Perhaps "anarchy" has gotten a bad rap

in this article from alternet by david morris, originally posted in on the commons, anarchy, as defined by petr kropotkin, is equated to cooperation and collaboration...

Kropotkin honored Darwin’s insights about natural selection but believed the governing principle of natural selection was cooperation, not competition. The fittest were those who cooperated.

“The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. … The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay.”

He spent the rest of his life promoting that concept and the theory of social structure known as anarchism. To Americans anarchism is synonymous with a lack of order. But to Kropotkin anarchist societies don’t lack order but the order emerges from rules designed by those who feel their impact, rules that encourage humanly scaled production systems and maximize individual freedom and social cohesion.

In his article on Anarchy in the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica Kropotkin defines anarchism as a society “without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption…”

in my opinion, the term "self-organizing systems" is not only more descriptive but also a great deal more palatable than "anarchy"... the concept of self-organizing systems is a well-studied element of complex adaptive systems that has emerged from research done by the santa fe institute... the concept began with chaos theory and complexity theory and has since been applied to many systems - economic, social, organizational, mathematical, physical, etc. - with great validity... it also totally supports the collaborative and cooperative fundamentals revealed in kropotkin's research...

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Jimmy Carter says secrecy is a violation of human rights

and you know WHY he thinks that...? because not having access to information stifles growth and change... it's become an axiom, thanks to research on complex adaptive systems, that for complex systems to be effective, for them to even survive, they must be OPEN, open to change, open to adaptation, and adaptation and change cannot take place without new information about changing conditions in the larger environment... a corollary to that axiom is that closed systems, sooner or later, die...

The Bush administration has violated Americans' basic human rights by blocking access to information and creating more government secrets than at any other time in U.S. history, former President Carter said Wednesday.

Carter made the remarks at the start of a three-day conference aimed at helping other countries develop "access to information" laws, drawing participants from nearly 40 nations.

To applause, Carter said he looks forward to more freedom after a new U.S. administration takes office in January.

The Atlanta-based Carter Center has been working to help other countries with right-to-information laws since 1999, when it piloted a program in Jamaica. At that time only a handful of countries had such laws.

Today, nearly 70 nations have laws granting the public access to government information.

"Powerful leaders in order to stay in office deprive their citizens of a right to know," Carter said. "Access to information can change the landscape of an entire society."

access to information not only "'CAN' change the landscape of an entire society," it WILL change it...

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Comunidades y Viviendas, Monologue 1

Following on from last night's post, what to do? Where to start? How to explain? How to proceed? Striving for clarity to all those questions can only lead me to mental paralysis, so I will simply jump in.

As absurdly obvious as it may sound, everybody lives somewhere. It is a fundamental fact of our existence and, globally, one we all have in common. Certainly, the circumstances and the definition of that “living” may vary dramatically, but, the fact remains, we all put our heads down to sleep, and that takes place most often at the place (or places) we live. From the homeless person and the nomad, to the super-rich world citizen, our perspective on life springs from where and how we live day-to-day. My theory, therefore, is simple. If we are going to change the world, we must start from where people live.

Let me quickly introduce another perspective. Human society and the dynamics of the world in which it exists are made up of an infinite number of nested and interrelated systems. A family is a system. A community is a system. Biology is a system. An organization is a system. The environment is a system. Politics is a system. A government is a system. The economy is a system. The planets and their movement around the sun is a system. I will talk at another time about the emerging field of complex adaptive systems, but, for now, it is sufficient to point out that all of these systems are interconnected, interdependent, seek to learn and grow, and that the behavior of one affects, often in non-linear and unexpected ways, the behavior of the others. It is impossible to effectively alter the dynamics of one system without considering the influence of related systems and, subsequently, impacting the dynamics of those systems.

If we are to focus on and change a core element of human existence, where and how people live, we must undertake that work from a systemic point of view. All of the systems that interrelate with that core system must be taken into account. That was the framework behind the visual I posted in my introduction to this concept last night. All of those components, and probably more that I failed to mention, are systems inextricably interrelated to where and how we live, what I have chosen to call “Comunidades y Viviendas.” If where and how we live is to change for the better, ALL of those systems MUST be taken into account, and not only taken into account, THEY must very likely be changed as well. We must insure that the changes in the core element of how and where we live are not ground into dust by leaving the systems that support it unaffected. At a later time, I will relate several stories from my past experience that clearly illustrate how that can happen and the tragedies that ensue when it does. I am sure many of you have similar stories and hope that you will take the opportunity to share them when we get to that point.

Before moving one step further, I would be terribly remiss if I didn’t point out that what I am proposing has enormous and potentially quite threatening implications for established systems. If people become truly empowered to take charge of where and how they live, there is NOTHING else that can remain unaffected. Economic and power structures, for instance, will be altered in dramatic ways. The flow of both will be reversed, flowing from the bottom up, rather than as they do now, from the top down. This, to me at least, implies that there must be a readiness for this kind of change, and, as I said in the introductory post, I am predicating my proposal on what I believe to be unexpected and dramatic events that will pave the way for work on these changes to begin in earnest. That said, I see absolutely no reason why planning for it should not begin now.

That takes me to the principal challenge I see moving forward. I have connections with gifted and enlightened people in many parts of the world who, if they were able to pursue this effort and sustain themselves and their own lives in the process, would drop everything to become part of it. When I say “sustain themselves and their own lives,” I mean precisely that. Most of us require a certain level of resources flowing into our lives in order to maintain needs, responsibilities and obligations, and we also have connections and roots that are neither easily nor lightly abandoned. That’s good. It’s all about where and how we live and no one should be asked to sacrifice that. However, these people, if we are to join together in such a grand project, must come together from time to time to develop and evolve the concept, and, after all, developing and evolving the concept is the first and the biggest piece of the work. What this points to is a basic requirement for seed money, money for two things: to support the lives of the initial, core team so that we can devote all of our energy to the work, and two, money to support the travel necessary to bring us together as needed. To my mind, the money would ideally be provided by an “angel,” a sole philanthropist who would underwrite the development, evolution and pilot execution of the concept until it can become self-sustainable, with no expectation of return, payback, profit or future rights. An impossible fantasy? Perhaps. I’m putting it out there nevertheless, because I know from experience, you don’t get if you don’t ask.

I’ll expand on some of these initial thoughts in future posts. In the meantime, I look forward to your thoughts and comments.

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