Looking Local, A Hopeful Emergence
These last years I’ve really begun to identify myself as a voluntarist. You could also say anarcho-reciprocal economist! What does that mean? Well, basically that I advocate for stateless societies, local networked economies and self-governed, semi-autonomous communities. Not immediately, we’re a long way off from having attained the collective maturity necessary to manage such a system on a large scale, but certainly as a vision for the future. This is why I’m so keen to spread the word about Sociocracy and other tools that help people at a local level to govern themselves.
Recently a friend wrote to me asking my point of view regarding state issued citizen wage. The following article is a re-edit of my reply. Whilst the response wanders off topic, the overall context remains entirely relevant to the question.
Enjoy!
We are awakening! Consciousness becoming itself! Circles of people are gathering and light is attracting light!
Effective tools - social technologies, group processes, local exchange economies, psycho-spiritual maps – helping us to improve communication, access resources and organise more effectively. People working to nurture “flow”, and building local economies in innovative, sustainable ways.
Groups are networking together, sharing wisdom and learning through reflecting on their own and others’ mistakes. Integrating discoveries into evolved processes to serve specific needs, synthesising creative input of the many and ensuring the solutions formed are within the range of tolerance of individuals, communities and environments affected by them.
There is a potential for a tipping point where local people become so effective at governing and networking with others that the whole argument for “Government” / the “State”, becomes obviously ridiculous. Humanity only requires a surrogate controlling parent type of entity, managed by a small group of human beings and drawn towards distorted positions of influence and power, in the absence of a greater majority owning their power (empowered people = utilising power in service of vulnerability) for themselves.
Perhaps it is wise to be cautious of supporting a culture of petitioning “the powers that shouldn’t be” for “benefits” like a citizen wage for all. Beware a co-dependence with strangers who may have their own, not others, best interests at heart. Let us instead focus towards our immediate communities, create local currencies and exchange mechanisms. Turn our attention to all conceivable ways to become less, rather than more dependent upon a pyramidic, global economic infrastructure.
Increasingly, effective methods for organisation, collaborative decision making and development, spell out a potential future for a marginal cost society where the current capitalist paradigm inevitably shrinks to represent only a small part of the economic landscape. We see glimmers of this, yet the fuller expression of such creative emergence could be extraordinary. How much time and energy do people currently invest in conducting meaningless, repetitive functions in order to survive and prop up an unsustainable economic system? What myriad of other, more nourishing ways of navigating life are actually possible and available to us should we choose to opt for another path?
The development of local infrastructure, local economies and exchange networks, and evolving effective collaboration (between communities and in turn, with the various life forms and natural systems of Earth), increases the chance of supporting a wonderful emergence, rather than a greater catastrophic emergency.
Now is a time where all humankind is called to increase engagement and energy input towards manifesting change, bringing to an end unnecessary, repetitive work conducted in mundane environments, serving nothing but to maintain a status quo, and with ever increasing lack. Rather, let us turn inwards to face ourselves. Begin or to continue the inner work of dis-entanglement from previously necessary but ultimately ineffective protective strategies, inherited in order to survive childhood and to maintain a “place of belonging” within manipulated, self-perpetuating cultural environments.
There is a call to put energy into our relationships with others and with the wider world. To open eyes a little wider and consider the true impact of actions (or inaction) made in each moment. There is an ancestral deficit, and payment is way past due. The gifts of any unconscious behaviour of those that came before is the stark realisation that to continue in such a manner will likely spell the end to our existence. We are faced with the glaringly obvious fact that we cannot continue on the path that we have been walking.
Is it the reflection of an intelligent plan that humanity find itself teetering once again on a precipice moment where the next steps taken are so crucial. A situation to clarify explicitly the need for radical and immediate change?
We are faced with the invitation to “up our game” to a level of consciousness that transforms this moment into the emergence of a responsible, mature expression of our potential. Failure to do so could spell the end for a large percentage of the human race and many other life-forms besides.
It is not planet Earth that requires our help to survive, for likely, whatever tragedy we bestow upon her, she will recover eventually and continue to exist and for many eons to come. But for us, humanity, to transform this planet to the degree that she could no longer sustain us, as a cancer devours its host, represents our greatest threat!
The choice before us is one that all do well to consider, and seriously, because action
requires human intention and energy input. Complacency and waiting for another to come to the rescue is probably not going to turn out well right now.
Never will there be a moment when we are more resourced to serve a transformation of our predicament. This is a paradox in light of the debt spiral humanity finds itself within. One is the face of the actuality and the other, a self-created and sustained fallacy. The current economy exists only in relation to the proportionate debt that human beings have naively agreed to service. The debt only has quantifiable value, so long as people continue to collude with giving it value in order to service it. We pay the debt with the substance of the Earth itself, sustenance of the system relies on the perpetuation and expansion of the debt, and the “repayment” depletes our environment of its vitality.
Awakening to the fact that the real debt is a debt of consciousness, conscious intention, conscious action, conscious relation with ourselves and with all beings. This is where we need to turn our attention, towards the realisation of the universal abundance. Abundance in love and in opportunity for love through us, to define itself in beautiful ways. Such expression requires that we realise the perfection of our design and discover it is only a fear inspired adaptation that reduced us to the shadow of a fuller potential.
Where we need turn our efforts right now is in coming home to the vulnerability at the core of our being. A reunion with our exquisite sensitivity to all of life’s unfolding. To connect with the child that cries within, embracing ourselves and learning to listen with an inner ear to this place of deeper wisdom.
We are called to see the depths of ourselves and therefore of each other and through the eyes of innocence, discover the miracle of life’s unfolding.
The horror of our young sisters and brothers, the children abused, starving, dying by wars and famine, this is but a reflection of what we do to the child within us and to each other, on a daily basis. Acting out behaviours that completely disregard vulnerability and that are fuelled by unconscious behaviours, seeking to avoid a direct relationship with these tender places. It’s a paradoxical road to no-where, other than ultimately leading right back to that which we seek to avoid.
Only by opening our eyes and turning to face the child within can we transform this predicament. Only by this greatest act of courage can we truly empower ourselves.
Every one of us is perfect by design! We can accommodate all that we feel and realise all that we are. Yet we’ve introjected the doubt of those who raised us, for they in turn had learnt to doubt themselves by the example of those who came before them.
Yet even in the midst of our great forgetting, this universe crafts each moment by perfect design to serve as the catalyst for our perpetual re-awakening.
When aligned within, and daring to express of our true selves, we naturally attract all that’s needed in order to sustain and to nourish this potential. And still, in the absence of such alignment, we continually draw towards us that which in essence we are called to re-integrate in order to become whole. It is just that in this latter case the phenomenon of attracting our disowned parts is less obvious, especially when that we need to reclaim can appear in distorted form, relative to the degree that we’ve identified with whatever stands opposed to it.
The benevolence of the universe is without limit, constantly offering the potential for a basic income (exactly all that we need), along with the opportunity to live our bliss. We’re beckoned into a paradigm where the distinctions drawn between work and play dissolve and we discover that abundant flow is the natural consequence of aligning ourselves with the universal calling that speaks through our heart’s true expression. Rested in this perspective, there is no resistance and only flow, a path that leads towards true abundance, and effort-less.
This is a great work, and we are all called to the act. There are no shortcuts to transformation, yet there is no distance to be travelled. The route is simply inwards, to
pay heed to our essential needs. Vulnerability connects us to each other and to all of life, yet it resides at the core of our being. Through this portal we transcend our very identity and attune to the constant guiding voice of an intelligence field.
The only energy lost is that invested in the futile attempt to sustain an identity other than our own. Peace is the inevitable consequence of realigning behaviours and actions to reflect our unique expression. Our truest nature is the purest and most harmonious contribution we can ever make towards the wellbeing of all that surrounds us. We are all that we need and being all that we are is what is now required.
