This story was published in September 2004 and it was a big secret. I received it on disk but I think it should be public by now anyway. It is interesting to look back at it and in terms of today's world some two years on. I will link each chapter as I go along over the coming weeks.- The Old World Order - Happy reading!
Entire stock of knowledge to be accessed
Beyond Industrial Capitalism and Nation States
WARNING
This freesite contains explicit truth and new ideas.
The content could turn you from an obedient subject to a rabid secessionist. You might become a new tribalist and a Leaver-Giver. You could help save the world.
We are experiencing a second great Renaissance in knowledge, technologies and thought. There is a growing body of opinion and literature that recognises the many new realities and opportunities facing us. But most individuals, businesses and institutions, continue to think and act too conventionally.
This freesite puts the case for radical advancement, coupled with the sound and ethical use of the new abundance stemming from the digital and scientific revolutions that are sweeping us forward. It demands far more than evolutionary change and a wide revision of old attitudes and behaviours. What is called for is a complete transformation, from one level of civilization to another that is higher and better in every way.
To facilitate referencing and discussion, each sub-heading in this document is suffixed thus: (0) Click for Links to Sub-Headings
A Second Transformation Should Not Be Delayed (1)
The original Renaissance, in Europe, occurred progressively. During the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries the old feudal order of things was painfully replaced by a new level of civilization based on wide availability of printed information and knowledge. The transformation took so long because the masses had first to become literate, and then new ideas and reform movements had to emerge and gradually prevail over the old order. The forces of the eventual losers, the Roman Church and the remnants of feudal domains, fought determinedly to retain control and privilege. Many innocents died in wars of suppression, and at the hands of the first Inquisition.
Today, there is no reason for similar delays in effecting a transformation to a new level of civilization based on instant communications and free exchange of information and knowledge. Nor should it be necessary to effect the changes through conflicts and bloodshed.
Our Present Civilization Is Broken Beyond Repair (2)
Rather than waste time and energy in attempts to change the existing civilization from within, while retaining its core paradigms and assumptions, it will be wiser and quicker to leave it behind. Many of the old social and economic concepts are flawed, and they would weigh us down if we continued to adhere to them. Thankfully, there is no longer any need for a revolution to break away from the control of central governments and global corporations and institutions. If those entities were still effective, and they remained necessary to modern society, the prospects of a protracted struggle would be high. But the philosophies and economic mechanisms of nation states and global corporations are founded on obsolete principles, of unrelenting economic scarcity and the use of market forces to ensure that available resources are maximised.
Once knowledge is freely available and physical resources are abundant, the old order is irreparably broken. It is then pointless to try to reform and evolve systems such as industrial capitalism and nationalism, we must simply put them behind us and go forward, using a new set of paradigms.
A Kaleidoscopic View (3)
This document is quite extensive, so it is arranged in a manner that facilitates skipping and rereading several times. Rather than risk boring readers with a laborious and tightly integrated argument for transformation, the author has chosen to present a kaleidoscopic view of the subject matter. You can read only the headings that interest you or read everything sequentially. However you read it, all the information can be tied together to form a single perspective of where humanity has been in the past, where it is today, and where it can go in the future.
Early in the first Industrial Revolution, people looked through the new invention of Sir David Brewster and marvelled at the optical patterns that his Kaleidoscope produced. Yet, they could not know what wondrous new technologies would become available to humanity in the space of barely two hundred years. Nor did they realise the nature and significance of ancient knowledge that had already been lost, or kept secret, for millennia.
Today, thanks to the digital computer and the information technologies it has spawned, ordinary people can know and understand just about everything. If they care to take the time and trouble to stop worrying about their day to day existence, and focus on the future, people can now determine what sort of life their children will have. As far as we know, the opportunity for ordinary citizens to shape their own world according to their aspirations, values and beliefs, has never existed before. This new social phenomenon, and the 2nd Renaissance that is making it possible, is BIG news. But you will not read or hear of it in the mainstream media of our present civilization. This document is your personal kaleidoscope for viewing a mosaic of related facts and perspectives that those in control of today's world would rather you were not aware of. Enjoy it, then act on the insights it provides.
The 'Better' Things Are, The Emptier People Feel (4)
According to all the accepted measures of economic wellbeing, the citizens of developed countries are now better off than ever before. Paradoxically, figures for one of the wealthiest nations on Earth, the United States, show that while real income levels have risen by some 400 percent, since the end of World War II, the percentage of Americans who consider themselves to be "very happy" has not risen to the same degree. Over a period of three decades, from the late fifties to the late eighties, the number of "very happy" Americans actually fell by 5%. As the US entered the 1990s, only 30 percent of its citizens were "very happy". Similarly, only 30 percent were "well satisfied with their financial situation". From the survey statistics, more than two thirds of the citizens of the US do not feel "very happy" with their lot in the civilization that industrial capitalism built them. Social commentators are now describing epidemics of boredom, alienation and despair in the Western world as diseases of affluence.
Youth Suicides Reflect Alienation and Despair (5)
The young people in affluent, industrial-capitalist countries are taking their own lives. The statistics on youth suicide, like those on unemployment, are rubbery. Politicians elected on a platform of reducing the problem tend to obscure harsh realities by changing the way figures are collected, and the rules by which certain forms of death are included or excluded. But nothing can hide the ugly truth that, in the developed world, young people, particularly young men, are killing themselves in droves. This is so across all socio-economic levels of those societies. The raw figures are indicative of the magnitude of the problem. In the United Kingdom, 19,000 young people attempt suicide each year and some 700 succeed. Again in the UK, suicide accounts for 20% of all deaths of young people aged 15 to 24 years, and is the second most common cause of deaths in this age group. In Australia, suicide rates in males aged 15 to 24 years increased fourfold in the latter half of the 20th century, and suicide now accounts for one in every four deaths in that age group. Throughout the 1990s, more young Australians died by suicide than by road accidents. Chillingly, an Australian survey of school students showed that 60% have thoughts of suicide.
No civilization or economic system, no matter how much wealth it creates, can be deemed a success when the majority of its youth are so despairing that they consider or attempt suicide.
Industrial-Capitalism Is A Widely Adopted Failure (6)
Today, capitalism is the dominant economic system on this planet. Socialism and communism have been and gone, and only industrial-capitalism retains any sway. The financier, George Soros, is critical of capitalism because "it has no soul". Nothing in the system takes care of the people who lose as a result of the operation of market forces. By some mysterious means an informed and rational market is supposed to lead to a rapid and efficient distribution of scarce resources through a reallocation of the traditional factors of production; land, labour, and capital. That such a simplistic theory can continue to form the basis of economic management, at a time when science is uncovering the startling complexities of biological systems and habitats, says a lot about the shallowness of public debate and policy in our society.
Although industrial-capitalism has been in operation for some two hundred years, 5 billion human inhabitants of this world still live on less than US$2 per day. This fact alone says that something is very wrong with the theory and operation of capitalism.
Capitalism Has Been Mistaken For Civilization (7)
Governments in the developed world pay undue attention to economic indicators, and try to avoid accountability in areas of human advancement and social development. Their spin-merchants trumpet economic growth and other indicators (whether in a raw or sanitised form) and claim success, no matter what is happening to the social fabric, the environment, biodiversity, or other relevant measures of the well-being and sustainability of our present civilization.
Regrettably, governments have come to equate the economics of capitalism, and "good numbers" in this area, with a job well done. This philosophy misrepresents the goals of capitalism and industrial production as being synonymous with the advancement of civilization. Nothing could be further from the truth.
True Civilization Involves Cooperation (8)
Daniel Quinn is one of the early thinkers and writers of the 2nd Renaissance. In his novels, such as Ishmael and The Story Of B, Quinn describes the way successful tribal societies evolved in the times before the practices of agricultural farming and animal husbandry made it possible to accumulate the food surpluses that led to the emergence of towns and cities, and to a new need to buy food rather than find it on the plains and in the forests of the old world. Early tribal societies evolved a way of living in conditions of managed abundance. Natural selection ensured that the societal models that were successes survived, and that the failures did not.
Science now understands that 19th century models of nature, that emphasised the ruthless extermination of rivals, were mistaken. A modern understanding of ecosystems and symbiotic relationships leads to the conclusion that cooperative models predominate in both the plant and animal kingdoms. However, business and government thinking remains locked into the old combative models, in which human enterprises and institutions are continually at war with each other and the planet at large. These are dead-end mindsets that cannot lead us to a higher, more advanced level of human civilization. War is not found in nature, only coexistence models succeed there.
Tribal Models Worked For Thousands Of Years (9)
The Australian aborigines were, prior to European settlement, people who lived in conditions of managed abundance. For sixty thousand years, far longer than the fleeting histories of socialism, communism and capitalism, aboriginal tribes existed in harmony with the land. No major wars were fought. Although there were skirmishes between tribes these were seldom serious or prolonged. The aboriginal people did not experience famine because they did not exceed the population levels that could sustain a hunter-gatherer existence. They had no government except their local tribal councils, and they paid no taxes. In order to survive, the aboriginal people of Australia had only to work the equivalent of three days per week, the rest of their time was for their leisure and storytelling. The concept of suicide was unknown to these original inhabitants of the Australian continent. They also enjoyed one advantage over modern Australians; tribal people had lifelong support and cradle to grave security within their tribe. In a technological sense tribal Australians were backward, but in terms of community and social support structures they were an advanced culture.
Takers and Leavers (10)
The settlers from Europe despised the "primitive" aborigines because they had not "conquered" the land, they were not warlike and they had not "developed" the resources of the land they inhabited. In the terminology of Daniel Quinn, the settlers had a Taker mentality while the tribal people were Leavers. The idea of exploiting the land and of exerting the power of life and death over all other species, is the notion of Takers. Leavers, on the other hand, preserve a balance in the way they draw sustenance from the land and kill only what they need to survive.
After only two hundred years of farming, mining, and otherwise developing Australia along taker lines, the record is damning. Settlers from Europe who were accustomed to four seasons in a year cleared and cropped land that might often go for seven years in a continuous state of summer. Now, 40% of all the original forests on the Australian continent are gone, 75% of rainforests are lost and can never be regenerated, and much of the fertile topsoil has been eroded and carried away on the prevailing winds - across the Tasman sea to New Zealand. Because the water table rose due to the loss of trees and vegetation, soil salinity is now a massive problem, and large areas of Australia can no longer be cultivated. It only took 200 years for takers to destroy land that had been preserved by leavers for 60,000 years.
Tribalism Remains A Viable Way Of Life (11)
Daniel Quinn argues that tribal models have not vanished completely. He instances the culture and operation of the circus as an example of the persistence of tribalism during the industrial age. People who join a circus do so because they want to belong to the close-knit culture that such organisations have. Factors such as nationality, race, gender, language, religion, sexual orientation or politics, don't determine who can or can't join and belong. To be an accepted member of a working circus a person only has to contribute to its success in every area where their inputs are needed. The stars of the high trapeze help erect the big-top, distribute the hand bills, sell the tickets, and then they fly. After the show they help pull the tent down and move everything to the next town.
In return for sharing goals and contributing fully, members of the circus receive the unconditional support of the group. The circus tribe looks after, and stands by, its own people. Many start-up businesses adopt a tribal ethos, but they lose this characteristic as they grow. Microsoft was quite tribal at the beginning, but by the time it hired a finance manager and a human resources manager it became hierarchical and bureaucratic, and the magic of a tribe was lost. Tribal cultures are still with us, but they are not in the mainstream of big business, big government and big crime. Tribalism persists in pockets of our culture but it is not widespread.
The New Tribal Phenomenon (12)]
There are a growing number of advocates of new-tribalism, but its nature is widely misunderstood. While few people seriously believe that new tribalism involves going back to living in caves, many think that it is associated with restraint, low economic growth and reduced living standards. Quinn himself, in his book Beyond Civilization, gives the impression that sustainable growth implies that not everyone can aspire to the lifestyles of the top Taker societies of the US and Europe. However, Quinn also points out that people who leave our Taker civilization behind, do so in the expectation of gaining something more valuable than the way of life they give up. As he puts it, "People never run off to join the circus to give up something. They run off to the circus to get something."
Besides the unconditional support that membership of a tribe implies, Quinn suggests that people who are prepared to live in a sustainable way, as Leavers, can expect to gain "security, hope, light-heartedness, and freedom from anxiety, fear and guilt." This is quite a shopping list. Given the mess that the outgoing civilization is in, such gains will be attractive to many people who are currently enduring feelings of hopelessness regarding their retirement years and the future of their children.
Still, many in the New Tribalism movement, including Daniel Quinn, appear to overlook the impacts of the scientific discoveries and enlightenment associated with a second renaissance. Far from there being unavoidable choices between new tribal lifestyles, continued affluence and rising living standards, it is becoming practical to have all these outcomes at once.
The emergence of a new tribal society is being held back by the continued acceptance of old paradigms and "truths" that are no longer valid. One of these no-longer-truths is that resources and the factors of economic production are, and always will be, scarce. Other no-longer-truths are that nationalism remains desirable and appropriate in a globalised world, and that national governments desire to progress, and can implement democratic processes that will take us forward, to the sunlit uplands of a new age.
The Most Important Events and Outcomes of the First Renaissance (13)
Because it took place over many generations, and involved so many disparate events, the history of the Renaissance in Europe is often presented in a rambling, fragmented manner. The single most important event, and the single most important outcome, both tend to be obscured by the clutter of information about the flowering of the arts, the many wars, the reformation movement, and so on. The single most important event was Johannes Gutenberg's introduction of the moveable type printing press in c 1455. This made possible the spread of information, knowledge and new ideas on a hitherto unprecedented scale. The escalation in the total amount of information then available to civilization led directly to the single most important outcome of the Renaissance, that of organised governments and democratic nation states.
Douglas Robertson is an author and scientist who has studied the relationship between information and civilization. To Robertson, information is civilization. He categorises the levels of human civilization according to the amount of information available. Level 1 arose with language, level 2 with writing, and level 3 was ushered in by mass publication. In his book, The New Renaissance - Computers and the Next Level of Civilization, Robertson notes that being limited to communicating information by verbal languages made anything more than a localised feudal realm impractical. Once information could be stored and transmitted in written form it was practical to expand the areas of rule, autocratic governments and widespread empires proliferated.
During the Renaissance, mass publication increased the amount and availability of information immensely. It became practical to organise and administer democratic forms of government. This was exactly what the people of Europe, who had suffered under the secular and spiritual domination of the Roman Church throughout the Dark Ages, wanted. Not every nation state became democratic, but the amount of information to enable this to happen was assured.
In A Level 4 Civilization Everyone Can Know Everything (14)
Douglas Robertson writes that while a billion fold increase in the generation of information will become a reality in a Level 4 Civilization, this will not be its defining characteristic. He says that, "The ability to easily find and utilise the entire information stock will be the hallmark of a Level 4 Civilization."
Electronic computing began with the mainframe paradigm, this was consistent with the dominant industrial technologies and the way governments and businesses were organised at the time. Information was centralised, control was centralised and access to the system depended on hierarchical levels of authority. In contrast, modern computing is increasingly decentralised.
In a system such as Freenet, data is dispersed across many nodes rather than being concentrated on particular server units. The information is not anywhere, it is everywhere. This system approaches that of a computing model for the first stage of a Level 4 Civilization. Provided that they know the appropriate key to use, it is possible for anyone to retrieve a file from Freenet. The information that is retrieved in this way is free of control and censorship.
Porn and Free Speech Cannot Be Separated (15)
Were it not for its non-searchable design, Freenet would conform to Douglas Robertson's defining characteristic for information technology in a Level 4 Civilization, the entire information stock could be utilised, and this could be done freely, without permission or denial being involved.
Such a notion will have official control freaks and self-appointed morals censors in a frenzy. However, no Freenet author should apologise for the fact that a full spectrum of data, from "very good" to "very bad" is accessible on Freenet. This is the way information delivery will increasingly work, in an everything-available everything-free manner. Rather than show contrition about what some people are inserting to Freenet, it is far better to repeatedly drive home the following points.
The presence of pornography, particularly extreme versions of pornography, is a direct consequence of Freenet's openness. If "bad" porn is propagating on Freenet, then freedom of association, free speech and the spread of new ideas are also able to exist there.
While some perverts do distribute images of their abuse of young children on Freenet, closing the network will not prevent such abuse happening. What closing Freenet will do in terms of paedophilia is sweep it under the carpet. Closing Freenet will remove a means of publicly naming paedophiles in high places, who are normally shielded by their equally privileged brethren at senior levels in the police, judiciary and priesthood.
Users of Freenet who don't wish to view or download any particular material, whether this is pornographic, religious, political or otherwise dull, do not have to do so. This is the meaning of Freenet, users are free to access material or free to choose not to view or download it. Freenet is designed for grown-ups, for people who can decide for themselves what they wish to view. It that troubles some forty-year-old children, neither they nor any other sub-adults should click on the Freenet icon.
Pornography on the WWW is commercialised, people have to pay to access it and as long as somebody is prepared to pay there will be commercial sites to cater for the demand. There is, and will continue to be, pressure to present more and more extreme pornographic content. The advertising on pornographic web sites on the WWW follows the best capitalist traditions and carries banners and teasers that promise the viewer that, if they will only enter their credit card details, they can see things like mature ladies doing unspeakable things to each other, or under aged Lolitas frolicking with dogs and goats. There is absolutely nothing that human erotic imagination can devise that is not already on the WWW, and strongly advertised for sale.
A review by the Online Computer Library Centre found 74,000 porn sites on the WWW in 2001, the estimated profit (bottom line earnings, not revenue) was US$ 1 billion. (By 2003 the number of porn sites on the WWW was said to have reached 8 million.)
Although there are already many porn sites on the WWW, they only represented 2% of the total sites in the above (2001) survey. Because pornography on the WWW is so lucrative the potential for it to grow is considerable. All the commercial growth will be on the WWW. Freenet, by definition is free and there is no money to be made from pornography there.
By and large, federal agencies have not moved to restrict pornography on the WWW. Hey, its good for the economy isn't it? What Big Brother's regulators and spooks have done, is bring pornography fully under their surveillance. The World Wide Web has become the World Wide Watch. Big Brother has no interest in curbing pornography, he just wants to spy on everyone who accesses this and every other piece of content that travels over the communication cables and air waves.
If authorities from various national government agencies take action to muzzle Freenet or close it down, their motivation will not be related to preventing the spread of pornography. The targets will be free speech and new ideas. If anti-Freenet measures are effected, the losers will be the citizens of the "free" world. Consumers of pornography will still be able to access pornographic material that is equally as "bad" as anything that has ever been available on Freenet, by continuing to browse the World Wide Web under the full surveillance of those government agencies.
The Renaissance saw an explosion in pornography via the medium of printed books that contained ribald stories and etchings. These materials propagated alongside new knowledge and ideas that eventually resulted in the society and values that exist today. No one should be too surprised that the introduction of new electronic media during the 2nd Renaissance is producing a similar surge of porn and new ideas, side by side.
The Most Unbelievable Change of the 2nd Renaissance (16)
Of all the changes that form part of the great transformation presently engulfing our world, the reality of abundance is the most difficult for most people to come to terms with. The notion that a Level 4 civilization can possibly produce more than enough physical resources and energy to feed, clothe and shelter all of humanity, at standards higher than those presently enjoyed by the top 10% of citizens of the outgoing civilization, is contrary to all the documented principles and knowledge in the vast number of economic texts and analyses that exist today.
However, all the old texts are now outdated. The force that has rendered conventional economic doctrines obsolete is information. The tool that has made it possible to access and utilise not only information but imagination and vision is the digital computer. The intellectual disciplines that have been greatly leveraged by the explosion of information and knowledge, and the availability of digital computers, are the sciences. The sciences are revising and extending knowledge exponentially, and new technologies spawned by scientific discoveries are leading, inevitably, to abundance in every aspect of human existence. As early as the 1960s the late G. Harry Stine recognised where we are headed. He said it simply.
"We must learn how to be rich and handle abundance, because we have never had to do it before."
Food Production Capacity Already Exceeds Global Needs (17)
Before we consider why abundance alarms powerful interests we need to establish that abundance exists. We can get to the crux of the reality of abundance without needing to instance the way new sources of energy can already eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels, or the way nanotechnology will soon offer the prospect of robotically manufactured goods that are constructed from molecules - from the inside out - rather than crudely fashioned by human machinists from larger blocks of material. We can look at the abundance of food.
To many people in the developing world this is a contradiction in terms, food and abundance do not go together in their countries. But, when all countries are considered together, there is already sufficient productive capacity to feed every human being on Earth. Although food is not scarce in an overall sense, more than 100,000 children die each month from malnutrition and related diseases. Excess food is routinely dumped and agricultural production is restricted by quotas designed to maintain high prices.
Greed and fear are the historical causes of the obscene failure of Western nation states to end the practices that curtail the production and distribution of food, and other essential resources, to the people of the world.
Abundance Scares Profiteers and Politicians (18)
Vested interests and government ideologues alike are wedded to the notion of economic scarcity and are intent on keeping it alive. It is easy to understand why those who control the supply of food want to maintain a base level of scarcity. If food were too plentiful it would not be possible to charge high prices. But why would governments fear abundance? Look no further than the reasons for having governments at all. Besides providing basic services, which they are increasingly privatising or contracting out, governments redistribute wealth and resources. They have social policies and programs to fix poverty, fix crime, fix health, fix schooling, fix housing, fix anything and everything - just trust them one more time. Once resources become abundant, however, most people will choose to fix things for themselves.
Representative democracy becomes unnecessary in conditions of abundance. That's the problem for profiteers and politicians facing the 2nd Renaissance. They must impede insights and developments that lead to abundance, and promote the old notions of economic scarcity.
While vested interests and governments have, so far, succeeded in constraining the production and distribution of food, the challenge of doing the same for energy, and for the almost costless consumer goods that will result from nanofacture, will be more difficult. In due course the challenge of suppressing knowledge and abundance will prove impossible.
New Science - New Civilization (19)
During the Dark Ages, in Europe, the scientific theories used to describe the observed world left a lot to be desired. The Roman Church was the final arbiter on all scientific explanations of nature, matter, life and the heavens. At the time, it was held that the Earth was the centre of a limited universe, the Sun was said to travel across the heavens, and the number of stars in the firmament was seen as fixed and unchanging. Until Galileo Galilei, science followed the teachings of Aristotle in physics, and it was considered that heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones.
The first Renaissance produced a wave of new thinking and theories and led to the science that is now taught as "modern". By the start of the 20th century it was thought, by some scientists, that all that could be explained in the physical sciences had been discovered. But, during the 1900s, and particularly following the introduction of powerful and widely available computers, the "modern" theories and explanations of science began to be challenged and radically revised.
Much of this new science involves explanations and theories that are counterintuitive. Quite early in the 20th century Niels Bhor remarked that anyone who isn't shocked by quantum mechanics has not understood it. The trend of uncovering previously undreamed of levels of complexity in nature that are governed by elegantly simple constructs continues at an ever-increasing rate. New scientific theories and new insights are spawning previously unimaginable new technologies, that will inevitably lead to a global abundance of physical resources and material goods.
The new technologies will also raise the level of information available to the incoming civilization to about 1025 bits. This is the level, calculated by Douglas Robertson, at which a Level 4 Civilization will operate. As noted above, it is not only the explosion of information that is so empowering, but the expectation that new technologies will enable the entire stock of knowledge to be accessed.
WARNING
This freesite contains explicit truth and new ideas.
The content could turn you from an obedient subject to a rabid secessionist. You might become a new tribalist and a Leaver-Giver. You could help save the world.
We are experiencing a second great Renaissance in knowledge, technologies and thought. There is a growing body of opinion and literature that recognises the many new realities and opportunities facing us. But most individuals, businesses and institutions, continue to think and act too conventionally.
This freesite puts the case for radical advancement, coupled with the sound and ethical use of the new abundance stemming from the digital and scientific revolutions that are sweeping us forward. It demands far more than evolutionary change and a wide revision of old attitudes and behaviours. What is called for is a complete transformation, from one level of civilization to another that is higher and better in every way.
To facilitate referencing and discussion, each sub-heading in this document is suffixed thus: (0) Click for Links to Sub-Headings
A Second Transformation Should Not Be Delayed (1)
The original Renaissance, in Europe, occurred progressively. During the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries the old feudal order of things was painfully replaced by a new level of civilization based on wide availability of printed information and knowledge. The transformation took so long because the masses had first to become literate, and then new ideas and reform movements had to emerge and gradually prevail over the old order. The forces of the eventual losers, the Roman Church and the remnants of feudal domains, fought determinedly to retain control and privilege. Many innocents died in wars of suppression, and at the hands of the first Inquisition.
Today, there is no reason for similar delays in effecting a transformation to a new level of civilization based on instant communications and free exchange of information and knowledge. Nor should it be necessary to effect the changes through conflicts and bloodshed.
Our Present Civilization Is Broken Beyond Repair (2)
Rather than waste time and energy in attempts to change the existing civilization from within, while retaining its core paradigms and assumptions, it will be wiser and quicker to leave it behind. Many of the old social and economic concepts are flawed, and they would weigh us down if we continued to adhere to them. Thankfully, there is no longer any need for a revolution to break away from the control of central governments and global corporations and institutions. If those entities were still effective, and they remained necessary to modern society, the prospects of a protracted struggle would be high. But the philosophies and economic mechanisms of nation states and global corporations are founded on obsolete principles, of unrelenting economic scarcity and the use of market forces to ensure that available resources are maximised.
Once knowledge is freely available and physical resources are abundant, the old order is irreparably broken. It is then pointless to try to reform and evolve systems such as industrial capitalism and nationalism, we must simply put them behind us and go forward, using a new set of paradigms.
A Kaleidoscopic View (3)
This document is quite extensive, so it is arranged in a manner that facilitates skipping and rereading several times. Rather than risk boring readers with a laborious and tightly integrated argument for transformation, the author has chosen to present a kaleidoscopic view of the subject matter. You can read only the headings that interest you or read everything sequentially. However you read it, all the information can be tied together to form a single perspective of where humanity has been in the past, where it is today, and where it can go in the future.
Early in the first Industrial Revolution, people looked through the new invention of Sir David Brewster and marvelled at the optical patterns that his Kaleidoscope produced. Yet, they could not know what wondrous new technologies would become available to humanity in the space of barely two hundred years. Nor did they realise the nature and significance of ancient knowledge that had already been lost, or kept secret, for millennia.
Today, thanks to the digital computer and the information technologies it has spawned, ordinary people can know and understand just about everything. If they care to take the time and trouble to stop worrying about their day to day existence, and focus on the future, people can now determine what sort of life their children will have. As far as we know, the opportunity for ordinary citizens to shape their own world according to their aspirations, values and beliefs, has never existed before. This new social phenomenon, and the 2nd Renaissance that is making it possible, is BIG news. But you will not read or hear of it in the mainstream media of our present civilization. This document is your personal kaleidoscope for viewing a mosaic of related facts and perspectives that those in control of today's world would rather you were not aware of. Enjoy it, then act on the insights it provides.
The 'Better' Things Are, The Emptier People Feel (4)
According to all the accepted measures of economic wellbeing, the citizens of developed countries are now better off than ever before. Paradoxically, figures for one of the wealthiest nations on Earth, the United States, show that while real income levels have risen by some 400 percent, since the end of World War II, the percentage of Americans who consider themselves to be "very happy" has not risen to the same degree. Over a period of three decades, from the late fifties to the late eighties, the number of "very happy" Americans actually fell by 5%. As the US entered the 1990s, only 30 percent of its citizens were "very happy". Similarly, only 30 percent were "well satisfied with their financial situation". From the survey statistics, more than two thirds of the citizens of the US do not feel "very happy" with their lot in the civilization that industrial capitalism built them. Social commentators are now describing epidemics of boredom, alienation and despair in the Western world as diseases of affluence.
Youth Suicides Reflect Alienation and Despair (5)
The young people in affluent, industrial-capitalist countries are taking their own lives. The statistics on youth suicide, like those on unemployment, are rubbery. Politicians elected on a platform of reducing the problem tend to obscure harsh realities by changing the way figures are collected, and the rules by which certain forms of death are included or excluded. But nothing can hide the ugly truth that, in the developed world, young people, particularly young men, are killing themselves in droves. This is so across all socio-economic levels of those societies. The raw figures are indicative of the magnitude of the problem. In the United Kingdom, 19,000 young people attempt suicide each year and some 700 succeed. Again in the UK, suicide accounts for 20% of all deaths of young people aged 15 to 24 years, and is the second most common cause of deaths in this age group. In Australia, suicide rates in males aged 15 to 24 years increased fourfold in the latter half of the 20th century, and suicide now accounts for one in every four deaths in that age group. Throughout the 1990s, more young Australians died by suicide than by road accidents. Chillingly, an Australian survey of school students showed that 60% have thoughts of suicide.
No civilization or economic system, no matter how much wealth it creates, can be deemed a success when the majority of its youth are so despairing that they consider or attempt suicide.
Industrial-Capitalism Is A Widely Adopted Failure (6)
Today, capitalism is the dominant economic system on this planet. Socialism and communism have been and gone, and only industrial-capitalism retains any sway. The financier, George Soros, is critical of capitalism because "it has no soul". Nothing in the system takes care of the people who lose as a result of the operation of market forces. By some mysterious means an informed and rational market is supposed to lead to a rapid and efficient distribution of scarce resources through a reallocation of the traditional factors of production; land, labour, and capital. That such a simplistic theory can continue to form the basis of economic management, at a time when science is uncovering the startling complexities of biological systems and habitats, says a lot about the shallowness of public debate and policy in our society.
Although industrial-capitalism has been in operation for some two hundred years, 5 billion human inhabitants of this world still live on less than US$2 per day. This fact alone says that something is very wrong with the theory and operation of capitalism.
Capitalism Has Been Mistaken For Civilization (7)
Governments in the developed world pay undue attention to economic indicators, and try to avoid accountability in areas of human advancement and social development. Their spin-merchants trumpet economic growth and other indicators (whether in a raw or sanitised form) and claim success, no matter what is happening to the social fabric, the environment, biodiversity, or other relevant measures of the well-being and sustainability of our present civilization.
Regrettably, governments have come to equate the economics of capitalism, and "good numbers" in this area, with a job well done. This philosophy misrepresents the goals of capitalism and industrial production as being synonymous with the advancement of civilization. Nothing could be further from the truth.
True Civilization Involves Cooperation (8)
Daniel Quinn is one of the early thinkers and writers of the 2nd Renaissance. In his novels, such as Ishmael and The Story Of B, Quinn describes the way successful tribal societies evolved in the times before the practices of agricultural farming and animal husbandry made it possible to accumulate the food surpluses that led to the emergence of towns and cities, and to a new need to buy food rather than find it on the plains and in the forests of the old world. Early tribal societies evolved a way of living in conditions of managed abundance. Natural selection ensured that the societal models that were successes survived, and that the failures did not.
Science now understands that 19th century models of nature, that emphasised the ruthless extermination of rivals, were mistaken. A modern understanding of ecosystems and symbiotic relationships leads to the conclusion that cooperative models predominate in both the plant and animal kingdoms. However, business and government thinking remains locked into the old combative models, in which human enterprises and institutions are continually at war with each other and the planet at large. These are dead-end mindsets that cannot lead us to a higher, more advanced level of human civilization. War is not found in nature, only coexistence models succeed there.
Tribal Models Worked For Thousands Of Years (9)
The Australian aborigines were, prior to European settlement, people who lived in conditions of managed abundance. For sixty thousand years, far longer than the fleeting histories of socialism, communism and capitalism, aboriginal tribes existed in harmony with the land. No major wars were fought. Although there were skirmishes between tribes these were seldom serious or prolonged. The aboriginal people did not experience famine because they did not exceed the population levels that could sustain a hunter-gatherer existence. They had no government except their local tribal councils, and they paid no taxes. In order to survive, the aboriginal people of Australia had only to work the equivalent of three days per week, the rest of their time was for their leisure and storytelling. The concept of suicide was unknown to these original inhabitants of the Australian continent. They also enjoyed one advantage over modern Australians; tribal people had lifelong support and cradle to grave security within their tribe. In a technological sense tribal Australians were backward, but in terms of community and social support structures they were an advanced culture.
Takers and Leavers (10)
The settlers from Europe despised the "primitive" aborigines because they had not "conquered" the land, they were not warlike and they had not "developed" the resources of the land they inhabited. In the terminology of Daniel Quinn, the settlers had a Taker mentality while the tribal people were Leavers. The idea of exploiting the land and of exerting the power of life and death over all other species, is the notion of Takers. Leavers, on the other hand, preserve a balance in the way they draw sustenance from the land and kill only what they need to survive.
After only two hundred years of farming, mining, and otherwise developing Australia along taker lines, the record is damning. Settlers from Europe who were accustomed to four seasons in a year cleared and cropped land that might often go for seven years in a continuous state of summer. Now, 40% of all the original forests on the Australian continent are gone, 75% of rainforests are lost and can never be regenerated, and much of the fertile topsoil has been eroded and carried away on the prevailing winds - across the Tasman sea to New Zealand. Because the water table rose due to the loss of trees and vegetation, soil salinity is now a massive problem, and large areas of Australia can no longer be cultivated. It only took 200 years for takers to destroy land that had been preserved by leavers for 60,000 years.
Tribalism Remains A Viable Way Of Life (11)
Daniel Quinn argues that tribal models have not vanished completely. He instances the culture and operation of the circus as an example of the persistence of tribalism during the industrial age. People who join a circus do so because they want to belong to the close-knit culture that such organisations have. Factors such as nationality, race, gender, language, religion, sexual orientation or politics, don't determine who can or can't join and belong. To be an accepted member of a working circus a person only has to contribute to its success in every area where their inputs are needed. The stars of the high trapeze help erect the big-top, distribute the hand bills, sell the tickets, and then they fly. After the show they help pull the tent down and move everything to the next town.
In return for sharing goals and contributing fully, members of the circus receive the unconditional support of the group. The circus tribe looks after, and stands by, its own people. Many start-up businesses adopt a tribal ethos, but they lose this characteristic as they grow. Microsoft was quite tribal at the beginning, but by the time it hired a finance manager and a human resources manager it became hierarchical and bureaucratic, and the magic of a tribe was lost. Tribal cultures are still with us, but they are not in the mainstream of big business, big government and big crime. Tribalism persists in pockets of our culture but it is not widespread.
The New Tribal Phenomenon (12)]
There are a growing number of advocates of new-tribalism, but its nature is widely misunderstood. While few people seriously believe that new tribalism involves going back to living in caves, many think that it is associated with restraint, low economic growth and reduced living standards. Quinn himself, in his book Beyond Civilization, gives the impression that sustainable growth implies that not everyone can aspire to the lifestyles of the top Taker societies of the US and Europe. However, Quinn also points out that people who leave our Taker civilization behind, do so in the expectation of gaining something more valuable than the way of life they give up. As he puts it, "People never run off to join the circus to give up something. They run off to the circus to get something."
Besides the unconditional support that membership of a tribe implies, Quinn suggests that people who are prepared to live in a sustainable way, as Leavers, can expect to gain "security, hope, light-heartedness, and freedom from anxiety, fear and guilt." This is quite a shopping list. Given the mess that the outgoing civilization is in, such gains will be attractive to many people who are currently enduring feelings of hopelessness regarding their retirement years and the future of their children.
Still, many in the New Tribalism movement, including Daniel Quinn, appear to overlook the impacts of the scientific discoveries and enlightenment associated with a second renaissance. Far from there being unavoidable choices between new tribal lifestyles, continued affluence and rising living standards, it is becoming practical to have all these outcomes at once.
The emergence of a new tribal society is being held back by the continued acceptance of old paradigms and "truths" that are no longer valid. One of these no-longer-truths is that resources and the factors of economic production are, and always will be, scarce. Other no-longer-truths are that nationalism remains desirable and appropriate in a globalised world, and that national governments desire to progress, and can implement democratic processes that will take us forward, to the sunlit uplands of a new age.
The Most Important Events and Outcomes of the First Renaissance (13)
Because it took place over many generations, and involved so many disparate events, the history of the Renaissance in Europe is often presented in a rambling, fragmented manner. The single most important event, and the single most important outcome, both tend to be obscured by the clutter of information about the flowering of the arts, the many wars, the reformation movement, and so on. The single most important event was Johannes Gutenberg's introduction of the moveable type printing press in c 1455. This made possible the spread of information, knowledge and new ideas on a hitherto unprecedented scale. The escalation in the total amount of information then available to civilization led directly to the single most important outcome of the Renaissance, that of organised governments and democratic nation states.
Douglas Robertson is an author and scientist who has studied the relationship between information and civilization. To Robertson, information is civilization. He categorises the levels of human civilization according to the amount of information available. Level 1 arose with language, level 2 with writing, and level 3 was ushered in by mass publication. In his book, The New Renaissance - Computers and the Next Level of Civilization, Robertson notes that being limited to communicating information by verbal languages made anything more than a localised feudal realm impractical. Once information could be stored and transmitted in written form it was practical to expand the areas of rule, autocratic governments and widespread empires proliferated.
During the Renaissance, mass publication increased the amount and availability of information immensely. It became practical to organise and administer democratic forms of government. This was exactly what the people of Europe, who had suffered under the secular and spiritual domination of the Roman Church throughout the Dark Ages, wanted. Not every nation state became democratic, but the amount of information to enable this to happen was assured.
In A Level 4 Civilization Everyone Can Know Everything (14)
Douglas Robertson writes that while a billion fold increase in the generation of information will become a reality in a Level 4 Civilization, this will not be its defining characteristic. He says that, "The ability to easily find and utilise the entire information stock will be the hallmark of a Level 4 Civilization."
Electronic computing began with the mainframe paradigm, this was consistent with the dominant industrial technologies and the way governments and businesses were organised at the time. Information was centralised, control was centralised and access to the system depended on hierarchical levels of authority. In contrast, modern computing is increasingly decentralised.
In a system such as Freenet, data is dispersed across many nodes rather than being concentrated on particular server units. The information is not anywhere, it is everywhere. This system approaches that of a computing model for the first stage of a Level 4 Civilization. Provided that they know the appropriate key to use, it is possible for anyone to retrieve a file from Freenet. The information that is retrieved in this way is free of control and censorship.
Porn and Free Speech Cannot Be Separated (15)
Were it not for its non-searchable design, Freenet would conform to Douglas Robertson's defining characteristic for information technology in a Level 4 Civilization, the entire information stock could be utilised, and this could be done freely, without permission or denial being involved.
Such a notion will have official control freaks and self-appointed morals censors in a frenzy. However, no Freenet author should apologise for the fact that a full spectrum of data, from "very good" to "very bad" is accessible on Freenet. This is the way information delivery will increasingly work, in an everything-available everything-free manner. Rather than show contrition about what some people are inserting to Freenet, it is far better to repeatedly drive home the following points.
The presence of pornography, particularly extreme versions of pornography, is a direct consequence of Freenet's openness. If "bad" porn is propagating on Freenet, then freedom of association, free speech and the spread of new ideas are also able to exist there.
While some perverts do distribute images of their abuse of young children on Freenet, closing the network will not prevent such abuse happening. What closing Freenet will do in terms of paedophilia is sweep it under the carpet. Closing Freenet will remove a means of publicly naming paedophiles in high places, who are normally shielded by their equally privileged brethren at senior levels in the police, judiciary and priesthood.
Users of Freenet who don't wish to view or download any particular material, whether this is pornographic, religious, political or otherwise dull, do not have to do so. This is the meaning of Freenet, users are free to access material or free to choose not to view or download it. Freenet is designed for grown-ups, for people who can decide for themselves what they wish to view. It that troubles some forty-year-old children, neither they nor any other sub-adults should click on the Freenet icon.
Pornography on the WWW is commercialised, people have to pay to access it and as long as somebody is prepared to pay there will be commercial sites to cater for the demand. There is, and will continue to be, pressure to present more and more extreme pornographic content. The advertising on pornographic web sites on the WWW follows the best capitalist traditions and carries banners and teasers that promise the viewer that, if they will only enter their credit card details, they can see things like mature ladies doing unspeakable things to each other, or under aged Lolitas frolicking with dogs and goats. There is absolutely nothing that human erotic imagination can devise that is not already on the WWW, and strongly advertised for sale.
A review by the Online Computer Library Centre found 74,000 porn sites on the WWW in 2001, the estimated profit (bottom line earnings, not revenue) was US$ 1 billion. (By 2003 the number of porn sites on the WWW was said to have reached 8 million.)
Although there are already many porn sites on the WWW, they only represented 2% of the total sites in the above (2001) survey. Because pornography on the WWW is so lucrative the potential for it to grow is considerable. All the commercial growth will be on the WWW. Freenet, by definition is free and there is no money to be made from pornography there.
By and large, federal agencies have not moved to restrict pornography on the WWW. Hey, its good for the economy isn't it? What Big Brother's regulators and spooks have done, is bring pornography fully under their surveillance. The World Wide Web has become the World Wide Watch. Big Brother has no interest in curbing pornography, he just wants to spy on everyone who accesses this and every other piece of content that travels over the communication cables and air waves.
If authorities from various national government agencies take action to muzzle Freenet or close it down, their motivation will not be related to preventing the spread of pornography. The targets will be free speech and new ideas. If anti-Freenet measures are effected, the losers will be the citizens of the "free" world. Consumers of pornography will still be able to access pornographic material that is equally as "bad" as anything that has ever been available on Freenet, by continuing to browse the World Wide Web under the full surveillance of those government agencies.
The Renaissance saw an explosion in pornography via the medium of printed books that contained ribald stories and etchings. These materials propagated alongside new knowledge and ideas that eventually resulted in the society and values that exist today. No one should be too surprised that the introduction of new electronic media during the 2nd Renaissance is producing a similar surge of porn and new ideas, side by side.
The Most Unbelievable Change of the 2nd Renaissance (16)
Of all the changes that form part of the great transformation presently engulfing our world, the reality of abundance is the most difficult for most people to come to terms with. The notion that a Level 4 civilization can possibly produce more than enough physical resources and energy to feed, clothe and shelter all of humanity, at standards higher than those presently enjoyed by the top 10% of citizens of the outgoing civilization, is contrary to all the documented principles and knowledge in the vast number of economic texts and analyses that exist today.
However, all the old texts are now outdated. The force that has rendered conventional economic doctrines obsolete is information. The tool that has made it possible to access and utilise not only information but imagination and vision is the digital computer. The intellectual disciplines that have been greatly leveraged by the explosion of information and knowledge, and the availability of digital computers, are the sciences. The sciences are revising and extending knowledge exponentially, and new technologies spawned by scientific discoveries are leading, inevitably, to abundance in every aspect of human existence. As early as the 1960s the late G. Harry Stine recognised where we are headed. He said it simply.
"We must learn how to be rich and handle abundance, because we have never had to do it before."
Food Production Capacity Already Exceeds Global Needs (17)
Before we consider why abundance alarms powerful interests we need to establish that abundance exists. We can get to the crux of the reality of abundance without needing to instance the way new sources of energy can already eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels, or the way nanotechnology will soon offer the prospect of robotically manufactured goods that are constructed from molecules - from the inside out - rather than crudely fashioned by human machinists from larger blocks of material. We can look at the abundance of food.
To many people in the developing world this is a contradiction in terms, food and abundance do not go together in their countries. But, when all countries are considered together, there is already sufficient productive capacity to feed every human being on Earth. Although food is not scarce in an overall sense, more than 100,000 children die each month from malnutrition and related diseases. Excess food is routinely dumped and agricultural production is restricted by quotas designed to maintain high prices.
Greed and fear are the historical causes of the obscene failure of Western nation states to end the practices that curtail the production and distribution of food, and other essential resources, to the people of the world.
Abundance Scares Profiteers and Politicians (18)
Vested interests and government ideologues alike are wedded to the notion of economic scarcity and are intent on keeping it alive. It is easy to understand why those who control the supply of food want to maintain a base level of scarcity. If food were too plentiful it would not be possible to charge high prices. But why would governments fear abundance? Look no further than the reasons for having governments at all. Besides providing basic services, which they are increasingly privatising or contracting out, governments redistribute wealth and resources. They have social policies and programs to fix poverty, fix crime, fix health, fix schooling, fix housing, fix anything and everything - just trust them one more time. Once resources become abundant, however, most people will choose to fix things for themselves.
Representative democracy becomes unnecessary in conditions of abundance. That's the problem for profiteers and politicians facing the 2nd Renaissance. They must impede insights and developments that lead to abundance, and promote the old notions of economic scarcity.
While vested interests and governments have, so far, succeeded in constraining the production and distribution of food, the challenge of doing the same for energy, and for the almost costless consumer goods that will result from nanofacture, will be more difficult. In due course the challenge of suppressing knowledge and abundance will prove impossible.
New Science - New Civilization (19)
During the Dark Ages, in Europe, the scientific theories used to describe the observed world left a lot to be desired. The Roman Church was the final arbiter on all scientific explanations of nature, matter, life and the heavens. At the time, it was held that the Earth was the centre of a limited universe, the Sun was said to travel across the heavens, and the number of stars in the firmament was seen as fixed and unchanging. Until Galileo Galilei, science followed the teachings of Aristotle in physics, and it was considered that heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones.
The first Renaissance produced a wave of new thinking and theories and led to the science that is now taught as "modern". By the start of the 20th century it was thought, by some scientists, that all that could be explained in the physical sciences had been discovered. But, during the 1900s, and particularly following the introduction of powerful and widely available computers, the "modern" theories and explanations of science began to be challenged and radically revised.
Much of this new science involves explanations and theories that are counterintuitive. Quite early in the 20th century Niels Bhor remarked that anyone who isn't shocked by quantum mechanics has not understood it. The trend of uncovering previously undreamed of levels of complexity in nature that are governed by elegantly simple constructs continues at an ever-increasing rate. New scientific theories and new insights are spawning previously unimaginable new technologies, that will inevitably lead to a global abundance of physical resources and material goods.
The new technologies will also raise the level of information available to the incoming civilization to about 1025 bits. This is the level, calculated by Douglas Robertson, at which a Level 4 Civilization will operate. As noted above, it is not only the explosion of information that is so empowering, but the expectation that new technologies will enable the entire stock of knowledge to be accessed.
