Is your imagination like mine? I bet it is not too different. But, okay, in this hopeful daydream, how did life get so good?
Given what we endure right now, to imaginatively skip forward and look around, is one thing, but what about the interim. What happens between now and the good life to come. Clearly, there must have been a huge transformation of minds and institutions. How did that revolution happen?
Still imaginatively looking back from the better future and considering the journey we must have taken to get there, the transition certainly couldn’t have been the work of aliens or gods. Maybe in fiction, but not in reality, not even envisioned reality. Thus, it must have been done by people. But it couldn’t have been done by just a few isolated people. Therefore, it must have been done by a great many people acting together. A great symphony of humanity must have created a new world. This symphony of citizens must have been informed. They had to know where they were going. They had to see freely eye to eye their path. They had to learn as they went, from their experiences, and must have put their learning to work.
But what organizational vehicles might these people – and the hope is that it will be us – have used to develop and protect their shared aims, to create their shared experiences, and to act on their aims and the lessons of their experiences to propel their shared programs and projects?
My best guess is that there would likely have been local smaller vehicles as well as bigger ones for wider domains of living and doing. There would likely have been specially focused vehicles and also more general purpose ones. But, amidst all that, there would also have been, we can be pretty sure, some organizations which were highly oriented to the general purpose of social transformation. There would have been some organizations, that is, that prioritized collectively developing and sharing overarching vision and strategy in tune with the changes that happened in getting to the better life we are imagining. There would have been organizations seeking to foster, galvanize, and implement struggles for changes. There would have been organizations seeking to construct and to then melt into the infrastructure of the new society.
How many such organizations would there have been? We don’t know. Even imagining, that is beyond answering. But if there were likely a few, or even a good many, then, looking back from our imagined revolutionized future society, there certainly must have been at least one. And I think we can also deduce that at least one, and maybe more, must have existed in nearly every country, and must have been linked between them all. Of course some of the branches would have come earlier, and some would have grown large faster, while others would have come later, and developed more slowly. But how else then having global reach could there have been the needed internationalism, solidarity, and sharing of lessons and assets? How else could there have been the needed mutual aid?
Alright, let us imagine this is correct. In that case, when did the organization with branches around the world, get born? When did it get nurtured into strength? When did it get solidified into great cohesion even as it simultaneously kept flexible enough to learn lessons from its experiences and continually refine itself in accord?
We don’t know that either, of course, even imagining. We do know, however, if we think about that better future, and if we consider how we might have gotten to it, that such an organization, will likely have been born and have grown sometime between now and the future good life.
So here is the question of the day, at least by my reckoning.
Why can’t the time for forming that new organization, entwined internationally – at least one, if not more than one – be now? Why can’t we who want a better new world, and we who agree about many overarching defining features that are essential if people of the future are to self manage their own lives – get together and build the type of organization we know must come into existence at some point? If not now, well, why not?
Some people will say, we shouldn’t do it now because we might fail. My answer to them is if we don’t try, we will certainly fail. More, even if we do fail, we will learn, and then next time we, or others who take our place, will have more knowledge to apply, more wisdom to sow. And, keep in mind, also, maybe we will succeed even now, much less later.
Some will say, we shouldn’t do it now because there are dangers, even in success. My answer to them is, absolutely, of course there are. But we will have to overcome those dangers at some point. If we try now, and we succeed, wonderful. If we try now, and we fail, okay, we will learn and be better prepared to succeed later.
Arguments against action like the two just noted always exist. If we succumb to such arguments today, or others, why will tomorrow be different, and also the next tomorrow. Succumbing to these type of arguments amounts to surrender. Surely we don’t want to surrender.
One effort to try to develop an organization of the sort imagined here is the International Organization for a Participatory Society (IOPS). It hoped to form, to grow, to become wise and capable, and to abet, and to finally melt into the new self managed society we all seek.
IOPS initially arose from a poll taken by a bit over 4,000 people. Over 95% of the respondents were amenable to joining an organization with features and structure described in the poll questions. That incredible response inspired setting up a consultative committee, raising some funds, and creating a web site, which now exists at http://www.iopsociety.org/
Please, visit the site, and if you do, look at the IOPS organizational description. Consider its shared vision and programmatic commitments. Take a look at its brief history (that will hopefully, in time, grow far richer). Links for all this are evident.
If you visit the site and like what you see there sufficiently so you feel it would be wonderful if this organization grew to include tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands and more people, why not work for that?
If you like what you see enough so you feel like you would love to live in the society it is seeking, why not contribute to making it so? If you like its commitments to self management, to mutual aid and respect, to organizational flexibility and respect for internal dissent now and in the future enough so you feel IOPS grown up would create a welcome and empowering place for you to contribute; then, doesn’t it make sense to join?
If you do go to the site ( http://www.iopsociety.org/ ) and after looking around you do decide to enter a brief bio, a picture, and your country and city – you will become a member of IOPS and also of your country branch and of your city chapter. You will then be in position to help attract others so that IOPS members can meet in your city, share views and ideas, and, in time, become part of a self managing membership that engages in activities of its own design and, in time, at a founding convention, helps move the whole undertaking from interim to real.
At that point, if we can get there, well short of the time of the better life, but well beyond the current awful moment of rampant crises, IOPS could be an organization which, when people live in the better future, they will look back to that convention and see it as having been a historic step in a long path. Imagine them recalling that.
If we don’t decide to act on our imaginations now, when will be a better time?
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1 Comment
When I explain my views to my little philosophy group called Organicity: Ending Ecocide I always encounter the question – but what can I do about it? And I always answer, following Noam, not much – as an individual. Truthfully, I often wonder myself. Now I will have an answer. Join IOPS – and work to expand it, locally. Thanks Michael.