Living Together/Table of content

Aims

• to write a paper which explains why the current systems or organisational ways of doing things don't work and what can be done instead.
• analyse the current situation of global society and global political economic systems
• show that the current problems can be solved by 'the project'

Structure

Introduction

still fragmented and uncomplete, needs tied together - 1st draft. also, never mind spelling and grammar:)

• define what 'living together' means in the context of this paper
• explain why we and not i

It must have been around 10 000 years ago when humanity started to form 'modern' societies. Modern in the sense of setteling down at one fixed spot, claim a piece of land for the rest of their life and performing agriculture as a mean of survival (see: Daniel Quinn - Ishmael). Since then lots has changed. Civilisations have come and gone. Some simply disapeared for until today unknown reasons, otheres have been eliminated by new, raising civilisations. The latest one, by us called modern civilisation, is us. We've build enormous cities that provide living space for most of our people in our societies. We have mostly progressed away from tribal and later on family based living onto the new age where individuality has become a key element for many peoples' lives and interconected with the choice to live in a city. This is not true for humanity as a whole, but it appears a strong trend in all societies (48% Urban, projected to grow to 59% by 2030, or an anual growth by 2.6% [1]) and even more so if only looked at the so-called First World.

But of course there is way more to 'living together' than just cities. Over the last few thousand years various forms of organisation(of society and economy) have been tried by various societies. We won't focus much on the historical aspects and how modern civilisation has become what it is now. In this paper We will mainly talk about the last 60 years. The reason for that is a radical shift on the path of humanity. As so many times before in history a war had a significant impact on its people and the 2nd World War had a significant impact on the whole world. After the 2nd World War the whole world order changed. England had to give up most of its colonies and the US emerged as a strong global economic(benefitting from Europes state after the war; e.g. see economic aid for Europe)and military power. We also regard the Bretton Woods conference from 1946 as a significant event in determening modern civilisation's path. More about this will follow at a later state.

All this is important to understand why we live how we do. To understand why a decission made on the behave of one nation can easily effecr many others without having any impact on that decission themselfes. After many years of personal frustration with so much injustice and inquality within our society and all other societies we have lived in during our lifes we refocused during the last few years. We had to get away from pure critisism and the constant feeling of powerlesness and started to focus more on the question how could a new society, beyond civilisation, look like? we spend the last few years researching this question and by now it appears refined enough to us to introduce it as a whole system. In this paper we will introduce and specificly describe 'A new way of Living'. A way of how humans can live together in harmony with each other and their surounding. We will describe this vision further before we then look deeper into its philosophical foundations. The here developed philosophical and ethical cornerstones necessery for such a new way of living together as described in the vision. They are the base for the following section on social and economic systems implemented in such a new way of living together. Here we will discuss sustainability, re-use, transperency, the co-operative model, p2p, organisation and the fundamental principles of 'all aspects changeable' and 'think global, act local'. This section will conclude with a summary of advantages coming with this concept of living together. In order to understand how we can get there we will then look into the current way of living. This time we will focus on social and economic systems rather then attempting to talk much about philosophical foundations as they appear highly fragmented and are often either unclear or non existent. We will describe the concepts of democracy, nation states, centralisation, individualism, globalisation free markets and corporates. To keep this section as descriptive as possible, in order to be able to compare it with the description of section one, we then will look into occuring problems of modern civilisation and see how they could be solved or better be non exsitend in a new way of living. The focus herein is on ecological devastation, inequality, profit and controlled information. In order to finish this paper with a positive aspect we then will have a brief look into the possibilities of transition. We will outline a roadmap of how we can get from now and here to then and there. We don't attempt to convince anyone about anything. We simply felt the need to share what we have discovered for ourselves and will do so over the next pages.

A New Way of Living

• imagine this... or A vision
• describe feeling

Philosophical Foundations

Golden Rule - Ethic of reciprocity

• behavior of humans as individual as well as an organisation

Social and Economic Systems

Organisation

• importance of org (vs. chaos), but what form does it need to take?
  • organisation serves the purpose of the wellbeing for all individuals under this organisation
• see organisation, system, System Theory, w:Systems thinking

Sustainability

• The laws of thermodynamics apply to all systems including organisations, and should form the foundation of a definition of sustainability on which organisations are developed.
• See Energy conservation and Renewable energy

co-operative model

• co-operation and collaboration; create win-win situations

transparency; share instead of hiding => open standard (incl. information)

• info, knowledge and technology accessible for everyone
• open source movement

reuse and utilisation - access not ownership

• knowledge: no intellectual property => more time to improve and no need to work on the same things without sharing
• resources: mex effective and efficient use (see social capital)
• sharing facilities: e.g. one big meeting house in the middle, 5 smaller settlements with individual houses (or shared houses), sharing bathroom and kitchen facilities in order to meet sustainability criterias (add drawing for clarification)

p2p

• network social and comp
• see p2p network, p2p meme/concept

all aspects changeable

• all aspects changeable

think global, act local

• Think global, act local
• e.g. choose level of centralisation appropriated to situation/problem (water, energy, food)

Current Way of Living

Social and Economic Systems

• see organisation, system, System Theory, w:Systems thinking

Democracy and Nation States

• gov is taking care of us/ looking after us - e.g. welfare state
• self interest of nation state - system of nations vs nations
• system of fixing instead of preventing. e.g. health, pest (here or into problems?)

Bretton Woods

World Bank, IMF, BIS, Federal Reserve System, Fractional-reserve banking, Usury

Free Markets

• consumerism: goods, entertainment, information, relations...all areas

Centralisation

• how is centralisatiom happening while globalisation proceeds at the same time? refer to the different definitions of globalisation

Globalisation

• 'grow because you can' mentality
• see Corporate personhood, Globalisation, w:Anti-globalization

Corporations

• seeThe Corporation

Occurring Problems

controlled information

• intellectual property prevents re-use => re-inventing and parallel inventing => result is less then what it could be
• only privileged have access to certain info, knowledge and resources
• hidden information -> unconscious about 'my impact' and what's happening

profit

• GDP vs GPI

competitive model with the aim for maximum profit rather then maximum harmony

• against each other instead of together - win-loose instead of win-win
• beneficial to lie and hide

inequality

• top-down decision making; decisions are imposed upon the majority
• few have heaps, lots have little (rich-poor)
• passive income, interest
• see Poverty
• money can grow by itself, has a life of its own (different to a general currency)

harmful to its environment - non-sustainable

• exploitation of natural(incl human) resources
• repair more expensive than buy new
• pollution

Roadmap - Transition period

• Answer: How can we get from now to then?

wikipedia as an example for the new way of non-hirachic collaboration

• p2p on a social level
• freely accessible info for everybody
• truly democratic

Conclusion

• Answer: Why do we want to change?
• new way is not just desirable in itself, but also solves all those problems(threatening human kinds' existence) created by the current way

Bibliography

• points to go...somewhere:
  • communication
  • self-responsibility
  • prohibition
  • 'i just work here' mentality
  • common sense (definable?) vs. regulations/policy/law
  • corporations behave like a psychopath (see: The Corporation, section: The Pathology of Commerce)