In 1984 a
large part of the rich world came together in a movement that came to
be called 'Feed the World' (video). Since
then, Bob Geldof and others, including some very powerful people, have
kept trying to change things.
In 2010, 1.07 billion people (1 in 7 people in the world) did not have
enough to eat. (source) That is the most in the
known history of humanity.
Meanwhile,
the richest country in the world suffers from
epidemic obesity.
Who is to blame? Many people want to shout out their answer, but what
would it mean if it is no one's fault?
In spite of our cleverness, our good intentions and the tremendous
output of our modern economy something is causing billions to starve.
It is causing us
to pollute
our own environment. It is causing us to become an extinction event on earth.
It
also causes innocent individual action to come together
invisibly
-- out of sight and mind -- to cause tremendous destruction and pain
... such as the breathtaking cruelty that occurs to at least
some
our food animals. (source CAUTION: VERY GRAPHIC VIDEO)
Even in the richest countries things don't quite make sense. Whatever
happened to all the free time time and the easy riches that the 'labour
saving devices' were supposed to create? Why
do most people have to work so hard to make ends meet when
there
is so much abundance? Why do so many parents today feel it is too
dangerous for their younger child to play outside unsupervised?
Why does
modern society seem so cold and uncaring to so many?
People are clever. People are powerful. Why then does so much go on
that will end up hurting everyone?
MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL
This is based on a real phenomenom -- meaning that
it is repeatable and no matter what you believe it still happens, just
as gravity happens no matter what you believe.
Simplified,
we could say this: whatever works best today we will have more of in
the future. By 'works best' we mean in terms of money.
No matter
who or what you are, if you find a way to make or save more money,
people will line up at your door to find out how you did it. In the
future, all these people will then do it themselves. Eventually, it
will become necessary behaviour just to survive. Then someone will find
something even better way to make or save money. Repeat.
This
is why all the free time that labour saving devices were supposed to
give us simply disappeared in a cloud of efficiency. This is why
doctors who used spend an hour or two visiting you at home now can only
see you for five minutes in an office.
By
looking at our local and global communities through the lens of
self-organisation, the world suddenly
makes sense. The exciting bit is that understanding how
self-organisation works in our society, it will suggest extraordinary new solutions
to
some of the most difficult problems we are all facing right now.
On the Self-Organisation
page we explain its basic properties and how they
apply to society. The Veil talks about
some of its effects using real world situations arising
from the climate change debate. On the In Depth
page we go into detail about how these forces work and how you
can programme and test them yourself. Here you will also find some
original research into this subject.
The first step is to learn to see how self-organisation is working
in our local and global communities right now. For this purpose we have set up
a blog where we discuss what we see
through the human self-organisational lens.
We would be pleased to see you there.
THE CORE ARGUMENT
SUMMARISED
If we
create the right conditions for self-organisation
to occur,
self-organisation will occur, just as when we create the right
conditions for fire, fire will occur. It does not matter whether the
burning material is wood or people.
Because we routinely design
these systems, we know exactly what conditions are necessary to start
self-organisation.
All the
conditions necessary for self-organisation to occur exist in human
society. Therefore, we should expect it to be operating in
your community right now. Our understanding of these processes
predict the baffling
and
destructive realities that we see at all levels of society.
Traditional
methods of applying law, policy, rules of faith, etc, will not alter
the long-term destination of a progressive self-organisational system.
On the other hand, the nature of
self-organisation offers us powerful practical tools for change.
This project
is dedicated to describing and promoting these solutions.
