The bulk of the 21st century belongs to our children and grand children. Whether they are going to make it across to the next century will depend on how well democracy and capitalism – the twin pillars of civil society – hold up. Both have to stand strong because the water below that bridge will be turbulent. If one pillar falls it will take the other with it and the bridge will be lost. Without some serious reconstruction those pillars may not last through the century. The Transition Race to Peace and Sustainability proposes some overdue maintenance and innovation.  

A Socio-Economic Perspective

“Plan B” for Economic Survival

Europe experimented with various socioeconomic organizing concepts during the 19th and 20th centuries. In socialism, the state owned all major industries. A more extreme concept was communism, which exercised total control of politics and practiced central planning of the economy. Another extreme was fascism, which co-opted business and industry to serve the state under a single party and a leader with dictatorial power. All three systems failed.

Following World War II, large industries promoted broad distribution of their products and wealth in the U.S. helping to enlarge the middle class. In turn, industries enjoyed certain protections from the state. As a result a form of democratic capitalism* emerged. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the spread of capitalism accelerated. However, one can argue that democratic capitalism has also ended, since in recent decades it has morphed into its current form of bottom-line capitalism that is void of human compassion, mindless of its wealth concentrating and polarizing consequences, and derelict of its environmental responsibilities. It places heavy emphasis on influencing legislation often at the expense of the consumer and the public interest.

Consumers and consumption have an important part in this system therefore it may be appropriate to call it bottom-line consumerist capitalism that has become a successful but vulnerable global economic monoculture. Earth has finite resources and a limited life support capacity that cannot satisfy the near-infinite needs and appetites of this economic system. It is now becoming evident that capitalism in its current form is not sustainable on our planet.

While the human capacity to create ideas is unlimited, our planet has limited resources with which to turn ideas into value added products to generate wealth. When wealth generation runs into the limitations of our planet our economy, based on continuous economic growth of production and consumption, will come to an end.

Our global economic monoculture, without an alternate plan, is destined to collapse. As the global economy becomes dysfunctional, social and political order is likely to collapse. When that happens all good work and effort made by peacemakers and environmentalists will be lost. That Dark Scenario is now visible on the horizon – the future of humanity on our overcrowded planet is endangered. 

The purpose of Holigent.org is to offer the framework of a hybrid sustainable economic system. The Transitional/Holigent Solution combines the best features of global capitalism with a local economy. In such an arrangement, the direct human resource, barter-based local economy (community credit earned in community service) works parallel with and to a degree separate from the global economy. Thus the combined global and local economies will yield a hybrid capitalist free enterprise system that provides economic security and social harmony with a reduced environmental footprint. Such a hybrid system will amount to a “Plan B” for economic survival, and will be available to any community ready for the transition. The transition to such a hybrid socioeconomic arrangement is not to be forcefully implemented. It is a voluntary and developmental process.

While Transitional Urban Villages can be built and the Holigent Solution can be introduced most anywhere around the world, we propose such demonstration projects in pivotal places such as Los Angeles, California and Dongtan, China.

* Super Capitalism by Robert B. Reich • Alfred A. Knopf • New York 2007

A Political Perspective

These are the best of times (2007) on Earth. Globally, we have a large middle class with spendable cash and access to technology and information never before imagined. Yet, about half the population of the world lives in hopeless poverty and the probability of catastrophic events disrupting the global economy and peace is very high. While the reasons for probable disruptions are multiple, the underlying cause is perhaps as singular as our planet’s limited carrying capacity. Earth has a finite capacity to provide breathable air, drinkable water, productive soil, and habitable space. There are also limits on nonrenewable raw materials and energy.

In a world of finite resources, capitalism is a zero-sum game that is inherently programmed to concentrate wealth and that leads to polarization. The collective stress that arises from the combined negative forces of globally diminishing resources, limited life-support capacity, and economic polarization will overwhelm all existing institutions and attempted remedies, thereby giving rise to the Dark Scenario. Global economic order along with the institutions of civil society will be endangered.

Throughout the 20th century the United States was the liberator and protector of democracy. The 21st century is calling on the U.S. to lead the way in protecting the planet and to continue to serve as the guardian of democracy. The U.S. will not be able to fill this role with 19th or even 20th century methods and mindsets. 21st century global problems will not lend themselves to military ‘solutions’ or to customary market solutions. An entirely new socioeconomic organizing concept is needed.

The hurdles reside within the nature of our current economic and social systems. In the material and energy realm, our planet cannot satisfy the perpetual expansion of production and consumption associated with the demands of economic growth. In the social realm, the inherent need of unbridled capitalism to concentrate wealth and to influence legislation leads to polarization and to a corruption of democracy that will undermine social order. These flaws make the current global socioeconomic system terminally ill and unsustainable. In other words, the existing system, in its current form, is in large part the source of our problems and it is not within this system to provide the answers to peace and sustainability.

The Holigent Transition proposes to combine the best features of global capitalism with a barter-based, human-resource-exchange local economy. The resulting hybrid capitalist free enterprise system is a self-replicating cellular model that carries the seed of a systemic solution for achieving peaceful sustainability.    

The Los Angeles Peace and Sustainability Project is being proposed as the potential proving ground and demonstration model.  The City of Los Angeles is proceeding with the revitalization of the Los Angeles River, which will open for development of underutilized real estate along the River. The population of the city can provide the diversity necessary for the development of a broadly replicable peace and sustainability model.      

This project provides the opportunity for multiparty cooperation to develop, and to demonstrate a solution for the problems of cities at home and around the world. The Los Angeles Peace and Sustainability Project offers a systemic solution for affordable housing, transportation, social and economic security, carbon emissions reduction, and environmental protection.

In the current and probable future asymmetric wars big conventional military force will prove ineffective, merely presenting a large, visible and static target for the enemy, which for the most part will be a hard-to-hit small, invisible and a moving target. Continuing with current policies and methods will lead the U.S. to a tragic and irreversible loss and decline.

To maintain U.S. world leadership for the 21st century the U.S. must offer the world nothing less than a new socioeconomic arrangement that can secure global peace and sustainability. The Los Angeles Peace and Sustainability Project can serve as the demonstration program on which political parties can agree. Supporting and funding such peace and sustainability initiatives can be the catalyst for productive cooperation. In time such peace and sustainability programs can become an instrument of domestic and foreign policy. When this country exports peace and sustainability programs and assists in their development, it will help regain trust in U.S. leadership and goodwill at home and around the world. 

A Philosophical Perspective

The ancient Greek philosophers explored the nature of the universe in an attempt to understand it. Democritus, a leading voice among the atomists, argued that one has to reduce all things to their smallest elemental part, their atoms, to understand the behavior of matter. Through the process of reduction, the atomists argued, one can understand the nature of the universe. 

In opposition, Aristotle and the holists argued that a system divided loses its unique quality. The holists’ argument continued by insisting that the universe itself must be studied in its undivided whole in order to preserve its quality and to yield true understanding.

Through the perspective of more than two thousand years since those early inquiries in attempt to understand the world, we know that the atomists and the holists were both right within their domain and both wrong in understanding the true nature of the universe and our world in it.

Over the centuries that passed the atomistic view prevailed at much the expense of the holistic argument. Consequently science developed along the reductionist line at near complete absence of the holistic consideration. The development of European and ultimately industrial Western civilization is heavily influenced by the model of reductionist modern science, which is highly specialized and ultimately helped to spawn our deeply fragmented socioeconomic and political system.     

When the universe is closely examined in a static frame we see that every part and particle in nature has an ‘atomistic’ structure. However, that is an untrue view of nature in which time-driven interactions take place. When we look at each thing in its true form as a moving picture, we can then see that each system, simple or complex, has an atomistic structure and a holistic process from which unique properties and qualities emerge. These parallel events move in time onward and upward, driving cosmic evolution from the simple and homogeneous toward the complex and diverse. This, in broad strokes, is cosmic and evolutionary self-organization – perhaps the only sustained and sustainable process in the universe.

Atomism and holism, in analogy, are the two eyes of a universal observer. In optical observation of the world through one eye the observer will see a flat view without depth perception and therefore without perspective. Similarly, looking through the singular lens of reductionism will yield flawed understanding of the world. A productively sustainable system, biological or social, exists only as a result of synthesis among its atomistic structure and holistic interactions.

An Evolutionary Perspective

Evolution is the cosmic laboratory that tinkers with endless variations out of which natural selection picks a few winners that are the best fit for each particular environment. Systems and organisms are born and die as a result of this process. Matter and inanimate systems emerge from this process with some predictability. Animate systems, particularly in the higher animal kingdom, while bound by the basic rules of evolution follow the process with greater complexity. The human realm is also bound by the basic rules but free will in its current mode introduces a factor of unpredictability.

Evolution chose aggression and competition at an early stage and perfected these instruments to a high degree. Aggressive competition proved a very successful means to eliminate the less fit and secure the reproduction of the competitive aggressor. Humans have emerged at the top of the evolutionary game with competitive aggression at its highest form.

Aggressiveness is our evolutionary heritage and it is hardwired into our neuro-endocrine system. Our brains, our nerves and our endocrine system coordinate to command the heart, lung, muscles and all the organs of the body for the service of aggressive competition. We are slaves to this evolutionary heritage and almost helpless to change our behavior.

Human aggressiveness is a serious problem that now presents a tipping point in human evolution. Serious, because aggressive competitive behavior is space and resource intensive. The human population of Earth, at 6.5 billion, is at the limit of our planet’s carrying capacity. When the world arrives at the end of its resources and carrying capacity, desperate individuals and nations will turn to their aggression and use their stockpiles of weapons, and no amount of goodwill or even skilled diplomacy will matter.

Since aggressive competitiveness is hardwired into the human species and because that behavior is space and resource intensive, Earth’s carrying capacity will predictably be depleted. Since stress and the rational thought process are in an inverse relationship, when depletion arrives regional and global collective stress will rise and will overwhelm rational thought processes, and thus the hope for peaceful solution will be lost. (See Peace). There is nothing in our conventional toolbox that can fix that. Without full understanding of this we will be searching for a “market” solution that will most likely be a deadly waste of time. 

There is one potential solution. Humanity must graduate from the Darwinian jungle and move to a higher plateau of evolution. This upward movement can be engineered with relative ease as outlined by the concept of Holigent Transition. The essence of the solution suggests the transition from a competitive to a cellular networking mode. Since we cannot change our evolutionary heritage, we must work with it and around it. We must rearrange the way we live, work, commute, and consume to provide social, economic and environmental security. When such securities are provided on a sustainable basis, the individual and collective stress remain at their base level, well below the aggression trigger. In cellular networking communities, people will live content and at a reduced demand for space and resources.

Such a transformation can be engineered in two stages. Transitional Urban Villages will provide the physical rearrangements of life, and the Holigent Solution will provide the social and economic rearrangements for sustained security. The Los Angeles Peace and Sustainability Project is proposed as a demonstration model. The development of Transitional/Holigent communities requires substantial priming. Once established, such communities become self-financed, self-replicable and to a high degree self-directed.  

Perspectives

Our Endangered Earth

Our Place In the Universe

Thoughts and Comments

• When global warming reaches a certain tipping point, the permafrost gives up its methane gas as well as CO2 and global warming accelerates.  Oceans warm and release more CO2 and, new understanding suggests, something else happens. Warming oceans release some of their oxygen.  Anoxic (oxygen-dead) waters breed anaerobic bacteria that give out hydrogen sulfide, a poisonous gas.  The hydrogen sulfide the oceans then release will cover much of the Earth and kill most living things as scientists suspect happened during the great Permian extinction 250 million years ago.

• Environmental disasters and the extinction scenario are on the top of our consciousness.  Yet “death by economy” can hit us much sooner than most of us realize.  The stock market collapse of 1929 happened with lightning speed and the Great Depression quickly spread to Europe.  Economic disorder, collective social stress, hopelessness, and political failures in Germany culminated in World War II and an estimated 55 million dead.  Today the global economy is far more connected and world population has tripled since the onset of the Great Depression.  The potential magnitude and consequences of economic, social and political failures have multiplied.  

• Capitalist-consumerism – now a global economic monoculture – is highly vulnerable, threatened by among other things global resource depletion, environmental disasters, terrorism and social/political instabilities.  The stalling or disruption of the global economy is likely to bring catastrophic consequences to people around the world.  Securing the quality of life is a multi-faceted task that must go beyond the concerns of environmental sustainability.  For that reason our Transitional Urban Village proposal reaches for atmospheric carbon reduction and the Holigent Solution focuses on social and economic stabilization to promote and preserve civil society and peace.

• In our democracy (U.S.), individuals vote on election days, mostly as amateur politicians, while special interests vote as professionals daily in the lobbies of power and on the golf courses Sundays and holidays. Election results are a TV popularity contest increasingly decided by money rather than merit. Particularly at the federal level, along with the size of government, the concentration of money (revenue and borrowed) and political power continues to grow. A system so flawed will damage democracy beyond the ability to maintain civil society.

• Capitalism’s unparalleled success in stimulating production and consumption to fuel economic growth cannot be sustained by our planet with finite resources and limited life-support capacity, and there are additional problems. The concentration of wealth that is the essence of capitalism is tilting the playing-field locally and globally, polarizing society and the world. As we look ahead in the 21st century we see free-enterprise capitalism shifting toward global monopolization. The power of corporations continues to grow and corrupt democracy, as individuals are destined to become defenseless consumer-slaves in corporate kingdoms. This trend does not offer a promising future for civil society.

• China’s rapid rise as an economic powerhouse is fueling speculations as to whether China will remain an economic partner of the U.S. or turn into an adversary as the competition for resources heats up. It will be useful to remember that the adage that “nations that trade will not war with each other” remains valid only as long as the train of global economy is on track. There are multiple and complex economic, social, political and environmental issues down the line that are threatening to derail that train as we move toward mid-century.  A U.S. - China (nuclear) war could be part of that train-wreck. This is another reason why we must begin The Transition-Race to Peace and Sustainability with the Los Angeles demonstration project without delay.

• Transitional and holigent urban villages offer, beyond the green potential, an opportunity for communities to localize aspects of governance and economy. Thus a degree of self-governance and a local parallel economy can create durable socioeconomic cells that can be the building blocks of a cellular civil society with reinforced pillars of democracy and a hybrid capitalist free-enterprise system.

Looking Across the 21st Century