessary level of mastery is greater than in a hierarchical structure. We will study and create conditions that reinforce this process.
If some situations truly and unavoidably require a hierarchical structure for practical reasons, then temporary hierarchical structures will be created with a clearly and narrowly-defined purpose and duration, and will be closely monitored. All members will master all positions in the command structure, and will frequently rotate roles to prevent concentration of power and other dysfunctional social dynamics. There will be no privileges or “perks” based on rank. Such provisional hierarchies will have no life of their own. Once their purpose is fulfilled, they will be dissolved.
Potential Pitfall:
Food and power production, and other processes as well, will shift from massive centralized plants to widely-distributed small-to-midsized operations. Community involvement will soar, empowering individuals, strengthening community cohesion and solidarity. But not everybody is a natural farmer or technician or is interested in becoming one. We don’t want to force anybody into jobs that they don’t want to do; but this fact could cause some neighborhood facilities to be poorly maintained.
Training in every skill and field will be freely available to all. If you want to learn home gardening or how to operate and maintain your home or neighborhood water wheel or solar farm, there will be classes in your community, or even one-one training with skilled professionals.
There will be hotlines and web forums where you’ll be able to consult with skilled professionals on issues that occur beyond your level of skill. They will also be on-call to come out, do the necessary repairs or maintenance, and explain procedures to residents. In most communities, we can expect that there’ll be enough people inclined and able, that little outside intervention will be needed.
This same model can be adapted to other sectors and functions. Volunteers will have access to specialized training in a manner and role similar to that of Barefood Doctors in China, for a wide range of skills and scenarios, especially in their local areas.
Challenge:
Regardless of the paradigm in use, the human psyche is vulnerable to a range of harmful dysfunctions. Dogmatism, inflexibility, arrogance, complacency, apathy, inertia, rigidity, and fanaticism have derailed many well-intentioned movements and revolutions, turning them inhuman and oppressive.
In the new democratic, empowered, synergistic paradigm, there’ll be no reinforcement for behaviors based on such mindsets. Yet we will be wise not to assume that “it can’t happen here.”
In the unlikely event that the new paradigm ever becomes repressive, disempowering, socially toxic, rigid, inflexible, stifling, or harming people’s happiness, symbiosis and well-being, then it will be their right and responsibility to stand up for the principles of the Transition and the new paradigm, and forcefully but non-violently return to the core principles of the paradigm in all aspects of life.
No institution or system should ever be above honest examination, scrutiny, re-evaluation and conscious evolution in terms of how they affect people’s happiness, prosperity, and well-being. The new paradigm will be no exception.