All posts by : Enrique Lescure

Introduction

The discourse surrounding globalization has often been shrill, repetitive and emotional – on all sides of the aisle. The proponents point out how trade and growth have increased GDP and living standards, while the critics point out that inequality has grown and the poignant fact that the global biosphere has seen better days, upon which the proponents may claim that the detractors want to deny the developing world the opportunity for raised living standards. There might be acknowledgements that there have been bad effects, but the foundation for the current development is seldom questioned.

Both sides definitely have points, but where our focus must be centered is on the fact that our current way is inherently unsustainable, and grows more unsustainable with every passing year due to our glaring inability to come to terms with quantitative environmental problems. While many of those in power are worrying for ageing, unemployment, integration or lagging growth numbers within the next two years, the reality we are facing on a global scale is that of an approaching Sixth Mass Extinction Event. In comparison, all other problems appear as minor nuisances.

This article is intended to discuss globalization in terms of different aspects, which can be termed the Good, the Bad and the Ugly – but also try to explore the issue connected to the wider issue of global resource flows. Ultimately, what we all need to do is to let go of our presupposed positions, untangle the web of preferences, aesthetics and politics and look at our world – the only one we have – from a physical perspective. Then, the ways where we can go will reveal themselves.

In short, we need to acquire ourselves a sober, technocratic view on the subject. What we also need is to iterate our line as an organisation on globalisation from our perspective and from the point of view of our ideology and our knowledge about the reality we all are inhabiting.

TL;DR

• Globalization is not a new concept, but is a process which has begun from the moment civilization emerged.
• The current phase of globalization began during the 1970’s with the ascent of new information technologies.
• Like the industrial revolution of the 19^th century, it has vastly improved the lives of billions of people.
• Like the industrial revolution of the 19^th century, it has also led to increased inequalities across the spectrum within countries – but a convergence between the first world and the developing world.
• Another aspect of globalization is the establishment of multinational corporations with political clout sometimes exceeding that of states.
• Is it likely that this process can continue for the remainder of the 21^st century?

Globalization – one process, many aspects

One could say that globalization, roughly speaking, has several aspects. For the purpose of this article we are going to focus on three of its aspects – the technological, economic and political. All of these different developments in their turn have sub-aspects which can affect the world in conserving or disruptive ways. It is also paramount that we understand that globalization is a partially intentional and partially emergent process, much alike most policies enacted by human polities – but on a much grander scale. Therefore, for the sake of clarity, I am going to investigate the three aspects on their own.

The technological aspect

The technologies which are cultivating globalization are generally emerging as innovations within the fields of communication and transport. The first major disruptive technologies within this area were engineered during the early part of the 19^th century, with the appearance of the telegraph and railways. These technologies allow the faster transmission of information, people and resources, and are hugely disruptive as they often overhaul local economies and allow for rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Secluded local economies are connected to the outside world, fostering a process of creative destruction. Meanwhile, it fosters innovation and an opportunity for trading, thus fostering innovation and increased prosperity and opportunities for a larger share of the population, providing – for the first time – choice to people previously relegated to being farmers to build their own lives and change their paths.

Today, the major disruptive technologies are within the sphere of Information and Robotics technologies, which on one hand is de-centralising information spreading and turning every content consumer into a potential content creator (imagine for example the impossibility of such a phenomenon as “Ugandan Knuckles” arising during the 1960’s, when content could only get through more centralised hands).

It must be stated that the technological development of the last two centuries have had many undoubtedly positive effects for human well-being, for health, longevity, child survival rates, maternal care, nourishment, education and living standards, at least for a significant part of the planetary population. That is a proven fact, and our organisation – which strives that human beings should have dignified lives – is viewing the benefits of industrialisation, technological progress and growth in largely positive terms.

The economic aspect

It can be argued that prosperity is a combination of technology, in terms of our ability to harness external energy sources (whether renewable or non-renewable) and the dynamics of an economy. To a large extent, it cannot be denied than the access to cheap credit made possible by the fractional reserve banking system has been a determining factor in creating an environment where investments into innovation have been feasible. This, coupled with public policies of investments into infrastructure, education and healthcare, has during the last 200 years led to an unprecedented increase in the world’s gross product per capita, despite the population growing more than seven-fold since the beginning of the 19^th century, and with the exception of a few Sub-Saharan African countries nearly every country on Earth is wealthier today than it was in the year 1818.

This is of course, to a large degree, one of the main reasons why all the health indicators in generally are higher today than in the early 19^th century, though it should be stated that even in medium-income countries like Russia, Mexico and Turkey, the average worker today is living a life with better health indicators than most aristocrats did as late as the 18^th century, due to better medical technology. That is undeniable.

What, sadly however, also is undeniable, is that economic growth nearly always is following the Pareto principle – that 80% of the new growth is generally tilted towards the one fifth of the population which already is the most economically privileged. This rule is not only prevalent in countries with significant problems of corruption, but in nearly all countries, including most of the large, developed countries. There might be multiple reasons for this, but in general people who have more capital will be more well-connected and have greater options to invest and greater time to judge their options. Wealthier people also in general suffer less stressors which might decrease their performance rate in the economy.

Usually, the political conflict which has dominated the discourse in most democratic states for the last century, has been one between market-oriented liberals and conservatives, who want to grow the economy by free trade and low taxes, and socialists and social liberals on the other side, who want to redistribute wealth from the economically more privileged to the low-income segments of society.

However, the main problem with our current situation from our perspective is more focusing on some key ecological ramifications, which mostly are attributable to how 4100% in global economic growth during only the last century has affected some key ecological ramifications. We will however revisit that.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that according to economic orthodoxy, human needs are perceived as seen through consumption power, which is dependent on a person’s income and savings. All needs are also seen as subjective – so from a purely orthodox viewpoint a Malian woman needing water and rice to survive a month and the “need” of a European male to own a farting clock or a mechanic fish that sings are seen as equal.

The political aspect

Politically, there has since the 1980’s largely been a consensus centred around the market liberal position, that states should ensure that countries open their borders as much as possible for trade, that tariffs must be scrapped and that public companies are inherently less profitable and efficient than private companies exposed to fierce competition. Underlying this has been the presupposition that states must attract and compete for investments, and thus should make their markets as attractive as possible for investors, either through good infrastructure, a well-educated work force or laxer regulations than other countries. The goal is to maximise growth and prevent stagnation, which is a necessity when the monetary systems are built on fiat, and thus are debt based.

The basis for these policies were laid already during the 19^th century, with the discovery of Ricardian comparative advantages, and proponents often state that these policies will serve to maximise economic growth and also create a convergence in prosperity between countries.

A lot of the contemporary free trades treaties are doing more than removing trade barriers and deregulating. To a large degree, they are actually restricting the national sovereignty of states by introducing new regulations which often are intended to benefit multinational corporations, with for example increased severity on real and perceived copyright infringements, the so-called ISDS mechanisms (recently declared violating the foundations for European law by the European Court), which means that companies could sue governments for legislation which can harm the profitability of said companies, as well as supranational arbitration courts often very heavily biased towards multinational companies.

Often, this free trade regime incentivises environmental destruction at local and regional levels, and human rights abuses such as sweatshops, child labour, debt slavery amongst rural workers and that natural resources – even vital ones such as fresh water – are owned by foreign companies.

On the other hand, countries like China, India and Brazil have become economic powerhouses thanks to increased investments and mobilization of their resources thanks to foreign capital and the utilisation of their comparative advantages.

While Shanghai, Mumbai and Lagos have benefitted from increased trade, traditional industrial centres in the western world, such as Ruhr, the Rust Belt, Detroit and Liverpool have declined. These free trade policies have accentuated the effects of creative destruction, which have led to increasing inequality within every country involved, giving rise to reactions in the form of left- and right-wing populism. The awareness of this political challenge has prompted the World Economic Forum to recently focus more on social issues, but that focus should be seen as an icing on a cake, or more appropriately said a balm to protect the status quo.

Normatively, these policies are founded both on ideology and on necessity. The necessity is of course the fact that debt is growing faster than the global economy and that the structural imbalances revealed by the 2007-2009 economic crisis still are existing in the economy – coupled with the deeper, inherent self-contradictions of a fiat-based system.

The inherent problem with growth, investments and debt

Most western economies have on general seen their growth rates decrease when the gross domestic product per capita increases. Some countries, such as Japan, seem to already have plateaued, while others are still growing at a modest rate, especially countries with strong markets in real estate and finance. This is not the entire image however, for while a country like Germany may experience a year with 0,5% growth and a country like Ethiopia might experience 5% growth, the 0,5% growth represents – in absolute numbers – far more new economic activity on the side of the developed country. Yet, investments in high-risk high-growth markets yield a higher return for investors, which – together with the comparative benefits of a higher labour pool and often, sadly, less environmental and social regulations, a market attractive for investments.

The reason why larger, developed economies have a lower growth is because investments represent a much smaller share of the entire pie, and also because people stop increasing their consumption exponentially when they reach a certain level of per capita income (which may differ between countries due to differences in cultural preferences).

While the growth in the developed world remains at a modest rate and is slowing down in developing countries such as China, the amount of debt have grown far more during the 2010’s than during the preceding decade. This also accentuates the need for continued growth, because the economies have a desperate need to generate the wealth to pay the interest rates – the inherent problem of a fiat-based global economy (also increasingly challenged by crypto-currencies, though that is a different subject).

In short, even if there were no ecological limitations on our usage of the planet which could impede growth in the future, it is unlikely that growth could go on indefinitely on an infinite planet, except for driven by population growth (which will plateau as well when a country reaches a certain level of development). As infinite planets do not exist (at least not in our Universe) that is just a thought game to entertain.

The Sixth Mass Extinction Event

It is impossible to deny that species are disappearing at an alarming rate, that increased urbanisation is a driver for industrial monocultures which today cover more than a third of the Earth’s land surface, that trawling is devastating to oceanic eco-systems, that the climate is affected by our continued reliance on fossil fuels and fossil-based fertilisers, that insect populations are collapsing and that the amount of forests on the planet are shrinking.

A lot of environmental problems are based on the reliance of certain chemicals and substances which can relatively easily be banned. For example the addition of hormones from medicines and contraceptives into water, the utilisation of neonicotinids (if they are proven without a doubt to be dangerous) and dangerous mine sludge poisoning water reserves can be seen as qualitative problems which can be attributed to practices which can (and often have) been changed by simple political interventions through specific regulations which can be implemented without rocking the foundations of the current system.

You can however not regulate everything and expect to keep the current pro-growth consensus within international bodies. A study by the United Nations show that if we introduced fully compensatory regulations globally, the hundred most profitable industries of today would go bankrupt, and this would run counter to all the ideological values and political judgements by the entire establishment.

The EOS is arguing that the need to transform vibrant ecosystems into high-yield linear mono-cultural production systems is driven by the economic orthodoxy in general and by the foundation of fractional reserve banking in particular, which is based on credit, debt and interest and expects new value to be created. It is also largely a myth that information technology and miniaturization has decreased our resource usage, rather it is still increasing (albeit at a slower rate, but that can equally well be attributable to the fact that growth tends to plateau). Our usage of the world’s surface and resources have also in general increased with growth.

The EOS is also arguing that the destruction of the world’s forests, oceanic habitats, food soils and freshwater reservoirs is increasingly putting humanity before a “global Easter Island scenario”, one where the biosphere is increasingly devastated, creating a convergence of crises and a domino effect where vulnerable regions are turned into collapsed states, and neighbouring countries are increasingly destabilised until billions of human beings are affected. This could, if not amended by Transitionary policies, lead to a new dark age for humanity, with an uncontrolled reduction of living standards, health, democracy and all the values we have learnt to cherish.

According to studies by renowned ecological institutes and universities, we are currently using far more resources than the Earth can renew every year, creating an overshoot and an ecological deficit. Orthodox economists of the neoliberal and libertarian varieties tend to appreciate the ideas of financial budget ceilings. Maybe a global ecological budget ceiling wouldn’t be a bad idea at this point?

The mainstream debate

Though the debate has generally improved and somewhat sobered up following the increasing awareness of how serious our current situation is, the issue of exponential growth and the global biosphere of Earth are still largely treated as mutually independent factors in discourse – politicians can still learn that if we don’t change our relationship with the planet and try to become more sustainable, we will create a collapse, and yet the same evening learn that if we deregulate and globalise further everyone and their mother will be a millionaire by the 2050’s.

These two worldviews are – from any reality-based perspective – incompatible. You have to believe either that growth is decoupled from conversion of environmental areas into linear production areas, that our usage rate of the planet’s surface and of its soil and water has no adverse effects, or that a global environmental collapse would have little impact on our standards of living.

Another popular argument championed by the proponents of the status quo is usually – as my predecessor used to say – “the technology fairy”. The idea in its most inane form is that new technologies will emerge which will solve all the problems, usually by utilising energy more effectively. Jevons’ Paradox, discovered already during the 19^th century, shows that the introduction of more energy effective practices often rather can exacerbate resource usage by making it more effective and thus make new and vaster areas accessible for exploitation and assimilation (just look at fracking for example).

Another appeal, in its most crude form is that critics “hate the poor” and do not wish to see increased living standards in the developing world. In its more eloquent, refined form, this critique states that countries need to reach a certain level before the population can start to care about the environment by developing a satisfied and content middle class which cares about conservation. This argument also claims that by focusing on growth, we will have a cheaper and less intrusive transition twenty or thirty years ahead, when new technologies which can clean the air and provide us with virtually free fusion energy can transform the Earth into a green paradise.

Thing is, these claims were made already twenty to thirty years ago, often by the very same proponents of the status quo.

The main problem with that argument is however that the environment is not some kind of staple in a computer game which you can increase and decrease at whim, as if the biosphere was an aspect of human society. It is not just a policy area, such as healthcare, education and infrastructure, where you can cram it into our economy. Rather, our economy is embedded into a roughly speaking 65 million year old natural ecological economy, and is both dependent on it and destroying it.

You cannot near-completely ravage complex, million-year old systems, and then expect to restore everything when you feel sufficiently wealthy to do so. Not unless you live in a world where all environmental systems are just dependent on chemicals, hormones, gasses and pollution – which in reality are not the main problem (excluding our addition of fossil-based carbon).

The socialist alternative

The Alt-globalization movement of the 1990’s had a higher degree of awareness of many of these environmental problems, often coupled with critique regarding the injustices inherent in rising inequality, unemployment and sweatshops. It gathered broad and diverse elements from the entire world who felt threatened by the disruptive effects on both the environment and on the social safety nets.

This movement has lost a lot of its cohesion and steam for the last decades, partially due to what can be labelled “glaring self-contradictions” and the lack of a coherent vision.

• The interests of first world labour laid off from various rust belts are generally not compatible with third world labour which wants to either migrate to the first world to compete for work or export their goods and services to the more capital-rich first world. The Alt-globalization movement tried to unite these disparate interests, but eventually large segments of the unemployed first world proletariat instead moved to the nationalist camp because these were perceived as more exclusively beneficial to their interests.
• While aware of the ecological implications, the Alt-globalization movement selectively chose to ignore these facts when it came to envisioning policies. For example the statement “the current food production of the world can feed x times more billion people than are living on the world today, yet one billion is starving” may be true, but ignores the fact that a significant amount of our current food production is unsustainable.
• Equally, when it came to industry, the Alt-globalization movement simultaneously protested the closure of old factories in the western countries, while condemning pollution caused by factories. They condemned consumerism while vocally defending the right of labour to have professions which were dependent on consumerism for their sustenance.

These self-contradictions were based upon two facts, namely that 1) this “movement” was really an umbrella structure of numerous movements and groups which different and sometimes even conflicting group-egoistical competing interests and 2) that many within the “intelligentsia” of said movement tried to use every conceivable argument they could in the service of ideological (and sometimes emotional) anti-capitalism, ignoring whether the arguments taken together were compatible or even sensible, and maximising the support both amongst workers and environmentalists. This (largely failed) populist strategy could mobilise hundreds of thousands of protesters, but was unable to formulate a coherent alternative.

The EOS critique on globalization

We should, as a movement always strive for the truth.

And the truth is, globalization has brought benefits to billions of human beings worldwide, creating innovation, increasing income, making available the resources for education, healthcare, infrastructure and safety. Neither is globalization a new concept, it began even before the industrial revolution, arguably already during the Ancient era with the establishment of the Silk Road.

As a movement, our Ideology is based on helping Life thrive – and human life and dignity is the central aspect of that. We want every human being to be able to reach their highest potential on a sustainable Earth. We desire for every person on this planet to live their lives knowing they will not become homeless, that they should always be able to go to bed without an empty belly, that their health should be cared for, that they should live without the fear of being oppressed, beaten or exploited and that they should have access to the knowledge and tools they need to realise themselves.

In this regard, we are opposed to inequality when inequality is so stark that it creates a sub-class of excluded or exploited people whose conditions are so damnable that they are threatening to their physical and mental health. In this regard, we should be opposed to all conditions where human beings are deprived of access to what they need to sustain their very lives. Sweatshops and child labour, as well as situations where workers are exposed to dangerous substances, should not exist in the future.

The truth, in today’s world, however, is that the choice for a Chinese factory worker is not between a 12 hour day’s work at Gloxconn and an eight-hour with double the wage and full health benefits, but between Gloxconn and starving unemployment and foreclosure on the countryside.

Before industrialisation, poverty was near universal. And despite the fact that roughly speaking 80% of the growth has gone to the 20% who already have the most decent lives, one cannot deny that life in the beginning of the 19^th century was brutish and short, and ridden with toothlessness and early aging for most human beings. That most were illiterate and oppressed farmers who were taught that their only solace lied in death – if they obeyed the spiritual and feudal powers of the elites.

However, the fact that industrialization and globalization clearly have had positive effects, do not mean that we are morally obliged to continue these policies, or that these policies can continue uninterruptedly in the same pace as for the last two centuries.

In fact, our organisation argues that:

• We are transforming the surface of the Earth so much that we are threatening to cause a Sixth Mass Extinction and living beyond our means.
• The reason for that is because we have a fiat-based economic system dependent on debt-on-credit, which forces us to try to increase exponential growth at no matter what cost.
• That exponential growth will always lead to an increase in areas converted into monocultures and linear systems for primarily human usage.
• That the SXE will lead to a global loss of complexity for human societies, driving us down into a new dark age, a Pandora’s box of unforeseeable consequences.

We argue that this is a reality-based assessment of our current situation, and is the single most important issue Humanity has ever faced. The greatest political challenge is to try to establish a balance between our species and the rest of the biosphere it must be a part of if it wants to inhabit this Earth and have a socially, economically and ecologically sound future.

We argue that this can only be accomplished through three criteria.

• A global ecological budget ceiling.
• A global circular blue economy.
• A global covenant of Humanity, that each human being has a right to life and to access for the necessities of life – freedom, housing, food, water, education and healthcare.

In short, the EOS argues that the only way to preserve and create a sustainable basis for our long-term prosperity and happiness as human beings is to make these three criteria the basis of our future civilization.

In my opinion, what logically follows from this outlook is the following positions regarding the three aspects of globalization we talked about in this article.

• Technological progress – we are definitely sympathetic towards technological progress.
• Economic growth – we are not against economic growth, we are against the continued conversion of the Earth’s surface into areas intended to support linear production flows.
• Political globalization – this aspect is problematic, because policies intended to maximise growth and investments are bringing us further away from a genuine Transition. In order to have a necessary Transition, we need a different set of policies with other aims. Our primarily goal should be that the cost of all products should be determined according to their environmental footprint. Policies to increase economic growth in western countries today make little sense, as the populations are stagnating (meaning in the long run that costs on infrastructure maintenance will diminish) and increased incomes have little effect on a population’s happiness when prosperity is growing beyond a certain income level – especially as further increases most likely will mean a heavier weight on the planet and therefore a steeper and much more radical Transition in the long run. There is one aspect of political globalization we should embrace, and that is when we strive towards deeper political integration of regions, and theoretically we should be willing to support the political unification of the entire Northern Hemisphere within maybe a generation.

In short, we are sympathetic to the emergent and organic aspects of globalization, we are critical to our overshoot above the planetary carrying capacity and therefore policies which will increase that impact, albeit unintended. Instead we need a conscious Transition shaped around the fulfilment of the Three Criteria.

Having written that, we should avoid the sloppy broadside critique represented by for example elements of the old Alt-Globalization movement, where globalization is defined wholly by its most repugnant characteristics, the criticism is both progressive and conservative simultaneously and thus irreconcilable with itself and the main ethos seems to be anti-capitalism beyond everything.

Our movement should be defined by love for Life and Humanity, expressed by the aforementioned Three Criteria. As long as we are sustainably capable of reaching the Three Criteria, the exact forms of governance should be determined by their ability to reach the goals, rather than any emotional or aesthetic-optical considerations.

For Life, Love and Light! 

Introduction

Yes, I know that many who usually appreciate my writings will recoil at the sight of this headline, but this article is since long overdue.

The unfolding of the Brexit event chain has mostly been a debate about how the United Kingdom is affected, but the departure of the United Kingdom has re-galvanised the federalists within the European Union, and during 2017 increasing calls have been heard to increase the amount of federalisation within the European project. Notable examples are commission president Juncker and German opposition leader Schulz.

I would argue that the EOS must speak in favour of the European integration project, and that we should argue that other eco-progressive and green forces ought to support the project of increased integration, not only in Europe but in other regions of the world.

Why? Because there was nothing good on TV on Sunday?

No. Because countries like Austria, Sweden and even Poland have an abysmal effect in terms of the important ecological issues. Certainly, they are capable of acting as role models, but in terms of substantial impact, they play an insignificant role. Sweden for example could try to switch to a fully sustainable society within ten years, and can theoretically even succeed with that. However, if the rest of the world does not follow, the end result will anyway become a sixth mass extinction event causing a loss of complexity which will affect all societies, Sweden included.

Countries like the United States, the Russian Federation, China, India and Brazil, which encompass hundreds of millions of people and entire bio-regions within their borders, have a greater ability to have a positive impact on the Earth. Should the European Union unite, and also include countries such as Turkey and Russia eventually, we would be in a much better situation if we chose to move towards a total transition. 

This does not mean that we should strive towards hyper-centralism, for several reasons, notably the issues of authentic democracy, transparency, subsidiarity and information bottlenecks. We must always strive to approximate the right balance between centralisation and localism, and to ensure that the centralism is the minimum required to achieve substantial goals within limited areas.

Nevertheless, the current trail of globalisation remains directed towards benefitting multinational corporations and economic growth, without questioning whether how long-term sustainable said economic growth will be. Meanwhile, politically, we are moving towards increasing fragmentation and nationalism, which under a regime of global free trade only can mean a race for the absolute lowest standards in terms not only of ecological but also of social sustainability.

Ideally, we would need to move towards a Terran Confederation – a super-state composed of either all or most of our planet’s human civilisation. But since that is not politically viable at the moment, we need to argument for greater regional integration so we can get geographic tools to foment change, while ensuring the autonomy and a future for democratic governance on the local level.

TL;DR

• It is well-known today that many of the greatest ecological, social and civilizational challenges of our age are global.
• The convergence of crises which is currently emerging will – if not properly addressed – result in a Sixth Mass Extinction Event and a Civilizational Collapse.
• We need to utilise the political dimension to shift the world towards a total transition, which is necessary.
• The power to exert political power is mostly centred into the political institutions of nation-states, which primarily are engaged in benefitting their national interests, their elites and their citizenries.
• There are currently 196 nation-states on the planet, most of which are swimming right above the threshold of being capable of sustaining their own infrastructures.
• Only twelve of these nation-states have a population above a hundred million humans, while there are 7,5 billion humans on the planet’s land surface.
• By creating fewer political entities with the mandate to exact transition policies, we can simplify the process towards transition.
• Unifying huge areas under the same governance will create democratic and cultural problems, so there is a trade-off.
• This trade-off can be alleviated by federalism or confederalism.
• Ultimately, what institutional forms humanity decides to constitute itself in matters little unless all forces which strive towards a total transition can unite and win a critical mass for a programme of a total transition.

Global challenges; National interests

The concept of nation-states evolved in Europe from the predominantly kingdom-like Eurasian political entities, during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. One of the predominant ideas of the Age of Enlightenment was that governments were primarily answerable before their citizenries – the people – and thus the predominant view was shaped that the state should act accordingly to its “national interests”.

Imperialism spread European ideals to the rest of the world, and decolonization led to every piece of land in the world (apart from Antarctica and small patches of disputed lands here and there) being constituted into the nation-state form, no matter whether the inhabitants living on those lands view themselves as belonging to the same nation or not.

In our world of today, even the most despotic of tyrannies are formally basing themselves on constitutions which serve as fig leaves to provide a framework for the territory to be accepted as a nation-state, and their local warlords and torturers as presidents and prime ministers. In many other failing states, local gangsters and tribes are in reality holding the real power. Some states are really nothing more than occupying armies of mercenaries hell-bent on defending small elites which both exploit the territories they control, and invite foreign companies to exploit them. To a large extent, these companies are based in wealthier nation-states with vast middle class clusters centred in glitzy inner cities and suburban villascapes.

Nevertheless, the order of our world is based upon that each recognised nation-state should possess one vote at the UN General Assembly, no matter whether they represent more than one billion or less than one million citizens, and no matter whether they can claim to be genuine nation-states or even fully exert control over their territory. Most nation-states’ elites are also divided on what constitutes public welfare and national interests.

This is making the process of initiating the Transition excruciatingly painful, but even if all nation-states were homogenous entities with clearly defined national interests, it would still be a daunting task to move towards the steps necessary to take if we want to safeguard human civilization during the 21^st century.

The dilemma at the heart of it

In today’s world, the prestige, popularity and stability of a government is generally determined after the annual economic growth within the nation-state. The challenge of instating environmental regulations is a well-known hazard within Economics, meaning that nation-states which install regulations meant to curb some of the excesses of exponential growth will subsidize nation-states which decide to install laxer or non-existent regulations. Since shareholders generally strive after the highest profit margins, they tend flocking to countries which either do not have environmental protection laws, or which are cheating on laws against polluting the environment and releasing excess greenhouse gasses (as well as abusing their labour, terrorising unions, allowing child labour and slavery-like conditions, etc…).

Since most nation-states have influential business communities and corporations, there is also an internal pressure for governments to give as few concessions as possible when it comes to necessary (but all too often insufficient) international treaties aimed at curbing man-made climate change, the deprivation of biodiversity and other types of regulations which will be expensive for businesses.

According to the orthodoxy ascribed to by most governments today, what is good for business is good for economic growth, and what is good for economic growth is good for all the people, from the tycoons in their palaces to even the homeless (since people afford to give more donations to shelters). And yes, that is – from a certain perspective – true. The problem, as many of you already know, is that this order is built on unsustainable foundations and is encouraging us – through fiat money and debt – to destroy our planet’s biosphere. In short, by stimulating exponential economic growth with today’s system, we are digging a deeper pit for ourselves to crawl up from.

This competition between nation-states about who will be most attractive for investments and best at generating economic growth is shortly speaking fuelling the destruction of the planet’s land surface for future generations.

While speaking out against destructive free trade treaties and policies intended to maximise economic growth figures within the rules set up by the current game may be popular amongst certain segments of the native working class and farmers in many developed countries, we (who desire a more sustainable world) must realise that we cannot achieve that world by pandering to Protectionism and Nationalism or other populist notions.

Human beings are by their nature creatures of habit, and most citizens of developed nations currently enjoy a middle class life standard, which they generally have positive feelings towards and are willing to protect (thence the support of protectionism). Also, many of them cling to these ideals, even if they currently are struggling against poverty, debt or marginalisation because they are enmeshed in the values of their surrounding society, both in terms of ideology and commercial brainwashing.

What we must realise is that while the citizenry may largely oppose agreements such as TTIP and TTP and the ISDS mechanisms if they learn about them, this opposition is not rooted in the long-term effects for ecological, economic and social sustainability, but rather are largely conservative responses against disruptive reforms which may inflict harm on entrenched parts of the working and middle classes.

In short, in order to foment the Transition – the greatest project of the history of Humanity and the most important struggle of the 21^st century – we need to morally and mentally prepare the citizenry for a period when the changes on the macro-level will affect everything on the micro, when we all must question and ascend above what we have taken for granted. The Transition would see immense economic and social changes, and may for decades mean a lifestyle vastly different from what the general population of developed nations have become used to for several generations now.

What we also – however – must take into account is that if the Transition takes hold on a small nation-state, and institutes sweeping changes, it would, if the rest of the world is still marching on to the tune of Davos, lead to one national population bearing a very heavy burden for largely symbolical reasons, since what a nation of 10-20 million is doing with its national economy and infrastructure will not do much to alter the course the planet is heading towards. Moreover, the sacrifices during the initial stages of the Transition, especially if it is for no gain, would certainly erode public support for the Transition until the political leaders having vested their political capital into such a project would be removed, either by democratic means or by other.

Some may claim that the important issue is the moral cupping, namely that we as a collective choose to commit ourselves to a national course which the rest of the world will frown at, that the Sixth Mass Extinction Event will happen anyway but that we can choose to at least take a symbolic stand by committing to a Transition on the national level.

One can have many thoughts about such a position, but the Earth does not have any opinions whether or not your intentions were good. The biosphere needs to be saved, period, and the biosphere cannot ever be saved by national politics alone, which even the current Establishment understands. That is why the world leaders attempt to curb the excesses of the current system – while of course preserving the system itself – through binding and non-binding international treaties.

And now we are back to the starting point, for these treaties will always not only be defined by the incompatible goals of pressing gas and break at the same time, but also by the competing interests of nation states, and the “national interests” – give as little as possible while gaining as much benefits as possible.

The Prisoners’ dilemma in short.

A case for European Federalism

The Earth Organisation for Sustainability is an avowedly and openly globalist movement – because our goal is not that one nation-state or bio-region should successfully engage into the Transition. A Sixth Mass Extinction Event will affect everyone, no matter whether they live in Switzerland or Somaliland, so therefore only a concerted response by a majority of the human race can successfully and thoroughly commit ourselves to a total transition. Our Globalism is not one which exists to solidify or maximise the destructive potential of the current system, but on the contrary one which seeks to transcend political divisions and form cross-national platforms for carrying out the Transition.

Thus, a united Europe – even if initially not formed for the explicit purpose of carrying out the Transition – would be an immensely powerful bloc in the world, comprising around a tenth of the world’s population and some of the largest economic and industrial areas of the world. In fact, it would be one of the three largest economic regions of the world.

If such a power was to embark on a route of Transition, it would indeed have a tremendous impact which would be felt throughout the entirety of Earth’s surface, both in terms of Ecological, Economical and Social sustainability. It would be a seismic shift, able to provide leadership and a focal point for local transition movements throughout the world.

Even reactionary reforms would have a huge impact – reforms such as for example banning weapons’ or surveillance exports to countries at war or dictatorships, removing remaining post-colonial arrangements between former colonial powers and states nominally independent since the 1960’s and for example ceasing to illegally conduct fishing outside the coasts of West Sahara or the Horn of Africa.

Of course, establishing this super state is no guarantee that the situation will improve in itself – rather those who desire a sustainable future for Humanity must work tirelessly and steadfastly to shift the Zeitgeist towards what is the only course that allows for humans to thrive in the long term.

And yes, it is hardly surprising not a popular foundation to support European Federalism, because of quite obvious reasons, some of which are legitimate – such as the fear of eroded democracy and autonomy – and some which are more rooted in chauvinism and reaction. This scepticism is prevalent amongst many of us.

Given the severity of today’s situation, we have few options. We must work for a trans-national, global Transition which brings us towards a sustainable future, but working for that would be easier, at least here in Europe, with a European federal state which could take a stronger position in relationship to powerful non-state entities.

For that reason, wherever we live, we must support international cooperation and unification, while striving to ensure that the movement for the Transition should grow strong within the context of those regions.

A cautious, conditional approach

To support federal unification should not entail a support for any kind of policies supported by federalists, especially not if said policies would move economic sovereignty to institutions intended to foment the continuation of the current status quo. We must always ensure that there is a healthy dose of:

• Democratic influence within the legislative bodies.
• A high degree of subsidiarity (that decisions are made as close to those affected by them as possible) and autonomy.

We must also avoid the Siren song of identifying too much with our regional power constellations and their conflicts with other power constellations. Instead, we must ardently stand for the peaceful resolution of armed conflicts in order to focus on the Transition, which should be the first, second and third priority for all of Humanity during our lifetime.

What we should do

EOS members throughout the world should work to facilitate sustainability in all its forms on the local, regional and global levels, and must within the constraints of laws, conscience and the EOS by-laws struggle to make the Transition blossom. EOS members active in the United States should focus on adapting their local communities for the Transition and also forming the foundations of a Proto-technate, to test variations of our concepts and ideas of a sustainable future civilization, just like EOS members in India, China and Africa… and Europe for that matter.

What EOS members, in my opinion, should not do, is to invest themselves – in their capacity as members – in political activism or bickering which may contribute to polarisation and conflict. Instead, we must strive to always where we can, bridge conflicts through diplomacy, non-violent communication and peaceful social activism, contributing to or initiating Transition efforts on the ground.

As an organisation, however, we should be able to state at least what institutional and social trends we find agreeable and would like to voice our support for, and what trends we take as offensive and disagreeable in relationship with our goals.

It is my belief, that if our increasing relevance should be sustained, that we should judge the current trends in the world in relation to our three criteria. It is also my belief that a world with more unification would be a world where the Transition would be easier, if we can manage to form a strong movement and explain to the public why everything must change.

Thus, the efforts of European federalists such as Martin Schulz are laudable, even though they may not (yet) share our sense of urgency.

Introduction

The advent and rapid acceleration of information technologies have opened up increased opportunities for inclusion and participation, as well as making possible more de-centralised and autonomous methodologies of administration, project leadership and resource management.

The principles envisioned by the organisation named Technocracy Incorporated were based on the regimented industrial and managerial processes dominant during the first half of the 20^th century, when the most powerful information technologies were television and radio, and when the most advanced and rational form of management was the tayloristic factory floor.

While the EOS have always found Energy Accounting a fascinating model to develop on in terms of a future system of resource management, we initially found the forms of management organisation envisioned by the US-based organisation to be outdated, and to a certain degree authoritarian or with the risk for falling into authoritarianism. Instead, the EOS has, through the Design document and its articles, proposed a system of autonomous Holons consisting of highly specialised and competent volunteer members and professionals.

A large part of this is not only a matter of a difference in managerial and ideological traditions between the eras, but also in terms of emerging technologies. Within EOS, within the scope of our means, we are utilising these new technologies and managerial systems to maximise our current resource base.

What this article will discuss is not the internal structural management of our organisation, but rather how the introduction and implementation of technocratic thinking as an integral cultural aspect of collaboration within a future sustainable global civilisation. The rise of the Internet, and its continued growth towards its full potential, can aid in the creation of a diamond age of humanity, but currently – in the United States and many parts of Europe – we are experiencing the ascent of mutually hostile echo chambers, digital tribes building on their own narratives and feeding on a sense of acute threat from rival tribes. This coupled with an increased acceptance of mob justice and trial by popular opinion can, if we are not careful, tumble some of the most technologically advanced societies on Earth down into chaos. That is an unacceptable situation, not only in itself but especially in relation to the convergence of crises we are finding ourselves in today.

No matter what level of governance we are talking of, local, regional, national or global, and no matter what communication system we utilises, it stands clear that the technocratic virtues must be a part of the future discourse, if we want to have a future that is, and must balance the creative democratic tendencies.

In order to preserve and build on the framework that underpins the principles of liberal democracy, these virtues are crucially needed today when every person with a cell-phone is not only a consumer of information, but also a potential producer.This is going to be the first in a series which will elaborate on the role of technocratic principles both inside our movement and in society at large

TL;DR summary

• The existence of the Internet and its communities has empowered the average person to become a creator of content.
• Traditionally, information has been produced by central nodes and divulged in a linear and vertical manner.
• Today, information is more and more produced locally, and is interactive in the sense that articles, videos and sound content can be commented on, reused and reproduced by the audience, which also can interact with the creator.
• We view this development as mostly positive, since these platforms allow for people to create and organise.
• Sadly, the Internet has always been abundant with disinformation, grand conspiracy thinking, medical and pseudoscientific quackery, rumour-spreading, incitement to violence and especially ethnically based conflict paradigms.
• Since the Internet allows the user to utilise time as they want, increasingly people are drawn, both by their own volition and by search engine algorithms which adapt to the search pattern of the user to find their preferences, and thus invariably echo chambers are created.
• These environments existed at their infancy already during the 1980’s, but with billions of users today, billions are exposed for disinformation or information with an alternative slant.
• Censorship and pre-approval by panels would in the short term diminish the challenge, but create slower and more cumbersome, bureaucratic platforms, and are also potentially a threat against dissenting voices and whistle-blowers who might possess information of which there is a genuine public interest.
• The risk for a breakdown of civic order and an acceleration of destructive behaviours due to abuse of the Internet should not be ruled out – previous technologies such as Radio and the Printing Press have both been utilised as platforms for instigating genocide.
• We argue that many of the infant diseases we are seeing within the user base of the Internet is rather attributable to the dumbing down effects of Television and Marketing.
• It stands clear that we need a culture of authoritative knowledge and fine-tuned critical thinking skills, an increased awareness of biases and preferences and – apart from an improved general knowledge of scientific topics – that the knowledge and application of the scientific method should be ingrained into the human civilisation.
• The technocratic virtues are not only useful in this regard – they are essential.
• Ultimately, we need a Technocratic Cultural Revolution.

Different types of information technologies

All types of technologies can be subdivided into several categories. Within engineering for example, we can see a clear difference between construction materials and engines as disciplines. Within information technology, we can see a stark difference between a film camera and a microphone, where one is focused on the visual realm and the other on the audial.

There are other types of categories as well, more subtle than the obvious ones. There is a difference between an old cell phone and a new one in terms of functionalities. There are also varying brands of cell phones.

The type of categorisation system we will be focused on for this segment within the realm of information tech would be distributed contra centralised information systems.

• A centralised information system is characterised by one or several central nodes that is transmitting information through sub-nodes vertically and linearly, which the end-users receive as consumers of information, with a limited to non-existent capacity to interact with in any substantial manners apart of that as receiver. Examples could be bureaucracies, churches, traditional corporations, early radio, Television.
• A distributed information system, on the other hand, is characterised by an environment where all receivers have the capability to be nodes in their own right to a certain extent. Examples: writing, postal systems, amateur radio, the telephone network and the Internet.

Of course, most distributed systems are not truly distributed in the technical sense. Postal systems, telephone networks and the Internet are all dependent on nodes which may be fully regimented or centralised, or simply limited in regards to their number in relation to the number of users. To take the Internet as an example, there are a limited number of ISP’s – eliminate them and the Internet is taken down. But Internet is truly de-centralised in its characteristic that every consumer potentially is a producer.

This presents opportunities which are well-known, and challenges which are less investigated.

One analogy would be a previous information revolution, namely the invention and application of the printing press during the 15^th century in Western Europe. Prior, books had been rare and pamphlets a de-facto monopoly for the Catholic Church and the worldly rulers – because only they could afford the scribes, and every manuscript had to be copied for hand, which meant that it was comparatively easy to control the production and distribution of texts, while it subsequently was quite difficult to administrate a region due to the time consumption and inefficiency in reproducing the same document.

While the advent of the early printing presses did not de-centralise the production of information that much, they did much to de-centralise the reception. Previously, priests and heralds had divulged the information to the public, but with mass production of books and pamphlets the market grew and the power could eventually become less centralised, especially in regard to spiritual matters. The Catholic Church had for centuries been the wealthiest institution in Western Christendom, and apart from utilising legal and physical means of silencing dissent against the Trinitarian doctrine or against Church policies, the Church had a huge benefit in comparison to lone dissenters or heretics who before the application of the printing press had to painstakingly copy all of their texts physically, often with a clear danger to their lives.

With press houses, dissenters like Martin Luther and Jean Calvin could mass produce their texts faster than Rome could react, and thus avoid prison or the stake. The Printing Press amplified the voices of those with a message, and equalised their impact in relationship to the resources of the Papacy. This can be compared to today, in regards to whistle-blowers like Wikileaks, and their effect upon the policies of superpowers.

By removing or at least downplaying the role of priests in acting as interpreters of spiritually themed messages, Martin Luther set the stage for the German Peasants’ War and one and a half century of instability culminating in the Thirty Years’ War, the until then bloodiest conflict Europe had ever seen. Regarding the Peasants’ War, it could partially be said to have been a result of the Bible becoming accessible to laymen preachers who reinterpreted the scripture to justify a rebellion against the feudal order and for the destruction of the prevailing class hierarchy in early 16^th-century Europe.

With fewer Bibles and no printing presses, it is doubtful whether these rebellions would have had such a destructive impact (it should however be stated that the foundations for these rebellions were not new technologies but rather injustices and famine years taken together, and peasant rebellions had happened throughout the Middle Ages when printing technology had not even been in its infancy, such as Wat Tyler’s famous rebellion during the early reign of Richard II).

Stating that, the printing press made it easier for dissidents or malcontents to organise, and for seditious writing to spread, as well as distributing rather than concentrating power. Therefore it also contributed to the chaos in the then Holy Roman Empire for more than a century.

The rise of the trolls

One of my acquaintances once said, that if our civilization would be wiped out tomorrow, and aliens would receive transmissions from the early 21^st century worldwide web, they would find that most of the content consisted of pornography and cats, so they would think that we as a culture probably were very interested in the act of procreation and that we worshipped feline deities.

The Internet, due to its distributed nature, provides every user with an abundance of platforms from which the user can spread information and interact with others. This has created many useful academic tools and platforms, such as search engines, torrent sites, platforms such as Wikipedia, Khan Academy and video hosting communities such as Youtube, Vimeo and Dailymotion.

Another facet of the Internet since its release has been that it easily could provide anonymity, and the opportunity for users to create fake identities. While this has had some positive effects in individual lives, for example for abuse victims, it has also led to a thriving environment for disinformation and the dissemination of false rumours intended to be used for self-serving or purely malevolent ends.

Yet another type of disinformation all too readily received by millions of people have taken fertile ground on the Internet, namely the spreading of different types of woo and the various snake oils spread by self-declared medical experts who at the same time – for purely selfish ends – are trying to discredit mainstream remedies (who by themselves might not be perfect or underdeveloped or overpriced, but which are produced within processes which at least aim to control their effects on the human body and the environment).

Add to it the conspiracy and alternative reality communities, which increasingly are forming their own self-referencing loops, with connections to climate change denial and largely (for this particular moment in time) right-wing politics on the fringe, and their quite impressive growth rate.

Now, these three tendencies of disinformation are increasingly being merged together into a toxic brew. For example, conspiracy communities like Infowars are increasingly peddling snake oil supplements, while those who traditionally mostly have sold woo increasingly have begun peddling conspiracies, and while the trolls of the 90’s and the 00’s were mostly engaged in their activities out of boredom, trolling today have become increasingly professionalised in order to stir up emotions for economic and political gain, and are starting to have both short-term and long-term effects on politics.

Even the most ludicrous ideas are being spread like wildfire – for example the Flat Earth community has seen an enormous resurgence. Today there are actually people who are gaining considerable earnings on selling Flat Earth beliefs to willing acolytes.

Having said that, just like the Anabaptists of the 16^th century and the advent of the printing presses, the concerns which are feeding support for the more polarising segments of the political spectrum are real, even if the proposed solutions may be both reactionary and ludicrous. For a reference, see the article Globalism contra Nationalism previously published here.

Given that, imagine an alternate world where the Internet never was released to the public, and the effects of populism and polarisation would probably take a slower hold (at least in Europe, in the United States right-wing talk radio expanded rapidly already during the 1990’s). It would be a world where information would travel slower, but also one where the conspiracy theories have not gained the enormous traction of today.

One must see this as a trend, and the bucket does evidently still roll down the slope. The ferocity of the polarisation and the creation of echo chambers, both on the left and the right, driven – ironically – by hyperdemocratic impulses of self-replication and the organic spreading of memes, is today leading to a rapid fracturing of communities throughout the developed world.

Unimpeded, this process could end with situation reminiscent of the civil wars suffered by Colombia, beginning with La Violencia during mostly the 1950’s. When political opponents start to view one another as enemies who cannot be understood, the room for civic discourse shrinks and an increased readiness to take to force establishes. It can seem far-fetched today, but there is a possibility that we could see large-scale democides take place inside western nations within ten years, if society continues to fracture between political, ethnic and sectarian groupings.

The Response

The powers that be are obviously in a state of growing fear of losing control of the narrative, possibly both for genuinely altruistic reasons (preventing a collapse of order and future genocides), and also for pragmatic reasons. After all, there are agendas which obviously will impact parts of the population negatively in the short run (neoliberal reforms, free trade agreements which reduce the capability of states to conduct economic policies, trying to avoid characterising certain forms of crime in shapes which may stir up tensions between groups) but which the establishment largely is convinced will create a better future for everyone in the long run. These sentiments are understandable. Ultimately, any kind of establishment must primarily ensure to keep a certain type of equilibrium, and any loss of stability does not only threaten the establishment but also the entire population, often most those dissatisfied groups who most loudly call for reform.

A number of policies have been enacted, both by states and by private entities, in trying to curb the growth of this polarisation. Other policies have been proposed, but not enacted. Here are a few examples:

• Many online newspapers have removed their comment fields, after the comments became dominated by a minority or majority of voices filled with vitriol and negativity, often related to subjects such as foreign policy, immigration, trade, security and integration.
• Facebook has been pressured by European governments to remove certain pages which may violate anti-extremism laws in European countries.
• Youtube are increasingly demonetizing popular videos with politically controversial content or which are selling conspiracy beliefs.
• There has been detailed proposals such as CleanIT which aims to control the Internet.
• Cryptocurrencies are increasingly seen as a threat.

While these initiatives could be seen as laudable in combating certain tendencies, they often fall short of curbing the excesses. In Sweden, most newspaper comment fields were closed already during the last decade, yet that reaction has not changed the trend – instead the frontline has moved towards communities like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

With the ascent of Darknet and of Cryptocurrencies, and when non-western regimes are increasingly supporting fringe political movements and the conspiracy world in the west, it stands clear that polarisation will intensify. It has done so during the much illusory recovery of the 2010’s, and it will probably increase even more after the next Great Recession. There is an ever increasing risk that civil strife can move from the web communities and out on the streets due to this polarisation.

It should be noted that the legislators often are one to several steps behind the technology. The CleanIT proposal for example states that forum moderators should play a vital role in reporting and combating extremism on Internet, but during the 2010’s the importance of discussion forums have continuously diminished. Equally, the plans drawn up today to diminish and marginalise these tendencies will undoubtedly be of limited success simply because the Internet of 2018 can become an entirely different concept than the Internet of 2017.

One underreported process is the move towards mesh technology, which would make the Internet more independent from both broadband providers and ISP’s, eventually leading to it being virtually impossible to strangle or regulate, unless you would want to strangle electricity itself.

Besides, repressing a dissenting voice, no matter if it calls for humanity to run underground to protect themselves from Nibiru, would inadvertently lend credence to said voice. Note for example how Holocaust deniers are using the fact that Holocaust denial is illegal in France, Germany and Austria as “proof” that they are oppressed truth-tellers.

Moreover, while the temptation to regulate what people would be exposed to on the Internet is providing a certain allure, it is at this point in time probably one of the most destructive and authoritarian tendencies. If the system is granted the legitimacy to legally or socially block and destroy dissenting voices belonging to one or two disliked political opposition groups (yes, even insane malcontents are a form of political opposition), then it is granted the power to repress movements which aim to help the world moving towards the necessary Transition.

We must not forget that parts of the current supranational establishment, consisting of financial institutions, multinational corporations, think tanks and governments, are vehemently opposed to the recalibration of human civilization towards a sustainable future, because they can only think forward for the next six months of continued exponential economic expansion, not being able to comprehend the long-term damage of the current system on our planet.

It is very possible to imagine if voices which call for the transition towards a more sane and sustainable world order would gain traction, that these will be exposed for the most blatant, criminal, violent and immoral suppression from the forces invested in the prolongation of the current, unsustainable, status quo.

That is why it is essential to defend the Internet.

Given that, while defending the Internet as a platform for the transparent dissemination of useful information, knowledge and expertise, we must be ready to wage a two-front war against disinformation too. We would claim that the frontline should not be secluded to the Internet itself, but rather span through the entire community.

In short, in order to safeguard the mechanisms of Democracy, we will need to employ the traits and ideals of a Technocracy when finding ways of discussing the solution of real problems.

Combating Idiocracy

Most of the problems associated with fake news, conspiracy theories and echo chambers have actually predated the Internet, and been an intrinsic characteristic of western culture which has blossomed since the 1920’s, especially within the world of advertisement and mass media – I am of course referring to the type of advertisement, pioneered by Eduard Bernays, which strives to manipulate people’s subconscious by subtly making them associate eating fried potato with family life, or owning a Porsche with possessing a woman in a red bikini.

In fact, the blame for the uncritical attitude many netizens display towards whatever video they happen to click up on Youtube can be partially blamed to the Internet’s predecessor – Television – which has created and encouraged a culture of passivity and reception, where the brain’s inherent reaction is to shut down and just allow information to seep in. Television also greatly amplified a culture of “irresponsible market democracy”, where channels struggle to find the lowest common denominators amongst the targeted market groups. This created a loop where culture was inadvertently moulded, by legitimising and even lionising stupidity, idealising simplified reasoning and a short attention span. While schools have generally struggled to produce engaged and responsible citizens, Television has – unintentionally – worked to create an army of drooling zombies, readily and passively manipulated by programmes which rather than encouraging critical thinking are encouraging a weirdly alluring mixture of enticement and cynicism. One has only to look how History Channel and Discovery moved from interesting but possibly somewhat dry and professionalised topics to shows about Nostradamus, Aliens and Mermaids.

Open the Pandora’s box of the Internet for generations that have been intellectually passivized by the telly, and the result would have been the one we are seeing today.

In order to successfully fight the hydra of confirmation biases, fake news feedback loops and increasingly enclosed and aggressive online environments characterised by conspiracy thinking, we need to challenge the existing western culture where entertainment – no matter of what objective quality – is sanctified in relationship to its popularity rather than its content.

Television has taught us that Geordie Shore, Bachelorette and Big Brother are equally valid choices as Nova, Planet Earth and Cosmos, because they are equally if not more available, and also that consumers have a right to be entertained and not challenged. If a programme is boring, a consumer may just zap towards another channel which is entertaining.

It is not surprising then, that consumers who go on the Internet find that Alex Jones is more entertaining than CNN, that Naturalnews.com is more entertaining than Phys.org, and that when provided with a “market of self-declared truths”, people will choose the truth which they feel most positive towards and which challenges them the least.

Of course, people have been manipulated before by unscrupulous political agents, but it is hard to deny that four to five generations have had their critical faculties and even their logical thinking skills systematically eroded by being exposed to Television.

If it only was for Television…

Those unlucky enough to dwell in cities would always when they travel down to the city centre or to the supermalls be exposed to billboards, neon signs and advertisements designed to hack into their subconscious, transform their values and  make them more pliable to impulsive behaviour in terms of their consumption. Consumerism as a way of life is dependent on tearing down people’s critical faculties.

For a person who is conditioned to be swayed by depictions of beautiful people, of bombastic music and a false sense of meaning and narrative provided both by blockbusters and by mundane Coca Cola advertisements, a film like this could have an impact.

If there is a connection between consumerism and the rise of the “alternative facts”-community, then we must confront the fact that the culture that have emerged for much of the latter half of the 20^th century is melting down because of its own inner inconsistencies, and that we would need a cultural revolution to move away from consumerism and the deification of ignorance.

Humanity today possesses a power tremendous and terrible. We have the power to destroy the biosphere, to alter the climate, even to instigate nuclear winters. Yet, for the last generations, we have almost consciously created a culture striving to tear down inhibitions and self-control, to make people more impulsive, more promiscuous, more easily swayed by emotional messaging and – most crucially – without filters to critically access information.

Currently, parts of the establishment seem to strive towards a “middle ground” position, where people should be able to critical analyse RT, Press-TV or NaturalNews.com, but be more or less open and uncritical towards CNN, Coca Cola or McDonalds, in short – install selective locks to prevent people from accessing information from market operatives with agendas seen as destructive. That position can be construed as hypocritical, for why should it be seen as more immoral to advertise for Infowars-approved “Caveman” pills than for Coca Cola? At least the detrimental health effects of Coca Cola are well known by everyone. Advertisement is simply “fake news” that are somehow acceptable and seen as a cornerstone for society, even if the stated purpose is to make people buy things which often are destructive for their health and minds.

Apart from the blatant hypocrisy, any attempts to infuse “selective rejection” in a population conditioned to react primarily by emotions may slow down the breakdown of the concept of objective reality, but will fail short of achieving the goal. Despite the best efforts of public education, the concerted efforts of dumbing down the population has evidently been succeeded beyond the wildest dreams – if anyone would have wild dreams about an Idiocracy.

A Technocratic Cultural Revolution

Technocracy can be construed as “rule by the skilled” or “rule by skill”. I would state that most systems to a certain degree have carried the first characteristic, including our own. After all, most states in the world today have a civil service which politicians are obliged to listen to, and most power plants, hospitals, railways and airports for example are (quite luckily!) administered by professionals. In some countries, notably Germany and Austria, the department ministers are expected to be experts within their notable fields, for example a minister of infrastructure should be an engineer of some form.

The second aspect, however – Rule by Skill – is notably absent from the discourse and is seldom employed. There is a difference between skilled and skill after all, namely that while the first is describing an individual with certain characteristics who is given formal position because of these characteristics, the second is describing that these set of characteristics should define the entire system of management and the entire culture.

This is a central and essential distinction.

Because even if a person has the right education and has achieved the professional level acquired for managing certain sectors of a community, what if said individual decides to make a decision based on flawed, simplified or non-complete information. Also, too much emphasis on the qualifications of a decision maker can be used to shut down relevant critique against said professional.

What I would argue is that there are a few Technocratic Virtues which would need to be embedded in the culture, and the more democratic a system is, the more horizontal and de-centralised it is, the more it would need these virtues.

These virtues are:

• Authentication (as defined by the EOS Board Member Lilium Carlson)
• Self-reflection and awareness of one’s own biases, as well as one’s own emotions and reactions when confronted by material that challenges one’s instincts
• Evidence-based policies
• Scientific transparency
• Public knowledge of the Scientific Method
• That the public is armed with the knowledge to identify and disarm attempts at manipulating public opinion.

The System of Public Education

It is absolutely crucial that children, probably from the age of ten, are challenged with epistemology, learn to identify fallacies of reasoning (such as strawmen), and learn to understand and utilise the Scientific Method, including Occam’s Razor. It is also essential that teachers themselves are acquainted with these methodologies and taught to properly being able to distribute tools necessary to acquire critical thinking skills.

Two examples: In fifth grade, we were exposed to a teaching methodology in “democracy and critical thinking”, where the entire class was to form a circle of chairs. The teacher then would ask the students what they thought about controversial subjects, such as bullying, steroids, drugs, racism, dictatorships and war and reason about it. Needless to say, the level of analysis was usually on the level that “war is bad because it hurts people”. While true, such a class I would claim fail to achieve the stated goals since it doesn’t provide any tools for the student to employ their critical thinking skills.

Later, in high school, a ruckus developed on school because some students were reading far right websites on the school library. The responsible teacher for our class decided – contrary to the recommendations of the school – that the students in the class should focus on two news and how four different newspapers created a narrative around these news, and also to speculate why the newspaper presented the news with that narrative. The newspapers in question were Aftonbladet (Social Democratic), VK (local newspaper, ind. Liberal), Proletären (the newspaper of the Communist Party) and Info-14 (ind. National Socialist). That teacher repeatedly taught us to critically examine all sources and ponder about the agenda of those responsible for publishing the news.

Of course, we were high school students, not ten year olds, but I still find it heartening that our teacher dared to ask us examine controversial material and discuss it from an analytic rather than moral perspective.

Overall, the education system must also more emphasise for students how advertisement often is a form of mind warfare employed in the service of hacking the brains of those exposed for the material. The students should of course as well be enlightened about the important role played by Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann in forming the current western civilization, which in reality is not much older than the second half of the 20^th century.

Media

If we should have a chance to re-establish a discourse of sanity in the public space, media must become a tool primarily for information and less for entertainment. There must exist public service, but the role of public service should primarily be to act as a facilitator of useful knowledge and of the current political, social and ecological situation of the Earth.

Regarding independent media outlets and actors, each agent wishing to market their ideas and opinions must state what their agenda is, what outcome they wish to see for the future, and what beliefs they hold regarding why their narrative is superior – rather than to try to sneak in a preferred narrative without the users being notified what they are exposed to.

Moreover, platforms such as Wikipedia and Reddit must be strengthened, and connected with video hosting websites and traditional media platforms in order to provide a foundational global reference system which should work as a baseline and a foundation for the dispersion of News, especially in regards to eyewitness accounts.

Academia

Ideally, as many lectures as possible should be published on video hosting platforms and be made freely and transparently available in MP3 and MP4 format, and ideally even subtitled in the most widely understood languages.

An online index of academic papers could be established, to provide an improved peer review system where not only those who subscribe to narrow academic journals or are students or researchers may get hold of crucial new information.

Bottlenecks which constrict access to information may – for the moment – be perceived as monetarily necessary, but actually both serves to move against the effective execution of the scientific method and the rapidness with which new technologies and discoveries could be accessed.

Advertisement

It would probably be an advisable policy to ban commercial advertisement in public spaces as a first step. There is a profound difference between advertisement on billboards in a city centre and TV- or Internet advertisement. Generally, people are not compelled out of necessity to watch TV or surf the Internet (even if the latter is discussable people can still choose to avoid websites with advertisement). Most people who live inside or in the vicinity of cities must however – often on a daily basis – travel to places where they are bombarded with commercial advertising without their active or passive consent.

Moreover, all products should be compelled by legislation not only to honestly display their impact upon the environment, but on the human body as well.

The Internet

Possibly, rather than asserting a website’s notability from its popularity, search engines should rather focus on a form of peer assessment, from established institutions. For example, if a website – take for example NaturalNews.com – is interested in marketing alternative medicine, then medical websites and universities should be available to recommend that website or write statements which decides its notability. Also, notable websites which frequently spreads false or misleading information should be able to be given warning labels judged by the reactions of the other communities. This would create self-regulating algorithms.

Notice that this model of affirmation and authentication is what the EOS advocates should be used as a self-regulatory mechanism within the Technate as a whole as it is being established.

While still in its infancy, the Pro-Truth pledge which this website has ascribed to could be a beginning of this process.

The role of the Individual

We must foster a spirit of self-reflection, introspection and awareness within individuals, regarding – without self-judgement or self-hatred – biases, preferences and what thinking might be rationalising rather than rational, in short to what regard we are limited by wishful thinking and how we can move above ourselves to try to see our own preferences and our own agenda, and how the world lines up from that point of view. This is something which must be ingrained in the entire community.

The Scientific Method and its role in culture

One of the foundational principles of our Ideology is that the Scientific Method is the least worst methodology if one wants to assess facts about the real world. We should strive towards a popular culture which emphasises that empiricism, rationalism, peer review and authentication are crucial tools for solving problems. Often, popular culture relies on narratives which glorify brawn, emotions and violence as problem-solving tools, which could have a detrimental effect upon public understanding of reality.

Religion

While religion is an essential factor in the mental well-being of billions of people, provides them with a sense of meaning and fulfilment, and also often inspires people to take care and make a positive impact in the lives of their fellow human beings, it becomes a problem when religious leaders choose to interpret scripture to assert that it may provide facts about the material world. It must be more emphasised that religious scripture primarily should be seen as allegorical, which was how people during the pre-modern day generally viewed those writings. Fundamentalism must be combated, because it is dangerous for individual, public and global ecological health.

Limitations

Science and the scientific method cannot define morality or ideological values, they can merely point towards a method of attaining evidence and employing it in the service of the individual and the community. A technocratic cultural revolution must not strive towards fetishisation of science – i.e scientism, which merely replaces one dogma with another. Moreover, within the rational and atheist communities of the two latest decades, there has been a tendency to denigrate and mock opponents, instead of understanding that they merely are victims of a dumbed down culture.

Positive Radicalism

We cannot ignore the inherent unsustainability of the current system, both in terms of culture and in terms of its resource management in relation to the Earth’s biosphere. Why we should fight against woo, alternative facts, climate denial, grand conspiracy thinking, Flat Earth and Young Earth creationism is not because they are a threat towards the current status quo.

On the contrary, these beliefs are in fact supporting our current status quo, some of them quite literally so (climate denial), while others are merely doing it by virtue of their distractive abilities – because they provide the public with readily made false consciousness’s which serve to passivize and divide the public.

We must neither forget that even those who speak facts, sometimes speak of carefully selected facts in order to mislead and provide people with a false sense of security. One example are the cornucopians, proponents of divulging the facts that absolute poverty is diminishing, that literacy is going up, that population growth is decreasing and that some environmental problems are diminishing. While these are all facts, they are presented in a manner which seems to be intended to make the public have faith in the current system, in the current form of globalisation and in that current global agendas, like the Paris Agreement and the UN goals  – if implemented – would serve to adequately bring sustainability to our planet, and that exponential growth and sustainability are possible to combine.

Thus, the cornucopians are to a great degree far more dangerous for the well-being for the planet than climate denialists or proponents of the Lizardmen theory. For while the latter are generally gaining traction amongst those disenfranchised and without education or influence, the cornucopians are mostly attracting members of the managerial classes.

The goal: Establishing a consensus

We must establish a consensus that the scientific method should be the guiding principle in attaining solutions, that everyone should be capable of utilizing the scientific method, that all policies should be evidence-based, and that the major fact of our age and era is that a Sixth Mass Extinction Event is coming unless we move towards a sustainable future, which we only can achieve if we fulfill at least the first of the Three Criteria.

Conclusion: Transparency instead of Censorship

If we are going to summarise this article, we should state that the growth of the alternative facts community is attributable to the culture of entertainment created by Individualistic Consumerism. If people define their identity after their consumption patterns, it was only a matter of time before they would start to choose their sources of news and education to fit their own personal beliefs – thus nullifying the very purpose of education itself.

Instead of trying to delegitimise and de-platform the purveyors of nonsense and disinformation, we must rather delegitimise the notion within ourselves that we can choose our own reality.

We must systematically uproot and destroy that idea, by ruthlessly bringing it to light and attacking it. This is not because we hate the individual’s freedom to choose, but because everyone is needed – and everyone are needed to be sane in our day and age, with the Mass Extinction approaching. Disinformation and distractions serve to weaken humanity’s resolve in the face of this existential crisis.

Instead of viewing information primarily as entertainment, we must view it as an integral part of a system existing to safeguard the survival of Humanity and of Human Civilization. Therefore, it is of essential importance that each citizen should be empowered with the tools to critically access information and understand the scientific method.

Introduction

Our mission is the most paramount endeavour ever hurled over the shoulders of our species – namely to steer of a monster of our own making.

The Sixth Mass Extinction Event. A fever raging over our Earth’s biosphere, a convergence of crises approaching. There are causes hidden within causes. Humanity has allowed a financial system built on debt to govern our way of managing our planet’s surface and resources, leading to man-made climate change, the world-wide disappearance of insect populations, eroded soils, dying oceans, depleted freshwater reservoirs and massive deforestation in the tropical regions.

There is a rising awareness, but this awareness is segmented, incomplete and muddled by the interference of other issues into the equation. Our compartmentalised understanding of reality allows our elected leaders to indulge in the comfortable illusion that the bad environmental effects can be separated from the “good socio-economic system”. Yet, humanity will have to prevail on this one, or face a crisis unprecedented in the history of our species. In the most developed nations, celebrity gossip and twitter crises dominate headlines – yet mother nature does not care much for celebrities or for moral panics.

The Earth Organisation for Sustainability (the EOS) is formed with the mission of designing and testing alternative resource management systems, primarily of a socio-economic nature, in order to provide alternatives to the current order and facilitate a route towards a sustainable future civilization able to shelter and offer an equitable standard of living for 8-9 billion human beings (which is what the population around 2050 will gravitate around).

Our mission objective thus will inevitably form our methodologies of reaching out. That is not all, however, for during long courses of our existence we have been forced to operate with little resources at our disposal, which has taught us an ability to economise and to value creative utilisation of resources and time.

The purpose of this article is to describe how we are working and how it relates to our goals. It will also tell you what you can do to facilitate change in your environment.

TL;DR Summary

• The EOS activities can be summarised into three types – Research, Education and Social Activism.
• Research can be divided into theory, innovation, application and data gathering.
• Education consists of lectures, book tables and other forms of activities.
• Social Activism, finally, is the process of activating neighbourhoods in taking active control of their own fate and strive towards a sustainable transition.
• Our activities are facilitated through Holons, semi-autonomous units through which our members are organising.
• Everyone who is an EOS member can start a Holon!

Research

The foundation of the EOS is the scientific principle. This expresses itself through the employment of the scientific method, of the application of empiricism coupled with information generously provided by the scientific community, and of conservative interpretations of research data. It means that whatever we base our analysis on must be on the most recent estimates by respected institutions in the environmental fields, but that we must be open for the fact that these data may be altered with new information. Our own research must be open for peer review and falsifiable – meaning that others should be able to conduct the same experiments as us under the same conditions and achieve similar results.

Our main hypothesis is that a society based around the principles outlined in The Design would be able to better fulfil the three criteria of sustainability which we have defined. Our main goal is to put this hypothesis to test, both to identify general flaws within it and to find areas where it can be continuously improved – since we hold the belief that reality will always be too complex and contain too many parameters to be able to be perfectly digitally simulated.

The outlines of the civilization described in the book are also based on physical factors which are scientifically defined – since the physical reality itself on a macro scale is only definable through metrics provided by science. Thus, our vision for the future resource management system is based on physics, not metaphysics. We desire to improve on the tools of data acquisition and constantly strive towards a more perfect understanding of the physical outline of our Earth.

Science is however only our master insofar it serves us in better providing a viable path. We must avoid the trappings of scientism and of a fetishisation of science in itself. Science is simply the least flawed methodology to attain knowledge about the physical reality, but we do not believe it in itself can define morality, values or ideology – especially as utilitarianism taken to the extreme can become very destructive for the sanctity of life and of the human being.

Education

We have several different types of educational activities. This website is one of them, though admittedly it’s a work in progress. The website has a potential reach to millions of people throughout the world, and exists to spur interest in our activities and to inspire the masses, as well as attracting future members and partners.

On the ground, we have educational activities too – Lectures for example.

Our lectures are usually open for the public, and disseminates the Design or the Ideology of the EOS in a comprised manner, usually for fifty minutes every time. If possible, we aim to strike cooperation with organisations that can provide space for the information sharing. After the lecture, the audience should be able to talk with the lecturer, ask questions about the topic and – if interested – receive information on how to join the EOS.

Another option for dissemination is to hold a book table, where you inform about EOS and showcase its projects for the world. The table should contain brochures, comprised texts about the EOS, possibly images or models of the project intended, and a banner or roll-up displaying our logotype and the website address.

Lastly, we have a page on Facebook to a linked group which currently has around 4000 members (https://www.facebook.com/eosprojects/). The page and the group displays information from multiple sources, and allows us to engage with the public in discussions and information-spreading. It also allows us a platform to spread our message, allow people an opportunity to join us and to network.

For 2018, we are planning to further strengthening our social media profile, amongst other things with podcasts.

Social Activism

Social activism for us is a matter about having a positive impact on local communities, regarding the issue of transition towards an ecologically, economically and socially sustainable future for that community. It could equally well be labelled “practivism” since what we aim to do is to organise people and contribute something tangible to their community.

One example is the biodome we are raising in the area of Alidhem, Umea, and plan to donate to the urban gardeners. While we are in the process of constructing it, we are engaging the urban gardeners and the public, inviting them to take interest and thus enlightening them about our existence and – more importantly – about the situation of our planet. It is important to engage people on their level, and connect what we are aiming to do with the needs and concerns of their communities. An organisation is abstract, a global crisis is possibly even more abstract – what we need to do is to bring these issues to the streets, parks and community meeting spots, to engage people.

Our primary goal should not be to recruit more members – even though we welcome anyone who wants to contribute to our goals and who shares our values. Rather, we want to change the public discourse, and transmit the severity of the approaching mass extinction event while pointing at solutions that can give people the courage and conviction to organise. Green consumerism is a good step, but not sufficient to transition the world towards sustainability – for that we need people to organise to transition their own communities. We want to be a spark which facilitates this mobilisation, and a conduit which allows groups already engaged to network horizontally and vertically.

This will also give us access to geographic, economic areas where we can field test The Design and expose it for stress in a dynamic environment where there are unknown factors which we could not have predicted.

Building a Proto-technate

A proto-technate, as envisioned by our former chairperson Dr Andrew Wallace, is an integrated vertical network which internally works according to the principles outlined in the Design. Each node – or holon – of the network is a semi-autonomous unit which provides some of its yield to the wider network.

One example would be if we establish a 3D-printing workshop in Alidhem, and we sustain the dome with upgrades and with maintenance, as well as repairing garden tools for the urban gardeners. In turn, they donate a part of their harvest to the workshop. This form of resource exchange can later on be replaced with a primitive form of energy accounting. Imagine then that we get a powerplant operating, maybe in Umea, or maybe in southern Sweden, and that it supplants some of its income to our other operations as well as those of the organisations we cooperate with. Gradually, we create a network which will become more and more self-sufficient, while yet being embedded in the regular capitalist economy.

In some regards, this is why our three aspects are so neatly tied together, because the proto-technate as an ideal embodies all of these three goals.

What you can do

Imagine that a stranger on the bus strikes up a conversation with you, and that the subject moves from pleasantries into serious issues, such as terrorism, religion, immigration, the housing crisis, the upcoming political election or trivialities such as a celebrity being caught uttering something socially unacceptable.

You, as an EOS activist or a sympathiser of our cause, changes the subject by the following words: “Excuse me, but the most important issue of our time is the fact that we are using the equivalent of what 1,4 Earths can provide for us every year, and that we need to find a way to reduce our global footprints.”

By those words, and those words alone, you have brought the transition towards a sustainable world a little bit closer to fruition. Maybe a few seconds, maybe a few breaths. But today, in our age, every moment is invaluable.

Don’t believe me?

It is said that gravity always works both ways. You are bound to the Earth because its mass is so great in comparison to yours it might well be infinite. But it is finite, and your mass does actually affect the Earth a little bit as well, just a tiny, minuscule amount. And even the Earth itself was once just a grain of dust which happened to be slightly larger than its most immediate neighbour. Remember that.

The same could be said of our civilization on Earth, and its cultures. Most of the major cultures of history were originally formed by tiny groups devoted to a cause – not all of them worthy. The world’s largest religion today was once just a handful of schismatic Hebrews. The world’s second largest religion was in its infancy just a hundred followers camped out in an oasis near nowhere.

Language is the most powerful hacking tool there is, and can be used for destructive and creative processes alike.

So, let’s say that you are an EOS member isolated from the hub of the organisation, maybe alone in your country. Do not despair and do not become demotivated. Instead, your first task should be to expand so you are two people with regular contact. Your goal from then on could take the route of research, education or social activism, but any of these three routes should facilitate the transition we all want to see realised in the world.

And remember: You are not alone.

Introduction

Throughout the European and wider western world, tribalism is once again emerging, through the lens of mainstream xenophobic parties, CounterJihad activism, the emergent Alt-Right and outright militant neo-Nazis. This phenomenon is however not only confined to the western world – and I am not thinking primarily about the Nazis in Mongolia or Mexico.

Groups such as the Islamic State, the Buddhist supremacists in Burma and Sri Lanka, the Hindu supremacists in India, ethnic supremacists in Africa and even – in its least dangerous and virulent form – in the form of regional separatism based on ethnic identity, such as the current Catalan movement for independence. All these various movements and ideologies are characterized by one notion, namely that of the separation of our particular grouping from the others, and competition about (usually physical) space and resources.

Adolf Hitler, the most well-known ideological leader of National Socialism, espoused Ethnic-Darwinian ideals. His was a dog-eat-dog Earth, where better adapted groups preyed on the habitats of smaller groups characterised by blood feuds. In Mein Kampf, in the Table Talks, and in his conversations with Eckhart it stands clear that he believed that the animalistic struggle for survival is the true, genuine aspect of human nature, and that Culture to a certain extent was neutering and domesticating these survival instincts.

To some extent, his analysis had a point. The process of human civilization and of culture can be seen as a multi-layered move away from our animalistic origin – not primarily driven by the desire to attain higher spiritual values, but by the need to not kill ourselves. Most philosophers, prophets, ideologists and state founders have aspired to (unlike Hitler) move humanity farther away from tribal collectivism – which is understandable.

Sadly, though most of the world has made significant progress, we have not yet made enough, as proven by the continued existence of tribalist identities to the extent that people are willing to make huge personal sacrifices for them. Yes, this is – for what we know – probably hardwired into human genetics. But human civilization could be understood as a process to curb the excesses of human nature.

As mentioned before, we have not yet succeeded in that endeavour…

This article will not so much explore the nascent rise of tribalism, but rather explain why human beings become tribalists, why tribalism represents a threat against human survival on Earth, and what strategies we can utilise to move away from tribalism and establish a democratic and legitimate global confederation.

TL;DR Summary

• Humanity evolved as pack-living animals on the African savannah.
• This species had a tendency for striving towards homogeneity within the group and competition against outsiders.
• With agriculture civilization was born, and thus humans were forced to organise in larger groupings.
• With a larger population, conflicts between tribes and clans became bloodier and more frequent.
• Humans developed aware coping strategies to defuse human aggression and channel it towards goals which elites saw as beneficial.
• The need of collective belonging seems to be biologically ingrained in human beings, and this need seems to have the potentially most destructive characteristics within the male population between certain age groups.
• This belonging is expressed not only through genetically close-knit groups but also through groups formed around other types of identities and commonalities.
• We need to discuss what humanity should evolve into in the future to better adapt to the circumstances of tomorrow, which is what the third leg of our proposal is about – the Culture.
• Ultimately, tribalism has absolutely no answer to how we should tackle the global environmental issues of our age and steer humanity away from the worst crisis in 65 million years. That is the real danger of tribalism.

Human nature and our rise from the Savannah

All life on Earth today is originating from single-cell organisms arising billions of years ago, and all vertebrates currently living on land share a common ancestor – a fish which evolved lungs and became the forebear of all of us. This event unfolded hundreds of millions of years ago. Humanity, or rather the beginning of it, arose less than ten million years ago in Africa, forming tightly knit family groups of omnivorous, scavenging hunter-gatherers, who eventually developed stone tools and learnt how to use fire (certainly after thousands of tragic accidents with making bushfires when trying to make flint knives).

Through language, a door opened for us towards abstract thinking and reasoning, making the human being the only animal to have discovered both the past and the future. Through this, we were able to better cooperate and become the world’s alpha predator, eventually forming civilization. Yet, for all our humanity, we have not negated (and should in no way negate or try to repress) our animalistic instincts. And despite that we know language, millions of human beings every year express frustration or try to exert control through flight-fight responses, violence and dominance behaviour still used by other animals.

One aspect which unites most human beings is that they desire to belong to a community, and abhor isolation. That is hardly surprising. Our particular human species is 300 000 years old according to recent fossil finds, and according to both archaeological findings and anthropological studies of hunter-gatherer communities, Homo Sapiens tend to prefer tribes of up to between a hundred and two individuals who are closely related, mostly egalitarian, with different semi-elected leaders who take care of the different practical and spiritual functions of the tribe. Individuals who are ostracised by such communities, under the conditions prevalent during a hunter-gatherer state, generally succumb for the privations of nature. Thus, the fear of ostracism – often irrational in modern western civilization – usually meant the difference between life and death for the early human being.

We cannot speculate much about human beings and violence – like most other animals, humans tend to avoid violence when possible. During the Palaeolithic era, differing tribes did not tend to compete over scarce resources, and generally avoided bloodshed (though it was not unknown, judged by recent finds). During stressful times, human tribes could wage tribal warfare, either to drive another tribe away from its territory, or even to eat members of that other tribe. This was however quite uncommon.

Twelve thousand years ago, humans began to cultivate crops – and their number grew as they became sedentary. Before the age of writing, towns like Jericho sprung up both in the Middle East and in parts of south-eastern Europe (the Trypillian civilization comes to mind). Since this was an age before writing, we can only judge by scant archaeological findings. Previous generations had lived in small groups with relatively large territories at their disposal – but as agriculture and early irrigation emerged, humans of different tribes began living closer together.

Most of the world has undergone a process where organic tribal groupings are broken and assimilated into larger cultures. Not so the island of Papua, which sports over 800 different languages and several hundred tribes. Though the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea for thousands of years have cultivated crops, the island’s particular geographical features have prevented the emergence of a unified government until the arrival of European imperialism.

Thus, Papua New Guinea may be a state, but a nation it isn’t. Fractured by tribal violence, its democratic but weak government is unable to effectively govern. One can imagine that much of Eurasia around 7000 years ago effectively resembled contemporary Papua New Guinea, with a huge diversity of clans and tribes all competing for scarce resources at the river valleys, while being pressured from the outside by nomadic tribes. One should know that was the situation of the more peripheral regions of the ancient world even during historical time, which the myths and limited historical knowledge of for example the Balkans of the Bronze Age can attest to.

What is Tribalism?

Individual human beings operating in nature are vulnerable and easy prey. Cooperating within small groups yield certain benefits, but organically speaking there seems to be a limit of the amount of people an individual human being can operate together with – of roughly below two hundred people. Larger organisations demand constructed hierarchies and formal rules which are enshrined. Within the framework of the organic, tribal group, morality tends to arise in the form of unwritten rules and taboos regarding social status, human interrelationships and how the outside world is viewed.

Tribalism as morality is simple, and can be summarised by three rules.

• Treat those within your own group with respect and be loyal with them.
• What lies in the interests of your group is good, even if other groups are losing on it.
• If other groups act in a manner which damages the status or survivability of your group, it is bad, and you need to defend your group.

In short, morality is situational and dependent on what group the individuals dealing out or being affected by an act are belonging to. Whatever your tribe does is right and morally justified, but if other tribes act that way against your tribe, they are perpetrating a huge moral crime.

Of course, this outlook on life lies in the interest of the tribe as a self-perpetuating super-organism. By behaving in a manner veering between indignant self-righteousness and sociopathic predation, the tribe is maximising its ability to gather resources and social status, and thus increase its ability to procreate at the expense of other tribes.

One may claim that most of the world, especially the most developed parts, have put tribalism behind and embraced other ideals. While it is true that tribal organisation has been supplanted by other types of organisation at the formal level of our society, tribalism does not need close genetic kinship to arise. It has arisen in the shape of sectarian strife, of political conflicts related to nation, class, religious or moral issues. Even out of trivial, for all extent non-political issues, tribalism has emerged. One needs only to think of football hooliganism and subcultural conflicts, or primary school bullies. Neither does it need to be violent – in fact, most of the tribalistic behaviours within the framework of modern societies take the form of cheerleading.

Active members of political parties often cheer for political victories of their parties, even though they may disagree with the political issues themselves, simply because their party won. At sports bars, supporters drunkenly cheer the victories of their teams without even watching the games on the flat screens, instead feeling a sense of kinship and camaraderie with other supporters of the same team. People worship celebrities and gain a sense of belonging by being a part of a mob of cheering fans.

The need for belonging to a social group – or tribe – is one which actually evokes very positive, energetic feelings in the hearts of human beings. Happiness, togetherness, safety – the more isolated we grow, the more we long for them. The regime of clicks and likes on Facebook, and the groups gathered to support or boo left-wing and right-wing political articles, is but the most recent manifestation of this very human desire.

Increasingly, the political discourse in the western world has become more and more virulent and polarised, drifting apart by the issues of globalisation, nationalism, multiculturalism and Islam. The diverging political acolytes are following different media sources, constructing different frames of reality, and constructing echo chambers which serve to confirm their worldviews. But as time progresses what really matters is not the worldviews anymore, but rather the need to keep the tribes united and to uphold a unified line against “the barbarians” on the other side.

Tribalism, at its core, is the triumph of instinct over rationality, of myth above truth. Even groups that are defending the ideas of the enlightenment and of rational discourse, such as New Atheists and Anti-Flat Earthers, have often turned into pseudo-tribalistic gatherings which primarily serve to cheerlead the victories of their great leaders against the forces of superstition.

Thus, tribalism seems to not only be emerging everywhere where human beings are organising – it also seems to be necessary to a certain extent if groups should be able to survive. Self-critique is a valiant and noble undertaking, but too much of it can demoralise a group and lead to its dissolution. Even human beings who ought to be aware of the psychological mechanisms which drive human beings towards tribe-forming seems strongly susceptible to its allure, and strong tribal groupings complete with their own echo chambers seem to be able to spontaneously arise even with the absence of strong, charismatic leaders.

In short, Nazi morality is truly not alien or inscrutable seen from how human behaviour has expressed itself for literally hundreds of thousands of years, and mammalian behaviour has been characterised by these kind of group-egoistic patterns for hundreds of millions of years. Of course, Nazis would be the first to affirm that, with the usual right-wing argument that “because it is a part of human nature, it is natural and therefore good”.

We disagree.

So, let us examine the alternatives to tribalism.

Legalism

When people from distinct tribes first formed city-states, it probably increased the risks for confrontations between various blood-related kinships. One can imagine that, following inevitable crises, order broke down until order re-emerged under the guidance of alphas. Such an order would equally inevitably become brittle, because it in itself was little more than pure gangsterism. In order for the leader of one clan to have their rule seen as legitimate by the other clans, a militia capable of imposing physical violence is not enough. Rather, a dominant and capable alpha male (historically it has usually been an alpha male) has generally established patron-client relationships with other clans, to give them incentives to cooperate beyond the fear of violence.

There is a point where patron-client relationships fail to work effectively, and that is when the number of clients grow to the point where important clients must be bestowed power in order to protect the interests of the patron, while the clients themselves often have internal conflicts in which the patron is compelled to mediate. In short, the spider can be trapped in his own web of power.

The establishment of formal laws is a strategy aimed at solving three issues simultaneously.

• The universal application of rules in relationship to trespasses, in accordance with formal standards rather than political expediency or arbitrary judgements.
• Laws can serve as a layer of protection against the ruling clique and can limit the amount of power the clique can wield over an individual or a group, or at least provide a balance.
• For the ruling clique, laws can actually be helpful too, especially when difficult decisions which can cause friction must be taken. A ruler can then delegate the decision to a court, which can liberate those with political power from having to enrage powerful rival clans within the same system.

Legalism as a moral system is (ideally) completely morally neutral apart from the fulfilment of the letter of the law and should ignore political, moral and emotional considerations in the way decisions are made.

There are however several problems with legalism which we should not elaborate on in this article. As systems of law often emerge to protect property rather than human lives, it can enshrine the kind of inequality which threatens human quality of life, and also stipulate cruel punishments which serve to protect the elites. Moreover, legalism can enshrine even formal inequality, such as the feudal systems in Europe did. Lastly, if the elites really wish to for example exterminate a group of people, the legal systems can compel bureaucrats and judges to partake in crimes against humanity.

Legalism at its core is moreover built on fear, because its underpinnings are those of the ability to inflicting pain. Nevertheless, legalism, as it emerged in Egypt, the Fertile Crescent, China and other places, can be seen as the first step away from tribalism.

Universalism

The need to regulate, channel and repress the violent tendencies of human beings has only grown with the ascent of civilization and technology, and these methodologies have usually expressed themselves through the establishment of states and laws, through attempts to shape the culture through other values, or through universalist ideologies and worldviews. This roughly corresponds to the three systems of control which we have identified.

• External control I (fear of retribution).
• External control II (fear of ostracism)
• Internal control (desire to better fulfil an ideal)

Universalism has mostly emerged out of the high cultures of Eurasia, roughly during the same period between 2500 and 1500 years ago and appeared in the form of religious and philosophical systems encompassing the individual as a subject and all of humanity as its scope. There is no coincidence that it emerged (in imperfect shape) during the same period in Greece, the Middle East, India and China. All four regions were amongst the most developed in the world, and had undergone crises which were caused by the old tribal order but also undermined it, destroying tribal identities and kingdoms supported by them, in exchange for oligarchic city states in Greece and parts of India, and Empire in the Middle East and China.

While tribalism asserts the particular identity and right for collective self-expression of a tribal grouping, universalism tries to assert the shared humanity of everyone, in spite of tribal affiliation, gender, class and other demarking factors, transcending them with a new identity rooted in some kind of metaphysical or existential value. The emergence of this kind of identity can be seen both as a response to the horrors of tribal violence, but also as an organic adaption to urban life in emerging (then the closest thing to) global metropolises such as Babylon, Seleucia, Alexandria, Athens and Rome. Such cities, fraught with disease and high child mortality, sprawled because immigration from the countryside, forming the foundation for a new human identity – that of a colony- rather than a pack-dwelling animal. In the city, the human being sacrificed security for a – during peace-time – greater standard of living, survival skills for specialisation. And yes, new pseudo-tribal identities emerged in cities, those related to class, neighbourhood or political and sectarian belonging.

Universalism is also an internalisation of the type of legalistic code which aims to treat the state’s subjects equally. It means that actions – instead of being judged through the context of who was wronged and who the perpetrator was – should be judged after universal moral standards encompassing all human beings, where the action is judged independent by which it entails rather than whom perpetrated it. Of course, similar acts of laws had existed before – but were either installed by decree like Hammurabi’s code, or just encompassed the tribal identity of the nation, like the Mosaic Laws. Universalism strove to install into the human being a concept of justice unrelated to blood and soil and instead emanating from the sanctity of the human being. This provides the legal structure with a guiding moral principle beyond and above the propertarian foundations of most legal codes.

The foundations of Nazi Ideology

National Socialism as envisioned by ideologists such as Gottfried Feder, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, was an amalgamation of several intellectual trends during the 19^th century, a mixture of German idealistic philosophy, non-Marxist guild socialist currents, Romanticism, biological anti-Semitism, Vulgar Darwinism and traditional German militarism. Various scholars – both pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi – have differing viewpoints regarding this ideology, thus our summary will probably not satisfy everyone.

If one wants to summarize an ideology – any ideology – as well as its levels of moderation or radicalism, we can determine its structure through a simple graph. Let us say that the X-line represents a “problem” (it might be a genuinely objectively life-threatening problem, or one made up by brain phantasms), while the Y-line represents the devotion to an ideal – because what ideologies are constructed to convey is ultimately the meaning of human civilization.

The problem formulation of Nazism is as follows:

• There exists a scarcity of food, resources and land in relationship to growing populations (Malthus).
• Human beings bond in racial (genetic) groups which fight over resources (Hobbes, Dawkins, Pseudo-Darwin, Rhodes).
• The weaker races must yield to the stronger races (Pseudo-Darwin).
• Civilization and cities serve to dilute the blood and domesticate the human being, thus rendering it vulnerable to invaders not yet weakened by the trappings of humanism and universalism (Gibbon).
• Races which “dilute” their blood with the intermixture with other races lose their “racial soul” and become polluted (Gobineau, H.S Chamberlain).

The core worldview of Nazism can be summarised as follows:

• A race possesses a “folk-soul” which can be polluted and lost by racial mixture (Herder, Pseudo-Hegel).
• The struggle for survival and supremacy between races is natural and healthy (Pseudo-Darwin, Pseudo-Marx, Pseudo-Hegel).
• Those who are losing this struggle deserve to go extinct (Pseudo-Darwin, Pseudo-Marx).
• An individual can only achieve immortality within and through the survival of their “folk” (Hitler, Pseudo-Hegel).

Nazism can only be understood and consciously accepted if one would subscribe to all or most of above statements. As the “problem” is formulated, we can see that the first two points are touching the realm of the real by virtue of considering resource economics and human behaviour. What Nazism advises, however, is that it is impossible and immoral either to manage resources in a manner which would prevent conflict between human beings, or to prevent conflict between human beings (Dawkins touched this dilemma in “The Naked Ape”).

Neither technology nor sound ecological management can in the end salvage us from a Malthusian resource war, and civilization only serves to weaken the resolve and primitive survival instincts of a “folk” against its less civilized enemies. In short, Nazism – much like anarcho-primitivism after it – represents a rejection of Humanity as a project.

Rather, Nazism imagines a world of racially homogenous nation-states which are fighting for habitats and resources (neo-Nazis generally consign the struggle to the interior of countries and imagine isolationistic homogeneous nation-states where the dominant ethnic group acts like a huge tribe). Thus, it is a reactionary ideology, not in the pejorative sense but in the sense that it wants to retard civilizational and cultural development and sweep away the collective super-ego of the western civilization.

According to Nazism, what is “natural” (to kill those who are genetically more distant from you to improve your offspring’s chance of survival) is automatically assumed as morally righteous because of its inherent genetic rationality. The “folk”, understood as a racial rather than a cultural, social or civic constituency, is under mortal threat of extinction by the mere existence of representatives of other races and ethnic groups in its habitat.

For a liberal-minded, educated and economically safe westerner, this ideology looks repugnant and kooky, but what Hitler consciously devised and mobilised a managerial, bureaucratic state to perform has for millennia been a facet of human tribal behaviour – as of recent revived in its ugly form in the decolonised world. Ethnic cleansing, by machetes rather than firing squads and gas chambers, has plagued large parts of the world. The weaponisation of rape to break the “folk-soul” of tribal adversaries is but one of the horrific tactics employed by ethnic militias throughout the world.

The Nazis, racist and white-supremacist, claim that they are the strongest defenders of Western Civilization, and that they abhor Africans (amongst others). Yet, Nazism – in its primal form – is a repudiation of western traditions since the 18^th century and before, and aims for the nations of Western Europe and North America to assume a virulent, aggressive form of tribalism which would destroy the very idea of Humanity as a conscious project.

This is but one of the reasons why Nazism must be rejected. This rejection must, however, not take the form of moral panic, and must be based on a wider rejection of tribalism in all its forms. The reason for the danger that Nazism poses is not its inhumanity, but because its keen touch with certain animalistic instincts constituting a part of what we can call “human nature”.

Which is the most terrifying part of it.

Why Tribalism and Nazism are a problem for all human beings

Our country is Earth, our nation is Humanity.

That is the perspective of our movement. As you are well aware, our goal is to help our civilization avert the sixth mass extinction event. This is not only because the ecosystems and the biosphere have a value in themselves, but because humanity is dependent on the weather, the soils, fresh water and biodiversity to thrive.

In short, if you want to truly cherish humanity and the individual human being, you have to express ecocentrism. And if you want to prevent a sixth mass extinction and stabilise the biosphere, you have to have a global outlook. Humans from all parts of the world must need to pool their skills, willpower and resources together if we are going to make it.

Tribalism may be excusable amongst illiterates, hunter-gatherers and isolated farmers in the most remote parts of third world countries. It is definitely not excusable amongst urban dwellers with at least a primary school education – and either is a product of wilful ignorance or malevolence – malevolence, I should add, just not against the groups targeted against the ethnicities or tribes that are the object of derision and hatred, but against all humanity. Because splitting humankind in this century, under this situation – when the most serious crisis life on Earth has faced for the last 65 million years is approaching – is tantamount to an indirect, extended suicide.

Imagine for a moment that the Islamic State – in reality yet another tribalist group, unified around a sectarian, violent form of Salafism – conquered most of the Middle East and established a Caliphate, without much resistance from surrounding powers. Imagine that they succeeded with their goal of establishing Islamic Sharia Law and their form of government, rebuilt their cities and re-established what – from their point of view – would be an Islamic golden age?

Their Caliphate would nevertheless be destroyed when climate change turns much of the Middle East more uninhabitable for human beings when it already is, and a large part of the population are turned into refugees, in the period of 2050 to 2100.

The same if a Fourth Reich is established somewhere in Europe. If all the descendants of Non-European migrants are expelled, if all minorities are quenched and all Jewish influence removed, nevertheless rising sea levels will not only render coastal communities inhospitable, but will also damage sweet-water reservoirs. Melting glaciers in the Alps would disturb river systems, and changing climate will upset the ecological balance and thus expose the population for more hardships.

It is true that we – tribalism or not – are moving rapidly towards an ecological collapse, caused – which once again is true – largely by a civilization based on debt, trade and exponential growth rather than tribalism. But just because tribalism is not directly the cause of the approaching sixth mass extinction event, does not mean it would be a solution to the crisis – as for example those Nazis who are aware of the environmental crisis like to boast.

In order to transition towards sustainability, we need to address the issues of climate change, soil erosion and freshwater depletion from a global perspective. If a civilization or a culture is based around the concept of hostile particularism directed at other groups of human beings, that civilization or culture will have a difficult time cooperating with those it views as hostile or as subhuman. Moreover, its intricately constructed ethnic conflicts and theories of superiority or inferiority represents a distraction from the core problems.

Our rejection of virulent tribalism in all its forms must not be based on liberal-humanist sentimentality or an unwritten, unsaid endorsement of our current, unsustainable civilization, but must be based on an uncompromising faith that we – the human species – can endure this crisis and transition towards sustainability only if we unite around common objectives and view the Earth as our homeland, and Humanity as our nation.

Summary

The resurgence of nationalism in all its various forms, as well as of ethnically based conflicts, from Burma to the banlieus of Paris to the inner cities of the United States, is hardly surprising giving the current state of automation, economic development, globalisation and the mass extinction event we have caused and continue to cause as a meta-civilization.

Those reactions, however, would not do much to solve the crisis – in fact they serve to complicate the situation. Tribalists generally view the world as a static, zero-sum game where the tribe would need to attain dominance over a geographic area, be it a neighbourhood, a region, a country or a continent. What they are unable to comprehend is that even if they attain their goals, they will not be able to reach sustainability – which is what they believe they will achieve in their own lives if they succeed in defeating their designated rivals.

However, the EOS cannot fall into the trap of letting the rejection of tribalism become an endorsement of liberalism – because liberalism in its current form is ultimately in itself an endorsement of a civilization built on the illusion of exponential growth, the very system which in itself is causing the sixth mass extinction, and which encourages the masses into passivity and consumerism.

Our universalism must be one built on active inclusion, on introspection and on action simultaneously – a common project based on enlightened, heroic collectivism aimed on transitioning towards a sustainable future for all of humanity.

“We possess the power
If this should start to fall apart
To mend divides
To change the world
To reach the farthest star”

Ronan Harris, VNV Nation