“There is something terribly wrong with this country“ - V

We’ve had corporations controlling our government for over a century. and wealthy landowners before that. kings and nobles, emperors, priests... it seems anyone with any sort of power has tried to dominate the rest of society

We are on the verge of technologies that have the potential to eliminate all our freedoms as we know them or would hope them to be. Many of these same technologies can also be used to free us and make our systems more collaborative then ever before and have the potential of eliminating oppression from our social systems.

(james burke sample)

The system is corrupt - why do we need change?

Currently most of the world lives in a system we call global capitalism.

Capitalism is a game. An artificial set of rules. One that separates us from nature and each other. It treats us as isolated individuals. It’s mythology says that it was designed to make life easier for people. To free people from the struggle to survive... and yet we struggle with no end in sight.

It is a system that puts profit above all else. this leads to certain corruptions and perversions.
for example... We’re killing the forest which is necessary to the health of the planet. As the forest, gets scarce, instead of conserving that resource, capitalism places higher and higher prices on it. making it more profitable to exploit till the end. encouraging the final extinction. This applies to all natural resources and populations... oil, rare animals, clean water...

it cannot be fixed from within the system
*The system was designed to resist change and to favor certain people.
*The people who benefit from this system have a great interest maintaining it
*The system has been designed to marginalize those who try to change it.

The system is designed to waste our energies fighting it

but...

If we build our own system
Ignore the games that they play to distract us
politics, sports, entertainment

We can build something else while this corrupt system still exists to support us.

The system cannot be torn down and replaced
There are too many dependancies on the current system
food, shelter, health care, education...

transitions are important
it must be replaced piece by piece
to avoid a collapse and more death than people can imagine (the last thing anyone should want is for civilization to collapse)

build alternatives
Build a new culture based on sharing, caring, cooperation,
collectively owned businesses
money shared and distributed in a fair way,with an eye toward eliminating money from the system entirely.
reestablish villages - a more human form of living
create models that are modular so that every community can create their own way and plug in

a new hope
start with providing basic necessities to the people involved
once food, housing, health care are established it frees people to have time to work on other projects.

restructuring culture
culture must also be changed to reflect the new values of a restructured society.