What’s Next? From Critique to Co-Creation

“I thought those were carrots…” Photo by Antonio Janeski on Unsplash

In this brief article I just want to lay some groundwork for an emerging process to which we can all contribute. Although I am publishing this, it is in some ways intended to be an ongoing draft of ideas which I might edit in the foreseeable future. I felt that it was important to get the sticky note onto the board where we can all start participating in the conversation.

First, a quick flashback. For many years now I have pointed out the difference between “transition” and “transformation” in dynamical systems. It seems a good place to start.

Transition

when current patterns are in decline or outright collapse, but existing activity has yet to coalesce into a stable structure.

Transitions, or “post-” periods are characterized by

1. being ontologically dependent on the preceding era, in particular, its terms and definitions.
2. being “critical” in nature, since they are expressions of what is unraveling, rather than what is emerging.

Transformation

is the moment at which the system crosses a critical threshold and becomes a self-organized and self-sustaining entity.

By contrast, “pre-”periods are characterized by

1) being ontologically dependent on an as yet unrealized era to come, seeking to reveal its terms and definitions.

2) being “affirmative” in nature, since they are expressions of what can happen, rather than what currently exists.

Insofar as a “pre-” period preceeds tranformation, it is itself a “not quite there yet” landscape, but it is necessary to articulate what is in the process of becoming in order to accelerate the pace of transformation.

From Critique to Co-Creation

Ok, so, here’s where we are at, what we’ve seen so far.

• primarily economic critiques of global capitalism, exploitation, copyright, etc.
• primarily social critiques of work, racism, sexism, etc.
• primarily scientific critiques of environmental destruction leading to global and local climate shocks

And what we need now is to articulate the future we are co-creating. There are at least two facets to this exercise:

• We need an understanding of the dynamics that reinforce each other and establish the stability of the system as a whole
• Within those dynamics we need to have a desire to articulate and build the world we want.

The first of these is crucial because without such an understanding we risk trying to create a world which is internally contradictory and which contributes to its own instability and therefore to its own unraveling.

The second of these is crucial because there are potentially many worlds we can build which will not contradict the system dynamics, but they may not all be equally desirable from a moral standpoint.

Towards Co-Creation…

Anyway, the critiques are in, and there are plenty of them, from critiques of global capitalism to climate change. Fortunately by now it has become clear that there is decreasing innovation on the critique side of things. If you absorb enough, you see the same patterns repeating themselves. From a neural networks standpoint, this is great because it means people are noticing the same things and repetition along certain pathways provides for greater weighting for those pathways. So we are seeing depth and salience in the patterns. However, it is also crucial that ideas that are seemingly less weighted are given enough attention as well because they contribute to system dynamics as a whole in ways that may not be immediately apparent without some reflection.

So here’s how I currently see things evolving:

All human needs will be provided: food, shelter, clothing, health, etc.

In order for human beings to make un-coerced decisions about allocating their time and attention and sharing their hearts and voices openly, they cannot be worried about their survival.

Anything that obstructs information flow will disappear: copyright, patents, trade secrets, hoarding, paywalls, etc.

Cooperation and innovation at the levels necessary for human survival require the complete and total sharing culture of information and ideas. (For those who’ve been paying attention this is part of a long-standing emergence sometimes referred to as the “sharing vs. hoarding” debate and/or “closed vs. open”.)

Politics and society will shift from “bell curve” majority-rule-driven battles to “long tail” minority-security-driven conversations.

Current definitions of democracy that marginalize and oppress minorities will transform into a kind of politics that remains vigilant to emerging forms of difference and seeks to recognize and embrace them and to integrate them into just and fair systems of governance.

Commons will supersede property as the preferred method of defining and managing reality.

Insofar as current property is a form of hoarding (vs. sharing), this is an obvious corollary to other system dynamics. Cooperation “replaces” competition (but competition is just cooperation anyway; see references below).

Currencies will be recognized for what they are: temporary techniques for mobilizing human energy around specific communities.

It will be accepted that currencies come and go, that they take many forms, and that currencies are really representations of differing kinds information within communities of users. Currencies that connect their value to forms of regenerative activity and can communicate those linkages to users (“information-rich”) will succeed, whereas “anonymous” (“information-poor” or “trust-less”) currencies will fail.

Governments and corporations will not solve our problems

Governments and corporations will decline or disappear outright because their foundational properties are antithetical to cooperation and sharing. Distributed governance and “peer to peer” commons-based cooperation will provide complex systems networks of problem-solving and management in a sustainable regenerative ecosystem of human activity.

Conclusion

There is so much more that could be said here (and should be said somewhere), about renewable energy sources, about regenerative culture, about panarchy and CommonsWealth, but I really wanted to keep this particular piece as more of a brief precis than a book-length description.

Nevertheless, all I’m really saying here is this:

It’s high time those of us who are studying everything from peer-to-peer society to networks to community- and crypto- currencies to climate change to social and political revolution(s) need to start focusing our efforts on what works instead of what doesn’t.

I’m certain that there are more items on this list, as much as I am certain that there are many lenses and ways of looking at and articulating these things. If you have ideas, articulations, or other feedback please either comment here or feel free to contact me directly.

References

2016: “Panarchy 101: Crucial Lenses” at https://medium.com/panarchy-101-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and/panarchy-101-7-crucial-lenses-3f99ae7f875e

2016: “Competition IS Cooperation: Seeing Differently” https://medium.com/panarchy-101-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and/competition-is-cooperation-see-differently-a2dc8f5f3c3

2010: “Transition vs. Transformation” at https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/transition-vs-transformation/2010/06/14)

Photo by Antonio Janeski on Unsplash