The truth-telling in this reminds me of Sarah Kenzior, who, if you don’t already, you might want to read. She’s here on Substack now. I’m intrigued that the comments push back, to defend the very violence you so clearly call out in your piece as somehow necessary to any program of change. But we can’t repair damage using the same mindset of power-over and centralization that is responsible for that same damage.
For me, one of the most challenging aspects of this essay is that it raises questions and provides no ready answers. I happen to agree that this is a time for asking questions and that there are no easy answers.
"We need to define our own self-defense", I like that. I also think that this opens a very deep self inquiry that we have not been very willing to wholeheartedly embrace. Overall I am convinced that we don't talk enough about the future we want to see for humanity. We are still mostly reactive and your article is as well. "Do not let..." is an expression of that. We know what not to do but what are we standing for? What are we proposing? What do we tell people who think they don't matter, which is the new (oldest) message from the powerful to the dependent.
We don't fully embrace the question of what we are standing for because the light that shines from the answer when we take that direction speaks of a radically different world and nothing but that will do. A world of oneness and nothing less than that will make it possible for us to move forward now. I mean practical oneness: there is only one nature, there is only one air, there is only one water, one earth, one biosphere... do i need to keep going? Therefor there is only one humanity and we can state one thing without hesitation: those who want to divide us cannot lead us into the future.
That is what everybody can start doing: heal the relationships in your life, start now and keep doing it, forever. Fall in love again with all the people that are in your life and especially those who helped you to be here and those who helped you to be the person you are. There more we do that and the faster, the more we will dig away the foundation on which divisive politics and economics are build.
I believe that this is what we will have to do. That's where the true bottom up movement has to start.
Wow! This piece is brilliant, powerful, extraordinary, amazing! It's some of the best political thinking I've seen in a long time. And by "political" I simply refer to the process of group decision-making as a shared process -- and I do not constrain "politics" to "state politics".
In the early days of Covid I remember listening to a talk on sense-making with Daniel Schmachtenberger, where he explained a model of how a participatory market-based democracy 'should' work. I think in reference to state violence, it shows how far we are from this model. There were a set of rules:
1. The state binds the market through regulation and monopoly of violence. If the market is left unregulated you end up with environmental destruction and organised crime.
2. The people bind the state by removing the incumbents if they don't act in the interests of the people.
3. The market binds the people. (I wasn't all that convince by this, rational actors..invisible hand etc..)
4. The media provide the people with accurate information about what is happening, in order that they can make educated decisions when making political choices.
I think it's fair to say this has been turned on it's head, if it ever really existed.
In reality, the market has captured the state and monopoly of violence is being used to suppress dissent.
A large portion of the media has been captured by the market (billionaires) and is used to control both state and citizens.
The people have been captured by both the media (misinformation) and the market (perverse incentives via advertising).
Violence thrives on disconnection (and control). Whatever else is going. on in anyone's world, their personal world needs stop be locally grounded and connected - otherwise we are no longer human, but part of a machine, disconnected. Without human/nature connection, grounded in place, even a green utopia is fake and on the same trajectory as now. Want self defence? Like Leopold's land ethic, check in if what you're doing connects or disconnects. One is real, the other is everytjing horrible we are going on in the world. I haven't said "I think this... " anywhere, and I probably should have, but a feel fiercely frustratingly focussed about this: it's a fundamental baseline. A pattern where if we see it and start language that connects, transport that connects, publishing that connects, to name three, we can start to undo everything from domestic violence to ecocide. Chaos is not madness, it's underlying patterns to which we don't hold too tightly. Okay, raving alert. This needs examples but I'm a bit emotion-tied. Good discussion everyone, keep it coming.
I am dissatisfied at the one-sidedness of this presentation. Throughout history, states have always been violent. While of course that needs to change, this post does not help. Hamas (who control the Gazan state) is violent against both its own people and against Israel. They do not care who they sacrifice to their cause. The Huthis are an Iranian proxy. Syria. Russia in Ukraine.
To suggest that all of these problems are an effect of corporate capitalism, or confined to the West, simply does not work. I am all in favour of people at grass roots level taking steps for their voices to be heard and to build smaller-scale solutions. However, decentralising, and building a new global culture, is not simple and not an overnight shift. A billion people live in cities and are dependent on large-scale systems that produce and bring in food and take out waste. London cannot survive on window-box horticulture. Women's liberation would not have happened when it did without the washing machine, which requires a global economy to provide steel and copper. Global communications depend on a massive tech industry, and while localisation is needed, coordination of worldwide change initiatives needs them to continue to exist. And most of all, you cannot expect people to let go easily of the things that we have all come to see as part of our lives. That is simply not how things work.
We may of course be forced into that situation by massive collapse. How many billion of the world's population are you willing to see perish? For that not to be inevitable, we need a whole-system transition. And even if it does happen, we need some preparedness against the apocalyptic movie scenarios of complete degradation. Of course localisation is part of that, but only part. And always remember that destroying what we don't want is very different from building what we do want.
Here is some more of the understandings and interconnections ALL of us who are making strides in weaning ourselves from the patriarchal, hierarchical and techno kool-aid that most people in the "Western" world have been drinking since they were weaned...
Deepening re-weavings that more and more of us must consciously and heart fully join with, guided by a naturally re-wilding world that we are inseparable from...
No matter all the insane and confused people still lost in all these meta-delusions of separation that have been the zeitgeist of the human race since patriarchy, hierarchy and primitive ideologies of power slithered out of the caves and onto our world stage...
Competition is the law of patriarchy and hierarchy, and cooperation and interconnection is the law of the natural world...
It is only patriarchy that sees our human relations and the world and the Wild as "jungle"... That is, something to fight and subdue and own, turn into commodities and control...
That delusional zeitgeist or mental kool-aid continues to be doled out daily by extremely patriarchal, hierarchical and techno addicted corporate and state owned mainstream and social media, think tanks, lobbying and advertising agencies, and every other mainstream talking-head-disconnected-from-real-life political, militarist and capitalist wonker by the minute, and on into everybody's mental in-boxes, otherwise known as conditioned and unquestioned from birth delusional identities of separation...
“Understanding violence as the driving force of centralization” requires the definition of the two fundamental drivers of that violence: “power” and “patriarchy.” Power is the ability to organize and wield collective action. In that regard, the nation-state has been the form of social organization most effective in creating and using power. Patriarchy is the hierarchical organization of society with men at the top, at the highest levels and at all sub-levels below, i.e. the state and the family. By this definition men have ruled the planet for roughly 10,000 years. During that time the patriarchy has turned a paradise of biological diversity into a hell-hole of violence, misery and material inequality. Merging the two definitions, the patriarchy’s primary means for ruling the biosphere has been through organizing and wielding violence – primarily against women and the web-of-life.
It's easy to be cynical when Israel commits war crimes inflicting 47 times the civilian death originally inflicted on her. But is that ALL democracies ALL the time? Is that all examples of "Centralisation"? Fortunately that seems to be the exception, not the rule.
It seems what you call "Centralisation" I call "imperfect civilisation."
I like the rule of law. I like the idea of democracy (as imperfect as it is). I like having emergency services to call when there's a problem. I like being able to travel across Australia using the one currency. I like the fact that one day our Aussie super-grid will probably send solar power from a lazy Perth afternoon 4000 km across Australia around the curvature of the earth to power dark winter evenings in Sydney! Live - in real time!
And if we allow some local powers, some regional and some nation-wide - we call that a Federation. Some things ARE centralised - like defence - and other things not.
In contrast - I saw Mad Max 2 as a rather anxious teenager. The idea that all that could just go away left me hollow and desperate! Who do you call when there's trouble? Indeed - I would argue we want SOME state violence!
EG: This weekend a madman tore through Bondi Shopping Centre in Sydney's Eastern suburbs with a large knife and randomly slashed and killed 6 people - 5 of them women. A police woman stopped it all when she shot him. State violence.
Likewise, back in the days of the agrarian village, if my neighbour's village crops got some awful disease or some drought wiped their food supply out - they might send a war party to steal my crops. In a nation state we can chopper in emergency supplies.
I'm not saying the modern nation state is perfect. Our democracies are far too influenced by rich Corporations - many of them fossil fuel companies.
I'm all for Democratic Worker's Co-ops instead. But your post suggests that a large number of us are all going to revert back to the land because of a few Degrowth websites. It's just not going to happen. Also, it takes a lot of energy and specialisation and user demand to run the internet that you publish your website and podcast over. It's a form of global environmental conversation I love! It makes me question my own position - and think outside my own box.
I would hate to lose that. I don't think reverting to older agrarian village forms is viable in the modern world. There are simply too many of us. Also, the smaller our 'tribe' the more likely we are to be suspicious of the outside world. The bigger our world (through transport etc) the more likely we are to be tolerant of others.
There will always be the haters and fringe. There will always be the corrupt. There will always be some unjust war that pops up somewhere - and I say fight those unjust wars! But statistically it seems - especially amongst democracies - not everywhere - and not all the time. So let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Also, let's not return to RELYING on nature - for 8 billion of us will eat her to death! Instead - let's Decouple - as this is the only way to shoot through the 10 billion people mark, bring on a global demographic transition, and then head back to 7 or 6 billion by 2100. While still having some nature left to conserve! https://www.ecomodernism.org/manifesto-english
Good point: "When are we going to engage in self-defence?" And a difficult proposition when the state has a monopoly on violence. In that regard the US 4th amendment and the right to bear arms is an interesting one.
The truth-telling in this reminds me of Sarah Kenzior, who, if you don’t already, you might want to read. She’s here on Substack now. I’m intrigued that the comments push back, to defend the very violence you so clearly call out in your piece as somehow necessary to any program of change. But we can’t repair damage using the same mindset of power-over and centralization that is responsible for that same damage.
For me, one of the most challenging aspects of this essay is that it raises questions and provides no ready answers. I happen to agree that this is a time for asking questions and that there are no easy answers.
You are on 🔥!!!
"We need to define our own self-defense", I like that. I also think that this opens a very deep self inquiry that we have not been very willing to wholeheartedly embrace. Overall I am convinced that we don't talk enough about the future we want to see for humanity. We are still mostly reactive and your article is as well. "Do not let..." is an expression of that. We know what not to do but what are we standing for? What are we proposing? What do we tell people who think they don't matter, which is the new (oldest) message from the powerful to the dependent.
We don't fully embrace the question of what we are standing for because the light that shines from the answer when we take that direction speaks of a radically different world and nothing but that will do. A world of oneness and nothing less than that will make it possible for us to move forward now. I mean practical oneness: there is only one nature, there is only one air, there is only one water, one earth, one biosphere... do i need to keep going? Therefor there is only one humanity and we can state one thing without hesitation: those who want to divide us cannot lead us into the future.
That is what everybody can start doing: heal the relationships in your life, start now and keep doing it, forever. Fall in love again with all the people that are in your life and especially those who helped you to be here and those who helped you to be the person you are. There more we do that and the faster, the more we will dig away the foundation on which divisive politics and economics are build.
I believe that this is what we will have to do. That's where the true bottom up movement has to start.
Wow! This piece is brilliant, powerful, extraordinary, amazing! It's some of the best political thinking I've seen in a long time. And by "political" I simply refer to the process of group decision-making as a shared process -- and I do not constrain "politics" to "state politics".
For what I mean, see:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-10-24/on-commoning/
and
https://rword.substack.com/p/more-on-public-and-private
In the early days of Covid I remember listening to a talk on sense-making with Daniel Schmachtenberger, where he explained a model of how a participatory market-based democracy 'should' work. I think in reference to state violence, it shows how far we are from this model. There were a set of rules:
1. The state binds the market through regulation and monopoly of violence. If the market is left unregulated you end up with environmental destruction and organised crime.
2. The people bind the state by removing the incumbents if they don't act in the interests of the people.
3. The market binds the people. (I wasn't all that convince by this, rational actors..invisible hand etc..)
4. The media provide the people with accurate information about what is happening, in order that they can make educated decisions when making political choices.
I think it's fair to say this has been turned on it's head, if it ever really existed.
In reality, the market has captured the state and monopoly of violence is being used to suppress dissent.
A large portion of the media has been captured by the market (billionaires) and is used to control both state and citizens.
The people have been captured by both the media (misinformation) and the market (perverse incentives via advertising).
Violence thrives on disconnection (and control). Whatever else is going. on in anyone's world, their personal world needs stop be locally grounded and connected - otherwise we are no longer human, but part of a machine, disconnected. Without human/nature connection, grounded in place, even a green utopia is fake and on the same trajectory as now. Want self defence? Like Leopold's land ethic, check in if what you're doing connects or disconnects. One is real, the other is everytjing horrible we are going on in the world. I haven't said "I think this... " anywhere, and I probably should have, but a feel fiercely frustratingly focussed about this: it's a fundamental baseline. A pattern where if we see it and start language that connects, transport that connects, publishing that connects, to name three, we can start to undo everything from domestic violence to ecocide. Chaos is not madness, it's underlying patterns to which we don't hold too tightly. Okay, raving alert. This needs examples but I'm a bit emotion-tied. Good discussion everyone, keep it coming.
I am dissatisfied at the one-sidedness of this presentation. Throughout history, states have always been violent. While of course that needs to change, this post does not help. Hamas (who control the Gazan state) is violent against both its own people and against Israel. They do not care who they sacrifice to their cause. The Huthis are an Iranian proxy. Syria. Russia in Ukraine.
To suggest that all of these problems are an effect of corporate capitalism, or confined to the West, simply does not work. I am all in favour of people at grass roots level taking steps for their voices to be heard and to build smaller-scale solutions. However, decentralising, and building a new global culture, is not simple and not an overnight shift. A billion people live in cities and are dependent on large-scale systems that produce and bring in food and take out waste. London cannot survive on window-box horticulture. Women's liberation would not have happened when it did without the washing machine, which requires a global economy to provide steel and copper. Global communications depend on a massive tech industry, and while localisation is needed, coordination of worldwide change initiatives needs them to continue to exist. And most of all, you cannot expect people to let go easily of the things that we have all come to see as part of our lives. That is simply not how things work.
We may of course be forced into that situation by massive collapse. How many billion of the world's population are you willing to see perish? For that not to be inevitable, we need a whole-system transition. And even if it does happen, we need some preparedness against the apocalyptic movie scenarios of complete degradation. Of course localisation is part of that, but only part. And always remember that destroying what we don't want is very different from building what we do want.
Here is some more of the understandings and interconnections ALL of us who are making strides in weaning ourselves from the patriarchal, hierarchical and techno kool-aid that most people in the "Western" world have been drinking since they were weaned...
Deepening re-weavings that more and more of us must consciously and heart fully join with, guided by a naturally re-wilding world that we are inseparable from...
No matter all the insane and confused people still lost in all these meta-delusions of separation that have been the zeitgeist of the human race since patriarchy, hierarchy and primitive ideologies of power slithered out of the caves and onto our world stage...
Competition is the law of patriarchy and hierarchy, and cooperation and interconnection is the law of the natural world...
It is only patriarchy that sees our human relations and the world and the Wild as "jungle"... That is, something to fight and subdue and own, turn into commodities and control...
That delusional zeitgeist or mental kool-aid continues to be doled out daily by extremely patriarchal, hierarchical and techno addicted corporate and state owned mainstream and social media, think tanks, lobbying and advertising agencies, and every other mainstream talking-head-disconnected-from-real-life political, militarist and capitalist wonker by the minute, and on into everybody's mental in-boxes, otherwise known as conditioned and unquestioned from birth delusional identities of separation...
🙏🌻
“Understanding violence as the driving force of centralization” requires the definition of the two fundamental drivers of that violence: “power” and “patriarchy.” Power is the ability to organize and wield collective action. In that regard, the nation-state has been the form of social organization most effective in creating and using power. Patriarchy is the hierarchical organization of society with men at the top, at the highest levels and at all sub-levels below, i.e. the state and the family. By this definition men have ruled the planet for roughly 10,000 years. During that time the patriarchy has turned a paradise of biological diversity into a hell-hole of violence, misery and material inequality. Merging the two definitions, the patriarchy’s primary means for ruling the biosphere has been through organizing and wielding violence – primarily against women and the web-of-life.
It's easy to be cynical when Israel commits war crimes inflicting 47 times the civilian death originally inflicted on her. But is that ALL democracies ALL the time? Is that all examples of "Centralisation"? Fortunately that seems to be the exception, not the rule.
It seems what you call "Centralisation" I call "imperfect civilisation."
I like the rule of law. I like the idea of democracy (as imperfect as it is). I like having emergency services to call when there's a problem. I like being able to travel across Australia using the one currency. I like the fact that one day our Aussie super-grid will probably send solar power from a lazy Perth afternoon 4000 km across Australia around the curvature of the earth to power dark winter evenings in Sydney! Live - in real time!
And if we allow some local powers, some regional and some nation-wide - we call that a Federation. Some things ARE centralised - like defence - and other things not.
In contrast - I saw Mad Max 2 as a rather anxious teenager. The idea that all that could just go away left me hollow and desperate! Who do you call when there's trouble? Indeed - I would argue we want SOME state violence!
EG: This weekend a madman tore through Bondi Shopping Centre in Sydney's Eastern suburbs with a large knife and randomly slashed and killed 6 people - 5 of them women. A police woman stopped it all when she shot him. State violence.
Likewise, back in the days of the agrarian village, if my neighbour's village crops got some awful disease or some drought wiped their food supply out - they might send a war party to steal my crops. In a nation state we can chopper in emergency supplies.
I'm not saying the modern nation state is perfect. Our democracies are far too influenced by rich Corporations - many of them fossil fuel companies.
I'm all for Democratic Worker's Co-ops instead. But your post suggests that a large number of us are all going to revert back to the land because of a few Degrowth websites. It's just not going to happen. Also, it takes a lot of energy and specialisation and user demand to run the internet that you publish your website and podcast over. It's a form of global environmental conversation I love! It makes me question my own position - and think outside my own box.
I would hate to lose that. I don't think reverting to older agrarian village forms is viable in the modern world. There are simply too many of us. Also, the smaller our 'tribe' the more likely we are to be suspicious of the outside world. The bigger our world (through transport etc) the more likely we are to be tolerant of others.
There will always be the haters and fringe. There will always be the corrupt. There will always be some unjust war that pops up somewhere - and I say fight those unjust wars! But statistically it seems - especially amongst democracies - not everywhere - and not all the time. So let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Also, let's not return to RELYING on nature - for 8 billion of us will eat her to death! Instead - let's Decouple - as this is the only way to shoot through the 10 billion people mark, bring on a global demographic transition, and then head back to 7 or 6 billion by 2100. While still having some nature left to conserve! https://www.ecomodernism.org/manifesto-english
degrowth is a prerequisite for rewilding
Hi Rachel, would you argue that this emphasis was not implicit in your references to silicon valley etc?
Would you suggest that your analysis was even-handed in its treatment of Israel vs Hamas or Iran/Huthis?
Would you claim that the shift to wilding deals with many of my concerns about where solutions come from?
Good point: "When are we going to engage in self-defence?" And a difficult proposition when the state has a monopoly on violence. In that regard the US 4th amendment and the right to bear arms is an interesting one.