Realism bites

A common response to progressive or utopian ideas is "That's not realistic." Witting or not, the "realism" underlying this perspective is a crucial strategy for protecting the power of the powerful. In our modern capitalist society, realism protects the power of the plutocratic overclass, the small minority of the population that controls a disproportionate amount of the wealth, and thereby comes to dominate and profit from more and more aspects of our society and everyday lives. And if "realism" does THAT, I think people who believe in democracy will agree that realism bites.

The realist, in any given society, is expressing the "common sense" that keeps the powers that be in power. On what authority is there a limit on what humans working together could possibly do? The "authority" is ultimately a restriction of imagination cultivated by the forces of societal inertia and power protection. Restricted imagination is the flip side of an unquestioning faith that the way we are now, or could be with some key reforms, is pretty much all we can be. Together, restricted imagination and naive faith create the delusion that we are not free, that we are pre-limited in what we can possibly do. So it's really perfectly obvious that "realism" functions to protect the authority of the status quo; anything that would challenge the arrangements by which the powerful wield power is to be considered impossible, unimaginable, not "realistic." Realism draws a line in the sand and says we are not free to cross it. That's authoritarianism!

(Another point worth noting about the "that's not realistic" response is that by changing the focus of the issue from 'what would be better' to 'what is possible,' the realist is effectively conceding that the "unrealistic" idea proposed would be an improvement if it was "realistic." Either that or he's obscuring, perhaps unintentionally, a deeper, more profound question of the morality of our politics and society and everyday life. [The question being whether the way we are now is the best way to be, or whether there are other, perhaps radically different ways we could be and survive and have better, more free and responsible lives.])

By purporting to put a boundary at the limits of the possible, "realism" plays a significant role in maintaining our unfree way of life in which a vast majority of the people are trapped as credit-serfs and wage-slaves in a dead-end, materialistic, authoritarian society, ruled by a plutocratic overclass that is trashing the globe and treats the vast majority as resources for wealth extraction and power concentration (rather than as human beings equally deserving of using their freedom and power to think, talk, and work with others to organize their societies and lives as they best see fit in voluntarily-associating groups of like-minded people). (It seems indisputable that the plutocratic overclass doesn't treat the majority of citizens the way the golden rule demands; in other words, the plutocratic overclass does not act in accord with the basic principles of morality and democracy.)

Whatever is defining a boundary of "realism" is exactly what needs to be exorcised, uprooted, critiqued, and rejected in favor of freedom over authority. In a free society, there will be no distinction between realism and idealism, and people will intentionally avoid being tied down by status quo concepts of what is possible.

Once you see that your sense of what is realistic is a product and captive of the powers that be, you are free to move on. And only by freeing your sense of the possible, understanding that our way of life is just one of innumerable possible ways of organizing human life, can you see your way back to the clearing from which all possible paths, including true democracy, start.

[Afterpoint 1: Is there any good reason for people who believe in democracy to fight with the plutocrats and their spitlickles over the boundary of what is "realistic"? Instead, maybe we should accept the boundary they lay down and then move to other side! Leave them behind in the only reality we democracy-believers will define as not possible: the status quo reality where we are serfs and slaves in an authoritarian society run by and for a plutocratic ruling class!]

[Afterpoint 2: Sometimes people appeal to "human nature" as some sort of realism block on the human ability to create better societies. It is important to recognize that appeals to human nature are not really argument – whatever someone means by human nature is only his "faith" that humans are some particular way, beliefs he will assert are "just so" even though he cannot back them up with reasoned argument applied to convincing evidence. The fact is human beings have always been too different, too diverse, both within and across populations, to claim that the kinds of societies we could possibly construct are somehow limited by some underlying, inescapable "nature." Any argument that cites human nature as a limit on the human capacity to create free democratic societies is bogus and a strategy (witting or not) to avoid dealing with the profound moral questions at the root of our way of life.]

Life After Growth

a video by Leah Temper and Claudia Medina


Life After Growth - Economics for Everyone from enmedia productions on Vimeo.

Light, Language, You, and Utopia

1. Most people spend most of their time talking to themselves in their head. Most of the time, that's what "thinking" is – talking to ourselves as we navigate our ways through our daily lives.

2. When you're talking to yourself, there's a you doing the talking, and another you that you're talking to – two yous (and more, actually).

3. The sliver of space and time between the you doing the talking and the yous you're talking to is the point where being human intersects with light, the point where what makes us human makes us human.

4. The human intersection with light (that which makes us human, that which fills the spacetime slivering our yous) is linguistic, language-based, and therefore, by definition, a group activity.

5. By living a language as part of a group, we live light, we construe reality as a spacetime using light and language. There is necessarily a language of light embedded in human ways of life, typically implicit, deep in the background of everyday life and consciousness. But if enough of us determine to accept the responsibility, we have the freedom and power to create new languages of light – new spacetimes, new realities.

6. Particular languages of light and the spacetime realities they construe depend on the group ways of life – the language of living light – of particular groups of people.  Opening up benevolent-path spacetimes depends on the language-practice of people living benevolent-path ways of life.  (Light, language, and way of life are inseparable, inherently inter-constitutive; their necessary link is what makes humans human.) The benevolent-path way of life that will open up benevolent, even utopian, spacetime realities, is what can be called "true democracy," a form of society based on freedom, responsibility, and good will in which any governing is done by and for the people being governed in any particular situation.  It's really a simple, 5-step moral system of freedom and responsibility that opens a path to a utopian way of life:

Step 1) HUMAN DECENCY
At birth, every human being is equally deserving of respect and equally deserving of a society where she or he can live a good life.

Step 2) THE GOLDEN RULE / MORALITY
Good citizens and decent people live by the following principle of morality and freedom: do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or your children or mother or whoever you care most about in the world. The golden rule demonstrates that morality ("the way a person should act") is SOCIAL; it's about how you treat other people and the extent to which you consider how your actions will affect other people.

Step 3) DEMOCRACY
With golden rule-morality as the starting point, the ideal political form is what can be called "true democracy," which is to say that people govern themselves – any governing is by and for the people being governed in any particular situation. Wouldn't you want the opportunity to participate in any decision that affects you? The golden rule demands we extend that right to all. And that is true democracy.

Step 4) JUSTICE
Within the open-honest-thoughtful discussions that make up the political process of true democracy, good citizens and decent people will consider the good of everyone affected by the decision to be made, as called for by the golden rule. If people try to argue for a course of action based on selfish self-interest, good citizens and decent people will recognize and critique such positions as anti-democratic.

Step 5) FREEDOM
Live and let live; look kindly on people, both generally and specifically; feel free to find and create ways to be happy and enjoy life any way you can without hurting or infringing on others.

We have the freedom and the power to create true democracy. We just have to believe in it, and then start finding ways to enact it, especially in cooperation with others who are on the same path. It won't always be easy, but it's the right thing to do. And the resulting societies, as the products of the democracy enacted by free, responsibility-assuming people, will be ongoing utopias – the best societies free people can create at any given moment.

The mirror

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there is Being and a mirror of Being.

and the mirror of Being is light.

it is through light that Being becomes aware of itself,

in the particular experiences of particular beings enacting particular interpretations of light.

beings are the intersection of Being and light.

the particular way that beings interact with light
– what they see when they look –
will depend on their localized interpretations and enactments of light,

typically embedded in languages and practices handed down through generations.

by enacting the core relation between light and language in particular ways,

beings open up particular spaces for reality creation –

enact a different language of light, open up a new frontier of spacetime.

if human beings can pull out of the chemically-induced death spiral that will be the heritage of modernity, our next stage of human evolution will be tied to explorations in the human relationship with light through language.

This is the path!

Through light everything possible is possible.

Two kinds of society

At some level of generality, there are these two types of society: those fused by the autonomous intention of their members, which is to say true democracy, and those fused by power relations. And although it would be a bit reckless to assert that it was a "law of social organization," it is a safe assumption that societies characterized by stratification of privilege/power will be fused by power rather than democratic will. But small-scale societies throughout the history of humans have resisted the path of stratification and maintained their native practices of true democracy for hundreds and thousands of years.

Modern people are led to think of small-scale societies as "primitive," somehow left behind by progress and social evolution. This is an ethnocentric delusion. When a particular society would start down the path of hierarchy and centralization, small-scale groups at its edges would often resist incorporation into the "progress," even if it meant moving further into the hinterlands and/or fighting to the death. To those in the centralizing society, those on the outside look poor and backward; but from the outside perspective, the people are struggling to continue their traditions of free, self-governing societies. They weren't left behind by "civilization"; they were fighting it off as long as they could in defense of true democracy!

A shadow of a glimpse

 of the beautiful chaos
that is the light
just beyond our language

Rethinking James Clerk Maxwell ...

... with another approach to and through light ...

Different languages of light open up different spacetimes, different frontiers for reality construction.  The spacetime of the language of light characterizing "Modern Western Civilization" is a dead-end. We need to forge new interpretive paths, construe new languages of light, in order to be the best humans we can be...

The path to true democracy

Buried beneath the company town indentured servitude of modern capitalist life, and its digital and pharmaceutical distractions from the drudgery of wage slavery, is the fundamental, tripartite freedom-power-capacity that defines being human: you can think, you can use language to communicate, and you can work with others, from one other to multitudes, to get things done, make things happen, and create things.

You can think, you can talk, you can work with others. Together these three abilities constitute the fundamental human freedom and power to CREATE REALITY through shared language, values, and practices. And (this is crucial) that freedom-power is always there. It may be obscured and twisted to the ends of those wielding power, but it doesn't go away – it is what it is to be human – and it's radical, "radix," meaning it's all the way down at the roots of society. So in this way, this tripartite freedom/power constitutes the always-there potential for a starting-at-the-roots sociocultural remake that, over time and in cooperation with others, constructs a proliferation of new social realities in which voluntary participants use their freedom and accept their responsibility to work together to create the best possible societies they can at any given point.

So RIGHT NOW, if we choose to, we can use our human freedom and power to start creating new societies right here in the middle of the company town. First we identify shared values about what it means to be a good person and have a good society, and then determine to start trying to live according to those values, including, over time, seeking out others who are on the same path and creating societies with them. Our human freedom-power to create reality lights the path to social revolution – start finding ways to live new values and it is on.

Drawing on the Enlightenment tradition of which we are a part, I propose the following five interrelated social-civic values as good ones upon which to start creating a true democracy revolution:

Step 1) HUMAN DECENCY

At birth, every human being is equally deserving of respect and equally deserving of a society where she or he can live a good life.

Step 2) THE GOLDEN RULE / MORALITY

Good citizens and decent people live by the following principle of morality and freedom: do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or your children or mother or whoever you care most about in the world. The golden rule demonstrates that morality ("the way a person should act") is SOCIAL; it's about how you treat other people and the extent to which you consider how your actions will affect other people. *

Step 3) DEMOCRACY

With golden rule-morality as the starting point, the ideal political form is what can be called "true democracy," which is to say that people govern themselves – any governing is by and for the people being governed in any particular situation. Wouldn't you want the opportunity to participate in any decision that affects you? The golden rule demands we extend that right to all. And that is true democracy. **
Step 4) JUSTICE

Within the open-honest-thoughtful discussions that make up the political process of true democracy, good citizens and decent people will consider the good of everyone affected by the decision to be made, as called for by the golden rule. If people try to argue for a course of action based on selfish self-interest, good citizens and decent people will recognize and critique such positions as anti-democratic.
Step 5) FREEDOM

Live and let live; look kindly on people, both generally and specifically; feel free to find and create ways to be happy and enjoy life any way you can without hurting or infringing on others.

We have the freedom and the power to create true democracy. 'All' we have to do is believe in it (concur with the credo) and then start finding ways to enact it, especially in cooperation with others who are on the same path. It won't always be easy, but it's the right thing to do. And the resulting societies, as the products of the democracy enacted by free, responsibility-assuming people, will be ongoing utopias – the best societies free people can create at any given moment.

_________

* Important aside (1): In other words, morality is not a code laying down specific "don't dos" and "do dos" in order to be a good person. If you personally want to ALSO live by some code of ethics with strict rules of what you can and cannot do, that's your business, you are free to do so as long as it does not interfere with anyone else. We have the right to expect people to act morally, but good citizens and decent people do not try to impose their particular ethical code on anybody else who does not choose to live that way.

** Important aside (2): Fundamental respect for our fellow humans, and the consequent application of the golden rule, means that decisions in true democracy are not determined by 51-to-49 votes; they are decided through open, honest, thoughtful discussions aimed at consensus, and if no consensus can be reached, when about 2/3 of the people agree on a course of action, the other third should accept the democratic decision and go along, or else break away

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Path through the wreckage

[ Download pamphlet here. ]

Derrida for True Democracy

Among the cultural delusions embedded in modern western thought is that there is some "Order to the Universe" that human beings can potentially discover and "know." A sociocultural-anthropological perspective makes it obvious that the idea of order that modern western humans seek in the universe is fundamentally a modern western human kind of order. There's no reason to assume our concept of order has anything at all to do with the the Universe or Being as a whole. Put another way, there's no reason to believe the universe is ordered or structured in a way that would necessarily fit the modern western human conception of order. Any link between a human idea of order on the one hand, and the nature of Being as a whole on the other, is necessarily a matter of faith, not reason. By proceeding based on that faith, rather than remaining agnostic, we proceed down a particular path, and many many other paths are rendered invisible, beyond the pale of modern western experience.

One cannot prove (using reason) that human knowledge, as powerful as it can be, is capable of discovering or understanding the nature of the universe outside of human experience. The reasonable agnostic position is: there may or may not be something like "order" to Being – we can't tell from here. But even if such order does exist, there is reason to believe humans couldn't access it anyway because we would necessarily have to access it through language, and the idea that such language could objectively represent some Order (that would necessarily encompass human being and language) is necessarily a matter of faith, not reason. Given the inability of discovering order through reason (as opposed to faith), those who believe in true democracy should consider letting go of the question altogether and proceeding agnostically; this new way of thinking will open up new frontiers of being for social reality construction, frontiers of utopian democracy that are not visible from within the order-deluded, modern western human world-view.

Usage of light is the frontier for the construction of true democracy utopias

- the limit evinced in quantum mechanics
- the limit evinced in Godel's theorem
- the limit manifesting as the speed of light
are not limits on human beings;
they are limits of one particular way of being human -- through the western/modern mode of thinking, with its particular mode of coming to and interpreting light -- its particular way of casting a world with language and practices.

If you look at reality THAT WAY, you come upon THOSE LIMITS !
(now it seems obvious, doesn't it?)

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Quantum experimental observation tells us that when we look at something we 'pin down' one possible result out of a 'probabilistic' spread of possibilities. The reality we see, the one we pin down, depends on our looking at it.

One way to interpret that: the probabilistic spread is Being -- the pinning down of one possibility out of the realm of Being is a particular usage of light, a particular being in spacetime.

The sense of probability evoked in quantum mechanics is an expression of the fact that we construct our worlds, and the consequent crucial fact that we could do it differently. The realm of other ways we could be constructing our worlds is the realm quantum physicists identify as a sort of smear of probability. But that smear is better understood as a field of possibility, a field that contains the resources for radical reconstructions of self, society, and reality. The unattended-to wave that makes up Being is the universal frontier of reality construction... In order to open up new parts of this frontier, and see and experience new, different aspects of Being, we need to develop a new 'usage of light,' a new language/practice of light.

language * power * freedom

We navigate our everyday lives using language; we narrate, thinking to ourselves more or less constantly, as we experience and enact the sociocultural structures of daily life. This means that at its most basic level, our experience is linguistic, experience is a moment to moment creation of meaning with language that depends on an already-existing world of meaning grafted onto experience such that 'the world' (where the experience occurs) makes sense. And that meaning, that world, that sense, is built on language. Our everyday experience is 'languaging.' And that means our experience of everyday life, our consciousness, is fundamentally, like language, a social construction. Being a social construction means WE DO IT and, further, that we can do it differently.

It turns out to be a very simple concept, really child's play, that has been buried over by the forces of power ever since the development of cultivated agriculture and organized religion.

We're dupes of a delusion that our power to construct reality belongs to other people, or some God or other, or history, or even "society." But WE are the ones who think, use language to communicate with others, and can work with others to make things happen, get things done, create things. That means we are the ones with the freedom and capacity to create reality.

Some Common Sense

from Noam Chomsky:

"if we have the choice between trusting in centralised power to make the right decision in that matter, or trusting in free associations of libertarian communities to make that decision, I would rather trust the latter. And the reason is that I think that they can serve to maximise decent human instincts, whereas a system of centralised power will tend in a general way to maximise one of the worst of human instincts, namely the instinct of rapaciousness, of destructiveness, of accumulating power to oneself and destroying others. It's a kind of instinct which does arise and functions in certain historical circumstances, and I think we want to create the kind of society where it is likely to be repressed and replaced by other and more healthy instincts."

Excellent News, part 1: The path to a utopian society