A Real Post-Postmodern Civilization.

This is an updated version from two years ago...

"if a man does not keep pace with his companions it's perhaps because he marches to the beat of a different drummer" Thoreau...

We need to build what I call a New Earth Commons Society which uses a non-inflationary non-debt means of exchange; this culture could live 'side by side' to a scaled-back capitalist system, one where the focus was commercial and industrial/technical. I'm suggesting, here that we take humanity's basic needs off of market systems, and that this should be part of a Climate Emergency (and economic crisis) for around 70-years. I also believe these ideas help solve a problem regarding the failure of a Christian economic ethos. See my 12-part Winter Solstice Golden Rule Series. 

The merit of my idea is that it would allow as many people as much choice as possible as to which system they want to live under--so the ethics of voluntaryism are important to the degree that this is possible. The present worldwide financial monoculture is reaching all natural limits and cannot be sustained-- 2 billion practitioners was the likely limit. In all likeliness, this system reached its limits in and around 1950. I think the postmodernists grokked this, and, in part, is what they were getting at.

So this new emerging New Earth Commons culture would need to have a guaranteed dividend for all its people. Some boundaries would be legislated into the present system: real-estate would be limited to a one home per person initiative and the present speculation on personal real-estate would end (it would be allowed commercially in a stripped-down capitalist system). Health-care, education, food, would all be traded in the N.E.C system with the stable mode of a new commons currency (or tokenization)...In part, this issue addresses the need for an economic model where inflation is kept to minimal levels over 100-years (so an attempt at steady-state economics). I figure that by 2100 the two economies might divide into 2 billion participating in the reformed capitalist economy and about 8 billion partaking in the N.E.C. economy. To my thinking, this is an intelligent working of Pareto distribution. The stripped-down commercial culture would be focused on hi-tech and commercial interests with a focus on solving humanity's most intractable problems. One could also think of the commons as a residential economy. 

A large part of the N.E.C. economy would be to use the current recreation infrastructure; also, the voluntary aspect of the N.E.C. would mean most people in that economy would commit to living simple 'green' environmentally sustainable lifestyles. This isn't austerity if implemented benevolently and with knowledge combined with compassion and technology. A very large part of the culture entails having the infrastructure and education aimed towards mastery in any given interest. A re-implementation of guild systems and such. A re-emergence of the monastery idea even if they are secular in nature. I concede the mindset of misanthropy would need replacing with true philanthropy and not the phony kind the billionaire oligarchs shill today. Think of this as a techno-shire...

A new emerging N.E.C.civilization needs to have four pillars that are off-limits to capitalist exploitation:

1-food.

2-housing: with a one house per person initiative put in place ( end the casino speculation on homes). Everyone is conceded one- piece of private property. And yes, you can own as big a house as honest merit allows, but you only get to own one!

3-health-care.

4-education.

Implied in the new Four Pillars is the end of usury; especially usury as a tool of predatorial economic behavior. I see this idea as a compromise in the long, bitter, futile war between Marx and the capitalists. But again, my prediction is ruin brought on by the capitalists. Here is why:

1)The Global Capitalists are continuing 500-years of imperialism. Islam is the new threat to their hegemony, so Islam needs taming just like the aboriginals, or anyone else that has gotten in the way of this beast. Also, a large part of globalism today is the security of the oligarchy and its energy infrastructures which consume enormous resources.

2) This form of Global Capitalism is powered by the biggest Ponzi scheme in history: fiat currency and fractional reserve lending. It is that aspect of the Globalist's system which has created massive, unnecessary bureaucracy. Get rid of that system and you get rid of the unnecessary bureaucracies. I'm arguing for minimalist local representative councils working under the umbrella of The Four Pillars combined with trashing the current bureaucratic welfare system.

3) The free trading of goods and services should be juxtaposed to minimal exploitation of the earth's resources and its life-forms. The present exploitative systems of capital were fine in 1850 but are unsustainable now. Can we please agree that pollution has deadly consequences for humans and other life-forms. Can we please educate ourselves on the laws of thermodynamics and come to understand that there are real natural boundaries on a finite planet with finite resources.

A non-debt New Earth Commons currency juxtaposed to a living dividend paid out to all people is a necessary condition for a sustainable future and this should be combined with food self-sufficiency on the community level as much as possible. This dividend would be received along with education on ecology, food self-sufficiency, and commerce/economics ( teach people humanity cannot do whatever it wants when it wants ). We need to end the literal WELFARE of a system that takes care of the top 10% first (welfare for the elite) while at the same time promoting austerity for 90% of the planet (the fighting for the left-over crumbs). This is the current modus-operandi of our political duopoly. 

On the western welfare states: it isn't healthy or of much efficacy to give someone a few hundred bucks every month and tell them they are on their own. What any sane system would do is put in place an infrastructure where basic living needs are met juxtaposed to new education on how to reach higher potentialities. The truth is the current social safety net is all about supporting the intermediary bureaucrats and not about the effective utility of helping people meet their potential as humans. I suspect the system, as it is, was implemented by cynical misanthropes.

The New Earth Commons Civilization is the antidote!

We probably need to address what is known as the myth of progress with its various utopian end game theories. The theory suggests a schema of premodern, modern (around 1500 A.D.), and postmodern eras which cemented itself during the '50s and '60s. The first thing worth considering is that not everything premodern was irrational and illogical, and in fact; their way of keeping time via 30-day moon cycles was more coherent than our fractured Gregorian calendar. Having a direct relationship with the earth was in no way irrational either. So any corrective post-postmodern integration, at the very least, would need to discuss these particular issues.

As far as the Enlightenment and Industrial Capitalism: the sad truth is that there was a worm in the center of that apple and it was the sleight of hand of control of the money supply as the new covert method of controlling populations which seemingly replaced traditional monarchy, divine right, or church authority. I'm sure humanities stuck until we make a corrective like www.positivemoney.org.; a basic income; a citizens dividend, and perhaps even a complete overhaul of where and how to tax. Look into Henry George and the Land Value Tax. Look into Public Banking initiatives. The fact of the matter is that unnecessary coercion, exploitation, and force would need removing for a civilization to call itself post-postmodern, or integrated. One of the primary concerns here is to make sure that humanity's culture is voluntary and not built upon the foundations of forced coercion. The Four Pillars would be the overarching schema but there wouldn't be a centralized state authority as most of the initiatives would be localized and decentralized. A new model for education is a priority. Integration theory suggests that the tendency to reductionism within modernity needs to be addressed and challenged. So...

Education in a post-postmodern economy would not be for-profit and one of the primary areas of study would be a re-inquiry in the field of spirituality. Success here would mean the issue of financial corruption is removed as a possibility. We would also need new ways to test for non-bias and open objectiveness so a metric needs devising which isn't prone to skewing results--so we don't get pseudo-science as we have now in this field...This would also prevent Hindu's from doing Hindu science, and Buddhists doing Buddhist science, and fundamentalist's from doing bible science, etc. Now I get the modernists aren't going to like this idea, but the sad truth is that humans are spiritual beings whether God exists or not, and the impulse towards spirituality is never going away, so a wise civilization would concede this truism and deal with it maturely and professionally. Moreover, one of the complete failures within the current malaise is the culture of mis/distrust, and that trust is broken between the elites and common people and a sincere academic attempt to study honestly, and with integrity, humanities most important queries is about one of the only things I can think of that would restore trust to a broken civilization; in fact, no future progress is possible without something like this happening. But perhaps modern academies consider the resurgence of Flat Earth theories and such a success? Please let me assure the academies: they're relevant and are proof enough that you're doing something WRONG!

It's hard for me to imagine a more fragile civilization than the one late modernity has created-- all built upon the near absolute need for electrical power and to have the financial system dependent on this seems like incredible folly to me. A post-postmodern corrective would be to teach humanity to become food self-sufficient again and by every means possible. Whether technical urban hydroponic farming or a return to educated homesteading laws and more; everything possible needs doing to mitigate the horrors of the lights going out for an extended period. To not do so is folly, IMO., especially given predictions of climate instability in the coming century.

I should note here that I'm a Christian Gnostic, so I don't even believe that this place IS redeemable! Sorry, Hegelian's:P But the irony with most gnostics is that we are some of the most outspoken people when it comes to wanting to alter our toxic living conditions. So I don't believe we are moving towards some kind of grand Hegelian geist or its demented communist little brother wherein humanity will one day behave decently to each other. But I do think the left is correct in their assessment of liberal economic theory and the built-in contradictions within it. I also reject individualist neoliberal New Age economic solutions as the scale of the problems makes the issues systemic.

HERE is more on a similar theme riffin' on the Leap Manifesto.