Why do we have governments? Not a simple question. Depending on whom you ask you will get a variety of answers. Five of the more common answers are: 1. The government serves the interests of the ruling classes; 2. The government balances the goals and decides the mixture of policies for society; 3. The government seeks to balance the interests of the individual with the interests of the community; 4. The government’s most important purpose is protection; and 5. The government deals with essential services. I could agree with all of these but do we need a centralized government to provide these things? What I think most of us need is a society that is peaceful, orderly, and serves the needs of the populace. I think most people believe that the established fundamental institutions of government, such as education, government policy generation, media, and banking, were once relatively reliable and to most degrees trustworthy. This of course all depends on transparency. Skeptics like myself would love to believe that transparency exists, but I believe that is a pipe dream in this modern world run by governments fixated on centralizing everything to be run by technocrats and ‘powerful others’ with vested interests outside of our needs.
If the last two decades are any indication, the rights of individuals and hierarchical transparency are just ideals meant to keep us mollified into allowing the hierarchy to practice politics that serves the needs of the politicians and their masters, which is not us, no matter how much we might want to believe it so. “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary” H.L. Menchen. After the way the WHO handled the C19 pandemic so badly, I watch with great concern of the treaty-policy to make the WHO the central global agency of future pandemic management. Putting global health care into the hands of politically motivated bureaucrats and technocrats doesn’t sounds like a good idea to me!
If sovereignty, localized self-reliance, and true sustainability are our goals then we need to reject the centralization promise of a global government and do what we know we do best at the local level. This push to manage (control) things at ever centralizing levels of organization (nation building) has been notable in the last couple of centuries, especially in how it has produced chaos and suffering at levels unprecedented in recorded human history. Leopold Kohr notes in his book, The Breakdown of Nations, that throughout history people living in small states are happier, more peaceful, more creative and more prosperous. Kohr believed that “all our political and social problems would be greatly diminished if the world’s major countries were to dissolve back into the small states from which they sprang.” While this sounds like I’m supporting anarchy, I am not against larger governments having a broader supporting role in our lives (it’s how we move past traditional tribalism), but not a micromanaging one, with centralized and empty promises. Kohr believed that a smaller patchwork of unique political bodies would ensure more peace and security by minimizing “the aggregation of power by returning to a patchwork of small, relatively powerless states, where leaders are accessible to and responsive to the people.” Centralization of power means that when something goes wrong, it does so in a massive way, unlike failure at a local level that stays local. Or as Kohr said, “A radically decentralized world localizes the impact of institutional failure while centralization universalizes it.”
Activist, Rob Hopkins book From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want is a call to action to reclaim and unleash our collective imagination. He tells the stories of individuals and communities around the world who are doing amazing transition projects now, witnessing often rapid and dramatic change for the better. Hopkins calls it ‘Dorocrary’ – the people making the decisions are the ones actually doing stuff.
Why do people really get involved in creating change? Some might initiate it for greater ideas like sustainability, but when you ask people who have started this kind of action, they say, it’s about neighbors, the community, being involved in something exciting with others, the passion about creativity and using our imaginations to make things work better. If we are to create a world in which we thrive we have to first be able – and willing – to imagine it. And we need to start doing it before the ‘crunch’ forces us to. We need to start the parallel culture while we are still within the existing one that is fast failing, both ecologically and economically, all around us. Even the vast wealth divide, the financial wealth of the hierarchy will not be able to withstand the coming failures. While intellect (left brain) can show us ways to survive, imagination (right brain) teaches us to ask “What if” questions and the to explore alternate paradigms and to become creative. Intellect is constrained and limited by reason, logic and “And but …” responsses that can only look at current ways of thinking. Imagination is not constrained by such limitations and not only thinks out of the box, but can break the box apart completely. It means looking at each ‘what if’ question and seeing multiple possible answers. It’s a lot like being asked to name as many ways to use a paperclip (see earlier post, Cultivating a Flourishing Future 1 – the Educational Challenge{November 2018}). It’s about recognizing and accepting the possibilities.
Three crucial aspects of this kind of imaginative thinking are a genuine need to be curious about potential options that can be opportunities, a willingness to actually start and implement something concrete, and not lapsing into naysaying (the ‘Yes, but… ‘ responses). I’m always amazed by people with great ideas who seem afraid to begin making them real. The fear of failure, of being criticized, of not being able to meet imaginary expectations. The negative side of imagination is the fear in our minds that projects our fear outwards onto the world. We might fail. Well, if you don’t start it, you have failed already. What’s the worst that can happen? – you succeed!? People all over the planet are looking for creative ideas that can change their lives and you can be the one who does it. Why not you? Regardless of what your teachers might have said, you began life as a creative mind and spent years being conditioned and normalized into mundaneness. We need faith in ourselves and others and a willingness to explore and discuss ‘What-if’ questions without fear of being shut down. You are unique and your life experiences and knowledge give you a unique view of life. When we let creative imagination loose, I am never surprised to see amazing ideas come to the surface, even from people I least expect them to arise from.
Hopkins has written extensively about transition communities. They promote local resilience, they are low carbon, they create a local economy that is not just about personal profit, they work within natural local ecological limits promoting localization, and they identify and bring assets in to the local community. The transition philosophy in countries around the world creates local banks and currencies (transition economy), local food systems, localized energy systems, community development projects funded and managed locally by the community (not just the wealthy entrepreneurs in those places doing things to make themselves monetarily wealthier). We need to paint a glorious picture of what transition in our local areas so that a deep longing for change become entrenched within, not just the ones reading this blog, but also the ones who want change but cannot yet break out of their fear-based mindsets. As I and many others have said, “we are the ones we are waiting for.”
To Be Continued ………………
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