Member
0 entries
views

 RSS
Immortal since Dec 31, 1969
Uplinks: 0, Generation
  • Affiliated
    •  /  
  • Invited
    •  /  
  • Descended

    • Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Offset not contained in string in /var/www/vhosts/spacecollective.org/httpdocs/includes/side_capsule.php on line 377
    ’s favorites
    From bixar
    next steps
    From A0013237932294
    New ÜberEarth Discovered
    From FrankLloydWrong
    Paper Installations
    From necromelia;
    Preparing Society For Big...
    From necromelia;
    Furthermore,
    Now playing SpaceCollective
    Where forward thinking terrestrials share ideas and information about the state of the species, their planet and the universe, living the lives of science fiction. Introduction
    Featuring Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, based on an idea by Kees Boeke.
    From Bauke's personal cargo

    On communities
    After watching Space Collective from the sideline, I decided to make a post about something that is on my mind for a few months now. Please keep in mind that English is not my native language.

    In a few days the elections in the European Union will take place. One of the big issues is about the power the EU will have in it's states. Europe is going to look more and more like the United States of America and alot of people are afraid it won't be long untill the European countries form up into the United States of Europe. But we are not there yet.


    Image by myself

    I used to be really into politics, I always had a strong view on politics, and I knew who was going to get my vote. Since a year I am not so sure anymore, because I am viewing the world from a higher viewpoint now.

    People are and will always be debating about fascism versus democracy or communism versus capitalism, as if it's the fault of one of those systems that we do not live in a perfect society. Let me state first that I don't think there will ever be a perfect society; as long as there are people there will be people disagreeing with each other. But I do think we can achieve a better society then the ones we have now and not by choosing one of the systems we came up with in the last centuries. I would even dare to say that the systems probably don't even matter. I think the main problem of society is the size of it.

    The world is shrinking, and so is the group of people with power. While our societies are taking huge proportions, the group in control is getting more invisible and unreachable then ever. Main concerns with these huge societies are the dissapearing privacy, loss of cultural identity and unpersonal lawsystems that hold their lobbies in higher esteem then the people. These are only few of many complains I am hearing and noticing everyday.

    I believe that all of these problems can be solved by only fragmenting society in smaller societies. I am speaking of the size of communes. I do not know the ideal number of members one community should have, right now I am thinking about a few hundreds, maybe thousands. This way the differences between democratic, fascist or monarchic are small, they don't have a big impact since members of these societies will have relatively a lot more power. On a smaller scale the government will be serving it's people and will not be controlling it. And may the event occur that the leaders manage to misbehave, the inhabitants of the society can react more directly.

    Cultural identity will flourish. Every community will have an identity of it's own. Governments won't take away the privacy of the individual for their own good though social control will rise again. It's debatable if that's positive or negative. In our current society judges and lawmakers always need to make a balance between the favour of society and the favour of the indivdual. In our small scale community, these decisions will be naturally much easier to make.

    These communities would be independent of each other, but freedom of migrating, traveling or trading with and to other communities should be intact.

    There are a few problem's about living small scale I can't find a solution for yet. Some of these are debatable if they are problems indeed as they can be seen as positive effects too.

    • The desire of people to conquer other communities to gain more power.

    • The progression of technique, philosophy, art etcetera would be much slower since massmedia and fast communication transport like internet will not exist anymore.

    • Facilities targeted at big societies like hospitals, universities and postal services will not exist anymore in the way we know it today.

    • Big companies like pharmaceutical companies or any company making products for the masses will die resulting in a lack of mass produced medicine etcetera. Whole communities could extinct from diseases because of this. However, pandemics won't occur (so fast).

    • How do we prevent communities from teaming up? History learned us that people will always try form a bigger group, by conquering others or making diplomatic pacts. If we don't prevent this we will be back to current state in hundreds of years. This could be also seen as a uncontrollable wave form which we should not try to prevent as it is natural: societies build up and fragment after a revolution, then they slowly build up again.


    In short: we would be all living like hundreds of years ago.


    Image by myself

    At the moment it is impossible to flee from any government. On our planet there is no land unclaimed, a no-man's land does not exist. If one is not happy with his government, he or she is free to migrate to a different country. Unfortunately, if the event occurs that one is not content with any of the worlds governments, there is no way to go, one always needs to have a passport and a identity. It would be fair to at least have one land untouched by civilisation per continent ruled by no one. Complete anarchy. So that one can always go there and start a live on it's own. Ofcourse this would be the criminal's heaven and comparable with the pirate islands of a few centuries ago. But still, being given the chance to get away from it all should be there just out of principle.

    Please give your feedback about the effectiveness of the whole idea and how the mentioned problems can be prevented.

    Thanks for reading!

    ( edit / delete )  Mon, Jun 1, 2009  Permanent link
    Categories: Society, freedom, anarchy, community
      RSS for this post
    6 comments
      Promoted (1)
    Synapses (2)
     
    Comments:


    nom the puppet     Mon, Jun 1, 2009  Permanent link
    would be much slower since massmedia and fast communication transport like internet will not exist anymore.


    why?

    How do we prevent communities from teaming up?...we should not try to prevent as it is natural: societies build up


    question answered

    any company making products for the masses will die resulting in a lack of mass produced medicine etcetera.


    why?

    On our planet there is no land unclaimed


    what about the high seas?

    as long as there are people there will be people disagreeing with each other.


    true dat, but we still try to live together with respect and peace. plus the fact that we're debating this offers hope that we'll come to an even better agreement with each other eventually. The billions of people not killing each other outweigh the few that are.

    ( delete comment )
    Bauke     Tue, Jun 2, 2009  Permanent link
    Nom the Puppet: Thank you for your reply. I will try to give an answer on your questions.

    would be much slower since massmedia and fast communication transport like internet will not exist anymore.
    why?

    I am not only speaking here about fragmenting the physical society (as in where people live) but also about the psychological effect. In the world as we know it now, we are interested in news from the other side of the world, we also provide our services to other countries, we chat with people from other religions etcetera. The community I desire, is first of all independent of other communities. A small community of a few hundred people needs most, if not all, members to work to stay independent by working on farms, teaching etcetera. Massmedia, transport- and constructioncompanies (for example for building roads) and big corporations in general need big numbers of employees. As I mentioned before there are not that many workers available after the basic jobs like hunting, farming etcetera are done. And if there were, I imagine the communities being far away from each other, connected only by paths, not highways to transport people to their jobs. Without teaming up, big companies cannot exist. And by that services like radiobroadcast, internet, trainsystems and automobiles will not exist. Eventually the techniques used for our modern lifes such as radio, computers etcetera will die out too. As wel will cease to use these techniques, nobody will care about how it works or how it's made either. And since we cannot use central databases and exchange points to exchange the knowledge, it will eventually die.

    How do we prevent communities from teaming up?...we should not try to prevent as it is natural: societies build up
    question answered

    I listed this one under problems but that might be to easy. I bring up my theory that civilisations will grow untill they reach a certain point and then fragment, after which they slowly build up again. I do not know if this is true but I think it's likely to happen. Still I do not know if this is a positive thing. I'm not sure whether we should stop communities from merging. Because I hold freedom as the main reason to start communities in the first place, it feels not right to actively limit them to grow or merge. But it doesn't feel right to let history repeat itself while we are watching passively. Maybe there is a way to control the growth or desire to merge without limiting the freedom of a community? If you've got any suggestions I am looking forward to hear them.

    any company making products for the masses will die resulting in a lack of mass produced medicine etcetera.
    why?

    I answered this one in the first question.

    On our planet there is no land unclaimed

    what about the high seas?

    Please explain! While I don't think a group of people can live independent of others on an atol or similar structure yet I am curious to hear about your idea about it.

    as long as there are people there will be people disagreeing with each other.

    true dat, but we still try to live together with respect and peace. plus the fact that we're debating this offers hope that we'll come to an even better agreement with each other eventually. The billions of people not killing each other outweigh the few that are.

    Exactly my point, I think you read that sentence out of context because in the very next sentence I am saying that I think that despite people disagreeing we can build a better world.
    ( delete comment )
    nom the puppet     Tue, Jun 2, 2009  Permanent link
    I guess what I meant is that the theory doesn't make a convincing offer for all people to willingly give up the large scale modern society, like the dissolution of pharmaceuticals and the technical innovations which sustain a population this size, which seems to me like a big step backwards when I think of all the people dying from a lack of proper medical attention and food shortages. Some people do form small communes and occasionally live outside the law, but it's dangerous.

    I think the theory also needs to be clearer on the level of communication you expect between these communities, because it sounds like you're saying that the cultures will somehow become solidified into unique identities even though migration and trade between them are free, which are two concepts that don't fit together as evidence has shown countless times through history that whenever societies come in contact with one another, they share ideas. Besides, neighborhoods already have their own character. New York has a different vibe than Beijing and New Delhi, which all have a different character than the less uban areas surrounding them, do they really need to be more cut off? Also, limiting the access to information between populations makes it a breeding ground for crummy politics and militant strong-men.

    I can't think of what would prevent these communities from reinventing the telephone or the internet that doesn't violate some morality of freedom, the Amish do it by choice of course, but even they sometimes choose to leave when they reach adulthood. I don't think size is the root of the problem. It's efficiency of production coupled with the fact that governments are still trying to operate in something like a win-lose team sport. Priorities are out of order when they don't need to be.

    The thing is, this theory assumes as its first premise that the world's population has shrunk or would be ideal if it shrank, which means lots of people are going to die or some kind of global birth control has gone down or both. However it goes down, or if it goes down at all, artificially dividing communities usually leads to problems (see Israel) and is probably not the best solution to people's feelings of alienation and powerlessness. People know the other side of the world exists now, there's no going back from that and it will feel like losing a billion brothers and sisters if we are forced to revert back to these small isolated communities. What if a community is in danger, the kind of danger that requires more than just their next-door neighbor's help? Without a wider communication network like the internet or telephones, they'll be doomed unless word of mouth gets a 5th gear. But luckily small independent communities CAN exist while still maintaining the living standards of the developed world if they just rely on robots for their basic living needs. Automate the production needed to support a population with robots and let the people that live in the local area to govern the production themselves while still letting them participate in other areas of the global labor scene. This seems like a much more appealing solution.

    By the high seas I meant something like this Setting up an archipelago of these designated for experimental political and social applications would be a good idea.

    Yeah, I was agreeing with your optimism.

    The problems you bring up like the social isolation/loss of cultural identity felt in developed countries is a trend. It's made up of peoples' behaviors toward each other. Saying hello and bonding with everyone in town through communal activities just isn't necessary for survival anymore, people provide their own means of support through specialized tasks they've agreed to perform and by placing a mutual trust in a monetary system. Nothing's stopping anyone from saying hello to each other more often except fears of insecurity.

    Regarding lobbies, start counter-lobbies or introduce more directly democratic avenues. Organizing public forums, writing to local officials, etc. A public servant that doesn't serve the public doesn't stay for very long. Acting locally is a much more manageable alternative and seems to be a rising trend in the US political scene, and it doesn't require the abolishing of higher and broader levels of social and economic organization.

    you should really check out the polytopia project here on spacecollective


    ( delete comment )
    meganmay     Fri, Jun 5, 2009  Permanent link
    A0013237932294 was just telling me about an island he just visited off the coast of panama that has successfully retained its independence from Panama and by extension the west. The native people are so isolated they can only persist through incest, which has lead to all kinds of unconventional physical developments. They are a population of human beings floating in the ocean following an entirely different evolutionary trajectory. The neighboring islands are largely untouched, so while the number of no man's lands continues to shrink perhaps we should take the opportunity to declare these landmasses, not micronations with agendas, but counter-civilization preservation zones. I like this idea.
    ( delete comment )
    Bauke     Sat, Jun 6, 2009  Permanent link
    Nom the Puppet: Thanks for the reply, I've read it quickly and will dig deeper into it later.

    Meganmay: Thank you for your interesting contribution. I was not aware of the fact that there still is no man's land on earth. Islands have their advantages and disadvantages; on an island, it's more easy for a community to build and remain their cultural identity. Not only because of physical but also because of psychological borders. Examples of this can still be seen in our world, even in the western society (Iceland has a rich and strong cultural identity).
    Disadvantages of islands are indeed inbreeding. There's nothing wrong with some racial seperation on voluntary basis but inbreeding will do no good either. Also on the mainland when a community grows to big, it can easily split up, overpopulation on an island is alot more difficult to handle.

    It just happens that the girfriend of a friend lived in Panama for a few years and she told about small untouched islands that could be rented for a few days/weeks. I doubt it's the islands you are speaking of but I will ask her if she knows more about this.
    ( delete comment )
    Olena     Tue, Dec 1, 2009  Permanent link
    Megan, your comment about the native people is really interesting...
    I'd like to know more about them; particularly their "unconventional physical developments"
    ( delete comment )
     
          Cancel