The Next Society 2: A Patchwork Politic

There are lots of good ideas about what the next society could and perhaps should look like.  There's Parecon (Participatory Economics), which I wrote about way back in a post on Participatory Economics and Economic Theory, (7/8/08).  I just read quite a bit from a book entitled The Next Revolution by Murray Bookchin, where he talks about his theory of Libertarian Municipalism. There are a lot of interesting theories of how society could be organized. These are all lovely, detailed plans for the next society and, because of that, I don't think they're going to happen, at least not in any way that will be like their proponents specify.

I think Starhawk's writings on future economies in her book Webs of Power (which I also talked about in my post on Participatory Economics and Economic Theory) are more resonant with what I'm talking about. She looks at Participatory Economics, Natural Capitalism, the Gift Economy, and the views of bioregionalists, anarchists, and socialists, and concludes that "...in a diverse world we may need a spectrum of systems to fully fit each unique set of circumstances." She points out that "Our visionary political efforts might best be directed not toward putting in place some preconceived system but toward creating the conditions in which that experimentation can begin."

Faithful readers of this blog are probably aware that I consider intentional communities as a prime place to do that experimentation.  My vision of an emerging political/economic/social situation starts with having lots of successful experiments up and running and including not only communes and cohousing, but all sorts of cooperative businesses, a lot of the pieces of what is sometimes called the Solidarity Economy, and even bits of small scale capitalism--small businesses, family run stores, things that I will call true free enterprise.  (When I actually studied what free enterprise is, I realized it wasn't as bad as I thought.  The problems we are having are with corporate capitalism, also known as monopoly capitalism, where the big corporations use small companies as testing grounds for what's profitable and anything that works is either bought out by them or out competed by corporate imitation.  The only other alternative in our present system seems for an innovating business to become a major corporation themselves.  This is the grow or die strategy.  Another name for what we have now is 'growth capitalism'.)

Once we have enough of these small systems up and running, I believe that the next step is in the process could be to network the successful experiments, perhaps using what Bookchin calls a democratic confederation. (But probably not as precisely structured as he details.) So rather than having one overarching system, there are lots of small, local, diverse economic and political systems, connected in a highly decentralized structure.  This is based on the idea that what works in one place probably won't be what works in a very different place.  While there are no guarantees on any of this, I think this might be a workable scenario.

How do we do this?  That's the subject of my next piece: The Process.



Quote of the Day: "What is our vision, our picture of an ideal society and economy? When we say 'Another world is possible,' what kind of world are we talking about?
"The global justice movement is diverse.  It ranges from union leaders who want to secure a fair share of this economy for their members to old line Marxists, to anarchists, to indigenous communities struggling to preserve their traditional lands and cultures.  No one picture of the world can describe all the different viewpoints.  No one vision may actually serve this tremendous diversity.  And how could it? How could the aspirations of an urban office worker be the same as that of a Mayan farmer in Chiapas?  Why should we think that one form of economy or social organization should serve all?" - Starhawk

Issues in Community: Urban and/or Rural

(I'm returning to this series while my life sorts itself out.)

In the 1990s, I was part of creating an urban community that affiliated with the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (FEC).  Since then I've lived in three different city co-op households.  Last year I did three week visits to Acorn, Twin Oaks (twice!), and Dancing Rabbit, all of which are in very rural areas, and did very brief (several hours) visits to four other communities near them.  And at the moment I'm involved with a group that's trying to start a rural farming community in upstate New York.

I like both urban and rural communities and have had conversations with folks over the years about creating a hybrid that a friend called 'City Mouse/Country Mouse'--a community which would have a house in the city and a house out in the country.  (However, I have no interest in suburban communities. Let's not go there.)

As far as I'm concerned, the advantages of urban communities are close proximity to all that cities have to offer: a large, diverse population nearby and lots of things happening.  However, that's also the biggest disadvantage--urban living offers many distractions that can make it hard to pull a close-knit community together.  (As I found out when I tried to create a community in Cambridge, MA, a couple of years ago.)

The advantages of rural communities are closeness to nature, much larger capacity to grow food, and generally a cleaner environment.  The biggest disadvantage that I can see is isolation. A large community like Twin Oaks (and to a smaller degree, Dancing Rabbit) offsets that by having a lot going on within the community--and a larger population within the community to interact with.

I think different settings encourage different types of communities.  Most co-op houses I know of are either in cities or near more rural colleges and universities.  I think a lot of co-housing is urban as well. On the other hand, many ecovillages are located in rural settings and most of the FEC 'communes' are rural.

There are notable exceptions to this, rural or semi-rural cohousing and urban ecovillages (like the Los Angeles Ecovillage).  In fact, there has to be exceptions given the number of cohousing developments that also call themselves ecovillages.

And, within the FEC, there are two urban communes (the Emma Goldman Finishing School and the FEC's newest member, the Midden).  Having been part of an urban FEC community, I'm happy to see others carry on the tradition.

Meanwhile, I'd love to know if anyone is aware of any successful urban/rural communities.  I know that Ganas in New York tried it for a while.  Someone that I talked with at the communities conference said it fell apart because they were spreading themselves too thin.  I also read a passage by Gary Snyder on a community in Japan in the 1970s where the members hitchhiked between a house in the city, a house in the mountains, and a house on an island.  (I think it's long gone.)


Quote of the Day: "...radical sustainability promotes the development of autonomous communities--that is, egalitarian communities that value equality, justice, and mutualism.  ... Autonomous communities can exist everywhere--from rural to urban, north to south.  Autonomous communities are especially adapted to creating and maintaining a sustainable world." - Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew

Issues in Community: Aging

I have a new model of aging since I've been to Twin Oaks.  While I was there, a group of us put on a showing of the cult film 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' and my favorite memory of it was seeing their oldest member, a woman in her late eighties, dancing away to the 'Time Warp'.  Makes me rethink what growing old can be like.

My favorite year at the community I helped build in Cambridge, MA, was when we had someone in every decade of life there, from a child under ten and a child over ten to a man in his fifties.  Twin Oaks was even better than that, with an age spread from toddlers to eighty-somethings.  In contrast, while Acorn has some folks in their fifties and sixties, there is quite a different feel to the place because most members are in their twenties or thirties.  The place feels very young.

Since that community in Cambridge, I've lived in several different co-ops in the Boston area.  In the first two everyone other than me was in a range from late teens to early thirties, with the vast majority in their twenties.  At that point, however, I was in my fifties.  While I was treated like anyone else, I still felt out of place.  I got upset when someone suggested we could advertise the community as multigenerational.  I pointed out that I was the 'multigeneration'. 

On the other hand, the next co-op I lived in, almost everyone was in their fifties and sixties.  I felt sorry for the twenty-something woman who moved in with us.  While I felt more comfortable there, I missed the liveliness and young energy. 

I have enjoyed community the most when there really was a spectrum of ages; when community becomes a place where the young can learn from the old and the old can learn from the young.  I feel community needs both--the old and stable and the young and wild.

Community can be a place to age, to take care of each other as we grow older.  Just as it takes a village to raise a child, a village--or even better a community--can care for their elders.  True multigenerational community becomes a place of support for everyone.  It's not always easy to get the right mix, but I think it's worth it.



Quote of the Day: "Communication and rapport become essential if we shall be looking after each other--sometimes in quite intimate ways--as we age." - Margaret Critchlow and Andrew Moore

Unity, Diversity, and Love

Here we are, in the midst of a time out of time, past the Solstice, past Christmas, into Kwanzaa and the dark days of winter.  In the middle of all this it's important to stop and notice the stillness.  It's important to remember that love is the miracle that keeps us going.

It's 'Boxing Day' today, the feast of St. Stephen, and the first day of Kwanzaa.  The principle for the day is Umoja, Unity.  It's not hard for me to draw a line from there to love.

I have quoted my mother as telling me that "Every one of my children is different and I love them all the same."  Truly, every one of us (worldwide) is very, very different from each other and we are all connected.  How can we create unity out of that diversity?  How can we create room for everyone--no matter how they think, what they look like, what they believe, what they say they want?

Love is about opening our hearts to everyone.  Love is about seeing the connections, seeing the unity in this very diverse world.  Love is about saying yes to it all.

Yes, there is sorrow and pain here.  Yes, there are some pretty horrible things happening.  Yes, people do awful things to each other.  Yes, many things in this world have to change.  And, yes, I will love no matter what.  Because love is the miracle, the miracle that we can still love in spite of it all, that we can see each other's vulnerable helplessness even when we try to hide it by doing all the terrible things we do.  Only love can stand up to atrocities, love and forgiveness.  Only love can see the wonderful unity in our rich diversity.  Only love can say yes to it all.


Quote of the Day:  "Don’t ask what love can make or do. Look at the colors of the world." - Rumi

The Darkness and the Light

I have blogged about the Solstice before (see Winter Solstice, 12/21/08, and Yule, 12/20/09) as well as blogging about darkness (usually at Samhain at the start of November; see Darkness, 11/1/08, and Out of the Darkness, 11/1/09). For me this time of the year is a magical combination of darkness and light.

As un-sustainable and un-ecological as it is, I love the holiday lights and pretty much the gaudier the better. I also love candles and starlight and even bonfires, and I am very aware of how important darkness is to all of these. There is a reason we never see the stars during the day and candles at noon go unnoticed and Christmas lights look silly in daylight and even bonfire are not impressive. We need the darkness to see these lights, and it is the mixture of darkness and light that makes these so inspiring.

This year, the winter solstice was supposed to come with one of the most impressive displays of darkness and light in four hundred years: a full moon with a lunar eclipse right at solstice. Unfortunately, here in New England, we are getting a snowstorm and won't be able to appreciate it. Still the snow is beautiful in its own way and very appropriate for the solstice.

What does any of this have to do with social change? Just that this is why I do my bit towards it--so that we may all have a world where we can appreciate the seasons, and the darkness and the light.

May you have a blessed holiday season whatever you celebrate.


Quote of the Day: "This is the night of Solstice, the longest night of the year. Now darkness triumphs; and yet, gives way and changes into light. ... This is the stillness behind motion, when time itself stops; ... We are awake in the night. We turn the Wheel to bring the light. We call the sun from the womb of night." - Starhawk (Miriam Simos)

USH3: Finding a New World

A lot of American History textbooks begin with the stupid question of 'Who Discovered America?'

I'll give you a clue: it wasn't Christopher Columbus, or Leif Erikson or lost Irish voyager. As Kenneth Davis puts it: "The true 'discoverers' of America were the people whose culture and societies were well established here while Europe was still in the Dark Ages, the so-called Indians."

Columbus, for example, was met by members of the Arawak tribe when he first landed in the 'New World' (on the one of Bahama Islands). They brought him gifts. He wrote: "They would make fine servants..." He took some of them prisoners and sailed off to more islands (Cuba, Hispaniola) where he took more prisoners--all the while searching for gold, which he was led to in the rivers of Hispainola. He was amazed by their willingness to share whatever they had and told the court in Madrid they could have "...as much gold as they need... and as many slaves as they ask." In fact, the ongoing enslavement of the native peoples is one of the dirty little secrets of American history.

The colonists at Jamestown and Plymouth and other places carried out what amounts to a genocidal war against the natives without whom they would have never survived their first years in the new world. Yes, there were atrocities by the Indians, but there is no doubt that the settlers went after them with a vengence. Estimates are that there were 10 million Indians living "north of Mexico when Columbus came"--over time that would be reduced to less than a million, an eradication rate of 90%.

One exception to this was William Penn and the Quakers who believed in and respected the rights of the Indians. Before he even came to the new world, he sent them a letter offering them justice and friendship, and he signed it, "I am your loving friend, William Penn." The Quakers apparently kept peace with the Indians and when warfare did break out between the local colonists and the nearby tribes in the mid1700s, Quaker families were spared.

Slavery of the Africans also started during this period. Apparently the Portuguese took slaves from Africa a good fifty years before Columbus came to the Bahamas. In 1619, the first slaves arrived at Jamestown.

This was how it all began. Studying early American history quickly makes it clear that whatever oppression the colonists were fleeing from, the colonization of America was for the benefit of the Europeans and the Europeans only.


Quote of the Day: "Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war?..." - Powhatan

References:
Kenneth Davis, Don't Know Much About History
Russ Kirk, 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know 2
Staughton Lynd, Nonviolence in America
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

What Gives Me Hope

This is my last post of 2008 and my last post before I start a very different direction in my blog (studying US History--go figure!). I want to end by looking at what gives me hope that we might move in the direction of the SECSy world I have been describing. This is a wrap up post--some of this is a rehash of other posts (notably some repetition from my post of 12/15/08 on SLoDBN Resources).

The internet holds some sources of hope for me. There are blogs by people trying to find a way to a different world, some relatively well-known such as The Archdruid Report and The Great Change, others by people less-known but perhaps more intimately involved in the struggles, such as My Flight From the Grid and SoapBoxTech and Trout Clan Campfire. There are also blogs by people just trying to live differently (more simply and sustainably) and encouraging others to do so like the somewhat well-known Crunchy Chicken and Casaubon’s Book and the not-so-well known undacova mutha and Living the Frugal Life and global homestead and dozens more. Then there are blogs by folks advocating social justice, such as Michaelann Land and Diary of an Anxious Black Woman and The Jaded Hippy. Not to mention blogs by those thinking about better ways to communicate and build community and network and emerge such as Evolutionary Dynamics Exploration and Journey Reflections and Laird's Commentary on Community and Consensus and Network Weaving and blogs about alternative sexualities and the changing of society, like Queers United and Polyamory in the News. And finally there are blogs just about those who are trying to find their idiosycratic way in the world and encouraging others to do the same, like Cracker Lilo's Front Porch and Austanspace and One Smoot Short of a Bridge. (And, yes, a good bit of this is a list of the blogs I follow. Of course.)

I'm also given hope by things like the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (see my post of 10/22/08) and The Rhizome Collective (see my post of 10/18/08) and the DIO Skillshare and folks like Randy Schutt (author of Inciting Democracy--see my post of 7/10/08--and one of the people behind the START Guide) and the ZNet folks (developers of not only Parecon--see my post of 7/8/08--but Participatory Society, ParPolity, Polyculturalism, and Real Utopia, and weavers of one of the most massive radical education sites on the 'net). Not to mention all the folks that took part in the Riot for Austerity (see my post of 9/28/08).

My most astounding Christmas gift was from a young woman I helped raise. She gave me a book I'd never heard of but which gave me another reason to hope: Making Stuff & Doing Things, by Kyle Bravo, a wonderful Do-It-Yourself guide for the next generation. (My quote of the day is from this book.)

And ending the year brings up buying new calendars, and there are two calendars in particular that give me hope. The first is the Syracuse Cultural Workers' Peace Calendar , twelve months full of information and inspiring art work, and the other is datebook with the same anarchist/punk/DIY mentality as Making Stuff & Doing Things, the Slingshot Organizer which is filled with all sorts of useful stuff, radical thoughts and history, and pictures to color--plus radical contacts around the world, pages for addresses, etc, and pages for your notes.

A final thing that gives me hope is 'dissensus'. Just as I decided to make my mother my last Hero of the Day, I am going to make Dissensus my last Word of the Day. I've been recently introduced to the idea by John Michael Greer who has devoted two posts of his Archdruid Reports to Dissensus and Organic Process and Why Dissensus Matters . Basically, dissensus is the opposite of consensus, it's a way of acknowledging and celebrating complexity, diversity, and individuality. It's the old 'agreeing to disagree'. JMG points out that dissensus is most useful when "...irreducible differences make it impossible to find any common ground for agreement on the points that matter, or when settling on any common decision would be premature." Like when we have no idea what the future will bring. After thinking about it, I realized that dissensus, like diversity, has its limits. I don't know that it really is that useful when there are fundamental disagreements about goals. (For example, two peak oil people, one concerned about climate change and one so concerned about running out of fuel that they support using coal and extracting oil from tar sands, etc, are working in opposite directions and will cancel each others work out.) But those who agree on the basic direction but disagree on how to achieve it, are all important to the process. I've said from the beginning (see my post of 6/28/08) that there is no one answer.

So I also get hope from people I know like Eli, who is pursuing change at the policy level; Rob, who is trying to bring Transition Towns to our towns; Grace, who is organizing around stopping foreclosures; Steve and Audrey, who have gotten their neighborhood involved and who have started a 'barnraising model' that is catching on; my good friend Susan, who works for peace and preaches for justice on the internet; two women I know who model living simply and sustainably and are trying to teach others; and my family, most of whom wouldn't understand all that I am trying to do but model taking care of each other. They may all disagree on how to get there, but they are all working for a SECSy world. Each of them is very different, but all of them give me hope.


Quote of the Day: "How to change the world in just four easy steps! 1. Get off yr ass. 2. Write, talk, listen, participate, read, volunteer, take in new ideas and spread yr own. 3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 many times. 4. Give another person these instructions." - Luran Barry

Pulling it together

I've spent the last few posts, slowly (and, you might say, painfully) showing how SECS and CDIP are interconnected--and, in fact, that they are interconnected. I hope I've demonstrated that, rather than contradicting each other, SECS and CDIP complement each other.

So the next step is to create a world that is Simple, Egalitarian, Cooperative, and Sustainable, while also being Complex, Diverse, Individual, and Practical. I am planning to outline a basic strategy for doing this in the next series of posts. I call the strategy SLoDBN. The basic outline will not surprise anyone who has been following this blog.


Quote of the day: "I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better." - Georg C. Lichtenberg
Word (or phrase) of the day: Life-critical system
Hero(es) of the day: Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann

Equality Returns

In my last post, I discussed Walter Benn Michaels' book, The Trouble with Diversity. He sees diversity and 'identity politics' as taking the focus away from economic inequality. He sets diversity and equality in opposition to each other.

Lisa Duggan, in her book The Twilight of Equality, agrees about how neoliberalism is using diversity and identity politics to camouflage increasing economic inequality. But her solution is to reconnect diversity and equality. She argues that neoliberalism is deliberately dividing the movement, and analyses like Michaels make matters worse.

This is a very short book (111 pages including notes, bibliography, and index--but not including the introduction) but it contains a lot of ideas and information. The thirteen page introduction gives a dense, documented history of the last fifty years, including the development of neoliberalism and how the movements of the '60s and '70s were ripped apart in the '80s and then coopted in the '90s. As Lisa Duggan puts it,"During every phase, the construction of neoliberal politics and policy in the U.S. has relied on identity and cultural politics. The politics of race, both overt and covert, have been particularly central to the entire project. But the politics of gender and sexuality have intersected with race and class politics at every stage as well."

She goes on to say: "The most successful ruse of neoliberal dominance in both global and domestic affairs is the definition of economic policy as primarily a matter of neutral, technical expertise. This expertise is then presented as separate from politics and culture, and not properly subject to specifically political accountability or cultural critique. Opposition to material inequality is maligned as 'class warfare', while race, gender or sexual inequalities are dismissed as merely cultural, private, or trivial. This rhetorical separation of the economic from the political and cultural arenas disguises the upwardly redistributing goals of neoliberalism..."

The book itself consists of four chapters. The first is an expansion of the introduction's history of neoliberalism, this time starting with the development of capitalism and liberalism beginning in the seventeen century, and going up through the 1990s where she focuses on the concrete examples of welfare "reform" and the mass incarceration of young men of color in the name of "law and order" as ways of shifting public opinion. She ends this chapter by pointing out conflicts within the "elites" between those attacking diversity (which she refers to as "culture wars") and those embracing a new "equality politics" that supports "diversity" as long as it doesn't threaten the economic policies of "globalist neoliberalism". The second chapter focuses on an example of the "culture wars", a conservative attack on a conference on women's sexuality (called "Revolting Behavior") held at SUNY New Paltz. She goes on to analyze the economic reasons behind this attack. In her third chapter, Lisa Duggan looks at how and why many gay organizations (such as the Human Rights Campaign and the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, not to mention the Log Cabin Club) have begun a shift rightward, embracing single issue politics and repudiating progressive/radical groups that want to 'restructure' society. She singles out the Independent Gay Forum, an online writers group consisting mostly of white male writers (twenty-nine white men, one African-American man, and three white women) and dissects statements from two of the more well-known contributors, Andrew Sullivan, a former New Republic editor, and Bruce Bawer, a former writer for the American Spectator.

In her final chapter, Lisa Duggan looks at leftists, similar to Walter Benn Michaels, who denigrate "identity politics", as opposed to a more 'serious' class/economics politics. She ends by citing writers such as Robin Kelley, Cindy Patton, Eric Lott, Wahneema Lubiano, Amber Hollibaugh, and Nikhil Singh, who are able to see and integrate the connections between identity and economics, between diversity and equality. To quote her last sentence: "For it is pleasure and collective caretaking, love and the egalitarian circulation of money--allied to clear and hard-headed political analysis offered generously--that will create the space for a progressive politics that might both imagine and create...something worth living for." (Italics and ellipsis in original)

It seems like equality and diversity may go together.


Quote of the day: "... as long as the progressive-left represents and reproduces itself as divided into economic vs. cultural, universal vs. identity-based, ... it will defeat itself. On one side, the identity politics camps are increasingly divorced from any critique of global capitalism. ... On the other side, critiques of global capitalism and neoliberalism, and left populist or universalist politics within the U.S., attack and dismiss cultural and identity politics at their peril. Such attacks strip them of prime sources of political creativity and new analyses, and leave them uncomprehending before the cultural and identity politics of the opposition. In addition, they drive constituencies seeking equality away, toward the false promises of superficial neoliberal 'multiculturalism'. In other words, they help create what they fearfully or critically imagine." - Lisa Duggan
Word (or phrase) of the day: Victory garden
Hero(es) of the day: Sarah and Angelina Grimké

Diversity Troubles

The Trouble with Diversity by Walter Benn Michaels is one of the most infuriating books that I have read recently. What makes it particularly infuriating is that I agree with so much of its basic premises.

Michaels believes that we have been ignoring inequality and that diversity is being used as a way to divert attention from inequality. He points out how easy it is for corporations, colleges, and the wealthy to be in favor of diversity, since it costs so little, especially compared to what even beginning to rectify inequality would cost. Especially cheap are the apologies corporations make for their participation in slavery--and the benefits they can reap from acting contrite.

He points out the ambiguity of race and the motley interconnections of race and culture. More importantly, he points out the problem with treating class as a diversity issue--you end up talking about the contributions of poor and working class people instead of talking about changing the class system. Imagining a society where rich and poor are both respected is a liberal dream. Imagining a society without rich or poor is a more radical vision.

In all this, I agree with him. The problem is that instead of simply saying diversity is used sometimes as a smokescreen, in this book Michaels attacks diversity. He blames diversity for subverting attempts at equality, claims that if one culture is as good as another than no culture is worthwhile, states that cultural identity is meaningless, and believes that it doesn't matter if the entire world speaks only one language in the future and all other languages are forgotten (and he doesn't care which language it is).

All this reminds me of the song from the sixties that wanted to make the world into a big melting pot "...turning out coffee colored people by the score." Everyone the same color, speaking the same language, dressed identically... sure it makes equality easier, but it's not my vision of a better society.

In an early post I discussed the various radical groups that each believed that their focus was the only one possible, including Marxists who thought everything could be reduced down to economics. I'm not sure that Walter Benn Michaels is a Marxist, but he certainly seems to act as if economics were the essential thing. While diversity can be used to mask economic inequality, looking at the importance of cultural and gender differences is as much a part of social change as the elimination of class. It's not an either/or proposition, but about going for both/and.

He gets so worked up about people who talk about race instead of class that in one of his notes he singles out Betsy Leondar-Wright for talking about a "racial wealth divide" in a report about Hurricane Katrina. He says: "It's not the wealth divide that Leondar-Wright sees as the problem; it's the fact that it's racial." The trouble is that it's not true. Betsy Leondar-Wright is the author of the book Class Matters and has worked with United for a Fair Economy to "help build social movements for greater equality." She definitely sees the class divide as a problem for everyone.

Michaels likes religion, ideology, and other belief systems because they don't simply talk about differences, they think that what they believe is right and what others believe is wrong. He is, for this reason, particularly critical of 'religious diversity'. I get the sense that Mr. Michaels likes conflict. The final chapter of this book is entitled "Religion in Politics: The Good News" and, as far as I could see, the good news is that people are fighting about religion. How this helps reduce inequality is something I can't figure out.

He ends the book with a section analyzing himself in the third person ("Conclusion: About the Author"), which while making some valid points, is a bit too cute for my comfort. I mostly agree, however, with his final couple of sentences: "When it comes to economic inequality, we should stop finding ways to ignore it, we should concentrate not on respecting the illusions of cultural difference but on reducing the reality of economic difference. That is the heart of a progressive politics." Unfortunately, nowhere in this book does he describe a program for "reducing the reality of economic difference".

Lisa Duggan has written a book that addresses the same issues, but she doesn't set diversity and identity politics in opposition to economic equality. I will review it in my next post.


Quote of the day: "Where the (neoliberal) [sic] right likes status instead of class, the (neoliberal) left likes culture and the diversity version of respect the poor is respect the Other. ... That's why multiculturalism could go from proclaiming itself a subversive politics to taking up its position as a corporate management tool ... in about ten minutes and without having to make the slightest adjustment." - Walter Benn Michaels
Word (or phrase) of the day: Chapstick Lesbian
Hero(es) of the day: Gregory Bateson

Equality and Diversity

Some might think this is a no-brainer. Certainly, there are many, many organizations claiming to go for both equality and diversity. A search of the web brings up an overwhelming number of organizations trumpeting equality and diversity--including just about every large company and university (not to mention dozens of training organizations), and even such unlikely candidates as the US Army.

But there are some challenges to the connection between diversity and equality. What I find most concerning is statements like Clay Shirky's: "Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality." Fortunately, Clay Shirky gives a more detailed explanation. While it sounds like he has scientific proof that you can't have equality, diversity, and freedom (elsewhere he simply says: "Diverse. Free. Equal. Pick two."), here he points out that "You can get out of a system with power law distributions by giving up on scale. ... one way to avoid the inequality of large systems is not to _have_ large systems." Since I believe we need to build small scale systems anyway, that may answer that concern.

With a slightly different take, several authors have devoted whole books to trying to figure out whether if progressives work for diversity, that foregoes working for equality. In my next two posts I will look at two very different takes on this by two different authors.

I want to end by something my mother once said to me. (I come from what might be considered, at least by today's standards, a large family.) My mother simply said, "Every one of my children is different and I love them all the same." There is the best statement I know on diversity and equality.


Quote of the day: "We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color." - Maya Angelou
Word (or phrase) of the day: Rhizosphere
Hero(es) of the day: Margaret Mead

Contradictions or complements?

Complex, Diverse, Individual, and Practical. At first, CDIP may seem like it contradicts SECS. Isn't Complex the opposite of Simple? Individual what opposes Communal? And while Egalitarian and Diverse aren't opposites, it's certainly easier to have a society that is Diverse and hierarchal (such as ours) or Egalitarian and uniform (which the Amish are in many ways), than something that's both Diverse and Egalitarian. Not to mention the question of how practical sustainability is... But it is in these contradictions, or rather in the tension between them, that a true alternative future can emerge.

I am going to examine these contradictions/complements one by one to see if a SECS/CDIP scenerio is possible. Let's explore the interrelationships between Complexity and Simplicity, Diversity and Equality, Individuality and Community, and Practicality and Sustainability. Let's see if we are talking about contradictions or complements...


Quote of the day: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself..." - Walt Whitman
Word (or phrase) of the day: Naturally Grown
Hero(es) of the day: Lucy Stone

How CDIP is Interconnected

I mentioned when I started my section on CDIP that this was some of what I liked best about this society. It's not that we do this well, but we do it a lot better than other cultures.

Embracing complexity isn't easy, but it is a complex world. And it's a lot more complex when you have to deal with individuality and diversity. Embracing diversity supports embracing individuality and embracing individuality support embracing diversity--but it doesn't have to. There are individualists that think individuality is all and don't see the need for culture--any culture--and there are certainly many cultures that disapprove of individuality. But supporting both individuality and multiculturalism (as complex as that is) is basically supporting freedom and liberty for both individuals and a diversity of cultures.

I'm not as sure that real practicality is a mainstay of this culture, but a belief in being practical certainly is. In fact, I'm not even sure that individuality and diversity are supported that well in this society, but again, it's certainly what we believe in.

And I think that embracing this complex, diverse world of individuals and cultures may be one of the most practical things that we can do.


Quote of the day: "Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day." - E.B. White
Word (or phrase) of the day: Byke
Hero(es) of the day: John Chapman

Diverse Resources

Two diversity resources I have already mentioned in my post on Egalitarian Resources (10/4/08): Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider and bell hooks' Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Another good book is Joan Steinau Lester's The Future of White Men and Other Diversity Dilemmas.

I found a few interesting websites on biodiversity: The Biodiversity Heritage Library, The Encyclopedia of Life, and The World Atlas of Biodiversity.

I'll have a couple more when I get into equality versus diversity.


Quote of the day: "In nature, diversity means resilience. A prairie that has hundreds of different plants growing together can resist pests or respond to storms that would devastate a field of identical hybrid corn." - Starhawk
Word (or phrase) of the day: Noosphere
Hero(es) of the day: Ammon Hennacy

Diversity

Diversity is about variation. Being different is worthwhile. Differences enrich us. Differences make things work better. Diversity is a gift, a richness that strengthens our world and makes our lives fuller. We can learn much from people unlike us. We need the contrasts in our lives. We need cultural differences and religious differences and philosophical differences. A better world incorporates and sustains the differences between us.

Of course diversity, like all the other terms that I've used, can mean several different things. In particular, there's human diversity, which is mostly what I was referring to above, and biodiversity, the enormous variety of life and the need for that variety, since the more variation in an ecosystem, the more resilient the system becomes. And, of course, it's the same principle in both cases. The more variety we have, the better off we are. Sameness, homogeniety, is not just boring, it's stulifying, rigidifying, and dangerous.

There are people scared of diversity--and sometimes with good reason. I do realize that not all differences are good. I don't want to live in community with bigots and elitists and reactionaries, no matter how diverse that makes the group. But I also don't want to live with people just like me. I need diversity in order to learn and grow. As Audre Lorde points out, we need to embrace differences, not fear them.

Quote of the day: "If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place." - Margaret Mead
Word (or phrase) of the day: Riparian Rights
Hero(es) of the day: James Baldwin

CDIP

There are many things that I like about this society. I actually appreciate the complexity and diversity we have here. I also like the openness to individuality. Simple, Egalitarian, Communal, and Sustainable is all very well, but I also want a world that is Complex, Diverse, Individual, and Practical. Is this a contradiction?

I've thought about it, but I don't think so. The Amish have seemed SECSy to me (although I've heard that they are more hierarchical than they appear), but I don't really want to live in an Amish world. (I doubt that they'd be very appreciative of bi/poly folks, for example, not to mention pagan.) I like the complexity and diversity, the messiness of this world. I enjoy being different and want a world that appreciates individuality. I want a society that offers more options to people, not less. And I think that all this is compatible with simple, egalitarian, communal, and sustainable. I also want all this to be practical--idealistic, yes, but practical as well.

Does this sound crazy or contradictory? Stay with me while I explore complexity, diversity, individuality, and practicality, and I will get to the contradictions.


Quote of the day: "Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll
Word (or phrase) of the day: Breeder
Hero(es) of the day: Fernando Pereira

Radical Political Theory

There's a book called Liberating Theory by Albert, Cagan, Chomsky, Hahnel, King, Sargent, and Sklar. I'm not going to recommend it, because I don't think it's a particularly well written book (though some parts are fun and entertaining--it may be worth getting if you find this post useful). Fortunately there is a clearer version of much the same thing in a tutorial on ZNet--check out the Radical Theory Instructional.

The basic idea is that the progressive/radical movement is pretty fragmented. Albert, et al, claim that there are a few different basic ideologies that make up the movement. Four of these focus on different 'spheres' or sectors of society. (There are two other ones that focus on what's beyond this society--I'll get to these.) The four social ideologies are the major liberation movements. Albert and friends label these the Feminists, the Socialists, the Nationalists, and the Anarchists. The Feminists claim that Patriarchy is the problem and the family, the cradle of society, is the primary area we need to focus on. The Socialists claim that Capitalism is the problem and we need to focus on class and the workplace since that is what supports the society. The Nationalists claim that White Supremacy is the problem and we need to look at our cultural system and how the dominant White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture oppresses anyone in our society who is not a WASP. And the Anarchists claim that the State is problem and we need to look at how government and hierarchy control our lives.

Albert, et al, point out that all four analyses are correct but each simply focuses on one 'sphere' of the society: the Feminists focus on the kinship sphere, including the family, gender, and sexuality; the Socialists focus on the economic sphere, including work and class; the Nationalists focus on the community sphere, including race, ethnicity, religion, and culture; and the Anarchists focus on the sphere they refer to as 'polity', including government and political structure. In spite of what each of these groups claim, none of these spheres are basic; they are all interlinked and all important in maintaining the society we have--and we have to change all four of these spheres (nearly simultaneously) in order to transform this society.

The point of the theorists who wrote Liberating Theory is that once we understand that all these 'spheres' are interconnected and none are primary, we can create more coherent strategies. I agree. I think we need to take all of these analyses in to account in order to build a better strategy. Getting caught up in which problem is 'primary' usually leads to counter productive arguments.

Two more ideologies focus on our connections beyond this society: the Ecology movement looks at how we relate to the environment, and the Peace movement looks at how we relate to other societies. We need to remember that our society doesn't exist in isolation. So as well as needing to change all different spheres of this society, we need to improve our connections to other societies and the natural world. This is an overview of what we'll have to do in order to create real change. It's a tall order, but there's what I think is the direction for change. It's complex, but there is no simple answer.

Quote of the day: "First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it." - William James
Word (or phrase) of the day: Interlocalism
Hero(es) of the day: Rosa Parks