‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.’
- Margaret Mead
Old Jim was a memorable figure in my home town of Newport. He usually sported a shock of unruly hair and a full beard, but once a year he would go to the barber’s and have it all cut off. It was strange to see him clean-shaven after this yearly ritual, his head bald and scabbed.
Old Jim could often be found outside the post office. Towards the middle of the day, sunlight reached in through the windows of the post office and alighted on the cleavage of the friendly young woman who worked behind the counter. Old Jim was transfixed. Surprisingly, the young woman would wave to Jim. Jim would give a nervous wave back, which only goes to prove that the correct behaviour around cleavages can be complex. Sometimes the elderly post-mistress would come out of the shop and chase old Jim away.
Jim took refuge in the butcher’s shop next door. Jim was not really the kind of person who could have found work, but Alan the butcher let him help out by chopping up meat and sometimes sawing up bones for the armies of pet dogs that belonged to the town and for those occasional folks who still prepare soup by boiling up a bone.
Jim could also be seen down by the river, staring out over the water. His oversized leather jacket would flap in the wind and his baggy jeans scuffed through the grass where he walked.
Jim’s conversation was fairly basic, but he would always speak when he saw me. When you spoke to Jim he seemed to scrutinise you closely, as if looking for some sign that you were mocking him or holding him in contempt. Indeed, it became obvious that many people held a low opinion of him. Some would make shifty side-long glances at me as well, if they saw me stopping to speak with him.
Old Jim lived alone. One evening, whilst sitting in his armchair, he just slipped away to his eternal rest. In fact, it turned out that Jim had not been that old, being barely into his sixties when he died. When I lived in Newport I used to sit by the river myself quite often and I like to think that Jim could still somehow look down on the shifting waters of the River Tay. Who knows? Let’s hope at least that he’s keeping away from cleavages.
At this point in the book we have visions of utopia, views on ownership, ideas about the commons and how the natural commons may be more fairly shared and more sustainably managed. In the last chapter, we looked at the question of whether government is necessary, and then we looked at various forms of government that have been proposed. When we considered government by the many, we discussed the need for everyone to have a voice, but also the need to ensure that issues are considered carefully by all those who will be affected by the matter under debate. This chapter and the next look at how this might be achieved in more detail. It is an approach that starts from the very smallest of scales and then builds gradually to take up the bigger solutions of political and economic systems.
Charles Eisenstein (Sacred Economics) points out that today’s communities are only really about shared interests and hobbies. We ‘outsource’ almost all our immediate needs to strangers — be it for food, clothing, housing, child-minding, education or health-care. If one person does not provide the goods or services we need, then we just go somewhere else. As he points out, it does not really matter who provides these things — they are all paid for by money, so they all become equivalent. There is no relationship in such transactions — except the most superficial of acquaintances. By contrast, community, for Eisenstein, is inevitably local. Without a reliance on our neighbours for our everyday sustenance, there is, for him, no real community. If we are to challenge the current story of Privatopia and propose a new story, then this issue of community — especially small-scale, local community — is especially important.
The Issue of Scale
Small-scale organisations — whether they be neighbourhoods, businesses or institutions — have the enormous advantage that the participants will be known to each other personally. We have evolved as a social species and can relate to a circle of around 150 individuals at most. That is why, I believe, small groups are the key to larger organisations, and hence to our politics and our economy. People who disrupt meetings or communities are thereby exposed to the possibility of being made to feel guilty and perhaps even excluded; almost the worst fate that can befall us humans.
In Nowtopia, Chris Carlsson looks at specific types of community activity that he sees as emblematic of the coming change to a different social and economic world. His focus is on community garden projects, cycling, DIY fuel sources and festivals. Nowtopia is a positive and intelligent book as far as it goes. The author, however, identifies scale as a potential problem for the types of projects he explores. As projects flourish and grow in scale, they seemingly inevitably take on the features of the consumer capitalist corporations that they have initially tried to replace. They become bureaucracies. Perhaps this is not inevitable, and there are examples of businesses that have maintained their style and ethic whilst growing larger (often by breaking up into smaller autonomous units, only tenuously connected). Nonetheless, it shows the power of our current mindset, such that few of us are able to envisage society-wide alternatives, let alone find ways to realise them. Garrett Hardin (him of the Tragedy of the Commons) warned us of the dangers of scaling up. He said:
‘Perhaps no shortcoming of utopian thinkers is as striking as their apparent blindness to scale and its implications. A politico-economic system that works well with small numbers may fail utterly with large. This is one of the most important factors accounting for the ultimate failure of Utopian communities.’
Garrett Hardin — Filters Against Folly.
So we have to be mindful of this warning as the argument progresses in this chapter and the next.
Notwithstanding Hardin’s warnings, I think small is where we ought to start. We noted above that we relate best in smaller groups. Small-scale is also invariably local and place-based, and I feel this is essential for maintaining the care and respect we need to show to both wild nature and to our own human settlements. Small-scale, as we have seen, is also personal. It gives the opportunity for people to deepen as individuals — to gain some wisdom. It allows for small failures, that the local community can forgive and also embrace and learn from. It allows a wider vision to be built up through many smaller visions, even whilst acknowledging that there sometimes need to be larger organisations and bigger plans.
Starting with Ourselves
We might then look to start at the smallest scale of all; that is, just with ourselves. As people, we are both natural commons and wild nature. We are natural commons because of our physical and intellectual labour. We are also wild nature in that we are wild in mind, body and soul. We can describe ourselves as a commons because the commons is about more than natural resources, but also about the social relations around these resources, and about individual acts of commoning. It is this deep connection with wild nature and consequently our deep connection with others that is the real basis for compassion — and the real basis of successful societies.
We are not therefore a Privatopia within ourselves. If we are instead a commons, then we can let go of so much baggage. We can give up the defensiveness that so often causes us such stress, even whilst we are trying to protect ourselves. Stepping back from all the petty concerns of life lets us have a broader vision for what our lives are about and what our society might be about. Do we have that view of ourselves at the moment? I’d suggest that often we do not, as we are led to believe that we must earn the respect of society, earn our place in the economy, earn our right to be heard as citizens through education, and so forth. We have become cut off from who we are as persons. To change society means changing people at a deep level and not just changing the politics, or the economics. But arguably the change in ourselves is more about realising who we already are, rather than becoming someone new.
As such, wider society needs to recognise that every person has integrity, dignity and intrinsic value. There is nothing to be proven or earned. Society also needs to take responsibility for ensuring that we are reasonably rewarded for our work and help will be there if we fall on hard times. We examined these key factors in relation to governance in the previous chapter. This is a reciprocal arrangement — freedom with responsibility. The wider community owes us as individuals respect and care. Individually and collectively, we owe respect and care to the natural commons, to wild nature and to human society as a whole.
Personal Change leading to Vision
Such matters as climate change, biodiversity and defence are broad issues for nations and societies where current governments are failing badly. I suggest that the first thing that is needed is for us as individuals to recognise these and other concerns as being as much about ourselves as it is about people ‘out there’ who perhaps we feel should take responsibility. As we touched on towards the end of the last chapter, it is the social relations within society that really make towards its best functioning. It is social relations that drive our economics and should drive our governance — not the other way around. I think we can aim high and work with the minority of dissenting voices who seek such a profound change.
When we think of ourselves as part of a commons, then we take on board the need to share a common responsibility for contributing to society. Much of this is simply about ‘re-making’ human culture, through food, clothing, housing and families. (All of which is usually referred to as ‘maintenance’ or ‘reproduction’ in economics.) But we can do even these basic things either well or badly. Beyond this, there may be specific missions to be realised. As well as realising the ‘freedom from’ that good governance offers us, we can realise the ‘freedom to’. It is a freedom to make, above all else, and a freedom to ‘re-make’. Industrial economies have divided us from our ‘making’, as John Holloway has described, and leave us alienated and dependent. Likewise, our re-making has been ignored and diminished, and yet this is also integral to who we are. When we are with friends they re-make us. In conversation, we are re-made. With our partners and children we are re-made. When we take up some satisfying work then we make and we re-make and are re-made in return. In all of this we can be giving pleasure and creating beauty. I think any vision for a new story needs to start from these simple objectives. Re-making then covers a broad spectrum of ideas, from the daily chores of keeping house, feeding and clothing, (‘maintenance’ or ‘reproduction’) through to work, relationships, family and love.
In short, the vision can be summarised as: ‘Fall in love with the world.’ Then it is down to our hard work and co-operation that this vision is first explored and described and then brought into reality. We need both the inspiration and the perspiration.
New Missions are formed by Working Together
The vision is what we wish the world to be like. The mission is how we set about achieving this. The aims are the smaller tasks that go towards the mission. A governance system known as Sociocracy, which we will discuss later in the chapter, summarises vision, mission and aims by saying: ‘We are dreaming of a world where it is true that… (vision). We work to… (mission), by… (aims).’ (From Ted J. Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez — Many Voices, One Song.) If we can get things right amongst a small group of people then the hope is that we will get things right on a larger scale. Provided the big-scale structures do not become anonymous bureaucracies, it is possible. Big politics can instead be discussions between the right people for whatever task is in hand. Big politics still comes down to a few people in a room together, talking things through. As such, all that applies in this chapter to small communities can remain relevant as we scale up.
To realise a vision for a new story we inevitably have to work together. It relies on people being fully engaged, affirming towards one another and the communities and places where we live. Those who share our pleasures and our passions are likely to be those with whom we strike up a bond. We work best with people who affirm us. In turn, we can aim to be the kind of people who affirm others. A willingness to fail and the ability to forgive the failures in ourselves and others is a good place to be. Only then will our utopias be ones that can evolve and adapt to new circumstances and to changes in people and communities.
In working together though, we immediately come up against questions of power and hierarchy. As we saw in the previous chapter, it was often the anarchist reformers who had — and still have — a particular aversion to the problems that power-structures can create. To have a successful means of working together, we therefore have to have a think about how these issues might play out.
Power and Hierarchy
‘Starhawk’ (The Spiral Dance, Truth or Dare) suggests that our default story is one of ‘power over’ and as such, we often unconsciously adopt a position of feeling ‘dis-empowered’. The default story suggests that we have only extrinsic value, derived from our usefulness, financial status or such like. Such extrinsic values are only relevant to an atomised, individualistic world and only really achievable by some people, some of the time. We need to change the story, she suggests, to one of ‘power within’ and ‘power with’. As people, we have intrinsic value (hence ‘power within’) Furthermore, we are connected to others, and hence, ‘power with’. (Starhawk also reminds us that genuine value — intrinsic or imminent value — is always embodied.) Other authors contrast Logos power (that seeks to dominate) with Eros power (which seeks to unite and cohere).
By way of contrast to these views, Jordan Peterson (12 Rules for Life — An Antidote to Chaos) suggests that the collective pursuit of any valued goal produces a hierarchy, since some people will be better than others at pursuing that goal. Without seeking goals in life, Peterson says, there is no purpose. But the consequence is that we must inevitably have hierarchy. However, Peterson suggests, there are many different personal goals open to all of us, and so there are many opportunities for us to experience fulfilment of our meanings and purposes in life.
Peterson suggests that there is no evidence that patriarchy is pathological and has its source in the male domination of women rather than being part of our biological nature. (Famously he discusses this in relation to lobsters.) Also, he dismisses the idea that hierarchies are all based on power and aimed at exclusion. By contrast, he suggests that it is competence rather than power that is the prime determinant of status. Ability, skill and intelligence are valued highly in our culture. Faced with requiring brain surgery, for instance, and given a choice of surgeons, would we not all choose our surgeon on the basis of qualifications, skill and intelligence?
John Holloway sums up the divisiveness of power-over relations:
‘Power-over reaches into us and transforms us, forcing us to participate in its reproduction. The rigidification of social relations, the that’s-the-way-things-are-ness… is not just outside us (in society), but reaches into us as well, into the way that we think, the way we act, the way we are, the fact that we are. In the process of being separated from our done and from our doing, [this is Holloway’s manner of expressing labour being alienated from the means of production] we ourselves are damaged. Our activity is transformed into greed for money, our co-operation with fellow doers is transformed into an instrumental relation mediated by money and competition. The innocence of our doing, of our power-to, becomes a guilty participation in the exercise of power-over. Our estrangement from doing is a self-estrangement. Here is no pure revolutionary subject, but damaged humanity.’ (John Holloway — Change the World Without Taking Power.)
These competing views of hierarchy are mirrored in our view of nature. Nature used to be ‘red in tooth and claw’ but now symbiosis and ‘mutual aid’ is the order of the day, and this is often as a result of rejecting the old ‘survival of the fittest’ view of nature in favour of one that is more co-operative. (Even ‘fittest’ may have different meanings — such as the ability to fit into a niche and to co-operate, rather than just to compete or conquer.) But both views of nature can be supported. Nature is still as much hierarchical and competitive as she is co-operative and mutually sustaining. Such features carry across to our own human nature. As such, we are as much ‘power over’ as we are ‘power with’.
Let’s face it, hierarchy and power are complex issues. Trying to figure them out can often be an abstract and philosophical exercise (although of course with practical implications). Hierarchy and power may be innate to human nature, or they may have come about because of culture. Either way, it’s just a plain fact that there are hierarchies. I think a recognition of this basic feature of human nature — and/or human culture — is the way to go. There is likely to always be a need for layers of decision-making in human cultures, so we have to work with this and try to balance things up as fairly as we possibly can.
Equality in Groups
It is reasonable to say that communities of all types were once more hierarchical in nature. There would be a recognised ‘leader’ of some sort and then a structured authority within which people understood their place. If they existed at all, wider authorities such as kingdoms or national governments, had a more tenuous hold over the everyday lives of an individual. Nowadays, in the majority of societies, this has changed. Larger bureaucracies, of whatever political stripe, look after most of our needs. We see small communities as something additional to the immediate concerns of everyday life, so we do not view the idea of community in the same way as we view authority and large bureaucracy. In particular, we seem to have an expectation of equality within a community context. Robert Greene (Power) has this warning for us:
‘In the past, an entire nation would be ruled by a king and his handful of ministers. Only the elite had power to play with. Over the centuries, power has gradually become more and more diffused and democratised. This has created, however, a common misperception that groups no longer have centres of power — that power is spread out and scattered among many people. Actually, however, power has changed in its numbers but not in its essence. There may be fewer tyrants commanding the power of life and death over millions, but there remain thousands of petty tyrants ruling smaller realms, and enforcing their will through indirect power games, charisma and so on. In every group, power is concentrated in the hands of one or two people, for this is one area where human nature will never change: People will congregate around a single strong personality like planets orbiting a sun.’ Robert Greene — Power.
Greene’s book is a brilliant, if disturbing, read. It may look mostly to history for examples of the behaviour of tyrants, but as the quote above warns us, the powerful still behave in much the same way today. Even more disturbing is that so many tyrants are oblivious to their own tyranny. I think that many people — the author included — fear the prospect of a dominant person within a group, who will continually seek their own way and take over conversations, unless constantly kept in check — if indeed keeping them in check is even possible. Or it may be that there is an ‘Old Jim’ in your community — someone who is awkward around people and may struggle to express their feelings and identify their needs. Such a person is difficult for many of us to acknowledge, let alone hear. Would we listen? The most important aspect of community is that everyone has a voice.
If we are to organise politics on a bottom-up basis, a community’s difficulties will be carried up to the broader structures of governance. So, how to address this issue of the pocket tyrant? I think the most important thing is for the group or community to be very clear about its vision, its mission and its aims. The tyrant’s aims are likely to be on their own personal agenda and likely to be at odds with the wider group. So we have to get things right — or at least, as good as possible — even at the smallest scale. Humility is called for; the acknowledgement that we might be severely wrong in our opinions and the need to realise that those we most disagree with may sometimes be right.
Whilst communities remain only communities of interest, this is not so much of a problem — we can always just vote with our feet. Our life and sustenance need not depend on a good relationship with others — and this is increasingly so, as we explored with Charles Eisenstein earlier in the chapter and with the current society I have named Privatopia. If however, we returned to a situation where we relied on the local community to be our chief means of support, and also the place for decision-making, then difficult characters become much more problematic. And the same is true if we seek to transform society in other ways. Good governance is required to bring wisdom to community relations.
A small group or community is not likely to be running for long before some issue of equality comes up. Having thought about and been involved in various types of community for many years, it is this issue of equality that the author has come to see as the most problematic. There are power dynamics within couples and families, and even amongst friends. But in communities the power relations really come to the fore. Even if there is no acknowledged hierarchy in a community, there will always be a covert hierarchy. The stomach has already decided where people stand in hierarchies of looks, charm, strength and power, long before our mind rationalises the gut instinct and/or modifies or suppresses it with what is socially acceptable. Therefore, if the community tries to function on the basis of equality, there can be friction, because any concerns have no acknowledged process of resolution. Problems cannot be referred up a chain of command, because everyone, allegedly, has equal authority.
A solution may be to recognise and contrast ‘dominator hierarchies’ (where ‘power over’ is abused) with ‘reciprocal hierarchies’ (where power is administered with compassion and we are closer to ‘power with’). Power exercised with compassion is really the key here. A community is hopefully an expression of compassion — in fact, outwith families, the principle means of compassion.
Community and Bureaucracy
In A Different Drum, author M. Scott Peck speaks about ‘brokenness’ as the way of forming community. Communities are established for a number of reasons. They may be ‘intentional communities’ of people living together, perhaps with a level of self-sufficiency — set up as an alternative to the surrounding dominant culture of consumer capitalism. Or they may simply be ‘communities of interest’ — people who share a passion in something and who may not even be living locally to each other. Whatever the situation though, the community has various functions to fulfil, and Peck suggests that this can be done in one of two ways: People can be open and honest about who they are and about their real feelings — and so be ‘broken’, in Peck’s terms. Or, they can close up and relate to each other only in order to achieve the community’s aims, without sharing themselves personally. Peck describes this as a bureaucracy, or a committee. It seems to be an all or nothing situation for Peck, with the ‘true’, broken, community obviously very much more appealing to him than a bureaucracy.
Peck has set up a polarity. Either a group will form a community or it will form a committee. In reality, every group of people is on a spectrum somewhere between these two extremes. The most bureaucratically controlled workplace — a call centre perhaps, or a parcel sorting office — must surely retain some vestige of community. (I could be wrong.) Meanwhile, a monastery must have some rules to organise daily chores, for instance, or times of worship.
The committee state then, allows the group to carry out its functions without individuals having to lower their usual personal defences. Community, by contrast, according to Peck, is a state of ‘brokenness’. The hearts of the community members are open to each other and there is a deep sense of sharing.
Part of the brokenness of which Peck speaks is a willingness to fail and to forgive failure, as we have mentioned above. Whilst I’ve suggested there is a spectrum between the committee and the community, nonetheless it is probably fair to say more community — thus, more personal connection between people — would be helpful.
Sociocracy
One governance system that I want to introduce here is called Sociocracy. The history of Sociocracy, plus a basic description of its workings, is provided in John Buck and Sharon Villines’, We the People. More detail is given in Many Voices, One Song by Ted J. Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez — contemporary instructors in Sociocracy. Practising Sociocracy is probably easier than trying to describe it. Such simple procedures as ‘doing a round’ (that is, asking each member in a group to speak in turn about a particular issue) form part of Sociocracy. Sociocracy gives very specific meanings to the terms ‘vision’, ‘mission’, and ‘aim’. I’ve addressed these a little in a preceding section. The vision is the way we would like the world to be. For instance, a world where all humanity has access to clean water may be a vision. The mission is then related to this: To bring water to those without and to make sure it’s safe. The aims are the smaller acts that will help to fulfil the mission and therefore realise the vision. Being very clear and straight-forward in defining vision, mission and aims can be a great service to any organisation.
Sociocracy is about continuous evolution through feedback. This means that a group’s aims, mission and even its vision, are always open for review. As the group develops and tries out different strategies to fulfil its mission, it reviews progress and makes changes as necessary. Everyone is asked to stay focused on the mission and aims of the group. Everyone has the responsibility of trying to move the group towards its vision. We see these ideas reflected in our discussion of the last chapter, where we looked at the more informal federations and assemblies as alternative governance structures to the rigid hierarchies of institutions, and we will pick up on this again below.
Sociocracy is decision making by consent. Every voice matters and every individual has the power of consent, or dissent. Rau and Koch-Gonzalez say: ‘The definition of consent is that a decision is made if no circle member has an objection.’ Consent does not necessarily mean full consensus. The level of consent can be decided on as appropriate for the particular decision that is being considered. Objections are a ‘gift’ to the group, as these can be fruitful in generating debate as well as sometimes voicing concerns that others share but have not yet felt able to express. Tackling concerns head-on in this manner allows the group to further its aims and be open and receptive to new ideas. Dissenters though, need to be very clear about their reasons for raising concerns. Participants are encouraged not to leave a meeting with a thought that they have not shared with the group.
Sociocracy is organised on the basis of circles. (Being a bit nervous about hierarchy, everything is geared towards avoiding a top-down structure!) The central, or general, circle may be enough for small groups. This can then form smaller circles for specific functions as the need arises. Each circle has a leader and a facilitator, also usually a secretary and sometimes a log-book keeper to record an overview of how the group has evolved in its mission over time. The smaller groups will have a delegate who represents them at the general circle level, along with the group’s leader. And the leader and delegate will also be full members of the next wider circle in which they represent their group — a process Sociocracy calls ‘double-linking’. As such, there is always feedback both back and forward between circles and always with at least two people representing the work of one circle to the members of another circle. A mission circle might also be appropriate and perhaps for a corporation, a circle would be formed for the business’s customers and even for shareholders.
Sociocracy is not about making everyone equal, but it does attempt to mitigate the imbalances in human relations, where power dynamics can often determine the way groups and organisations are run. It tries to address the tendency to sometimes seek our own way and the tendency within some people to dominate decision-making processes. So it tries to address those concerns over hierarchy and those power dynamics that we touched on above. However, it is important to remember that each of us also needs to have some emotional, and even what might loosely be describ