Envisioning a new society for a peaceful, humane, sustainable world

[CSummer]

A new society requires both a new consciousness and a new culture.
To try and envision what life, the world and society might be like before we have
gained this new consciousness and built the new culture is like trying to imagine
what it would be like to live in a place we've never been.

The new culture is built within small groups, and the new society arises from consciousness
that has at least begun a process of re-integration. It arises from relationships of mutual caring,
trust and support that are the basis of the new culture being formed within small groups.

We also don't build a holistic, sustainable way of life by analyzing resources
and calculating what the local environment can sustain.
We do it by building a relationship with the place we wish to call home.

This is the difference between the old and new ways and societies:
The old way is every person for her/himself; find a place to fit in or a situation to exploit
and make the best of it. If you're exceptionally talented or capable in a culturally rewarded way,
you might do very well by capitalizing on your art or profession.
The new (and ancient) way is much more relational; we don't need - or wish -
to live separated from a community of our fellow humans.

I don't believe it's possible to really imagine a new society or way of life
from within the existing culture or consciousness, which are both burdened with
beliefs of powerlessness and scarcity.
Can we even imagine what it would be like to be part of a small group of people
who have come to deeply know, trust, care for and support each other?
Can we know the empowering effect of realizing we can co-create a group in which
everyone can feel safe, respected, accepted, welcome, valued, trusting, seen and heard,
free, encouraged, etc?
A group that has become the home we may have never had:
a home where our heart is - safe to open to others;
a home where our participation brings us deep gratitude and joy.

This is the 'great turning' that needs to happen:
from separateness - to togetherness.
Until that happens, we are wandering in all directions
and the real work of designing and building the new society
in any coherent, integrated way cannot begin.

CSummer

The Necessary Qualities of Sustainable Earth Vision.

A sustainable Earth vision has to be universal --it has to
optimally accommodate everyone's personal vision of what a
sustainable life on Earth should be like.

A sustainable Earth vision cannot be proscriptive ; It has to be
descriptive; it has to show why things in the vision are presented
the way they are--how they organically relate to all other things in
the vision sustainably.

By showing why the components of the vision are supposed to
be the way they are, a sustainable Earth vision would educate .
This education would enable the participants of the vision
creation to continually improve on the vision while actively
implementing it.

Furthermore - by actively participating at realizing the vision
people would learn--"hands on", "on the job".
This education would would become a second nature to
humans; always showing why it is necessary to optimally
accommodate all others within the vision along with one's own
self.

Maintaining the vision to be harmonious, while continuously
fine-tuning it, will become a worthy life's purpose. It would become the most significant cultural trait, and thus it would be preserved in perpetuity.

Thanks, Hearthstone.

[regina2]

They were sustainable only in the Darwinian sense. Because they were pretty efficient at keeping their populations low, they didn't suffer shortages.

[hearthstone]

Dr. Dana Meadows: Envisioning A Sustainable World.

I just posted at the "Reader" - https://www.waccobb.net/forums/editp...epost&p=192945 a video - https://vimeo.com/13213667

Dr. Meadows stresses the need of having a vision (model) of a sustainable world _before_ implementing steps that would take us there.

However, creating a vision of a goal to be achieved is not some kind of an afflatus, or any such ...

The idea of knowing what one wants to get before setting out to get that what one wants, despite its being so commonsense, takes a while to get used to ...

The best start for learning visioning is Robert Fritz's "The Path of Least Resistance", I think (Fritz, Robert 1984 The Path of Least Resistance. Salem, MA: DMA Inc., ISBN: 0-930641-00-0)

Thanks Hearthstone.

[CSummer]

Yes, I would agree that visions and models are necessary. To me, they are rather different, however. A vision is something we might picture (visualize) in our minds and describe on paper. It is more like a theory or hypothesis, waiting to be tested. It may even lack anything about how it will be realized.

A model on the other hand demonstrates the feasibility of a vision. It could be done on paper or with a computer, but this will be less persuasive than something done in the real world. For example, I might have an idea for an invention which I could convey verbally or describe on paper as a vision of something I believe could work. If I want to do anything with this idea, however, I'll need to build a model that demonstrates that it can actually work.

I think this is especially true of a new society. Presenting a vision will not likely go far unless there's some compelling reason for many people to join in realizing it. But most of us need to see - and even experience personally - the society actually working. It takes a huge leap of consciousness to go from one culture or society to another, except as an observer. What do most people do when they go to a foreign country and observe the ways of the people there? My guess is that most of us think something like: Well, that's okay for them, but I'd never want to live like that. Unfortunately, we can't really get a sense of another culture unless we try it on for a while. And this is the leap that pioneers of a new society must make: we must be willing to make a radical departure from the way of life we've known if we want to create - even on a very small scale - a society that supports a peaceful, humane, sustainable way of life.

What's missing for me from what Dana Meadows said (and she was more a systems analyst than a designer of systems, I believe) is the need to have - in addition to a vision - a clearly defined purpose for what you want to create. As Robert Fritz talks about in "The Path of Least Resistance," you don't change things within the structures that produce what you want to change. This is evident from looking at all the efforts to end human hunger and other forms of economic injustice. Not much changes within the context of global economic and political structures that are inherently unjust and inequitable. Nor is it useful to try to change those structures, as they strongly resist any change.

If you want to create a society that is just and equitable, you need to create structures that enable access to and sharing of resources. And, to me (and probably others), the first question that must be answered is: what is the primary purpose or function of what we want to create? Something as far-reaching as a human society needs to be designed using a "whole systems" or holistic approach, and the purpose and values are the foundation from which such a design arises. I think we can't really know what it is we want to create until we have clear answers to these fundamental questions, and any effort to envision what it might be like before we have the function and values clearly stated may not be real useful.

So, the starting point is: Why and for what purpose do we want a human society, even one that has the qualities of being peaceful, humane and sustainable?

CSummer

Dr. Dana Meadows: Envisioning A Sustainable World.

I just posted at the "Reader" - https://www.waccobb.net/forums/editp...epost&p=192945 a video - https://vimeo.com/13213667 ...

[hearthstone]

Never mind "vision", "model" .... What is essential is that one knows what one wants, otherwise, if one doesn't know what they want, what will they ever get? How they know what it is that they want is up to them ...

In the case of achieving a whole world that would be sustainable the thing is to know for _all_ who have a stake in creating such a world to agree on what a "sustainable world" should be. Without all such knowing what a "sustainable world" should be, we'll just continue what we have been doing all the time, resolving our differences in real life, incurring real waste of time, resources, lives (very frequently). In order to avoid incurring such waste we all have to agree on what a "sustainable world" should look like. How do we arrive at such an agreement?

Thanks, Hearthstone.

Yes, I would agree that visions and models are necessary. To me, they are rather different, however. A vision is something ...

[CSummer]

I completely agree that we need to know what we want if we're ever to create anything new - or anything that meets our needs or fulfills our desires. For me, it's rather simple: I want to work with others in building environments that support the flow of life energy within and between us, which are those within which all real human needs can be met. And of course I want those environments to work well and sustainably with the local and regional ecosystems. This, to me, is the creative approach to building a society that can support us in realizing our higher potential as humans to live in peaceful, caring, harmonious relationships with our fellow humans and with the natural world.

The problem you talk about is one that exists in the context of the dominant society, and I suspect it would not exist in a society that supported everyone in being able to meet their real needs. This is something radically different from what now exists, and it seem pretty clear to me that this is where we need to begin. We act in destructive, violent and self-defeating ways when we believe that our real needs cannot be met. It is coming from powerlessness and scarcity consciousness, which are pervasive in the dominant culture - because, I believe, many real human needs are discounted or ignored.

Also, since I'm reading his book, I think Robert Fritz would say that you're coming from a problem-solving orientation rather than a truly creative one. He says that such an approach - though it can be useful in some situations - doesn't tend to create anything new. And if we proceed to design and build a new society - one based on close working relationships between humans and between us and the natural environment - we may find that questions of what is/is not sustainable are easily answered.

CSummer

Never mind "vision", "model" .... What is essential is that one knows what one wants, otherwise, if one doesn't know what they want, what will they ever get? How they know what it is that they want is up to them ...

In the case of achieving a whole world that would be sustainable the problem is to know for _all_ who have a stake in creating such a world to agree on what a "sustainable world" should be. Without all such knowing what a "sustainable world" should be, we'll just continue what we have been doing all the time, resolving our differences in real life, incurring real waste of time, resources, lives (very frequently). In order to avoid incurring such waste we all have to agree on what a "sustainable world" should look like. How do we arrive at such an agreement?

Thanks, Hearthstone.

[hearthstone]

Why do you think that I am coming from a problem-solving orientation?

What edition of "The Path of Least Resistance" you got?

Thanks, Hearthstone.

...
Also, since I'm reading his book, I think Robert Fritz would say that you're coming from a problem-solving orientation rather than a truly creative one. He says that such an approach - though it can be useful in some situations - doesn't tend to create anything new. And if we proceed to design and build a new society - one based on close working relationships between humans and between us and the natural environment - we may find that questions of what is/is not sustainable are easily answered.

CSummer

[hearthstone]

Clint,
you want "... to work with others in building environments that support the flow of life energy within and between us, which are those within which all real human needs can be met. ..."

I want to find a way that would make it possible to reconcile all the differences that there are amongst all of the various ideas about what the ideal world should be like, before the reconciliation of our ideas happens in real life, incurring real waste of time, resources, and lives, as this has been happening for millennia.

What I want the ideal world to look like is fairly well presented at www.ModelEarth.Org/seed.html .

Thanks, Hearthstone.

I completely agree that we need to know what we want if we're ever to create anything new - or anything that meets our needs or fulfills our desires. For me, it's rather simple: I want to work with others in building environments that support the flow of life energy within and between us, which are those within which all real human needs can be met. And of course I want those environments to work well and sustainably with the local and regional ecosystems. This, to me, is the creative approach to building a society that can support us in realizing our higher potential as humans to live in peaceful, caring, harmonious relationships with our fellow humans and with the natural world.

The problem you talk about is one that exists in the context of the dominant society, and I suspect it would not exist in a society that supported everyone in being able to meet their real needs. This is something radically different from what now exists, and it seem pretty clear to me that this is where we need to begin. We act in destructive, violent and self-defeating ways when we believe that our real needs cannot be met. It is coming from powerlessness and scarcity consciousness, which are pervasive in the dominant culture - because, I believe, many real human needs are discounted or ignored.

Also, since I'm reading his book, I think Robert Fritz would say that you're coming from a problem-solving orientation rather than a truly creative one. He says that such an approach - though it can be useful in some situations - doesn't tend to create anything new. And if we proceed to design and build a new society - one based on close working relationships between humans and between us and the natural environment - we may find that questions of what is/is not sustainable are easily answered.

CSummer

[CSummer]

To answer your questions:

You wrote: Why do you think that I am coming from a problem-solving orientation?

From your previous post: "In the case of achieving a whole world that would be sustainable the problem is to know for _all_ who have a stake in creating such a world to agree on what a "sustainable world" should be."

To me, this problem exists within the context of a society and economic system that is largely constructed by and for the super-rich and powerful. It is a social order based on scarcity consciousness and the false premise that there are only a few ways to accomplish what needs to be done. Of course, this premise can be expected when the systems are built for the purpose of keeping the rich and powerful in their positions of wealth and power. If systems were designed and built cooperatively and for a more humane purpose, e.g., to meet all real human needs, the question of what is or is not a workable vision of a sustainable world may be much less significant.

In other words, if we begin with a rational and humane design purpose for our society, we may find that it's not at all difficult to build it in a sustainable way, because we would recognize that there are real human needs for such things as economic security and feeling safe from attack. So we of course want to design and build systems that don't degrade our resource base or deprive others of access to healthy, life-sustaining resources.

To me, our first challenge is how to make the transition from a society in which a tiny minority "call the shots" to one that is truly co-designed and created. This requires learning to build relationships of mutual respect, acceptance, caring, trust and support. It's a huge transition from having others manage our resources and our affairs to learning to trust and rely on ourselves and each other to do that.

It seems you believe it's necessary for large numbers of people to agree on a vision of a sustainable world. My sense is that we'd be hard pressed to find more than a handful of people in the world who have a well-defined vision of a sustainable world. It's hard to imagine life in the ocean if you live in an aquarium!

Hearthstone: What edition of "The Path of Least Resistance" you got? (CS) 1989 revised edition.

CSummer

Why do you think that I am coming from a problem-solving orientation?

What edition of "The Path of Least Resistance" you got?

Thanks, Hearthstone.

[hearthstone]

Just change "the problem" to "the thing"--no more problem oriented! I'll edit the original forthwith!

To answer your questions:

You wrote: Why do you think that I am coming from a problem-solving orientation?

From your previous post: "In the case of achieving a whole world that would be sustainable the problem is ...

[CSummer]

Thanks for clarifying this, Hearthstone. It seems to me you have a good grasp of our fundamentally different approaches to bringing about a peaceful, humane, sustainable society and world. I can only speak to my approach and how I've come to that; I'll let you speak to yours.

So, why do I believe "working with others in building environments that support the flow of life energy within and between us, which are those within which all real human needs can be met" is the best way to build a peaceful, humane, sustainable society and world?

What does it mean to "support the flow of life energy" or to meet real human needs? The simple analogy is the environment we commonly call a garden. Plants grow in environments, and the better a plant's specific needs are met, the more it will thrive and realize it's true potential. This is why we humans - at least some of us - create gardens: to provide this special environment that's conducive to certain plants thriving (and 'thriving' is synonymous with 'life energy flowing freely').

Why do we not now live in a peaceful, humane, sustainable world? Why is there war, violence, injustice, human-caused suffering, environmental degradation, illness - both physical and psycho-spiritual? I don't think it's because this is what we want. It seems to me that we lack both a clear sense of what we want (to a great degree because we feel powerless to create it), and we tend to give our power and our responsibility to design our socio-economic environments to (often unknown) others - to a tiny minority of the super-rich and powerful. And it is apparently not in their interest to create socio-economic environments that support the meeting of real human needs. Rather, it seems to be in their interest to keep us in a state of dependence on their systems through which we can try to meet our real needs.

In other words, we don't believe we are able to work together to create environments in which our real needs can be met, so we must be subject to the policies, decisions and manipulative tactics of a ruling class. This is our present society, which defines and supports a certain way of life: one in which most people feel quite powerless and suffer from an illusion of scarcity. We don't believe it is within our power to create the lives, society and world we really want.

So I see no other way for us to begin the journey to a new society than by discovering that we do have the power to cooperatively create environments in which we can experience at least some of our real needs being met. The most recent realization for me is that this is best done in small groups by focusing not on our "basic" needs (which for most of us are at least somewhat met), but on the needs that are typically ignored or discounted - hence unmet - in the dominant culture: our emotional-relational needs. From my experiences with groups, it seems evident that this is what can liberate us from our cultural conditioning - from the illusion of powerlessness and scarcity - and enable us to make the transition to a self-organized, co-created society.

And until we discover that we have the power to create such environments, we will not be able to design and build a peaceful, humane, sustainable society and world.

I imagine that I may have left you with more questions. I will add that in this process, we need to learn to distinguish between real needs and "pseudo-needs," the latter being all those things we do to keep us distracted from the powerlessness, frustration, despair, etc. we feel around having failed to get our real needs met (especially our emotional-relational needs from the earliest years of our lives). This is essential because socio-economic systems designed around meeting real human needs are much more likely to be sustainable than those focused on meeting pseudo-needs.

CSummer

Clint,
you want "... to work with others in building environments that support the flow of life energy within and between us, which are those within which all real human needs can be met. ..."

I want to find a way that would make it possible to reconcile all the differences that there are amongst all of the various ideas about what the ideal world should be like, before the reconciliation of our ideas happens in real life, incurring real waste of time, resources, and lives, as this has been happening for millennia.

What I want the ideal world to look like is fairly well presented at www.ModelEarth.Org/seed.html .

Thanks, Hearthstone.

[hearthstone]

The end-result of "working with others in building environments that support the flow of life energy within and between us, which are those within which all real human needs can be met" is supposed to be, according to you, a way of achieving a "peaceful, humane, sustainable society and world".

You still need to know what the "peaceful, humane, sustainable society and world" should look like in order to achieve it, no matter by what means!

... I believe "working with others in building environments that support the flow of life energy within and between us, which are those within which all real human needs can be met" is the best way to build a peaceful, humane, sustainable society and world ...
CSummer

[CSummer]

I think the vision must be built step by step, starting on the micro-scale and growing from there. I don't see any purpose or need to have a vision for what is not within our power to create in the near future.

Also, my sense is that realizable shared visions for the world - or even for our immediate surroundings - are most likely to arise from small groups that have done a process of coming together. There's a book called "The Power of Collective Wisdom and the Trap of Collective Folly" which says (in so many words) that there's a process of learning and growing that needs to happen before collective wisdom can arise. I wouldn't trust a vision that's not coming from such a process, which I believe is most likely to happen in a small group.

And in small groups, true visions don't come from voting or consensus; they arise organically when a group has made a lot of progress in coming together. Then one or two group members will have the intuition to express a vision (or what Robert Fritz calls a "primary choice") with which the whole group will resonate.

I also think a global vision will become better defined as ecovillage-type communities become more common and visible. Two examples that demonstrate the viability of a sustainable way of life and technologies are Gaviotas in Colombia and Dancing Rabbit in Missouri. Once there are perhaps 50 or 100 such communities, the world will have a variety of models that exemplify a sustainable society.


CSummer

The end-result of "working with others in building environments that support the flow of life energy within and between us, which are those within which all real human needs can be met" is supposed to be, according to you, a way of achieving a "peaceful, humane, sustainable society and world".

You still need to know what the "peaceful, humane, sustainable society and world" should look like in order to achieve it, no matter by what means!

[hearthstone]

An individual vision involving the whole world can be gotten whichever way; what I am concerned with is how to unify, harmonize all such various visions into one that would be agreeable to all who have a stake in having a wholesome world to live in. How I propose to do this is at www.ModelEarth.Org/seed.html .
Hearthstone.