The Meaning of Life and Other Vegetables

Hello everyone.

I feel that I had my humanist- / radical- / socialist- / “New-Age”- thinking hat off long enough for you to recover, so it might be time to finish off this arc, with “The Ant Revolution”.

Picking up from here –

Some of you might say: What you have proposed is nice, but not realistic. Where will the food you suggest to donate come from (implied answer: the supermarket – ?). Or the hot water in the shower you suggest offering…? What about infrastructure, like roads? And so on.

You are right. I did not go into any of that. The argument I presented was not a plan or a blueprint for change; only a declaration of intention, and maybe pointing out a general direction. I feel that with the current prevailing thinking, this is not a small thing. First, I feel that too many people don’t think about these topics at all. They accept what they perceive as “reality” as a given, “the natural order”; then simply proceed (more accurately, skip) to dealing with their everyday “survival”, “routine” or what they simply perceive as “life”, in whatever ways they feel they can. Second, even those who stop to ponder about the situation are mostly conditioned to the “trade mindset” I described, so any improvement they’d consider working towards would lay within these confines. My intention was to claim that none of that is “natural order”, that there may be an alternative, and that we should question EVERYTHING, if we want a real change for the better.

Indeed, in the traditional way of effecting large-scale, sustainable change, a lot of research, planning, and preparatory work would be necessary. I think that everything I mentioned so far, including the planning etc., would have been doable – if we (humanity) had put our mind to it. The first pre-requisites are faith that a better way exists, and that we can get there; and an intention. These are the aspects I addressed in parts 1 and 2.

However, looking around, I have little faith in any sort of centralized implementation. Many kinds of “traditional”, centralized / systemic “ways of going about things together”* have been tried so far, and the sum result is what we see around. Starting from kings yielding raw power, many centuries ago, through institutions like the church (and offshoots), democratic and authoritarian regimes, fascizm, centralized socializm/communizm, capitalizm, you-name-it-izm – what we currently see is what it came down to. Despite any good intentions and the abundance of wits, it all seems to break down.

[* This is just a longer way of saying Political Systems. I prefer to avoid using the word Politics (and its derivatives) because it’s commonly poorly understood, and thus misused. Politics simply means “Topics related to how large groups of people go about living together”.]

Sitting with it for a moment, I think that the core reason for the above breakdown is that as humans we are all essentially self-centered. The individual cares about themselves and their closer circle. As the circles expand, the care diminishes. This is also true for groups of people – teams, organizations, institutions: No matter how noble they are on the outset, through time and hardship all such groups seem to eventually converge into first taking care of themselves (so the group can be perceived as self-centered, just like I claimed essentially all individuals are); and second, taking care of increasingly large circles around themselves at increasingly diminishing levels (again, just like the typical individual does). Apparently, no large-scale altruism exists (except very rare outliers, like Mother Teresa); so a realistic approach to get “everyone happy” should look to leverage our individual interest in improving our condition in relatively small circles around us. My argument might sound a little vague right now, but I believe it will clear up as you read. So please go on.

As above, the prevailing system / power structure won’t be dismantled and transformed into any kind of fair, sustainable system by a single individual (no matter how wealthy and powerful), nor by a small group of such individuals. Those who currently possess enough power or resources to effect a change that will benefit the many, stand to lose the most from such a change. Namely, losing most of their power and wealth.

And so we come to the ants metaphor.

An ant colony or a beehive is a powerful organism. Each member (or “organ”) plays a small, non-unique role, and the strength comes from numbers. It’s also more resilient, as it’s normally able to survive the loss of a member (actually, quite a large number of members) or their reduction in functionality. True, the ant colony represents a mindset that is at odds with mainstream, contemporary, Western culture, which focuses on uninhibited individualism at all costs. However, the ant colony is not a collection of robots acting identically. Rather, the individual ant is seemingly “free” to act at its volition, subject to its core “code” and a small set of basic, easy to understand and apply rules, that in turn serve the greater good, and as an integral part of it – the specific individual’s good (the community benefits >>> the individual benefits). Each individual ant is seemingly “suspending” its pursuit of its own good, and is in turn rewarded by a broader, longer-term “standardized” wellness and security – a tradeoff that is a little sour on the Western palate, but not a bad bargain overall (arguably, an intelligent choice).

The ant colony is a useful model for a situation where any single individual is seemingly powerless in the bigger scheme of things; but where at the same time, a large number of such individuals who follow the same simple set of guiding principles may achieve substantial goals, nonetheless.

Natural ant colonies have a Queen, but here a decentralized model is of more interest. Can an effective “ant community” operate without a “Queen”? Maybe.

I hypothesize that with an established minimal set of basic, simple directives, which practically all members follow, none of the biological and coordinating functions of the Queen will be essential for a productive and beneficial operation of a parallel human community. What exactly these directives need to be, should be the subject of careful consideration and preferably a broad, thorough discourse; either way, I’d like to suggest a set of requirements that these directives must meet in order to make up a realistic, practicable and actionable scheme to bring about the necessary change.

Note: My use of the ant colony metaphor relates to the way to transform the current, prevailing system/paradigm into a fairer, sustainable, beneficial-to-all-humans (and maybe money-free) system; not to the operations of the post-transformation society. I’m not suggesting that humans are ants, or should live and operate like ants!… My focus is on how the “weak” (but many) can bring down a powerful, entrenched, self-serving (and fairly centralized) establishment.

Guiding principles for establishing desired actions for individuals interested in bringing about a change

1. A desired action is one that contributes to the end goal (the cause), directly or indirectly.
2. At any given point, the desired action set available for a given individual is a subset of a finite, defined action set (the desired global action set) available to the general population.
3. Individuals are free to take actions other than desired actions; these are seen as neutral to the cause, and thus outside the scope of this discussion. There is no restriction of action imposed by this system.
4. Actions in the desired global action set must:
   • Be reasonably easy for the average individual to complete on their own.
   • Not rely for their effectiveness on any number of other individuals taking any specific action, at any time (though effectiveness may be much enhanced by such actions, synergistically).
   • Not require extensive monetary resources for completion (the monetary cost must be within the normal, routine means of the average individual, or at most require a modest sacrifice) – think “average hobby”.
   • Be able to be started without mobilizing any number of other individuals or recruiting more resources than are at the normal, routine command of a single average individual/household.
   • Be clearly and simply traceable to the cause, so it’s easy to understand how they serve the cause (not necessarily directly)
   • Have – if completed – clear, tangible and measurable outcomes (may be small scale and local), within a reasonable timeframe – not more than 2-3 months, and preferably <4 weeks.
   • Not require any sort of coordination other than one-way transfer of information by and to the individual taking action, e.g. looking in a website.
5. More?

I think that free giving, as I described / argued for in part 2 of this arc, is one example of such a desired action.

I haven’t, at this point, developed this argument (or the desired global action set) beyond the above. However, according to the decentralized / independent nature of action under this scheme, any desired action would (and should) be beneficial to the cause regardless of the apparent completeness of the scheme. This is exactly the point of such actions – they can be small-scale, sporadic and uncoordinated, and yet effective when taking place in large numbers. If I am correct, free giving can be a starting point – so please feel encouraged to begin. Even better – suggest more, and even improve / challenge the outline itself.

Thank you. Peace to all.