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Geodemocracy Introduction -Overview |
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Geodemocracy Introduction -Overview |
These Lessons are not yet finished.
Ask questions if you find areas not covered by the text.
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The Geodesic Direct Democratic Network Introduction-Overview As homework, each person who wishes to learn this should write a glossary of the new terms and titles, with their meanings, from this Lesson. If the terms are understood, the whole system is pretty much easily understood.
It is important to realize that there are people in this world other than politicians trying to do something. I would guess that one hundred years from now, historians will note that in (this) period Man was so preoccupied and so relatively illiterate that he thought it all right to leave the problems of the world to the politicians. This idea will look preposterous in the perspective of history.- R. Buckminster Fuller, IDEAS AND INTEGRITIES P.306
In this new Millennium, It is time to try something new in the way of government. For the whole last millennium, we have used the 'winner/loser' paradigm as the basis of all decision making, at first enforced by militaries and now by money backed by police. The systems we are using are not up to the task of governing the world in a sane and intelligent manner. This is rejected by many, and I am not here to convince anyone of this situation, but I ask that people just look around at the world, listen to the sources of news, especially from those in other countries which are watching their environments die at the hands of those who cannot think in sane ways.
There is an alternative. It was not possible before present times, but it is possible now, and it would change everything. It's called a Geodesic Direct Democratic Network, or Geonet for short. It is an organizational model, not a philosophy or theology or any other particular way of thinking, but just a structure which guards against the delegation of decision making to a few individuals or small groups. It recognizes that power comes from the decisions of each individual, regardless of their concepts or beliefs, and preserves that power to them, in every way that counts. Some version of it will someday be the government of all Humans, but right now, it is just an organizational model.
Democracy comes from the idea that the majority of people are sane and when educated and informed of all the data, "the facts", of any problem will likely come up with a solution that is best for everyone. In the past, this was as likely to create tyranny as freedom for some minority, as it did for the American Native Peoples when the decisions were made by the Europeans which invaded their continent. The data the average European had was an image of contrasting cultures, with an intense bias for the European culture and it's religion and politics and a very distorted and ignorant view of the Natives, not an objective view of both.
This kind of bias is fading because the cultures are all mixed now, not completely, but far more than ever before in history. Data is available on all kinds of viewpoints and solutions, different perspectives and assumptions. It is commonly recognized that local problems often require local solutions, and for each level of problem, it is likely that a level of solution is required at that level, from local to global. It is said that the people as a whole are always far ahead of their delegated authorities on one hand, but that people when they organize and associate for the purpose of finding solutions will tend to accept the 'leadership' of those who are especially good at swaying human emotions with their words, which often, for the 'leaders' own personal purposes, led to group decisions that really only include the 'leaders' and their immediate cohorts, creating bad results rather than good results in the long term. Such a group is often more of a social system than a rational decision system.
The solution to this problem is to create group decisions while counteracting the formation of social groups, and to keep the responsibility under the control of each individual rather than delegated 'leaders'. At the same time, the system has to be able to handle different levels of problems by involving different numbers of people, once again without allowing 'leaders' to form cliques and attempt to control the opinions of others through emotion, group instilled fear, and rational sounding, but illogical or expedient argument. There is only one way to do this, and that is with a geodesic organization.
A geodesic is a structure where all the components are equal. It is the basic structure of all atomic and molecular structures. In human terms, it is best shown in terms of buildings like Disney's Epcot Center, which is a geodesic building. A geodesic building covers an amount of volume with a strength that would require possibly hundreds of times more materials and work to build to have the same coverage and strength. A geodesic does more with a lot less, and when trying to build beyond certain sizes, the geodesic is the only kind of structure which can cover such volumes. It not only does more with less, it gets stronger the larger it is. In a geodesic organizational structure, all the people are equal, and each controls their own investment in the results of the system. It is the very essence of the concept of democracy, and if designed right, it can prevent the abuses of group decision making, by individuals, small social groups, or even outside forces.
Each human being has inherently a certain amount of power. Their power comes from their bodies, in what they physically do, their minds, as concepts, emotions, and intuition, and their knowledge, which they learn from others, and from their own experiences, ...all which comprise their Spirit. If threatened, overwhelmed by social position, scared, bribed, or just ignorant, they can be convinced to give up that power to others, who then make the decisions and plans, and the individuals carry them out, not realizing that it was their decision to obey that makes what they do their responsibility, not the decision maker.
This surrender of decision is instinctive, a survival necessity for the millions of years that we lived in Tribes, not just a process of conceptuality or mind. If enough people give their decisions over to someone else, especially concentrating them on a single person, that person can use force to intimidate those remaining people who refused to obey to give up their power to him or her. This is the basis of all human social power in the world right now and the greatest fear of all who value freedom.
But there is only so much a single human can do. If no cooperation occurs between people, they are not only far easier to control by powerful individuals, but actually accomplish little. There is a law of Nature called Synergy.
Synergy is defined as the characteristics of the whole not deducible by the characteristics of the parts considered separately. We are taught that 1+1=2, and in static systems, this is true. If you pick up one stone and then another, you have two stones. But when we are talking about dynamic systems, like fields and social structures, then 1+1 does not always equal 2. Sometimes, under certain conditions, 1+1=3... or 4 ... or 5, etc. If you take one rabbit and put it in with another rabbit, and they happen to be of different genders, you might end up with 15 rabbits.
Consider table salt; table salt, or sodium chloride, is made up of two components --sodium, which is a metal which explodes -- and -- Chlorine, which is a poisonous gas -- so how come we can eat sodium chloride without being poisoned and/or exploding? Because together they have synergetic results, they produce a salt which is needed by the body to retain water. It is actually healthy to have small amounts of salt in the diet, very small amounts, and dangerous not to. If you didn't know about salt, and you studied Sodium and Chlorine, you could not deduce that they together are neither explosive nor poisonous... this is Synergy.
So Humans have to produce synergy to survive, that is, they have to cooperate to some degree. When they do cooperate, and everyone does instinctively, they produce synergy among themselves. This synergy can range from the lynch mob to a corporation to a spiritual state of communion. The problem comes from how they organize themselves and what kind of manifestation they produce in that organization. Nazi Germany was not all Nazi followers... most were just loyal German citizens who watched the synergy of the country, a social unit, go crazy and destroy itself against the rest of the world, taking millions of lives in the process. With people believing that 'you cannot fight city hall', then when city hall goes crazy, they go along with it, delegating their power to it as it requires out of pessimism and fear.
All social systems now existing either forces people to cooperate or rejects them if they don't cooperate. A business just fires someone who does not cooperate with decisions from the few at the top who make decisions, and a government will often kill anyone who resists or does not cooperate with the few at the top who make decisions. A geodesic democracy, however, can be designed to prevent such rejection or force. There is a way, and that way is the Geonet.
A system, any system, has two necessary dynamics, a compression component and a tension component. Without both of these, the structure will not stand up. The compression, in organizational terms, is the rigid structure of interaction, while the tension component is the flow of ideas and actions resulting from those ideas being accepted. A system which does not have enough rigidity, even in terms of common agreements, will not come about, and a system which is not flexible enough will not survive it's first crises, which is a normal part of all systems as they interact with outside forces. This applies to galaxies and atoms, as well as human social systems.
A geodesic social structure cannot be any different. The rigidity of the system is as required as the flexibility of the system. As long as the rigidity does not restrict the flow of ideas and decisions, but protects that flow, then the balance is preserved, and as long as the flexibility does not dissolve the rigidity of the system, leaving it formless and easy to fly apart or be destroyed, then the balance is preserved also.
In a hierarchical system, the rigidity is preserved by conditioning backed by force. The flexibility is from the top down, and not from the bottom up, so the force is necessary and preserves the rigidity. The flexibility at the top is preserved by the rigidity which holds it up by the delegation of power from the bottom en mass. At the top, tight agreement must exist, while at the bottom, disagreement is best, to preserve the delegation of power the top relies on. If division exists at the top, either it is a deliberate illusion, or the system as a whole is dissolving into struggle. If people fear each other more than they fear their 'leaders' then the system is working perfectly... for the leaders.
A geodesic system requires no 'leaders' and no fear. It must have built in rigidity that preserves the flow of ideas without allowing divisions beyond the designed-in cellular structure. The unity must be in the structure, not in the ideas, for to try to control the ideas and actions is to try to limit the power of the people involved... yet, the structure has to have feedback loops so all individuals know the results of their ideas and actions. The structure is inherent, that is, when the geodesic system is first started, the structure is the form the system takes, without any changes by the individuals who join. There is no overview by others, no power structure to say 'this is the way it is' or to make changes in the system as it continues. All who join therefore have to know the system before they join, and to do that they will either take lessons and 'fake' meetings, or once it starts, they will be 'Soakers' soaking up the structure as to how it is done. Compared to large scale hierarchical systems, the geodesic democracy is incredibly simple and easy to learn ...and never impersonal.
Remember, all new concepts seem complex, especially if they deal with complex interactions and tendencies, and the Geonet will seem complex at first. When it is understood, however, it will seem incredably simple and easy to operate. There are synergies within it that are not immediately apparent, which make it all faster and cleaner and much freer than any other system.
The Beginning of Real Democracy Geodemocracy Lesson 1 -Structure