In the... Prologue A New Horizon A Text for the Revolution Chapter Outline Flowers and Old Shoes

Prologue Concerning society, it is necessary immediately to reverse the pyramid of all injustice, not by imposing a stupid equalization--but by a natural equality. Brancusi A New Horizon Today, according to the 1990 United Nations Human Development Report, the wealthiest twenty per cent of the world's people creates and consumes eighty-five per cent of the world output. The poorest twenty per cent--over one billion human beings--struggle to stay alive on only 1.4% of human output. "The north has roughly one-fifth of the world's population...and consumes 70% of the world's energy, 75% of its metals, and 85% of its wood." Even the editors of the Financial Times, hardly the voice of hungry people, find that "...If global resources and carrying capacity are indeed limited, as environmentalists insist, then the north's free access to these globally scarce assets cannot be justified." [FT, 2 June 1994] Computer models of the world system, based on dynamic system factors and on extrapolation from changes in historical rates of consumption, environmental degradation, and population growth, indicate that before the middle of the next century a major collapse of human civilization will begin to occur--well within the lifetimes of many young adults who are now living. Moralistic, rational, or emotional pleas for environmental cleanup or social justice will not be enough to prevent the catastrophes that lie ahead. Only by reorganizing ourselves politically and economically can we create sustainable environmental and socioeconomic systems. If we are to prevent the terrible scenarios that now await us, we will have to make changes that are radical enough to be called "revolutionary." The immediate and urgent task for most of us, then, is to learn how to become effective "revolutionaries." Further, to avoid massive human suffering in the future, enough of us will soon have to come to agreement on exactly what changes we need to make and on what time line. Acting for the first time in history as a whole species, we will have to consciously and quickly discover our "horizon of low survivability," how fast we are drifting toward it, and whether we can agree on a new course before it's too late. The changes that we will need to make in the near future may be in contradiction with some of our old ways of thinking--with values and beliefs that have worked for millennia in the past but which will be incompatible with human survival in the future. We will, for example, have to decide--not whether but how much--to limit our birth rates, our resource consumption rates, and our material wastes. Especially difficult will be the process of distributing our vast but still limited wealth more equitably throughout the global system. This task will be essential to species survival in the context of a crowded world filled with epidemics, mass starvation, and weapons of mass destruction. We can not let the special interests of a privileged few delay us in achieving this essential reorganization of our world economic system. We know that perfect equality in material wealth is not practical nor even desirable, but we also know that it is only fair that every child, every human being, have access to such basic necessities as food, shelter, health care, education, and meaningful work. To achieve these minimal criteria for a healthy life, we need a common understanding of the problems and an agreement on how to solve them. We need also to learn how to organize our societies so that they function naturally to provide such necessities while carrying us forward in a purposeful direction. In short, we need to be reading from a common text. A Text for the Revolution Every revolution, it has been said, needs a text. There are, of course, many good books we can draw upon. The book which follows explicitly calls for revolution, offers a plan for carrying it out, and explains how to cope with some of the obstacles that will confront us. This revolution must be strictly nonviolent and democratic. Our means will have to be entirely consistent with our ends. Thus the approach to political change described here is cultural, institutional, and above all, personal. No police force will be needed to stop it, and no self-appointed secret government would confess to wanting it destroyed. This revolution will be decentralized and invisible. It is, in fact, already growing in the minds of people everywhere who can see what is now happening around them, who can see just a little ahead--and who care about the fate of humanity. It is part of what will be an age of great awakening--a waking up to the realities within ourselves, to the holistic nature of our global system, to the ecological limits within which we must live, to the necessity of a global plan for our political and economic systems, and to the urgent need for a international force that can guarantee the security of each people. A story of the events leading up to the great awakening could be told simply. Let's sketch it out from the beginning: The family of humans, born in Africa, was initially small, but we grew and prospered. We set out in different directions to explore the world. We wandered the Earth, settled in isolated communities, and developed new tongues, new styles of living, different ways of thinking, even new physical features. Our communities thrived, expanded, and eventually, rediscovered each other. When we began growing back together we looked and sounded so strange to one another that we hardly recognized each other as human--let alone as kin. Failing to recognize each other as fully human, we fought wars. Genocidal slaughters took place. Still suspicious, and protective of their own clans, a few of our peoples armed themselves with the "ultimate weapon that can never be destroyed"--the energy of the sun concentrated in a few human hands and jealously guarded. The rest of us watched fearfully, knowing that if we all obtain such weapons, they will destroy us all. Meanwhile, the various branches of our family have been so successful that we are now many times more numerous than when we first began to write about our fascinating and surprising "discoveries" of one another. In fact, we are now rapidly outgrowing our shared support systems. And if we continue to keep our communities divided, we will remain misunderstood and substantially unknown to one another. Our relationships will be unstable. With increasing competition for scarce resources we will be given to conflicts that--in the presence of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons--are too dangerous to risk. We have to learn how to re-integrate our separate communities, to stop the violent extremists among us, and to get along with each other at a whole new level of community. In our search for ways to accomplish these tasks, we are sure to invent new ideas as well as to utilize some ideas that have been present in our family since the dawn of recorded time. We sense, deeply, that the new ways of living together which we seek must go beyond the structure of the family with its biologically-based hierarchy. Yet we know that we must preserve our fundamental notions of fairness, of personal freedom, of mutual respect, and of caring for one another as well as for the Earth that makes our lives possible. In short, we need to create a new type of community that truly includes all of us without obliterating our differences. Being realistic, we also know that some of us, through trauma or accidents of learning, tend to remain as very small children--unaware of the needs of others or unable to balance the interests of self with the interests of others. Some of us, too, will intentionally be deceptive and will consciously place self-interests ahead of the interests that we all share. Indeed, we know that the temptation to do this is experienced, at times, by each of us. We turn, therefore, to a system of laws that were designed to apply to each of us equally, to preserve both fairness and freedom, and to give to each of us a potentially equal share of power over the affairs of our community. More than two thousand years ago we came up with a name for this system: democracy, i.e., "rule by the people." Through experience, we have learned that it is difficult to create democracy. We also know that if we are not truly democratic in the affairs of our community, that is, if some of us violate the social contract, others will become angry. They are likely, for awhile, to turn their backs on the community structure itself, if they see others profit by exploiting it. People may divide against one another while trying to solve these conflicts, but they will--sooner or later--rise up together against those who have usurped the common interest. More than half of all the people of the world have already moved to form democracies. Modern 'democracies,' however, are still riddled with authoritarian, corrupt, and antidemocratic processes. Building an authentic and thoroughly democratic system takes time. Unfortunately, given the rapid drift toward global disaster, we may not have as much time as we think. Yet without genuinely democratic problem-solving on a global scale humans are likely to experience catastrophic suffering--over increasingly large areas of the Earth--during the next fifty years. Creating democracy in time, therefore, must be the principle concern with which we prepare for the 21st century. Thus far we have told the human story in a way that, perhaps, a majority of humankind would recognize. The great challenges that lie before us, however, are less well known. The path that together we are now taking, we do know with certainty, will lead to catastrophic consequences sometime in the first half of the next century. But the strategies for human survival, the alternate paths that together we will have to find within the life-span of our youngest children--are more complicated and less well understood. Chapter Outline In the first chapter we will look at some basic assumptions: (1) that human survival in the 21st century depends on our ability to create a global democracy before it's too late, (2) that it takes time to create democracy, and (3) that what we call "democracy" now is not yet the quality of democracy that we want and need. We do not at present, for example, have sufficient control over special interest groups to prevent our increasingly rapid drift toward disaster. The second chapter discusses the nature of "history," develops the above outlined "human story" a little more fully, and searches for the "ultimate sources of meaning." This chapter affirms democracy as a universal cultural and decision-making system. If the fundamentalist and ethnic rejection of democracy as a universal value is widely accepted, then we are all at sea in separate ships--steering with different maps and orienting ourselves by different stars. In storms or under conditions of poor visibility, we will inevitably collide. In the third chapter we look at a theory of democracy based on concepts taken from information theory, general systems theory, and a constructivist theory of "deep evolution." Democracy is seen as occurring in identifiable stages, and predictions are made regarding its future stages on each of two separate scales of history. We also look at democracy as more than just a political system. It is a system of human values, ideals, emotions, human relations, decision-making, and information processing at many levels. To function well at the political level, it has to be reinforced by democratic functioning at other human system levels. The fourth chapter examines democracy at the level of the individual, the family, and the group. A new model of the individual, homo syntropicus, is suggested as a replacement for both homo economicus and the socialist "new man." I propose a model for understanding individual consciousness and then compare it to the model of democratic processes. Techniques for extending democratic consciousness and communicative skills are also outlined. The proposed revolution in democracy begins with personal cognition and moves through every level of human organization. Chapter five carries it into the workplace, corporations, party organizations, and perhaps most surprisingly, into the government bureaucracy. The concept of "organizational democracy" is defined, and the roles of expert knowledge, workers, and management are redefined. In chapter six we apply our ideas for democratic reform to "democratic" government itself at three levels: local, national, and regional. An organizational form for achieving Democracy's New Agenda (DNA) is proposed in this chapter. DNA is not to be a political party that serves as a springboard for advance in the present political hierarchy. Its aims are to promote the seven transformative values: fair elections for one term only, nonprofit media, lobby reform, better education for democracy, zero population growth, eco-planning, and democratization of corporations. The four priority reform actions are described as: (1) electoral reform, (2) lobby reform, (3) media reform, and (4) the creation of powerful local and national organizations to help realize the transformative values and to bring about the priority reforms. Such power as these organizations may have will come from the numbers of people who join them, who learn to work together democratically, and who contribute financial resources to them. At a supranational level of organization, a proposal for regional divisions of the world system, suggested by Rajni Kothari, is briefly outlined and supported. Thus far the focus has been on reforming our currently existing systems at several levels of human organization. Chapter seven contains suggestions for creating a brand new, democratic, world system from the ground up. If our elected government representatives are slow in seeing the light, we will start the revolution without them. Each individual, anywhere in the world, can begin at any time to build a new world democracy based on the proposed "universal model" for a democratic constitution. Suggestions are made for adapting the universal model to local circumstances. More details are offered on the proposed "syntropic economy," on the role of small groups, and on the culture of democratic life. Chapter eight concentrates on a model of guaranteed security for all peoples, the problem of nuclear weapons, and the transition to a democratic world system based on the model constitution. The epilogue is a poem which expresses in summary form the message of the book. Appendix 1 briefly explicates the theory of "deep evolution" upon which the evolutionary theories of democracy (chapter 3) and consciousness (chapter 4) are partially based. Appendix 2 contains descriptions of several methods for improving personal skills and developing the democratic repertoire. A companion book, The Universal Model: A Democratic Constitution for the Third Millenium, contains the text of a draft proposal for a democratic constitution that is especially designed for coping with the problems to be expected in the 21st century. It can be adapted to any political or cultural setting in order to further democratize local systems. Like all proposed constitutions, this one is subject to revision after debate--and to amendment after adoption. The Universal Model, which will be mentioned several times in this book, incorporates the International Bill of Human Rights that was created in the General Assembly of the United Nations. It also includes the U.N. Covention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Copies of Creating Democracy...In Time, The Universal Model, and later books in the series On Democracy in Time can be obtained from Pensema Publishing Company or from The Center for the Evolution of Democracy. Flowers and Old Shoes For me it seems that the winds of change originate from every region of the Earth. They drop the seeds of democracy into the human mind, and as I watch them flower I can scarcely resist embracing them. They arrive like dear friends whom I've been missing--though not fully aware of my discomfort until I feel the warmth and excitement of their return. I only wish that I could articulate their value in a more pleasing form. Nevertheless, the ideas expressed rawly in the pages that follow remain friendly to my understanding of who we are and what we can become. Having already worn most of these thoughts a few years, I find they still fit comfortably on my mind--like a pair of old shoes. Now I let them go, so that someone else may try them on. But then, I was fortunate enough to have been born into a society in the north--where, with little effort, I could always find shoes.