The Natural Ways

Ito Eta

As I write these words today, our world is in the midst of one upheaval after another. Governments are falling, economies are failing, and the old ways of being are subject to constant challenges. Our world is no longer satisfied with business as usual and is demanding...what, exactly? What is it demanding? There is anger and frustration but little direction. We are tired of what we have had to endure but what is the alternative? It seems that the entire world is ready for a change but what we find proposed are often little more than patches and small adjustments to the status quo. What we need is a revolution. By this, I do not mean a sudden change of governments. I have no intention of exchanging one master for another in a different hat. What I mean is a revolution in our minds; an overthrow of our familiar and comfortable habits of thought. For while they had their place in our history, they are also the cause of our present woes. I am asking my fellow human beings to do the most difficult thing in the world: to cast off from our intellectual moorings and sail into a sea of ideas strange and unknown. In asking for this, I do not mean to leave my fellow sailors adrift in a sea of storms without a map. This pamphlet is an attempt to construct a system of thought different from what we have today. Though alien, I hope that it will provide a possible destination in the vast ocean. My basic contention is that we have forgotten the natural ways or that, perhaps, we never knew them. We have structured our world, our affairs in so artificial a manner that it is hardly a wonder that both masters and servants in our current system feel chained. Our way of being in this world is not the way of the World and our deviation from it shows in every sickness of our institutions, every tremor in our society, and every feeling of discontent that stirs in our souls. Our language and culture are soaked through in the rhetoric of war; we see conflict and battle everywhere we look and repeat it in every story we tell about ourselves and our reality. In

our collective mental sickness we have come to believe that the only way of being is one in which my gain entails your loss and there is no possibility of collaboration beyond a temporary aligning of interests. That should not be our way and it need not be any longer. The World has its own ways. Call it the Will of God, the Forms of the Dao, or the Sublime Path; call it whatever you please. I mean to suggest that we can bring the ways of humankind into harmony with the natural ways if only we would pay attention to what those ways are. What higher knowledge could we hope to access than the accumulated experimental results of a 5 billion year old laboratory? The results of these experiments are made clear in The Parable of the Watchmakers written by Arthur Koestler:
There once were two watchmakers, named Hora and Tempus, who made very fine watches. The phones in their workshops rang frequently; new customers were constantly calling them. However, Hora prospered while Tempus became poorer and poorer. In the end, Tempus lost his shop. What was the reason behind this? The watches consisted of about 1000 parts each. The watches that Tempus made were designed such that, when he had to put down a partly assembled watch (for instance, to answer the phone), it immediately fell into pieces and had to be reassembled from the basic elements. Hora had designed his watches so that he could put together subassemblies of about ten components each. Ten of these subassemblies could be put together to make a larger sub- assembly. Finally, ten of the larger subassemblies constituted the whole watch. Each subassembly could be put down without falling apart.

This parable is intended to convey the idea of a holon a system of nested wholes in which each complete whole is a composite part of a larger system and, while restrained in its behavior by the larger system, remains self-regulating. This system of organization is far more resilient than a series of independent parts arranged without these intermediate steps. The trouble with us is that we readily acknowledge the reality of holonic organization in our biology (the body is made up of cells, cells are made of molecules, and mo-

lecules are made of atoms) but rarely do we recognize it in our social behavior. We tend to believe that we are entirely independent beings in a crowd; reminiscent of the argument by Margaret Thatcher that Theres no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. Otherwise we often hold that we are simply cogs in the greater machine and that the greater good is the only matter of concern. Both of these positions are incomplete. We are all autonomous, self-regulating individuals while being subordinate parts of a greater whole whether that whole is a family, a company, a society, or a biosphere. The acknowledgment of this requires the realization that the subordinate parts and the superordinate wholes have their proper roles that must be respected. Why am I bringing this up? The reason is that we when we view the flaws in our world, we tend to blame either individuals or society and attempt to make laws in order to address these flaws. I believe that nearly every law, every regulation, and every institution we create in order to control the organism of society is an unnatural restriction on that which is not at fault and serves only to multiply our grief. We need not shackle ourselves individually and collectively because of our habits of thought. The natural world we in which we live has no regulator it needs none. Its self-regulation comes about as an emergent phenomenon based upon the very nature of its structure. Thus our first question when we look at society ought not to be how can we fix this but why did it go wrong at all. The answer commonly given to such a difficult question is that it is simply human nature. Do not believe it. Human nature is trotted out like an ancient specter whenever we behold some new form of human stupidity, avarice, or cruelty by those who either cannot question or care not to question the deeper reasons for our misbehavior. Many of you will have had experience playing the game of Monopoly with trusted friends, family members, or others you hold in high esteem. Yet many of you have had the experience of these kind and generous people turning nasty and cruel in the

course of the game. Is this because they are fundamentally wicked people who have merely been hiding their rotten natures behind a thin mask of civility? Ultimately, what I am saying is simply this: our way of being is rotten and needs to be amended. We cannot simply apply patches and temporary fixes to an edifice whose foundation is sinking. Our goal ought to be a slow and steady abandonment of our old ways of life and the creation of new institutions and new organizations which follow the natural ways organizations that recognize their role in the holonic system and set out to resolve the conflicts of interests and power imbalances that exist in our world. The Ways of the Economy In recent years our economy has been faced with threat after threat to its survival. We have tried solutions in the form of commissions, agencies, and laws in order to constrain the actions of the wicked. Yet, still, we are faced with the same problems. How long must we continue trying to treat our patient without stopping to first understand the disease? There are some at this juncture who would paint my ideas as communist or socialist. They may even go so far as to suggest that they are anti-market. I have no issue with the free market; it has been and likely always will be the greatest producer of human prosperity imaginable. The market is simply Societys attempt to satisfy itself. My issue is with the form that the market has taken. In the markets present form, it is dominated by actors in the form of traditional corporations. These organizations are structured to serve the interests of shareholders or investors in the company. The shareholders, receiving profits and voting power in proportion to their capital contribution, elect a board of directors to oversee the affairs of the company in their stead. The board of directors hires the CEO and the CEO hires management which, in turn, hires labor. This simple structure automatically comes with all manner of conflicts of interests which can be simplified to the following

three: Labor vs. Corporation, Customer vs. Corporation, and Community vs. Corporation. Labor vs. Corporation The contract between Labor and the Corporation is a simple one the workers expend their time and effort for the companys sake in order to receive compensation in the form of wages which will allow the workers to live. However, the workers have little, if any control whatsoever in the companies in which they work. Its policies and procedures are outside their realm of influence. The common counterargument is that if the workers do not like this state of affairs, they have the option of going to work elsewhere. While this is a fair argument (as the worker is not legally owned by the corporation) there are three problems with this statement: 1. Clearly this was not an acceptable state of affairs for our governments in which the people demanded representation. The argument could easily have been made that if one did not like the government of a country, one could simply leave. Why is it that we expect and demand democracy in our politics but not in our economics? 2. Everyone needs to work in order to live. One may, of course, start a company of ones own but not everyone has access to the time, capital, skill, or even the courage in order to do so. Is it right that vast sections of the population should be condemned to give their time to organizations that they cannot control for a lack of these prerequisites? 3. Finally, this line of argument is reminiscent of Henry Fords old joke that Any customer can have any car painted any color he wants so long as it is black. Can we say that the 'customers,' in this case, have shown a preference for the color black when they are not even aware of the fact that they can choose red as a color?

Were this not enough, we are also faced with unequal division of wealth. In a traditional corporation, a worker works for a wage and shares nothing of the profits (by virtue of being a worker) while the shareholders collect all of the economic profit. One can argue that clearly the workers believe that they are being paid fairly for their labor, else they would go to another company. On the face of things, this argument cannot be disputed except that as labor is considered a cost of production, management has an incentive to depress wages as much as possible in the pursuit of economic profit. This often means that when taking into account the cost of switching companies and the possibility of not being able to find more work, the negotiated wage compensation is below what the people would normally accept under perfect conditions. Furthermore, is there not a moral argument to be made for the democratic distribution of wealth in accordance with ones labor input? That people should be paid different wages depending on their skill level, I take no issue with. However, if everyones work is essential to the profitability of the company, should not everyone share in the profits? Customer vs. Corporation This is an issue which appears far more often in the service industries than in the industries of capital and consumer goods. It manifests itself as the conflict between the shareholders interests in maximizing profit and the customers interest in receiving good service in exchange for their patronage. When managers of companies find themselves torn between meeting customer expectations and providing the highest possible profit to the shareholders, they are obligated to choose the latter. This is perfectly understandable. If they consistently failed to do so, they would no longer be employed. Yet the consistent choice to fulfill this obligation may end in suffering for the shareholders, the managers, and the customers. Nowhere is this clearer than in the financial industry.

When examining banks, we find that they take their depositors money, ostensibly to hold it or to provide a small profit to the depositors while loaning out that money (if not investing it) at higher rates for an economic profit. While the bank does have some interest in keeping the depositors money relatively safe, they are far more at liberty to takes risks with money that does not belong to their bosses and often do; sometimes with devastating results. Can we expect anything less out of them? In the case of insurance, insurance companies are not ultimately organized to be of benefit to their policy holders, thus, the company will frequently try to deny or minimize coverage for any claimant in order to continue providing as much economic profit to the shareholders as possible. Can they be blamed for this choice? In the current structure of things, it cannot be any other way. Still, we ask for further regulation and, again, I ask whether more regulation is needed instead of a different relationship structure? Community vs. Corporation Finally, we come to the conflicts that may erupt between communities and companies. Many of these conflicts have their roots in the gap between the relative mobility of capital as compared with the relative immobility of labor. When a company comes into a community, it typically does so due to the perception of some advantage to it we cannot expect anything less. When the company sets up shop, though, it may be the primary employer in the area. If this is the case, then the livelihood of the entire community is dependent upon this one company. If circumstances change, the company can simply move to a new location. This move may be at some expense but it can happen in a matter of days when it is decided upon. The people who provide their labor, on the other hand, have roots in their present community. There are great expenses beyond money associated with the sudden move necessary to keep working with the same company. This gives companies tremendous bargaining power over local communities as the local com-

munities are, quite understandably, averse to withering away and dying. As a result of this power imbalance we regularly see a decline in standards of environmental responsibility, labor conditions, and fair pay. Why? Because were the community to try and enforce any of these things, as it ought to do for its own health, the company would either threaten to or would actually leave the community for less strict pastures. Given the structure of our economy, could it be any other way? Is the corporation not obligated to pursue profit by whatever means necessary? Why bother hobbling them with laws and regulations for doing precisely what they were designed to do? I am proposing a change in forms. I am proposing a structure, more than a century old, that has already been shown to work in locations all around the world (including the United States). I am proposing reforming the organizations that our economy is comprised of in order to mitigate or eliminate the three conflicts I have highlighted. I am proposing cooperatives. A cooperative can be defined as an organization created and operated by its members for their mutual benefit. It is sometimes referred to as a mutual aid society. While there are many forms of cooperatives, there are two, in particular, which are of interest: Worker Cooperatives and Consumer Cooperatives. Worker Cooperatives In a worker coop, ultimate control rests with the member/owners (for convenience, we'll simply refer to them as members). In a traditional company, shareholders elect a board of directors, the directors hire management, and the management hires workers. In a worker coop, the workers and shareholders are the same group and, in contrast to traditional companies, each member has one vote and one vote only regardless of capital contribution. The co-op may choose many different forms but, in the form most similar to traditional companies, the members elect a board of directors from

amongst themselves and the board hires management to serve the interests of the co-op. Sometimes, management is given the opportunity to buy membership in the company, thus becoming part of the controlling body as well. In this way, the interests of the company and the interests of its employees will nearly always be the same thus easily resolving the Labor vs. Corporation problem. This is especially true if they are using a form of consensus decision making (a topic which I will cover later). In a worker coop, all members have the right to make decisions concerning the policies and future of the company to which they give their time and all members share in the profits generated by the firms activity. Again, this is not to suggest that there are not differences in wages due to skill but the economic profit is shared equally. Consumer Cooperatives In a consumer cooperative, the member/owners are those who use the service or products that the co-op provides. A good example is a food co-op. A typical grocery store (like Publix) is formed as a traditional company. A food co-op would be structured so that the people who shopped there would largely be members of the co-op. The members would, again, elect a board of directors, which hires management, which hires labor (many of whom would be members, anyway). However, unlike Publix, the co-op does not need to pursue profit - at least not in the same way. The co-op only needs to make enough money to cover its cost of operations including labor. Thus, in the case of the Publix-Co-op, it would likely price all items in a similar fashion to other companies in order to avoid the ravages of supply and demand on the short term. At the end of each year, however, the members would vote on whether or not to keep the profits which the co-op made in the organization or disburse them back to the members based upon their expenditures at the co-op. If they choose the latter, then, for that year, the members effectively received their groceries at cost, instead of at cost + profit margin - a tremendous saving for society. This form can and has been extended to banking, healthcare, trans-

portation, and even news agencies. Reduced to its basics, the consumer co-op form eliminates most of Customer vs. Corporation problem which appears in service industries. Since the customers control the company, their only objective is to provide the best possible service at the lowest possible cost and, when structured well, they typically do beautifully in accomplishing this task. In examining both worker cooperatives and consumer cooperatives, we will often find that the conflicts of Community vs. Corporation will be handily resolved. Since most cooperatives tend to be controlled by people who live in the same place in which they work, they are very unlikely to suddenly move the coop for any reason. As they live where they work, they have an incentive to keep the environment clean. Since they own the company, they will provide both decent working conditions for themselves and a fair rate of pay. In proposing these economic forms, I am aware of the fact that they come with their own sets of challenges. It will inevitably require much effort and dedication in order to recreate an entire economy along these lines. The aim of this pamphlet is to suggest a different way of being in the world. The co-op is a form that both recognizes and respects the individuality and collectivity of humankind. It is a form that, when well executed, leverages the collective wisdom and intelligence of all who are involved to the benefit of all who are involved without requiring the coercive nature of a command economy or the unnecessary interference of a wellintentioned state. Yet even this cannot truly bring about a new way of being without also altering the ways of politics. The Ways of Politics The structure of the American government, as currently conceived, is a problem. The basis of my contention is as follows: In recent years, we have witnessed ever greater centralization of authority in the government

The responsiveness, transparency, and fiscal responsibility of our federal government has declined year after year

I will freely yield that I do not intend to prove these assumptions as true. The mere attempt at doing so would take up volumes and is not the intention of this document. For the purposes of this pamphlet, we will simply take the above claims as true and move on to the points which are sure to spark passionate debate. Before starting my propositions, I would like to remind you of the philosophical concept of the holon - a system of nested wholes in which each complete whole is a composite part of a larger system and, while restrained in its behavior by the larger system, remains self-regulating. This is where our troubles begin. The structure of Government we have created is better suited for the rules governing a single machine rather than an organism. Some might argue that this is not entirely true that the different levels of government have at least some respect for the right of self-regulation of the levels beneath them. Perhaps. That notwithstanding, I will ask, does it truly look like the structures of government treat their compositional levels as independent beings or do they treat them as machines to be tweaked in order to produce desired outcomes? Furthermore, rules and processes are imposed upon areas of government irrespective of that particular section of society's needs through the process of majority rule. Is this right? What I am about to propose is radical, without question, and would entail a rewriting of the US constitution. I harbor no illusions about the fact that this is an incredible oversimplification or that my proposal comes with its own set of problems. What I am proposing here is a different method of organization more in line with the ways of nature. Proposal

The government of the US should be organized not as a federal republic in their present forms but as a Holarchic Republic with consensus based decision making. In practice, this would mean the elimination of states as independent levels of government. The entire government would be composed of counties, council regions, or perhaps local government areas (We will go with the term LGA for simplicity from here on). All decisions would be kept as close to the local level as possible with the exception of issues which are truly national in character such as the definitions of the rights of person-hood, privileges of the citizenry, and matters of national defense. Independent LGAs would send representatives to a unicameral Congress or Assembly for the sake of decision making. Personally, I am in favor of a parliamentary government here but, as I assume that America would be loath to give up the Office of the President, the president would be elected by the popular vote of the entire citizenry. The Supreme Court would be expected to retain its position as an independent judiciary. Having called for the elimination of state level government, I am not saying that LGAs cannot voluntarily choose to pool resources in a state like fashion in order to bring down costs of governance. The primary difference is that the state level of government as an intermediary between the Republic and the LGAs would no longer exist. The only conditions of the formation of state-like structures would be 1) that the association is voluntary and 2) that the LGAs in question be adjacent territories. The second stipulation exists simply to circumvent the nightmare scenario of LGAs in present day South Carolina, New York, and Alaska trying to create a state together. I realize that consensus decision making is a foreign concept to most people and, to those who know, it is a time consuming process (one which will be explained shortly). In response I would argue that the Republic level of government should not have that much to consider doing at any point in time, if the LGAs are doing

their jobs properly. Furthermore, most decisions which are of consequence to the entire nation ought to have the consent of the entire nation, or at least the elected representatives of each area, before proceeding. To do anything else is coercion and coercion is rarely, if ever, a moral action when done against those who have acted within the bounds of the law. There would be a few exceptions to the consensus requirement, however. Supermajority thresholds could be established for the budget process as, if we were to wait for consensus on the budget, the Republic would never have any money. Lest someone cry Articles of Confederation here, I will note that the powers and rights of the Republic would be very well defined and the Republic would retain the ability to enforce those powers. The rights and powers of the Republic are not to be infringed upon in any circumstance by an LGA. In exchange, any power not explicitly granted to the Republic by the LGAs would be considered to be in the domain of the LGAs and not to be infringed upon. As a corollary, I would personally recommend the creation of a set of "Inviolable Acts" - portions of the Constitution or Charter which could only be abrogated by the suspension or elimination of the entire document. Ideally, the rights of person-hood would fall under the Inviolable Acts section. My reasons for preferring this stem from the terrifying thought that the so-called "rights" which belong to any member of the citizenry can, technically, be terminated at any time with an amendment of the constitution. While I realize that this is not an event with an especially large probability, the fact that there is even a possibility of this occurring under the present structure of government ought to be cause for some concern. With this proposal, I expect that governance would be brought more into line with the nature of organic systems powers that belong to the lowest levels of existence, are retained at the lowest level, and powers granted to the higher levels are only those which are appropriate for the higher levels to have. In this manner, the government would be far more responsive to the people as there are fewer levels of government and less bureaucracy. Furthermore,

the fact that most important decision making happens at the local level means that when somebody does something silly in the government, you know exactly who they are, where they live, what they do. Members of government will no longer be able to hide behind the veil of relative anonymity granted by the sheer gap between where decision making happens and the location of those affected by the decisions made. Ultimately, the difference between this proposal and the structures that exist presently is the difference between a hierarchical organization and a decentralized network with particular "hubs". To continue, what I am proposing for LGA or city level governments is for them to be structured as a three part government: the executive branch is, of course, headed by a mayor or some other executive elected by the people. The judicial branch may be appointed by the chief executive or otherwise elected by the people of the LGA. The legislative branch will be the people themselves. There will be no independent legislative body at the LGA level of organization yet another quite radical proposition. In order to avoid the unfortunate situation referred to as the tyranny of the majority, the operation of the legislative branch would require the creation of a hypothetical software platform which I will refer to as The Metarchy for now. The Metarchy The Metarchy would be an internet based democratic platform in which any member off the local polis can contribute to the drafting of legislation. Citizens of legal age who can prove their residency in the given LGA (for now we'll just go with Charleston for simplicity) would simply have to register with The Metarchy as a citizen of Charleston using their Social Security Number. Having done so, the citizen may then create an online alias in order to protect their privacy and participate in democratic processes in their local network. This alias will not be shared with anyone except at the discretion of the citizen themselves. As the level of anonymity neces-

sary for democratic processes has been established, we can move on to the actual voting process. The Metarchy is simply the software platform on which the legislative deliberative process is based. The actual name of the site may be something as simple as The Charleston Network for citizens of the Charleston area. Any member of the Network may propose legislation in plain English. No legalese. It can be formatted thus later. When a member of the Network proposes a bill, it goes up just like a post on any internet forum today. The bills are given a Bill Number and the sponsor is asked to give the bill an appropriate title. Then the bills are ranked according to the number of votes made on them and organized according to topic (health care, noise ordinance, traffic, etc.). At this point, I should note the following three things: 1. The voting process is modified consensus-based decision making rather than simple majority decision making. 2. A quorum is required for a bill to become law. 3. All bills are time sensitive. Quorum, here, is defined as 51% of the last known population count of the LGA. In other words, if there are a total of 100,000 people in Charleston as of the last census, a bill could only pass with the consent of at least 51,000 souls in the Charleston metropolitan area. This does not mean that it only needs a 51% majority. Quorum establishes the minimum number of people who must vote on a measure before it has any chance of passing. Otherwise stated, 51% of the population must have voted on a healthcare bill but it may still not pass if the majority of that 51% does not think it wise to enact. Ideally, the number of people who have weighed in on the decision with one vote or another will be tallied and the bill thread will ascend in the rankings as the number grows. Additionally, a special tag would be attached to a thread when quorum has been achieved in order to mark the bill as important.

With respect to consensus-based decision making, some background is necessary. Normal democratic processes are usually bimodal one may vote yea or nay with a possible pass option if available. Consensus processes are typically trimodal one may vote Consent, Stand-Aside, or Block. Consent is equivalent to a yea vote; one agrees to the motion. Stand-aside is similar to a nay or pass rolled into one; one has reservations but yields to the will of the majority. In the case of decisions made within The Metarchy, Stand-Asides may or may not propose an alternative to the present motion. Block is something new. Consensus is predicated on the idea that no one should be forced into doing anything and that good decisions mitigate the reservations of all relevant members. Thus, if one has a strong objection, one may place a block on the motion. Once a block is placed the motion cannot for any reason be carried until the block is removed. In good consensus processes one is required to state the nature of one's objection and propose an alternative version of the motion to be considered, if appropriate. In order to prevent abuse of this power, normally either the number of blocks one is permitted on a particular measure is limited, a moderator keeps track of the objections and helps to determine whether or not they are spurious, or both. I propose both. A limited number prevents one from using the power frivolously and a moderator can flatly say your block on this budget measure, being predicated on the number of jelly-beans in a jar, is inadmissible and will therefore be ignored. I realize that this gives a tremendous amount of power to the moderator class users. I encourage discussion with respect to the selection process and scope of power of moderators as I am unsure about how best to handle this issue. One possible solution is to make Moderator an elected office under the Judicial Branch. In taking on the mantle of Moderator, an individual would temporarily forfeit their right to vote on or propose legislation in exchange for the Moderator powers. Being an elected official, any single moderator may be recalled in the event that there is a demonstration of an abuse of power. Still, I am unsure whether this is the best solution. That said, I would like to move on.

A block automatically triggers the creation of a sub-thread attached to the main thread of the original bill. Here, discussion may proceed on how best to modify the bill in order to remove the block. As only the original author of the bill (or anyone he/she empowers to) may modify it, an agreement has to be reached between the author and the objector. If an agreement is reached, a modified version of the bill is now posted to the main thread and the block subthread will be closed. The process will continue until the only votes remaining are Consent or Stand-aside at which point consensus is considered to have been achieved if the number of Consents is greater by some threshold than the number of StandAsides. I would prefer that the threshold be at least a supermajority of 75% of all votes (if not near unanimity) for a motion to carry but this can be debated as to the practicality. Finally, there is the important point of time sensitivity. Each bill would have a time limit of two months for discussion in order to allow for the greatest amount of examination. If quorum and consensus cannot be reached in that time, the bill will be considered dead and will be removed from the list of active bills for consideration and archived for future reference. Now some might ask how can it truly be considered consensus if only quorum is required for a bill to pass? Isn't that just like imposing the will of the majority? This is a fair point. In response, I would argue that in the case of traditional democratic processes, the minority may not have a voice or may simply be ignored. In the case of consensus as formulated here, all members of the polity have the right and ability to weigh in, craft policy, and prevent votes against their interests from passing. Whether or not they choose to do so is their own affair. It is also worth noting that as all measures here passed require consensus, the executive's vote is irrelevant except as one of the people. Thus, the executive has no veto power on the local level in this system. Additionally, the judiciary still retains the right of judicial review. Even if the polity passes a piece of legislation with

consensus, if it violates the Constitution or Republic level law, it will be struck down. The only exception to this would be proposed amendments to the Constitution. In this case, when consensus is reached on an amendment proposal, the representative of that particular LGA is obligated to present the amendment to the Republic level assembly (they are not, however, obligated to vote consent to it). It is my belief that this method of democratic process is more in keeping with the natural method of organization, the Holon. As opposed to a grand list of artificial constructs imposed from above by the government, the logic of the entity called Society is determined by the collective needs and desires of its constituent parts. This logic is truly an emergent phenomenon arising from the complex and shifting interactions between the lower level holons. Furthermore, in this way, government is not some entity residing out in the ether to impose its will on us lowly mortals. The government is truly us a higher level expression of our wills given form. My reasons for interests in this proposal are that our present social structure and government promote, in large part, the adversarial mode of existence. There are near constant skirmishes - however quiet - between the different levels of government as they tend not to have as much respect for their respective roles as they ought to. Couple this with the fact that the different levels of government place such horrible chains on each level below them that by the time one gets to examining the local level of operations, one finds that local level holons have very little freedom of action. Yet it is at the local level that all influences are felt. This is not a responsive structure. It promotes non-productive conflict where it need not exist and prevents the results of productive conflict from being implemented with any speed. For these reasons, I propose the Holarchic Republic model.

Ways and Forms In my writing here, I hope that I have given cause for a new way of being to be considered. I realize that this is but one of many possible ideas and may not even be the best one but I believe that this is a way of being in which we need not fight each other or be in conflict with each other because we have decided from the outset upon a form which will allow us to coexist cooperatively. We can leverage the collective wisdom and intelligence of all of the people in our society. In so doing, we make ourselves stronger and make Society stronger. Still, merely talking about these matters is not enough. Having viewed the natural ways it is now our task to give them form. Below is a list of possible means for doing so: Each of us ought to pull our money and our loans from traditional banking institutions and do our business with local credit unions. Credit unions are a financial consumer cooperative in which every depositor is a voting member. By doing this, we can sap the strength from the major banking institutions in favor of a more beneficial financial form. Educate our friends and family on the existence and benefits of cooperatives. For working examples we only need turn to the Mondragon cooperative conglomerate in Spain and the Legacoop in Italy. Start local cooperatives to serve any needs of the community which are simply not being met or could, perhaps, be better met by community organizations. Encourage any cooperatives created to do business as exclusively as possible with other cooperatives. By doing this we create a network of cooperative enterprise that can serve as a counterbalancing model to the traditional economic model prevalent in the world today. Create pools of capital to allow workers in traditional companies to begin buying out their shareholders in order to reestablish companies as cooperatives.

 Push for the adoption of a software program like The Metarchy in order to allow for the powers of society to be leveraged for its benefit. Push for the localization of political power. Submit endless challenges in any situation in which powers which ought to belong on the local level are appropriated by the State or the Republic. Demand greater citizen involvement in the democratic process beyond the occasional election of representatives. Call for a gradual elimination of both the Federal Reserve and Fractional Reserve Banking. For information on this point visit YouTube and search for a video titled Money As Debt Full Length Documentary. While flawed in some respects, the video illustrates many of the issues with our current financial system. Redraft the Constitution. While the two century old document has served us well, it does have its flaws and is grounded in the logic of a different era. We need a new document; one that responds to the realities we face. Stop using GDP as a measure of our prosperity. Prosperity is a state of mind, thus, it is much more sensible to use some sort of a citizen happiness index. Call attention to the flaws in our thoughts and processes. It is not enough to know these things if all of society does not know it. The primary weakness of our current world is that no one knows of an alternative. End the silence. This is by no means a complete list of all that needs to be done but it is a place to start. It is the beginning of a new world that respects every human being and every bit of the natural world. It is the possibility of resolving the false dualities of our existence: human/nature, self/other, good/evil. In this world there is only one absolute command BE and how we choose to be makes all the difference. End the Silence.

For more information visit http://grandspiral.blogspot.com