POST III - Joining together through a pragmatic approach
First, we are starting with a little fiction:
***** A little tale *****
There is a factory for a very special product, it is a kind of gum that when a person chews it, the person remains fully entertained and time goes faster. Basically the gum is a “time killer”, the no boredom forever is guaranteed! This factory has a set of shareholders and a board of directors. The shareholders live from the rent coming of their actions and decided that every year the company must increase its revenues by 10%. The board is responsible for directing the activities of the company and control that the goal of increasing annual sales by 10% is met. To help them to fulfill their purpose efficiently, they are receiving very high salaries, and also they receive an annual bonus according to the compliance of the year.
The factory has a finances, human resources, marketing, production, and systems department, which are all coordinated to meet that goal of everlasting increasing of revenues. As an example, the marketing department strives to design and develop communication strategies that aim to increase consumption of the gum. The finances department wants to reduce the different costs of operation, including the distribution, so they asked the system department to develop new software in order to better control the distribution.
I’m working at the system department as a software developer, so, I’m working hard with the distribution software asked by the Finances department. Right now, the pressure cause we must finish the software in a given date, so I’m stressed, tired and with really scarce free time. In fact it is being a long time that I’m not almost seeing my family. I’m seeing them one hour at morning and another one at night, the weekends are worse, cause I’m going out also to work. Really I’m dreaming with the normal times, when I had enough time to expend with them, a time where we sat together and chew the gum that entertains us so well. Or better yet, take a vacation and spend all day chewing this wonderful gum, really I can not imagine what people did in the past without this gum.
I heard rumors that the gum production is devastating the planet, that with the current growth rate in production we are using more and more land and resources, and that at some time in the future there will be not enough and that our resources will be degraded. But surely that is what alarmist say, they are no using enough the gum so they are not enjoying enough, no seeing the undoubted gum’s benefits. I guess that the best thing in life is to become a shareholder of a company like I’m working now. In that case, I will not need to work anymore, and I’ll have all the time for me. What will I do with this time? Hmm, I don’t know, I guess I will be chewing more gum … I don’t know, I’ll think about that at this time. I must admit that I’m a bit bored with my job. I don’t know why, I’m working in a good company and doing an important and recognized work. Besides, if I’m going to another company, I would be doing basically the same. There aren’t chances to do different things over there. Things are more or less organized, and we should be really lucky for that.
Thus, this is the way that my life is going on, working the best part of my life in a company that produces a gum that people is using in their free time, to kill this free time. And it will remains the same until the day I’ll be able to retire. Then I’ll be as a shareholder, I’ll have all my time free and I’ll be able to chew the gum all the day, until finally at some point, I will be going to my eternal rest, cause I guess that is what I want, because otherwise, why I was killing my time all my life?
***** The end of the little tale ****
Generally speaking, the little tale depicted above is more and less what is what is happening to most of us who are fortunate enough to not to be fighting daily for the basic needs to live. And what I can say is that there is something deeply disturbing in a society that is making of this tale its lifestyle and even it is considering it desirable. So, what we need is to reinvent ourselves from the bottom up. We need need innovate from the bottom-up in order to redefine our relationships, in how we are relating to each other with the aim to give everyone a chance to a fully life, but not a life as is described in the tale, but a fully life with autonomy, mastery and purpose, a life where each minute has real value and we just aren’t killing the time.
So, how we are redefining the relationships structure of our society from the bottom-up? The only way we can achieve something is to organize and act. Or what is the same, we must institutionalize the power that all of us who want that change have, of which the Edgeryders community 's members are a small sample. But just in the process of institutionalizing the power, i.e. creating the structures necessary for it to work, it is also where resides the greatest danger. Because if we are using the same structures as always, the most likely to happen is that if the movement succeeds, when it reaches a certain volume, the same structures created to mediate the power are becoming disconnected from its base, which is ourselves, and begin a domination process that ultimately distorts all the original intentions for which those institutions were created.
So it is true that we have to organize by creating the necessary structures to manage our power to reinvent ourselves as. But the priority first step on that path, is to innovate in the shape that these structures will have to avoid the danger that they are becoming through the time divorced from its true power base, us. The humanity has been innovating at a fast growing pace on technologies and other areas, but there is no innovation in our power structures, they remain in the same basic design from when we started to organize in groups. And it is this that staticity that we must challenge finding better ways to institutionalize our political power. That is the very first thing to think before any change, because otherwise, in the medium to long term we will be again in the situation that we want to escape right now. We have the desire, the tools and know that obediential power and healthy hierarchies/heterarchies are the way if used well, then how do we develop the context and structures to institutionalize a real power obediential? And using these new structures we can organize ourselves to reinvent our relationships from the bottom-up, how should we organize ourselves to achieve that change from the bottom up?
Come to the Living together session to start to answer these question through a conversation, but not only talking, also help to start a little practical experiment that allows us to answer these questions through real life changes, and also serve at the same time as a seed to start to redefine the relationships structure of our society from the bottom-up.
We have the desire, the tools (Internet, the co-philosophies, etc.) and the required knowledge, we must start to organize those pieces and experiment with them in order to discover through conversations and actions in real life the way for the change; a society where everyone has the opportunity to live a full life. We have everything, we should only start to act.