An idea for governance in the new age

If you read any of my other posts, you know I take an exceptionally dim view of communism and socialism. It’s not because it’s a collectivist approach to things, but rather because it demands that everyone give up their sovereignty (become disempowered in the extreme) so that a few can dictate to the rest. This is the epitome of hierarchical and is inherently corrupt, not to mention born of an old paradigm that is currently dying. It’s a product of mid 19th century thinking, and it played out for the entirety of the 20th century without a single positive manifestation and a body count which truly staggers the mind. It’s a dead horse that is still being propped up and moved around like a macabre puppet as if it has any life left. Why? Because those few at the top REALLY love having all that power – and because a lot of people really like being told what to do, so they don’t have to think or accept responsibility for their decisions.

I’ve put out the notion that someone needs to come up with a new concept, but I’m not really up to the task. Apparently, that does not matter because an idea has been forming. Figured I’d write it down and see where it goes.

The problem with all forms of government which have been tried to date have one model in mind – fully top down. The few at the top have the power/control/granted-authority to make decisions for the many at the bottom. The US was truly revolutionary in that it has at the core of it a concept that the few at the top have that authority only because the many have DECIDED to GRANT it. It’s not inherent, not god-given that so-and-so has the right to order others around. But this model worked because the majority of humanity did not have the spiritual strength to own their power, own their ability to make decisions beyond themselves. Indeed, our collective fear and sense of separation ensured this was the case. I can’t be angry at my ancestors for doing the best they could, but I can be proud of them for slowly generation by generation moving the needle toward a global connected world with a higher awareness of ourselves as souls all having a human experience.

What we need now is not another top-down model. If anything this pandemic has done it has clearly illustrated how vulnerable a top-down global model makes us. What we need is a bottom-up model of government. Where the job at the top is more about monitoring and providing connections, but the bottom decides what is best for their individual situation. A perfect example of the how horribly wrong centrist government can go is also found with the communist model – where Mao’s “great leap forward” was done over the corpses of literally millions because of an otherwise completely preventable famine which resulted due to bad decisions and failure to grasp what the individuals at the regional level understood.

So thinking that bottom-up is the model we should start looking for, I realized that we already have a model in place which has been gaining traction since it was proposed – agile. Currently, it’s a software development model but at the core of it the awareness that the best people capable of solving local problems are those most familiar with the local conditions, and leaving the individual teams with the power for being able to make the decisions needed to solve those problems. A centrist approach, where decisions are made without any awareness of the local conditions or challenges, is utterly foolish when it’s benign and downright horrific at other times.

The Agile Manifesto is pretty straightforward, and is based on 12 principles.

1. satisfy the customer
2. Welcome changing requirements
3. Deliver … frequently
4. [leaders] and [doers] must work together
5. trust [doers] to get the job done
6. face-to-face conversation
7. Working [deliverables] is the primary measure of progress
8. promote sustainable [action] to maintain a constant pace indefinitely
9. Continuous attention to excellence and design
10. Simplicity
11. the best [sytems] emerge from self-organizing teams
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective

Agile Manifesto

If we are looking to move forward in our spiritual evolution, relying on any idea which was born in the past is already not one suitable for the new perspectives. That would be old thinking which was born out of and would perpetuate the problem. This agile concept is entirely new, and as far as I know, has not yet been expanded into an idea for governance though it has had 2 decades in the business world to be vetted. I know from experience that it takes a major shift in understanding but when a company makes that shift successfully, the production and innovation levels skyrocket. When they do not, it’s a lame duck stuck between two paradigms. I also know that once the developers get a taste for being able to decide how to solve problems, they really resent having some higher up try to solve problems for them.

We don’t need one central anything – be that government, food processing plant, shipping hub, etc – we need distributed localized solutions that are interconnected. Let me pick on the food situation, since that is near and dear to my heart, specifically food production. Having a handful of food processing plants, where cattle and chickens and produce are shipped for hundreds of miles to be processed and then shipped back out hundreds maybe thousands of miles. That’s beyond fragile! We’ve seen how fragile it is. But if we had local processors, who take in and work with local producers to provide for local communities, yet backed up with the ability to ship/receive from nearby areas to manage excesses and lacks… Well. That’s agile.

I’ve heard it said from a farmer that I really admire that with all the land we have taken up by lawns alone, we could get rid of intensive high-concentration animal farming. I look around my neighborhood and see that almost no one is growing a garden – but they are watering weeds (grass). We have lawns because at one time it was a revolutionary way of displaying your wealth – having a huge expanse of arable productive land being used to grow weeds which are trimmed and sculpted, as if saying “I’m so damn wealthy I can not only waste good land but allocate resources to waste time”. I’ve been working to replace my own lawn with gardens, whether they are growing food or medicines, and preparing the lawn part to be able to sustain small livestock such as chickens or rabbits, maybe even a few goats or sheep. My goal is not necessarily self-sufficiency, it’s more about figuring out a model for how to do things planet smart that helps us all. For those that have lawns but don’t have the time to take care of chickens or a garden, well, I’m sure there can be a different kind of lawn-care service that can step into the void.

“Want your own chickens but don’t have the time/expertise to take care of them? Call Johnny’s Backyard Chicken Service! Payment plans vary! In trade for meat/eggs, cash only, or a combination.”

I’ve been thinking of doing something like this for gardening. “Want a vegetable garden but don’t have the time? Call PotI! Specializing in raised beds with a preference for organic, natural processes to produce healthy, nutritious foods that feed your family and help the earth.” Clearly I haven’t done it, but it’s a thought. I’m looking out of the window while visiting family. I’m surrounded by about 10 to 15 acres and I don’t see a garden or a fruit tree anywhere. I’m helping to install a garden here, which will be a tiny 20×25 foot plot. Minuscule, but better than nothing. If this were my land… Oh boy. It would be different.

For those who want to “save the planet”, I applaud the enthusiasm and the sentiment. Guess what? That sentiment to me means “I need to take action” and that includes reducing reliance on shipped goods, increasing reliance on local production, and restoring natural processes. The solution is not in further technology – that is increasing the gap between ourselves and our source (earth). We need to decrease that gap – start with remembering that we are part of the system, not separate from it.

And now I’m getting distracted. Bottom-up governance models which focus on interconnected pieces without a “master” are what needs to be developed and trialed. There will be growing pains, but as stated we’ve had 2 decades of this shift taking place within the business world to act as a guide. Think of it like a body – the brain is the connection hub, but it doesn’t dictate to the stomach how/when/what to digest, the stomach is given what it needs to do the job it has and is otherwise left alone.

So let me put my thought energy into getting this idea out into the zeitgeist so it can be picked up and ruminated on by people better qualified than me to develop this further. Bottom-up meets top-down, personal empowerment/responsibility with larger vision, and local focus with centralized communication and resource sharing potential/capability.

Humanity can genuinely make this world into something staggeringly beautiful. It all boils down to the choices we make every day. Do you choose to help others, even if only smiling kindly at someone who’s having a bad day, or do you choose to disregard others? It’s that simple. God doesn’t “allow” evil to happen – we do. We choose it. And we can choose something different. We all have to choose it.

Reliving the instant of wondrous discovery

I was listening to a podcast from Robert Edward Grant where he was interviewing Aubrey Marcus. At one point they started discussing what the point of living was. I loved Aubrey’s answer, which was essentially we are God self-pleasuring. Such an Aubrey answer! Robert’s answer used more of the language that I would have, and it is a good thing to hear the answer I would give being stated more and more. His answer reminded me of a TV series that I adored – Babylon 5. That series was the first time I heard some of my own secret ideas said out loud.

We believe that the universe itself is conscious in a way that we can never truly understand. It is engaged in a search for meaning. So it breaks itself apart, investing its own consciousness in every form of life. We are the universe trying to understand itself.

Delenn, Babylon 5

While I ADORE that line (and that entire series!!!), I tend to remember it as “We are the universe, exploring itself.” Though I guess technically that is Alan Watts, I think…

I’ve heard it said that among Jewish mystics, there is an idea which asks “What is the one thing that an infinite being does not have? Boundaries.” So an infinite being wishing to explore all the aspects of itself has to individuate and instantiate itself into itty bitty pieces, and for at least some of the journey … forget. I mean, if all the aspects of infinity always KNEW it was infinity, then is that really all of the potential it has to experience? No, and so forgetting this for the purposes of exploring and experiencing until it eventually remembers the truth makes a lot of sense to me. As Robert and Aubrey were talking about the process of remembering, I had a fun flash of insight.

Those who are young will not understand yet, but when you are first falling in love, there is an excitement and awe and wonder and innocence and anticipation that is hard to replicate. When you’ve got a few miles behind you, it’s easy to get jaded and forget what it felt like to feel that sense of wonder. That’s why children are such a joy – they remind us to be in wonder and find things magical. But being reminded of that long ago sense of wonder and getting to feel as we are falling in love for the first time all over again, those are very different things! When my husband and I had our very first date, we had that sense of excitement and anticipation all over again. Here we were mid 30s both feeling like teenagers again. I know that I for one savored it. It was wonderful!

Now imagine you are an infinite being who has created instances of yourself, and each instance has forgotten what it was. What must it feel like to be able to relive that genuine sense of awe and magical wonder each time that instantiated self remembers? When that individualized aspect starts to really understand “wait a second … I’m really … infinite… wooooooow…”

How do you define “progress”?

I’ve often felt sorry for folks who identified too much with their own sexual power – particularly young women. Even as a young woman, I knew this was transient and that over-identification with my body would mean I didn’t know what I would do when I was older. Indeed, I see many shocked 30 or 40 year olds who suddenly realize that they have to renegotiate their concept of self because the world responds to them differently. I moved seamlessly through all of that because my identify was rooted elsewhere.

I’ve thought the same thing with those who identify as an “activist”. Why? Two reasons: one is that the person usually has a sort of savior or messiah complex in which they are taking on a personal responsibility which isn’t theirs to take thus robbing of those who should be empowered from becoming so; and two is that the person is looking for things to be wrong and thus is generally very sad, disgruntled, and largely pessimistic in outlook. I know that when you look for something, you’ll find it — whether it’s there or not! I remember listening to my step-daughter talk about her first “social justice” class and she said “the only thing I can find to protest…” Those words leapt out at me as being wrong wrong wrong, absolutely brimming over with wrongability (Red Dwarf series shout-out there).

Why? Because when things are WRONG, you don’t have to LOOK for them. They slap you upside the face. If you’ve spent a lifetime being slapped, then often you’re numb to it and if something happens, then you often wake up to recognize being slapped. I don’t have to look for instances in which I’m actually slapped – it’s obvious. But to go looking for it? That means my baseline assumption is that humans are terrible and it’s up to me, the Great Savior Hero, to Make Things Right with activism. As Taylor Swift said, “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism.”

Ugh. I get wanting to make the world a better place. I do, and I agree 100% with the idea! It’s the method that I am not sold on. I do it everyday, by choosing kindness, choosing forgiveness, choosing fairness, choosing connection. I see so-called activists being complete dicks to those around them all while loudly proclaiming how they are “fighting” to make the world a better place, and I just shake my head at the somnambulance. I have far greater power with my everyday actions that I have the potential to re-write society. So I’ll take it and make the most of it. Be kind to the store clerk at Christmas rush, be patient with the waitstaff during rush hour, etc. That will do everything to make the world a better place if we ALL chose, really and truly CHOSE to do this.

With that background in mind, I was listening to an episode of the Chris Williamson podcast entitled “Feminism is no longer helping women” with Mary Harrington. She made a comment about “believing in progress” and it suddenly hit me.

If I define “progress” as “any type of change” then it doesn’t matter whether that change is positive or negative. Example: if I define myself as an “activist” that means that I have to keep fighting for change – and what specifically is changing is irrelevant. If I’ve fought for something, and that something happens, I now have to move the goalpost because my identity demands that I fight “for” something. The less aware I am, the more likely I am to reject the idea of success which would mean lay down the protest signs and instead it means write something new and keep going. No real thought as to whether or not this is actually good. How many people fought for women’s rights only now to be fighting to strip women of … being women entirely? Is that really progress? REALLY?

See that’s where activism seems to be heading. Progress means fighting for ever more freedom – including freedom from responsibility, freedom from consequences, freedom from any type of limit.

The “trans” movement isn’t about gender – it’s about humanity. Transhumanism. If gender is a construct, so is our very humanness. I can use surgery to add a penis and keep my vagina. Hell, make me a penis and add a second vagina. Woohoo! Now give me horns and use those bone elongation things to make my legs 2ce as long so I’m way tall while we’re at it.

Is it progress to be free of our humanity? to be free of the connection to our own bodies? to be free of our connection to each other? Is that really “freedom”? What it is is a complete severing of our connection to our Soul, which makes us controllable, biddable, deceivable, malleable, agreeable, pliable. It makes us a slave at worst, a peon servant class at best in which we live only to serve the Empire. And that leads me back to Greed as a Symptom.

To me, transhumanism seems like a prison of isolation, sorrow, physical and emotional pain, debt, rejection, dependence, disempowerment… There’s nothing positive about this. It’s a way of making us prisoners, convincing kids they are “free” to be anything other than accepting and content with themselves. There’s no money in acceptance – but if we can make you so fundamentally uncomfortable with how you were born, then we own you for your life!

If that’s someone’s definition of progress, what master do they serve? That way lies darkness, and it is not the path I walk. I cannot support a cause which seeks to diminish others, for to make one lesser makes us all lesser.