The Classless Society and the Road to Hell

I am optimistic, but also a scientist, primarily, so not that prone to kidding myself, I hope. I will never claim to have the answer to what constitutes a path towardsa sustainable human society, and certainly not any recepy to the thing itself. But I do have a lot of faith in human ingenuity, as well as in the strength of our evolutionary prerogative (or Spirit, as some call it), and so hope that the answers will keep surfacing through a big global action-learning process that we share and critique (but especially DO) each in our local communities.

As with all true creations, the way there is map-less - you make the path as you walk it - it is only when you've gotten to the next hill that you can see the next bit of the path. All you have to do is have a clear vision, a good compass, and get walking. Easier said than done. Especially if you don't get the talking / walking ratio right: chatting is nice, some is essential, but too much can detract from the energy needed for the walking and often also clouds our ability to really see the new view with new eyes.

What I think is very important to get out there, and part of the compass (being good solid principles, ethics, a connection with your intuition or gut feelings, ) in the face of much hopeful but misleading stuff that is being spread nowadays is PLEASE NOTE ..this is not about good intentions (contrary to what a lot of - superficial - new age stuff might lead you to believe), as it is more true than ever, in this 'changing the world' game that

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

Anon

Chris Rea - Road to Hell

There is a disastrously naive idea out there that somehow 'things will turn out ok' if we have pure motives, or good intentions. Uh uh ..

It should by now be blatantly obvious that the very good intentions of our ancestorsare precisely what have caused the mega-problems and crisis we are having to resolve now, yet still we see plenty of the very same kind of short-sighted and uninformed quick-fix, comfort-seeking, individualism-worshipping and especially the superiority complex of our culture .. and plenty of other such patterns that fractal their way down to our tiniest psychosis and upwards to the biggest wars and ecological disasters.

The - sometimes controversial - Action Learning Programme I have been running for the last 8years, (together with my involvement in the 'alternative movements' for the last 20yrs), have been an amazing living laboratory, where I have observed in some detail many of these patterns. And there I sharpened my gift of spotting the patterns, their miriad shape-changes and the connections between them and what is happening in our world, on many different scales.

A gift is simply something that is effortless and obvious to you, but not to the majority of people around you. I don't claim any merit for it, it's probably a result of being moved around every 2 years when young, to different countries, cultures and sometimes different continents. If you don't get into pattern and systemic thinking when your environment is changing dramatically and frequently around you, you just go nuts (and I didn't, although a few people might argue with that ...)

This is not just vain supposition, there have been many instances where I just saw beyond appearances, and so knew how things were going to pan out - and they did. From quite young I tried to shut-down this Sibyl part as a big nuisance, several times (interesting that there were 'wondering Sibyls' ..) but re-integrated some of it when I became a permaculture designer, in my late twenties, because I started understanding it basically as just a kind of vision-ability for pattern. Not that that stopped me from getting into trouble, far from it ..

What I hope will start to happen, as the co-creation and supra-sex ideas get more widely spread, is that we'll see a lot more grateful acceptance for each other's gifts (which are often our difficult peculiarities also, and as such, sometimes difficult to live with) and stop trying to surround yourself only with "people like yourself".

We know what making babies with your relatives does, and something very similar happens with inbreeding in co-creation...