In one of my university classes I used to show a picture of people in chains – Slaves. Then I would show a picture of people in cubicles doing their 9-5 drudgery. The difference I explained was that the first picture showed people who knew they were slaves. The second one showed work slaves that had bought into the idea that working in a corporate controlled system was normal. Whether it is a cubicle or a salt mine, the way we work today was set up during the industrial revolution. Not that the agricultural farming was necessarily an easy lifestyle, but it was a communally integrated system of living in which most communities were relatively self-sufficient. We have had a hierarchical system for many millennia, but that itself is also a system imposed upon the people. Only in most indigenous cultures did people have self-determination and sovereignty, although even those ‘tribal’ systems could be restrictive if tribal rules were not flexible.
Most people in our modern world seem unable to accept that there are different ways to live a good life. It’s something I have talked about a lot in this blog. What traps most people is this belief that the system is as it is and that outside of an armed revolution by the people, the hierarchy has all the power and will hurt anyone that threatens the status quo. So, people remain scared into compliance with fear ruling their lives. In the westernized countries, the hierarchy has conditioned us to accepting that materialism is the only way to live. In totalitarian countries people were conditioned to accept centralized systems. Yet, in each it was a hierarchy that controlled the system. People oppressed by a hierarchy through rigid rule or economics have power but are often too afraid to exercise that power – the belief that the rut known is safer than change unknown. Whether benign or oppressive, hierarchies believe in their own omnipotent polices and that more control equals more benefit overall. And then they spend much effort to convince the people, why they must submit to the hierarchy. In 1978, despite decades of crackdowns by the soviet authorities, intellectual dissidents, led by Vaclav Benda, started to set up an alternative culture under the very noses of the hierarchy – the parallel Polis, or parallel social structure.
This informal civic initiative set up new systems of discourse and interaction outside of the controlled mainstream system. The aim of the Parallel Polis, according to dissident authors was to create “an independent society not oppressed by laws and decisions of representatives of public authorities—a society based on its own values, which are not forced by the central authorities.” After the last fiasco of COP 26, I see how the global hierarchies (e.g., WEF, IMF, governments, transnational corporate systems, etc.) are trying to set up a centralized system to manage all the ecological and economic failures that they themselves have created. I don’t know about you but I’m not ready to meekly accept a global feudal system of authoritarian control. And we don’t have to. We can set up an alternate parallel society built from the grass roots of the communities in which we currently live. Just like the Czechs did through the 1980s that led to the collapse of the Iron Curtain as it was known back then.
As I look over the mass media, what has become noticeable during the Covid crisis is the numbers of journalists that abandoned their careers within the traditional news sources to open up or join alternative news sources. A simple conclusion is that journalists of conscience no longer trust the mainstream media to tell us any subjective truth with fair analysis. They are becoming propaganda just like Pravda used to be. But, to be fair to the editors and journalists that remain, I don’t believe they are not sociopaths following orders from shadowy superiors per se, but under pressure to ‘not rock-the boat.’ It has more to do with access to valid information sources and the reality of how mainstream media is a business – one that sells information using sponsors with vested interests to keep them financially afloat. The MSM exist on being able to access the hierarchical sources they need to gain information to tell their subscribers/readers/listeners. If the sources or the sponsors do not like what you say, then you are denied access to them and/ or financial viability.
Alternative media are sources of more objective truth and usually survive financially because of layperson subscribers with no vested interests outside of the information. It is a decentralized network much like the original internet started out before it got taken over by silicon valley oligarchs. If you are then discerning and use multiple sources you will start to find consistent knowledge that reveals flaws in any mainstream narrative. The alternative media is therefore a parallel structure. A consequence of this is also the rise of independent social media outlets using censor-free platforms to avoid being cancelled for speaking out about anything the Mainstream feels detrimental to their control.
During the sub-prime mortgage economic crisis of 2008, the banks were bailed out by the various world country treasuries. In the states, it was the U.S. Treasury (i.e., the Federal Reserve) using tax payer money. The problem with this latest round of economic crisis is that it isn’t the banks creating the problems but the Feds themselves by printing money from nothing that is causing hyper-inflation. While hard to predict accurately, some of the best economic guru’s show 2028 as the collapse point of the global economy. That is when all the U.S. social funded programs reach insolvency as hyper-inflation collapses the U.S. and hence the global economic system. in the past few years, we have seen a lot of cryptocurrencies being pushed. At this time, I am uncertain about the true financial reality of crypto versus governmental fiat currencies. If we should somehow continue an international financial system then crypto would be viable, but I see more of a collapse with localized economic transfer systems (LETS) being more prevalent (see earlier post, Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 4 – Economics part 3 {January 2020}). This is more akin to using alternate forms of finance and barter instead of the government-backed fiat currencies generated by the federal reserve banks (e.g., US Fed reserve, Bank of England).
The larger the social structure the more likely the abuse of a corrupt hierarchy. By decentralizing, there are numerous communities within a given area, each with its own autonomy, that can serve as a federation of Communities giving community sovereignty each with a voice in the federation within a given geographic area. I have more detail about what I see as an alternate society in the next post, but for now the ‘Parallel Polis’ describing the alternate Czech social structure in 1978 demonstrates the emergence of a new social structures in artistic and intellectual circles as a way to escape the controlling totalitarianism of that time.
As described by Vaclav, et. al, in Parallel Polis, an underground (alternate) movement created ways to inform people and generate alternative systems such as groups of people that advocated for personal rights and freedoms; non-official independent art that expressed ideas at odds with the authorities; unofficial science, political and various academic seminars that presented alternate data and perspectives; free dissemination of alternate news and magazines (remember this is pre-social media); An alternate economic system that was based on personal reciprocity and trust in the individual in which the search for resources was are not dependent on the control of monetary tools. There was also a parallel political structure such that when the day of independence arrived it could readily substitute for the departing regime. By necessity, this also involved a parallel foreign policy such that the new independent system could interact with other financial and mental systems occurring nearby.
The Parallel Polis in Czechoslovakia was against a mammoth Soviet regime, but the ideas that were upheld there work well at any level as the need to relocalized everywhere become apparent. It is the gaining of individual sovereignty and community freedom from high-handed authoritarian systems whether they be totalitarian or just autocratic systems that no longer work. Whether they be transitional communities or simply new styles of community living (e.g., New Urbanism) the parallel systems are set up within the existing hierarchical structure until the ‘official systems’ finally fail on their own accord leaving the parallel systems already in place. More ideas next post.
“The ultimate phase of this process is the situation in which the official structures…simply begin withering away and dying off, to be replaced by new structures that have evolved from ‘below’ and are put together in a fundamentally different way.”
And, “…the “independent society” does not compete for power. Its aim is not to replace the powers that be with power of another kind, but rather under this power – or beside it – to create structures that respect other laws and in which the voice of the ruling power is heard only as an insignificant echo from a world that is organized in an entirely different way.” Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless.
To Be Continued ……………
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