The draft of Bill Ellis.

This draft examines how directly democratic organization of society can bring people into better harmony with other life on the planet while avoiding the damage caused by large-scale exploitation of the environment. Based on a summary by Bill Ellis in Maine, USA.

Some of the thoughts presented here were inspired by E. F. Schumacher’s 1973 book, Small is Beautiful, and the lecture Bill Ellis gave before the E. F. Schumacher Society in 1998.

Today the people of the world are challenged with unprecedented problems as improper care for the earth's ecological systems threatens the planet’s life support system and has brought us to the brink of collapse. At the same time soaring population places increasing demands on these fragile and interconnected systems.

In addition, technological advances have made human labor forces increasingly irrelevant to the production of goods and thus delinked from the financial markets. As civilization proceeds from the industrial age into the age of knowledge millions of people may be left behind with no means of sustenance.

As detailed in previous chapters, the powerful are proceeding down the path of globalization, disregarding the needs of people and the environment while enhancing the fortunes of the few (see Chapter 4). This has resulted in most of the world's wealth being concentrated while many millions of others worldwide suffer from unbearable poverty with hardships bordering on deliberate inhumane treatment.

Under what some refer to as the “dominator paradigm” prevailing over thousands of years, economic needs supercede the natural order of earth needs. Modern attempts to increase food production by the sale and use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, monocropping, and intensive meat production are largely responsible for increasing desertification as a result of worldwide topsoil losses. Since civilization itself is dependent upon the topsoil on which it rests, we are digging the foundation out from under our home.

Now, inadequately tested bioengineering practices (genetically modified products), saturation of live stock with antibiotics, irradiation, and use of hormones to increase milk production introduce possible new dangers.
As these problems become more evident, millions of individuals around the world are beginning to question the stability and security of our present systems and join with like-minded others to explore the situation. As a result there is a movement toward the creation of “sustainable living” societies based on decentralized financial systems, governance through bioregionalism, and lessening of dependence on world trade.

Such people are sometimes described as “inner directed,” “cultural creatives” and/or “integral culturists.” They believe that competition is antithetical to sustainable living and insist on cooperation. A turn in the direction of sustainable living requires that society examine its old thought patterns and adopt lifestyles that more nearly fit the needs of today. Although such sustainable local or regional communities tend to be restricted in size, they can be linked with other communities in cooperative networks that have unlimited potential.

A vision of direct democracy—participatory democracy not under hierarchical control—was offered in a 1982 TRANET (transnational network tranet@rangeley.org) editorial. Made possible by new technology and concepts, a future world government can be pictured as a network of networks in which each individual has multiple paths available to provide for his or her well-being and to influence world affairs. Various members would associate for special projects or issues but without any bureaucracy demanding action or conformity.

The cells of this future of governance are emerging on many fronts. There are innovative social techniques such as Local Employment Trading Systems (LETS), CoHousing, Homesteading, Intentional Communitities, local scrips, food co-ops, Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOPs), Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), and many others. Also hundreds of thousands of Grass Roots Organizations (GROs) are springing up around the world, solving local problems with local skills and local resources. They are no longer waiting for governments or corporations to solve their local problems and develop their local potentials.

In the physical world, atoms, molecules, or cells, in sufficient numbers tend to form networks and special conglomerations. Simpler entities combine into larger ones. Elisabet Sahtouris, in Earth Dance: A Living System of Evolution, suggests that the human body with its cells organized into organs, and organs organized into a living being is a perfect metaphor for society. Ervin Laszlo and the Budapest Group carry the concept even further with their concept of “General Evolution.”
The same pattern is being followed by civil society and the burgeoning GROs are following that pattern. Also, to support the network of GROs, Grassroots Support Organizations (GRSOs) are forming, most often by middle class professionals and technicians who recognize the inequities engendered by the current economic-political system. GRSOs reach out to give in-kind assistance and to legitimize the actions of the peasants and disenfranchised in their bids for empowerment and local self-reliance. Techniques, technologies, information, and service from the industrial countries are supplied through links created by international non-governmental organizations (INGOs).

Julie Fisher in The Road from Rio describes world wide network of GROs, GRSOs and INGOs in terms that fit perfectly into chaos and complexity theory. A living body of networked organizations has emerged to fill the niche produced by dysfunctional post-colonial governments. Interdependent social cells have developed organs assuming specialized functions that serve the whole social/political body that promises better life for the people in developing countries and the whole Earth. The natural laws being revealed in chaos, complexity, and Gaian theories, are working on the social level.

As Elise Boulding pointed out in her book, Building a Global Civic Culture, the heart of a new world governance has already formed. Through the revelations of science, an understanding of the cosmic process is slowly emerging. With this new understanding, humanity may be participating in the creation of a sustainable and lasting civilization based on citizen participation in local community organizations—a Gaian global governance.

Modern forms of democracy are relatively new in human existence, and have never reached perfect form. Classical studies examine Athenian and Roman experience, in which important parts of the population were excluded from government. The prevailing system into the 18th Century was absolute monarchy, based on the “divine right of kings.” Neither churches nor governments were friendly to the idea that common people could rule themselves, nor even participate in government. The ideas of voting, representation, legislating, human rights, politics, constitutions, or social contracts were little more than hazy academic notions.

A landmark step was the curtailment of royal power in the Magna Carta imposed on King John of England in 1215 by the barons, which led, after much travail, to the modern constitutional monarchy in Britain, where traditions are preserved but power is effectively in the elected parliament. Over the years constitutional monarchies in which royal powers are limited have been established in other European countries.

By the 18th Century, masses of people recognized that they were missing out on many of the benefits that their toil had created. “It was the best of times, and the worst of times,” as later described in Charles Dickens’ The Tale of Two Cities. The American Revolution in 1776 and the French Revolution in 1789 (interrupted by the emperor Napoleon and a restoration of Bourbon kings until another revolt in 1848) ushered in new concepts of democracy.

Modern democracy came into being within what has been called the "Dominator Paradigm" based on the Genesis creation story holding that the earth was created for the use and domination of man. This was further developed by Greek philosophers. Then the Medieval Church and its "chain of being" put man near the top of a hierarchy, followed by women, children, other races, animals, plants, and the earth. In 1776 Adam Smith's laissez-faire economic theories held that the best for all would be produced by the self-interest of each through the operation of an “invisible hand.”

The American colonies had assumed a degree of self-government under the British Crown, but voting rights were usually denied women, blacks, Catholics, Jews, slaves, and anyone lacking substantial land holdings. Probably no more than 1/3 of the adult free men could vote. Office holding was even more restricted, based on property ownership. Many of these limitations continued after the revolution. In spite of subsequent extended suffrage to blacks, women, and all citizens, the voice of the people has been steadily eroded as corporations have grown in size and power.

It is now possible to enter a new phase of democracy due to expanding civil society, modern technology, and a new scientific understanding of how evolution works. The theories of Chaos, Complexity and Gaia have a suggested a "Gaian Paradigm” in which the earth and all the cosmos evolve as a single unit, system, or “holon.” Every entity of the universe is a unit composed of smaller units and embedded in larger units. The whole is dependent on every part, and each part is dependent on the whole, evolving in harmony and unison. Simple units combine to form more complex ones, which in turn combine in ever more complex forms.
Biological evolution is the most obvious example of the tendency toward the ordering of simple entities into more complex systems. Flexibility is one of the cardinal biological principles of evolution. Without flexibility a life form is not sustainable, it cannot change to meet new conditions. But governments, like corporations, have been organized within the Dominator Paradigm—good management means rigid order controlled from the top.

That idea is contradicted by a best-selling book “Birth of the Chaordic Age” by Dee W. Hock, retired head of the Visa worldwide credit card company composed of more than 20,000 banks. He has been acclaimed for his successful management style that emphasizes choosing capable subordinates and letting them solve problems with their unique abilities instead of micro-managing them. He believes that successful systems thrive on the edge of chaos with just enough order to give them pattern, and calls this concept “chaordic” from a combination of chaos and order.
If society is to meet the challenges that face it, it needs to live closer to the edge of chaos. It must welcome a degree of disorder. Democracy since its modern inception has suffered from its self-guilt of being inefficient. The Gaian Paradigm sees democracy in a very different light. The seeming weaknesses of democracy are its strength. The theories of Gaia, Chaos, and Complexity suggest that self-organizing on the edge of chaos is natural law. It requires the messy flexibility inherent in democracy.

The rise of civil society, the burgeoning of GROs, the growth of social innovation, community involvement in meeting their own needs, are all parts of the progressive agenda provided by nature. We may not see clearly today the final organization which will emerge if we continue to build the decentralized autonomous communities linked together in worldwide mutual aid. But, that is the way of cosmic evolution as it is seen from the new worldview. It portends the emergence of a new phase of democracy—one in which people in community at the grassroots have a direct input to all decisions which affect their lives—a new form of global governance.