Creating Communitas

CHAPTER X

BUSINESS AS THE NEXUS FOR TRIBALISED COMMUNITIES

Collecting points - The shared environment - Japan Inc. - Tribalised communities - The search for creativity - A pooling of agreements - Shared commitment - Metaphysical goals - Psychic sharing

But all for the love of the working
And each in his separate star
Shall draw the thing as he sees it
Kipling "L'Envoi"

The inner directed search arises from discontent of self or society. As the inner directed search secures new attitudes, individuals seek to change society to conform to these attitudes. They want an external society that has values matching their new internal values. The old realities, for example - God, King, and country - lose their potency. They still exert an influence over humanity and until new realities are established, with values reflective of the inner search, humankind lives in a state of transition.

CHAPTER IX

THE RESPONSE TO CHANGE

Tries - Goal setting

The elements of change can appear confusing and contradictory. The are not in fact contradictory but rather reflect their limitations. For example, diversity and personal self immanence may be considered as opposed to interdependence and sense of community. Likewise, bioregionalism and decentralization may be considered as opposed to global automation and the global marketplace. What needs to be recognised is that all elements of change are interdependent. Interdependence is the unifying force and not dominated by any single element.

BOOK II
THE PRESENT STRUCTURE
CHAPTER V
THE LIMITS OF ENDLESS GROWTH
Global dissonance - Culture clash- Consumerism - Limits of consumerism - Non-market values - Marginal economic efficiencies
In Book One we identified some of the causes for rejection of authoritarian structures. We realized that our faith in national politics and representative democracy is misplaced, and, as the breakdown of sovereignty and the growth of economic blocs continues, we move towards smaller communities.
This breakdown has been accompanied by a crescendo of information. We are unable to process the thoughts and ideas that have entered global consciousness since 1945. Nuclear annihilation; the global village; man in space; the world's population increasing at a rate of 150 persons a minute; the stock of arable land going down by four hectares every minute; the Cold War; the breakdown of communist ideology; Japan's economic supremacy; Western high tech military supremacy; the ozone hole; global warming; this is future shock. An onrush of events that shocked our consciousness. Changes, thrust upon a world, unready to accept, or deal with, the sheer mass of change.

CHAPTER IV
SOVEREIGNTY AND LOSS OF CULTURE
Sovereignty - Economic blocs - National economic integration into the global market - Economic blocs and culture
During this transition period, politics, at the level of an economic bloc, is the only control over the global economy. Even economic bloc politics cannot impose global control and some type of global government must eventually acquire power. Politicians, loath to give up power, even to an economic bloc, will limit that power to the entrenched interests of politicians. G.A.T.T., for example, does not allow direct election of its members from the public - all its members are politicians.

CHAPTER III
REPRESENTATIONAL DEMOCRACY,
LEADERSHIP, AND SELF RESPONSIBILITY
The representative democratic system - Political intractability
Survival fear, as the unacknowledged basis for national political power, allows politicians play on the fears and hopes of the electorate. Survival fear justifies the politician's usefulness and collectivises nations. The politicians investment in trauma keeps the electorate wondering what the nation will do in the face of danger. This focuses attention on the politicians who, at centre stage, convince their public that their acts are believable and can be trusted.

CHAPTER II

ENDING THE TYRANNY OF SURVIVAL FEAR

The global marketplace - Global communications - Millennium change

Those who benefit from the old order, deny, and strongly resist change. Governments, for example, continue to operate on the basis that survival fear is their reason for existence. Survival fear justifies the Soviet's right to shoot down a Korean airliner that mistakenly flew over their territory. Survival fear causes the United States to hesitate in signing disarmament proposals with the Soviet Union in 1989. A real basis for a fear of invasion does exist for a few nations. The Israeli government can justify actions based on fear of the nation's survival, but in most parts of the world the justification of invasion does not exist.

In its simplest form the philosophical basis for Karl Marx and of communism is that the prime mover of society is economic imperatives. In other words a population tied to the land is an agrarian society because farming demands a certain type of society. It is a fairly reasonable hypothesis.

Economic imperatives change over time and for example the economic imperative that made the social convention of marriage a necessity - a man working the fields and a woman caring for the home, has ended. Marriage is no longer a financial necessity. Men and women have moved to an equal income, child rearing is no longer a necessity and so on. Marriage, as it has existed for the last few hundred years, is not appropriate and a new sort of relationship that is sustainable in a communal society must emerge.

From a History of God by Karen Armstrong, page 133:
They now had almost enough …and were making Mecca an international center of trade and high finance … some even believed that their wealth had given them a certain immortality. But Muhammad believed that this new cult of self-sufficiency would mean the disintegration of the tribe. In the old nomadic days the tribe had had to come first and the individual second: each one of its members knew that they all depended on one another for survival. Consequently that had a duty to take care of the poor and vulnerable people of their ethnic group. Now individualism had replaced the communal idea and competition had become the norm … unless … (they) learned to put another transcendent value at the center of their lives and overcome their egotism and greed, his tribe would tear itself apart morally and politically …

Pragmatic Western industrial society, 'backs into' the future. Until an event, or act, occurs, no action is taken. The event determines the action to be taken, - usually based on a previous situation or assumed hallowed ideal, such as free enterprise. As the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and similar situations demonstrate, we have made a political philosophy out of 'crisis management.' There is a distrust of theories or schemes that deal with our future. The result is, we are 'event driven', and have lost control.

Environmental limits to the carrying capacity of the globe and limits to population growth now force us to re-appraise global society. Ecological dangers are only the starting point. The continuing allegiance to worn-out political and social structures incapable of having a broader vision other than short term gains drain our energy. We can no longer afford to be 'event driven' and must move away from past icons, even from such accepted tenets as growth economics and financial security. We must free ourselves from our past to consider new social values.

Hello Forbes,

I happy you joined me, in this site. As I told you, it's a good omen for wechange: this site has been recently created with the idea to have it become an active community working for change.

http://www.wechange.org/creating_communitas .
Your books deal with "real world" communitas, as opposed to the "virtual" community that I hope will soon develop within this site.

I wondered: what similarities, and what major differences do you see between those two kinds of communities?
Are there online communities that more like "communitas" than others?

I hope you will guide me to make wechange one of the best communitas online.