Multicellular organic society vs Virtual illusions

¿Is this an epoch of change or a change of epoch?

Luis Lopezllera M., Mexico.

Reflections for the Peoples Plan 21 encounter .

Bangkok, June 2002.

We have in recent times shocking events and an increasing awarness about the deep global crisis in the world. Uncertainty and fear spread around it. After decades of extreme exploitation and cynicism, we are collecting among the rulers confusion, lack of confidence and more killings. For the most powerful nation in the world, terrorism becomes the main challenge today, without distinguishing violence as a structural cause and violence as an unpredictable effect. A global war is declared against effects of the same system. But behind different episodes of war we have a more substantial confrontation and divergence: the global capitalist empire looking for more power and money and a myriad of small social identities looking for ancient and new sustainable livelihoods.

Bad and good news.

Using PP21 terms, we may say: We have an unresolved conflict between the present "Globalization" and "Peopleness".

* After the Tiananmen Square massacre and the collapse of the Soviet Union we continue having astonishing and even repulsive events in different dimensions but all of them symptomatic: the Gulf War; ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia; multiple local and regional deadly conflicts (Sri Lanka, Colombia, Rwanda-Burundi, Philippines...). Violence is seeded not only in southern or poor regions but we have random killers and terrorism in industrial countries (Am Shinrikyo and its sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo’s subway, the Unabomber, the Waco massacre, the Oklahoma blow-up), esoteric sects commiting massive suicide and even children attacking schools!

* Democracy becomes a buzzword fostered by the USA all around the world (a special campaign is directed against the socialist Cuba) but in reality it does not matter for making big business (oil from Saudi Arabia or markets and cheap labor in China). A coup d’etat supported by TV chains (April 2002) fails against the present populist regime in Venezuela (oil producer!) and its President Chavez who has been sympathetic to Third Worls causes. The present President of the United States of America was elected through very dubious procedures. According to recent surveys 70 percent of voters in the USA are unhappy with politics and politicians. It is a funny democracy.

* Surprising attack and destruction of the highest towers in New York! (September 11th, 2001). Those towers represented the power of global trade and finance. The Pentagon representing the military was also attacked in Washington. Around 3,500 victims. Take note that 3,500 persons die everyday victims of car accidents in the world. Cars publicity do not tell us about that.

* The USA attacks and defeats the extremist unsympathetic taliban regime in Afghanistan and pursues the Al-Qaeda militants (previously supported by the CIA). Many of them are emprisoned as outlaws in the bay of Guantanamo (a USA enclave in Cuba). Now Afghanistan, an empoverished but crucial spot, is a satellite controlled by western powers which at the same time will control the oil supply through this country for important demands.

* Israel and Palestine, soldiers versus people, engage in mutual attacks with very different warcrafts. Pakistan and India have one million troops at the border and are near a nuclear conflict (take note that, in the 80’s, Iraq then supported by the USA, used lethal gas against Iran and also against the kurds).

* An important segment of the Antarctica is detached because the global warming. The weather conditions are changing rapidly and many "natural" disasters like the Hurrican Mitch are destroying regions and countries like Honduras. The USA still does not sign the Kyoto’s protocol, because "it is bad for American businessess".

* The epidemy of AIDS multiply and devastates the population in Africa. Official statistics from China do not reveal the truth about ill people. Anthrax, a lethal powder, is distributed by post mail in the USA. Love and communication are not any more secure.

* Economic collapses in Mexico (1994-95) and Thailand (1997) generated a chain of regional failures. Argentina collapses economically and financially (December 2001), once a rich country, now half of its population is without job and literally has no money. This global problem is not limited to nations and includes TNC’s. An important transnational corporation, ENRON, collapses and reveals deep corrupted plots. In all cases, people loses their jobs and savings.

* Now we have no bread for many but circus for all. Hollywood, Olympic and Football games, Disneylands (even in France!), in favor of very profiting corporations, capture the attention (no heads) and feelings (no hearts) of billions of people all around the world, starting with the children. CNN transform facts into spectacles and people into passive and docile followers (no hands). A middle class citizen in the USA spends an average of 8 hours a day facing a monitor (TV and computer).

* Poverty and environmental damage continue increasing in the world. The gap between the haves and the have nots is continually increasing. Every day, every day, a human equivalent of 300 Jumbo Jets plenty of people is dying of hunger and malnutrition diseases!

At the same time we have several hopeful events:

* The revolt in Chiapas, México (January 1994), of the indigenous people. This emergent movement could not be massacred because the reaction of national and international solidarity of civil organizations. It has been a symbolic struggle against neoliberal globalization and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Unarmed zapatistas leaders travel in caravane to Mexico City (March 2001) dialoguing with the National Indigenous Congress and the Mexican Parliament. Millions give them expressions of solidarity.

* In Ecuador, a massive indigenous movement succeds for a few hours to take the governmental power without armed confrontation. In Brazil, the Workers without Land constitutes a very significative movement in all this big country and as a permanent militant call for peasants justice. "Via Campesina" (Peasants Way) networks similar movements all around the world. Rural communities in the Valley of Mexico (Atenco, Texcoco) resist actively the plans for a new mega-airport (repeating the Narita’s epic). East Timor gets its independence (Mayo 2002) and the resistant Xanana Guzmao wins the presidential elections. In many spots of the world, people’s movements continue to struggle and express anger and hope, getting eventual success.

* Seattle (November 1999) and many other cities where political and economic global forces gather (G-7, UNO, WTO, WEF in Davos, etc.) have been places where civic strong movements demonstrate their opposition. Porto Alegre, in Southern Brazil, becomes a place where opposition and propositions are mixed: At the beginning of 2002, Porto Alegre II gathered 60,000 people from all continents and 5,000 organizations exchanging facts, experiences and ideas in 700 workshops. These huge demonstrations have been inspired by previous efforts like The Other Economic Summit, TOES (challenging the G-7 summits) or the civil society’s conferences parallel to the UNO significative summits (remarkably Rio 92, Coppenhague 94 or Beijing 95). Monterrey was the recent one (March 2002) and Johannesburg will be the next one.

* According to Paul H. Ray (YES Magazine, Summer 2002, www.yesmagazine.org), there are in the USA (beyond a 20% of totally uninformed people, 14% of big business conservatives, 19% of social conservatives, 12% of left liberals) an amazing and promisory 36% of "new progressives".

* Intellectual, cultural and moral opposition to the present global trend is manifested everyday through many means. Thousands of political, cultural, social and scientific leaders like Nelson Mandela, Vacklav Havel, Vandana Shiva, Rigoberta Menchu, Noam Chomsky and many others, including thousands not captured by mass media, reflect deeply into the causes of misery and exploitation and give hard testimony of consciousness, resistance, hope and even success. Key persons from the establishment start criticizing it, like Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner on Economics (2001), formerly advisor of the White House and high officer of the World Bank. Even George Soros, the champion of the dubious binomial "speculation & philanthropy", is now putting the red lights.

* Thousands of associations for a better world continue struggling in order to change the present situation of the peoples all around the world. Democracy, Human Rights, Economics, Environment, Culture, continue being the main issues in order to improve the people’s condition and according to secular sociopolitical values like freedom, liberty, fraternity. Methods created through the sociopolitical liberation struggles, like those created by the Brazilian Paulo Freire ("conscientization" using key words/concepts and learning how to read and write -and viceversa) or by the Colombian Orlando Fals Borda (learning historic reality with "participatory action research") continue inspiring new ways of learning and acting. New approaches talk about sustainable livelihoods, organic society and "glocal (global and local) action & thinking".

* PP21 has performed very important steps in the 90’s (its movilizations and statements continue being deeply inspiring!) and I hope it will continue being a seed of hope and a laboratory of the future, not only in the interest of Asian peoples but for the entire world.

A shift of visions.

Nevertheless, the balance between positive and negative processes is still a huge deficit. We continue watching how people is massacred every day in many different forms (eventual or systematic, brutal or subtile, cynic or hypocritical). We continue experimenting how our personal or group efforts are many times suffering the Sisyphus fate. It is difficult to be optimist with this balance. This deficit is a call for new enlightenment, endurance and exercise. There are promisory signs. A new energy is coming from within. It is based on spiritual aims and the feeling of a new togetherness not based on particular interests but on common sharings.

Women will play a basic role in the becoming of this new era! They are the key for real love not for war. They are much more realistic. Realism is neither myopic materialism nor tricky statistics (GDP!). Collective and historical wisdom impulses us to see reality with transcendent eyes. In order to catch the whole reality we need reason (facts) but also intuition (feelings) and right intentions (will). First of all, to recover the inherent quality of being subjets not only conditioned objects.

There is the call for recovering the cosmocentric perspective instead of the anthropocentic mania inherited by five centuries of a capitalist civilization. Fortunately, thousands of different ethnic groups in the world, and significatively, the Mesoamerican peoples, remember us the importance of a communion with the Earth and the Universe. This vision fits with the sophisticated explanation about the Gaia planet, a metaconsciuos and alive entity (Teilhard de Chardin and followers). This spiritual energy could not be erased by the might of the capitalist system. This spiritual -and cultural- energy has been the main force to resiste and survive. Indigenous people may inspire astonishing endogenous processes!

Searching new paradigms.

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union many grassroots efforts were focused primarily on the power of the State. Today, concepts and practices of the Nation State, product of the historic industrial capitalism, are almost a fraud and fading away in favor of the Transnational Corporations. The State keeps its role as public police but it is much more manipulated by overwhelming forces -without borders- implying technology, information and privileges for the very few (bankers, tycoons, managers, bureaucrats, military, courtisans).

It is already documented by many authors (David Korten among others) how TNCs behave, manipulate and corrupt official/public institutions. Gurus of the neoliberal succes like Kenichi Omhae or John Naisbitt prophetized a decade ago the "transnational states" and the "megatrends".

The transborder strategy of PP21 in the 90’s has been a prophetic light. Muto Ichiyo and Smitu Kothari underscored the trap ("Towards sustainable systems", 1996):

"Most state-centered solutions entail the notion that real changes can occur only after the state becomes "ours" or through the institution of state policies where any people’s project (either in the form of social movements or alternative development efforts) is instrumentally viewed as integral to the ultimate seizure of the state by popular forces represented by their political parties or formations. This "state-centered" perspective effectively postpones the transformation of socioeconomic and cultural relations until the day of the decisive victory, the political revolution. This type of strategy, either revolutionary or social democratic, is no longer valid...".

We live in an epoch of changes identified with success. Technology, informatics, telecommunication, megacities, spacecraft, genetics... This seductive progress includes however displaced people by insecurity and rural hunger, illegal migrations, urban massification and ghettos plenty of privileges. Northern people goes to the South looking for leisure and southern people tries to go to the North looking for jobs. There are open doors for money, no visa is required; there is repression for illegal workers. Those seductive changes mean fragmentation of the natural elements of life (fision) like human basic cells and their bioregions... and concentration of conventional symbols (fusion) representing power: fascinating images (rule, consumption and pleasure) and figures (money, surveys and votes).

People’s centered strategies have been exercised all times, in parallel, divergent or convergent ways to the more usual strategies based on revolutionary or developmentist aims (movilizations or constructivism). "Association & selfreliance" has been a key concept, inspired by principles of basic political autonomy (including the utopians autarkists -selfsufficiency- or anarchists -no coercion-). Now it is reinforced by the concept of "Sustainability", inspired on ecology and alternative economics (the laws of the nature, work and trade are better than the laws of the State).

The concepts of Left and Right; Political parties; Representation to "upper" levels; Class struggles; Massive demonstrations; even NGO’s and Civil society, etc. are shifting in favor of Global awarness; Vital paradigms and Holistic approaches; Circularity of knowledge and values; Humble, permanent and effective action; Organic society; Social tissues; etc. Archetypical Struggles (Bhopal, Minamata, Sarvodaya, Narmada, the Ogoni struggle in Nigeria, Nicaragua, etc.) with their lessons (successes and failures) help us to find new ways. First we have to clarify our global bonds.

Global bonds.

The actual tools the global system of power is using in order to control people in the world are basically Images, Weapons and Money.

Images. The repetition ad nauseam of images through the mass media underscores "the american way of life" and the paradigm of "the winners", "the whites". This "cultural envelope" is destroying local identities. Information and Imagination are now key functions reserved to technocrats and "cultural workers" manipulating the consciousness and potential creativity of the people in favor of private and exclusive economic interests. Culture, leisure and knowledge are now unidirectional commodities and people are becoming dehumanized robots. Illusion vs Awarness.

Weapons. There is today only one sophisticated and powerful army in the world. It belongs to the USA. A huge layer of weapons covers the planet. Space, continents and oceans are saturated of military equipement with high technology and well prepared to spy or to kill. Russia is entering to the NATO forces and China is now the new challenger. The Security Council of the UNO is always talking about "Peace" but the five big countries with veto power are at the same time the biggest producers of weapons. The USA refuses to sign the international agreement against landmines. At the Monterrey’s Summit on "Finances & Development", president Bush offered to increase by 5 billion dollars the US aid (presently 10 billions a year) to alleviate poverty in the world. But next year the US will have a military budget of 400 billions because security now is a priority. Weapons and business hand by hand. Might vs Right.

Money. Trillions of dollars circulate every day in the world but only a minimal percentage of this money is producing real value. The rest, the biggest part is producing only more money. Greed not good is the aim of this decaying civilization. Because centuries of legitimization, it is difficult to realize how embedded and enslaved are we on the banking and monetary capitalist system. All the world is indebted to very few banking corporations. Even in the USA, the richest country, all american citizens are indebted and pay for generations the "service" for biggest debt in history. We were taught that money represents value but, if it was relatively true in the old past, during the XX century -and its wars- money was delinked from the malleable and attractive good produced by workmen: gold. During 25 years (1946-1970) the USA issued and spent in the cold war billions of dollars without material support (no taxes, no loans) for an equivalent of the entire productive infrastructure of the USA! President Nixon culminated a global strike announcing (August 15th, 1971) that the dollar would be not any more supported by gold. Since then the american dollar has been supported only by the convenience of banks and the western armed powers plus the credulity and fear of those submitted to them. Conventional money has been always a huge and unethical business for moneylenders but now it is the greatest business for speculators beyond amounts any decent mind may imagine. As an example, Soros made 2 billion dollars in one night speculating with the pound and empoverishing a whole country. Accounts vs Value.

Present scenarios.

Three scenarios combine today and more clearly in the near future:

Collapse. Local and regional crisis erupts surprisingly and multiply in a faster way. This civilization is unsustainable and will collapse as a whole (environmentally, culturally, economically and politically) sooner or later. This event will bring hunger, disease, war and the reduction of human beings into the law of the jungle and new kind of disarraying dictatures. The key words are Collapse and confrontation (anomie and disfunction). We must learn how to defend our lives and survive.

Reform. The functional institutions created in the past (for education and training, for work and business, for citizenship and democracy, for culture and leisure) are trying to avoid this nightmare by adjustments and "new initiatives" but unfortunately many of them are naive or foxy reproductions of "business as usual" with new envelopes. Many projects to alleviate poverty are in fact projectiles insiduosly seeding unfair competitions and mining the social tissues. The key words are Reform and Adaptation. We must learn how to throw away the straw, keep the grain and recompose institutions.

Mutation. Paradigms of love and solidarity are practiced by millions of small social entities overcoming fear and greed, saving human and natural energy, networking among them in different layers, regions and the global. The key words are Mutation and Innovation. We must learn how to catalyze synergies and processes with diversities. We are not any more in the middle of mechanic raw forces, now we deal with subtile qualities permeating conventional structures. It means more awarness than activity, more compassion than passion, more freedom than compromise, more perseverance than success, more dignity than gain, more communion than leadership. The tempest and the vessels are there but not enough pilots. In the midst of unpredictable changes we must nurture a firm change of epoch. According to the chaos theory, a minimal but deeply significative action here and now may change the whole: the butterfly effect.

The three scenarios are already combining, mixing, blending, and the proportion of each one depends of circunstances and your options. Asume yours.

Flags, shields and vital values.

Underscoring the key role of mutation, I will continue repeating part of my contribution to the "Symposium for the Third Choice", convened by the People´s Plan Study Group, Tokyo, September 1999:

Mutation means to change the codes of life at the common people’s level, at the grassroots, in order to overcome fragmentation and fear, seeding confidence and trust, becoming collectively creative in communion with new generations and nature. It implies to rediscover and invent healthy cohesive symbols, devices and practices in order to convene the collective efforts in a way not nurturing the usual mechanical codes and vicious devices. We call this strategy a process of "autopoiesis", self-poetry in grec means here "realization". Autopoiesis is a biological concept inaugurated by Humberto Maturana (Chile) and developed since the 60’s. Mutation means to work with people at the "molecular" level, persons, families, common undertakings, neighborhoods, guilds, mutualities, and to try to convene fundamental energies and to reproduce them thanks to a multiplier of vital exchanges. This multiplier implies to network through a systemic approach, today more feasible thanks to Internet.

This mutation implies multiple laboratories at the grassroot level all around the world. We have the following strategy based on three challenging points that we must underscore in a common life: 1) Identity, 2) Security, and 3) Sustainability.

Identity. Identity deals with "life & dead & beyond" options, beginning within family or convivial cells, but also with religious, ethnic and cultural immediate bonds at the personal and collective dimensions -language, history, social rituals, geography and environment, etc.- Traditions, religions and churches have a heavy responsibility on this issue because they are the source of many organizations, visible or invisible, and also of ideologies and artistic manifestations. There is an official history with patriotic values but there are also personal and communitarian histories and values almost always forgotten, erased and even repressed. To foster the identity of people is to recover roots, courage and vision in order to define a proper and more free path. It means to remake history searching the inner truth. Mass media and the Nation State conspire today against the diversity of cultures and peoples. There is the hegemonic consumerist society dominating almost 200 nation states but there are 10,000 different cultures claiming for different options to life. We need to recreate our flags.

Security. Security deals with power, conflict and violence, normally in relation to the State and governmental institutions but also with overwhelming criminal and outlawed threats. In two extremes, facing armies and weapons. The individual and collective protection of the community and its intergenerational life -children, adults, third age- is a basic right of the peoples and also the search for a basic might. Property rights must be considered on this perspective not as the right to an unlimited accumulation of goods and resources of different kind. Sovereignity in terms of real people -not in terms of concepts manipulated by a few leaders- reaching more autonomy of urban and rural communities. Liberty of expression, movement, association, labor and creativity must be guaranteed in an organic and consistent way. A civic agreement based on tolerance with the exercise of non violent means must help to peacefully resolve every controversy. Violence must be prevented by a permanent exercise of grassroots organization. Caution, care and internal strength must be trained by circles of awarness and vigilance. Physical, mental and spiritual health is at the base of any security. We need to recreate our shields.

Sustainability. Sustainability deals with a combination of economy & ecology ("ecosophy"?), dimensions usually delegated to the powerful but very destructive Market. There is a totalitarian market (disguised as a "free market") where the big swallows the small. In order to change it we need to recreate sustainable livelihoods practicing a behaviour of dignity, proud and selfreliance. A device that is the key to perform this challenge is Money. This concept, tool and practice is so rooted after millenimus in a daily life that almost nobody can rethink the tool as a social mean and not as a private end, as communal almost sacred token and not as a materialistic but now aetherial commodity.

If money is basically information and credit (confidence generated through work, responsibility and solidarity) in order to overcome barter and to facilitate the exchange of goods and services among the members of a community or a nation, people should not depend of historical structures like the present forms of "State & Market Company". These forms invent today money (without social support), exploit with it (usury), speculates with it ("money creates money"), puts it where there is no need (white elephants in front of impoverished people) and mixes all without distinction (with money originated by crime, narcotraffic, fiscal paradises, etc.). Facing these huge abuses, people must start creating their own devices (in essence, ritualistic symbols) to resolve human needs in a circulatory way of communal vital exchanges of products and services. The strategy is to build horizontal chains/networks linking producers and consumers -with alternative money or, if you wish, with "no-money" giving priority to the local interests instead of the transnational corporations.

These appropriated devices deal with quantitative dimensions, important when there is natural scarcity. They deal also with the complex and many times artificial issue of prices. But they should deal also with qualitative dimensions -important when there is an exhuberance of material and spiritual values, not envisaged as commodities producing money to accumulate,- where giving and lending without profit is better than taking and excluding. We need healthy money to recreate and circulate vital values.

All this strategy based on three paradigms implies not to try to escape utopically from the present dominant mainstream. It implies brave delinking steps but a the same time it implies hard non violent confrontations and, mainly, a new sort of creative diplomacy looking to reach the scarce morally solvent leaders of the establishment who may be open (thanks to the collapse syndrome) to exercise hopeful alternatives. It implies to be fitted to become catalyzers looking for innovative and even astonishing synergies.

I like to underscore two paragraphs in the Sagarmatha’s Declaration (The Mount Everest Declaration, Kathmandu, Nepal, 1996), focusing on economics (*):

"While struggling to make the state and other institutions of power accountable to the people, we empower ourselves to begin building alternative systems of production, circulation and consumption of goods and services under people’s control, and encourage the gradual emergence of people-based economic, social and cultural systems. We shall work to build linkages for the circulation and devlopment of people’s knowledge and people’s governance at all levels"... "We commit ourselves to strengthen and regenerate local production and economies which act as the basis of life-support systems of a majority of people... We commit ourselves to resist imposition of large-scale destructive projects (such as huge supermarkets at the cost of local shops, or large dams), and to protect and conserve natural resources through practices of sustainable use, to promote and strengthen the diversity of cultural and social practices, to strengthen empirically validated traditional wisdom in areas like health care and community health, artisanal technologies and agricultural practices, and above all, we commit ourselves to facilitate and restore the democratic control of resources, production and markets to the primary producers".

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(*) I invite those interested on this issue to consult my paper "A LOCAL GLOBAL MOVEMENT IN MEXICO FOR COMMUNITY CURRENCIES", presented at the ARENA Conference (Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives), in Colombo, Sri Lanka, March 2000. In the paradoxical near/long term, the "peopleness" underscored by PP21 should have its proper Alternative World Bank!

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