My own 2017 explanation of this phenomenon is shorter and simpler, but perhaps less complete and less convincing. Still, it might be of interest. https://leftymathprof.wordpress.com/trade/
It says "trade increases inequality", but it is the trade in factor markets that leads to leverage. The problem is not in the trade of finished goods and services. That trade is actually a means to an end in capitalism, but it is not the core of capitalsm.
Leverage, called power in Joseph's explanation, has always been the problem in capitalism because it is neither a meritocracy nor a free market system. Capitalism is a leverage based market system and economy, which systemically leads to inequality (among many other negative side-effects).
This leverage-problems is made almost invisible (for most people) with government corrections, but they only treat the symptoms. This core problem in the economy can still be understood when looking at the the early stages of capitalism, before modern big government existed. Early industrial capitalism produced extreme inequality, dependency, and power imbalances, which is why socialism emerged as a reaction.
Socialism wasn’t the solution, but it responded to real, observable harms created by capitalism in a period with minimal state interference. That clearly visible problem has now been covered up by the cosmetic corrections that the government applies, but leverage can still be recognised today in how corporate capitalism functions. It shows up as persistent structural advantages that compound over time: access, scale, legal asymmetry, and agenda-setting power. The result is leverage.
"Democratic responsiveness erodes not because of voter apathy or institutional failure alone, but because the distribution of economic power overwhelms formal democratic mechanisms."
There is a more complicated story to tell here because the ongoing and ever-growing eoconomy forces governments and regulatory organisations to keep up and grow with the economy to treat the negative symptoms of capitalism. This leads to growing bureaucracy, which is more easily eploited through the mentioned mechanisms, and offers even more power and protection to the capitalist elite.
Not only does this provoke the overwhelming of the democratic mechanism, it actually leads to a kind of union between the two. That is the stage of this process we currently see at work, but it is reaching its end stage. The next step will be the true union of government and economy in a different setup, one that guarantees full control over the population in the form of a techno-feudal state.
Great work, Peter. The section on democratic contradiction clarified how institutional capture works. In practice, many levers of governance sit where voters don’t touch them directly, creating a paradox: consent on the surface, compounding inequality underneath - because the key incentive rails are upstream of ballots. That’s how representative democracy drifts into mandate laundering. If democracy is to reduce inequality rather than scaffold it, we need public awareness and control over those upstream levers. We most certainly can’t leave it to markets...
As someone who has never voted for the conservatives or liberals, and saw them as always the worst possible options for most working class people because they obviously favoured profit making over people and planetary well-being - I've often wished that logic wasn't unique for me but pretty fundamentally obvious for 99% of everyone else. Then we could have voters who KNOW the system is rigged and wealth creates power to influence government and when we vote we aren't voting for top-down change that makes life sustainable and just, we are voting as damage control and to try and LESSEN the systemic inequality that keeps pushing as long as market economics is mainstream.
But obviously, that is not the way most people are. Most people I meet are good, decent people, working to have a good life, but they are not able to vote with consistent class consciousness because they quite frankly aren't taught systemic thinking to know WHY and HOW class inequality keeps happening despite good intentions from most people to live well with peace and balance.
So that's why I'm very invested in supporting Integral because it provides the missing link: An new infrastructure that IS democratic, that IS sustainable, that IS cooperative, by design.
The more people that engage with Integral the more they see for themselves how a democratic, cooperative, sustainable economy can be better than the mess we were all born into and trying to figure out and fundamentally change before it is too late.
I just hope there are enough systemic thinking activists like Peter dispersed out there in various cities all over the world who can develop Proto-Nodes and follow that logic along with Integral, once it is actually accessible for use.
My estimation is it would only take about 10-20 dedicated systemic thinking, sustainability and public health-oriented activists per community to set up the foundations of an Integral Proto-Node gathering together what is already being done in terms of libraries, mutual aid networks, community gardens, repair cafes, worker cooperatives, etc. and get that critical mass in each city, 3.5% of the population, to get engaged with it and that momentum should be able to carry forth to a successful system change evolution. No guarantees, but that's the potential we have here.
"I've often wished that logic wasn't unique for me but pretty fundamentally obvious for 99% of everyone else"
Leverage, called power in Joseph's explanation, has always been the problem in capitalism because it is neither a meritocracy nor a free market system. Capitalism is a leverage based market system and economy, which systemically leads to inequality (among many other negative side-effects).
This leverage-problem is made almost invisible (for most people) with government corrections, but they only treat the symptoms. This core problem in the economy is easily spotted when looking at the the early stages of capitalism, before modern big government existed. Early industrial capitalism produced extreme inequality, dependency, and power imbalances, which is why socialism emerged as a reaction.
Socialism wasn’t the solution, but it responded to real, observable harms created by capitalism in a period with minimal state interference. That clearly visible problem has now been covered up by the cosmetic corrections that the government applies, but leverage can still be recognised today in how corporate capitalism functions. It shows up as persistent structural advantages that compound over time: access, scale, legal asymmetry, and agenda-setting power. The result is leverage.
Which is why I love the structure and strategy of Integral. Our leverage as working people is that of collective numbers, engaging in a better way of living that is outside the wealth and power accumulating system of markets, to the highest degree possible, while living IN the system.
As Peter has said, nonprofits and mutual aid are a huge loophole in the current system. Capitalists use nonprofits all the time to their advantage and it is about time we use them to our advantage. Mutual aid, or free home and community labor, has traditionally propped up every market economy for centuries - the classic tale of Adam Smith being taken care of by his Mom so he could write his Wealth of Nations theories. It is about time we use mutual aid and time banking to our collective advantage. Not by force but by function.
I've seen people in my community go out of their way to gas up at a north hill gas station that is usually 3 cents cheaper than the others. It is easier said than done, but it is pretty obvious, if we can make meeting basic needs more local, more efficient, more democratic and more fun than the big market system of coercion and instability - people will gravitate to it. And protect it.
"As Peter has said, nonprofits and mutual aid are a huge loophole in the current system. Capitalists use nonprofits all the time to their advantage and it is about time we use them to our advantage."
The reason capitalists can use nonprofits, is because of the mentioned leverage. But what makes it difficult to get the idea of Integral working, is not only that there is currently little or no leverage in it, but that (especially at the start) it takes a certain inner human development for people to embrace it.
My work is based on that need for inner development, so I speak from experience when I say that capitalism has seriously marked most people in such a way that they distrust each other, and that their believe in the existence of solutions and alternatives is lower than ever. As a consequence it is very difficult to help people evolve collectively.
I have seen more or less similar ideas to Integral, so I am hopeful that it is already moving itself among the people. Maybe those separate initiatives should somehow be connected worldwide to create more leverage against the corporate capitalism leverage. But it would seriously speed up the process if we also found ways to make a collective inner evolution happen at a larger scale.
Do you have suggestions on how to approach the distrust and the need for a collective evolution? My estimate so far is that it is both a systemic and a cultural challenge.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about how we make Integral more popular initially when even so many activists are distrusting, close-minded, etc., is this:
How Integral is designed as an online platform should be directly informed by this challenge of onboarding.
Think of how profoundly Facebook (and other social media) spread like wildfire and altered the social infrastructure of people’s lives without them even thinking about it that explicitly.
I’m hoping Integral can be so useful for what everyone is already doing (even if what they’re doing isn’t Integral-like) that all you’ve really gotta do is say, “hey check out this platform, it’s a secure way to organize amongst your group, plan events, create polls, compile research, record progress, etc. etc., (you can decide exactly how you want to highly its utility) all in one place and it’ll even give you suggestions if you want it to.”
Many groups already wish they had something better than Discord or even Signal to organize themselves…
So now suppose someone does decide to use Integral. Then the user will notice that Integral offers several functions that are foreign to them, or maybe not incredibly obvious at first what they’re supposed to be used for. But that exposure over time - along with the fact Integral can literally suggest organizational tips to the person based on how they’re already using the platform - will teach the user Integral principles without the user ever needing to crack open a book or a long technical article explaining new big-picture concepts to them.
I have thought about this, and talked about it with people who have similar plans as Integral, but the pull that Facebook has, is psychologically quite different from the challenge Integral is facing. Facebook effectively hacks people at the mostly unconscious instinctive-emotional level, while Integral has to appeal at a much more conscious level. Mixing those two levels will not offer the desired result, and clash with and confuse most users that were attracted to the platform because of the Facebook-like incentives.
Good points. The general public does not do well with being 'told what to do', even if is the right thing. For some strange reason, human beings are more likely to follow the group and be conditioned by the capitalist system, corporate media and coerced by debt and risk of poverty to conform to the system rather than to logically resist it and build a better one. I wish humans weren't so easily fooled. But what's that old quote? "It is easier to fool somebody than to convince them they have been fooled." Routinely proves to be true. Even good, honest, hard-working people resist sustainable change for various reasons.
When I describe how a new system could be built, a bottom-up, decentralized, commons-based solidarity economy, most open minded people think that sounds great but "Where does this exist?!" and I have to admit it only exists in pockets in communities, in some cities more than others, in some countries more than others but struggles against the capitalist order for obvious reasons: A Solidarity Economy or post-scarcity society is the logical idea of building a post-monetary, post-capitalist society based on sustainability metrics from design to processing to recycling and to improve well-being for everybody. Nobody has ever seen this, in full, before. Nobody has ever seen a whole city or a whole country do this. Not only because the bloody US Empire, CIA and forces like that will interfere and destabilize the Hell out of them to stop 'a socialist government' from helping the people, like they did in Chile in the 1970s.
The general public never change until the better path IS the most obvious thing in the world, accessible in their community and transparent, easy to adopt.
So to start answering your question, how do we approach the distrust and need for collective evolution?
We start with those ALREADY in the system change frame of mind. Those who already are anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-ecocide with pro-social values. The environmentalists, the disenfranchised young people barely scraping by looking at a Helluva burned out planet to inherit if we don't change course soon and the elders who are equally as concerned about leaving a burned out, violent, damaged planet for the next generations.
There has got to be at least 3.5% of the population in each community who feel that way, who are already in support of Integral, without even knowing what it is. They want a sustainable society, they just don't know all the parts that have to come together to get there. The backbone is an Integral infrastructure and then all the mutual aid, timebanking, tool libraries, community gardens, repairing workshops, local democratic council meetings, sustainable policy advocating and more can come together in Proto-Nodes.
I think it is super sad that there hasn't been a mass US General Strike after the last Trump election and then now, with all out fascist Trump terrorism on display, how there isn't every reason in the world for a good chunk of the 99% working class to join the US General Strike organization, check their local mutual aid reserves and stock up for a sustained mass general strike to demand the resignation of the Trump regime and the passing of a Universal Basic Services bill to lift everybody out of poverty and continue to resist the fascist regime as it tries to survive in desperation.
But that hasn't happened. So until it does, build up Proto-Nodes and support for Integral with those who get the need for it. Aim for 3.5% of your population.
Trust is earned. Social proof must be established in the community in a visible, tangible way for the majority to join in that direction.
There is a curve called the "Technology Adoption Curve" and it is a bell curve that shows in the beginning of a new, emergent technology, and we could say cybernetic Integral is like a new technology, there are 2.5% of the population who are Innovators, 13.5% are Early Adopters --- Then there is a CHASM and the rest of the population won't join until "Social Proof" is evident that the new system works better than what they are doing now. The Early Majority is 34% and the Late Majority is 34% as well. The Laggards are 16% (aka Trump cultists, they can't be changed, they need to go to mental institutions for life, they only hurt society with their insane cult-minds).
So, when you feel trust is broken, remember that many people are resisting the system and want change. Find them and work with them. But also know that you are never going to get 100% on board. Always going to be about 16% who lag behind, never wanting to change.
But once you get 3.5% of the local population educated and acting in ways that build a solidarity economy in line with Integral systems of management, you'll build social proof for the Early Adopters and Early Majority to see the new pathway is better and join.
Never will I say this is easy, but it is my best advice at this point since there are so many people who are not going to be innovators or early adopters until they see the social proof. The small minority of Integral-oriented folks need to be vigilant in finding our local sustainability council to educate them so they can spread that education and establishment of Proto-Node institutions against the odds.
Sorry for being long-winded. Any further questions? :p
I have a question. Just wondering if you have a general relatively comprehensive system/mathematical analysis of what a sustained general strike does and how I - as a mathy precautious person who doesn’t wanna put my faith in something until I can logically see how it’s going to end in the desired outcome - can be convinced that I should get behind a general sustained strike initiative.
So far I’m hesitant. But I’m not hesitant to get behind Integral because I know how the gradual growth of networks operating under Integral logic, buttressed by adequate policy infrastructure and Interface Cooperatives, will absorb resources from the market over time to build the new systems.
In fact while I’m trying to reach the same level of clarity regarding the merit of general strikes, which are much more abrupt and “aggressive” tactics by comparison, I also have to ask whether the process and outcomes of general strikes may even interfere with the growth of Integral.
Love this. I’d just caution us against treating awareness alone as the driver. Most people are decent, but agency is expensive when the incentive rails push in the other direction. That’s why I read Integral as "make the good path the easy path."
Absolutely. I would never suggest that awareness is the lone driver of system change. Most people simply do not change by being told. They have to see the better path as obviously better and more helpful to them in their own lives and communities. That's why the push for 'awareness' in my opinion is for a core sustainability group in each community to educate themselves on Integral and mutual aid foundations so they can build and promote those institutions in a way that makes it, as you say, 'the easy path' for the majority.
The core group in each community can be around 10-20 people. They can set the stage for Integral and a good goal would be to get 3.5% of the population on board, via education, mutual aid and cooperative endeavours like a tool library membership or food commons contribution (community garden and community kitchen work tied to timebanking, sort of deal). There are steps to this, milestones to look for and it is the 'long-game' to transform society from a monetary-market entrenched power structure to an federated, non-monetary, cooperative commons-based society - so we should look at this transition in steps and parts.
For example: In a city of 60,000 people, a group of 10-20 sustainability activists could get acquainted through information sessions about Integral and establishing Proto-Nodes or at least doing a needs/assets assessment to find out how much the community has and needs (such as tool libraries, repair cafes, community gardens and kitchens, mutual aid networks, timebanking, worker cooperatives, etc.) and then they could plan to watch Zeitgeist Requiem together, and then Integral can be accessible to them to engage with going forward after that.
Next step is to fortify the mutual aid foundations of a Proto-Node and gather as many like-minded community members into the federated, voluntary cooperative system. So for a city of 60,000 that's looking for 2,100 members. If you count up the number of people meeting with a sustainability group, members of a cooperative tool library, doing repair cafe stuff, tending to the community gardens and kitchen and so on, and you see yo have over 2,000, that's a milestone for sure and momentum can carry forward to success, as studies have shown.
To summarize: Education is important mainly for the key group of activists who will be the first to implement Integral and Proto-Nodes with mutual aid foundations. The rest of the community will likely be drawn in by function, by convenience, by better benefits to their lives if they contribute to Integral cooperatives.
Thank you for this, Peter. A sobering and rigorous examination of inequality as a structural outcome rather than a moral failure. There’s a lot here that lingers.
My own 2017 explanation of this phenomenon is shorter and simpler, but perhaps less complete and less convincing. Still, it might be of interest. https://leftymathprof.wordpress.com/trade/
It says "trade increases inequality", but it is the trade in factor markets that leads to leverage. The problem is not in the trade of finished goods and services. That trade is actually a means to an end in capitalism, but it is not the core of capitalsm.
Leverage, called power in Joseph's explanation, has always been the problem in capitalism because it is neither a meritocracy nor a free market system. Capitalism is a leverage based market system and economy, which systemically leads to inequality (among many other negative side-effects).
This leverage-problems is made almost invisible (for most people) with government corrections, but they only treat the symptoms. This core problem in the economy can still be understood when looking at the the early stages of capitalism, before modern big government existed. Early industrial capitalism produced extreme inequality, dependency, and power imbalances, which is why socialism emerged as a reaction.
Socialism wasn’t the solution, but it responded to real, observable harms created by capitalism in a period with minimal state interference. That clearly visible problem has now been covered up by the cosmetic corrections that the government applies, but leverage can still be recognised today in how corporate capitalism functions. It shows up as persistent structural advantages that compound over time: access, scale, legal asymmetry, and agenda-setting power. The result is leverage.
Nice piece Eric.
I'm SHARING this with my friends!
nice article.. and video. thank you.
FYI ..the link at the bottom of your article is unfortunately broken:
https://www.revolutionnow.live/episodes/episode34-staycationing-9jlk7-kbr23-98fgl-fngdf-jn9pp-zsp5y
"Democratic responsiveness erodes not because of voter apathy or institutional failure alone, but because the distribution of economic power overwhelms formal democratic mechanisms."
There is a more complicated story to tell here because the ongoing and ever-growing eoconomy forces governments and regulatory organisations to keep up and grow with the economy to treat the negative symptoms of capitalism. This leads to growing bureaucracy, which is more easily eploited through the mentioned mechanisms, and offers even more power and protection to the capitalist elite.
Not only does this provoke the overwhelming of the democratic mechanism, it actually leads to a kind of union between the two. That is the stage of this process we currently see at work, but it is reaching its end stage. The next step will be the true union of government and economy in a different setup, one that guarantees full control over the population in the form of a techno-feudal state.
Great work, Peter. The section on democratic contradiction clarified how institutional capture works. In practice, many levers of governance sit where voters don’t touch them directly, creating a paradox: consent on the surface, compounding inequality underneath - because the key incentive rails are upstream of ballots. That’s how representative democracy drifts into mandate laundering. If democracy is to reduce inequality rather than scaffold it, we need public awareness and control over those upstream levers. We most certainly can’t leave it to markets...
As someone who has never voted for the conservatives or liberals, and saw them as always the worst possible options for most working class people because they obviously favoured profit making over people and planetary well-being - I've often wished that logic wasn't unique for me but pretty fundamentally obvious for 99% of everyone else. Then we could have voters who KNOW the system is rigged and wealth creates power to influence government and when we vote we aren't voting for top-down change that makes life sustainable and just, we are voting as damage control and to try and LESSEN the systemic inequality that keeps pushing as long as market economics is mainstream.
But obviously, that is not the way most people are. Most people I meet are good, decent people, working to have a good life, but they are not able to vote with consistent class consciousness because they quite frankly aren't taught systemic thinking to know WHY and HOW class inequality keeps happening despite good intentions from most people to live well with peace and balance.
So that's why I'm very invested in supporting Integral because it provides the missing link: An new infrastructure that IS democratic, that IS sustainable, that IS cooperative, by design.
The more people that engage with Integral the more they see for themselves how a democratic, cooperative, sustainable economy can be better than the mess we were all born into and trying to figure out and fundamentally change before it is too late.
I just hope there are enough systemic thinking activists like Peter dispersed out there in various cities all over the world who can develop Proto-Nodes and follow that logic along with Integral, once it is actually accessible for use.
My estimation is it would only take about 10-20 dedicated systemic thinking, sustainability and public health-oriented activists per community to set up the foundations of an Integral Proto-Node gathering together what is already being done in terms of libraries, mutual aid networks, community gardens, repair cafes, worker cooperatives, etc. and get that critical mass in each city, 3.5% of the population, to get engaged with it and that momentum should be able to carry forth to a successful system change evolution. No guarantees, but that's the potential we have here.
"I've often wished that logic wasn't unique for me but pretty fundamentally obvious for 99% of everyone else"
Leverage, called power in Joseph's explanation, has always been the problem in capitalism because it is neither a meritocracy nor a free market system. Capitalism is a leverage based market system and economy, which systemically leads to inequality (among many other negative side-effects).
This leverage-problem is made almost invisible (for most people) with government corrections, but they only treat the symptoms. This core problem in the economy is easily spotted when looking at the the early stages of capitalism, before modern big government existed. Early industrial capitalism produced extreme inequality, dependency, and power imbalances, which is why socialism emerged as a reaction.
Socialism wasn’t the solution, but it responded to real, observable harms created by capitalism in a period with minimal state interference. That clearly visible problem has now been covered up by the cosmetic corrections that the government applies, but leverage can still be recognised today in how corporate capitalism functions. It shows up as persistent structural advantages that compound over time: access, scale, legal asymmetry, and agenda-setting power. The result is leverage.
Which is why I love the structure and strategy of Integral. Our leverage as working people is that of collective numbers, engaging in a better way of living that is outside the wealth and power accumulating system of markets, to the highest degree possible, while living IN the system.
As Peter has said, nonprofits and mutual aid are a huge loophole in the current system. Capitalists use nonprofits all the time to their advantage and it is about time we use them to our advantage. Mutual aid, or free home and community labor, has traditionally propped up every market economy for centuries - the classic tale of Adam Smith being taken care of by his Mom so he could write his Wealth of Nations theories. It is about time we use mutual aid and time banking to our collective advantage. Not by force but by function.
I've seen people in my community go out of their way to gas up at a north hill gas station that is usually 3 cents cheaper than the others. It is easier said than done, but it is pretty obvious, if we can make meeting basic needs more local, more efficient, more democratic and more fun than the big market system of coercion and instability - people will gravitate to it. And protect it.
"As Peter has said, nonprofits and mutual aid are a huge loophole in the current system. Capitalists use nonprofits all the time to their advantage and it is about time we use them to our advantage."
The reason capitalists can use nonprofits, is because of the mentioned leverage. But what makes it difficult to get the idea of Integral working, is not only that there is currently little or no leverage in it, but that (especially at the start) it takes a certain inner human development for people to embrace it.
My work is based on that need for inner development, so I speak from experience when I say that capitalism has seriously marked most people in such a way that they distrust each other, and that their believe in the existence of solutions and alternatives is lower than ever. As a consequence it is very difficult to help people evolve collectively.
I have seen more or less similar ideas to Integral, so I am hopeful that it is already moving itself among the people. Maybe those separate initiatives should somehow be connected worldwide to create more leverage against the corporate capitalism leverage. But it would seriously speed up the process if we also found ways to make a collective inner evolution happen at a larger scale.
Do you have suggestions on how to approach the distrust and the need for a collective evolution? My estimate so far is that it is both a systemic and a cultural challenge.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about how we make Integral more popular initially when even so many activists are distrusting, close-minded, etc., is this:
How Integral is designed as an online platform should be directly informed by this challenge of onboarding.
Think of how profoundly Facebook (and other social media) spread like wildfire and altered the social infrastructure of people’s lives without them even thinking about it that explicitly.
I’m hoping Integral can be so useful for what everyone is already doing (even if what they’re doing isn’t Integral-like) that all you’ve really gotta do is say, “hey check out this platform, it’s a secure way to organize amongst your group, plan events, create polls, compile research, record progress, etc. etc., (you can decide exactly how you want to highly its utility) all in one place and it’ll even give you suggestions if you want it to.”
Many groups already wish they had something better than Discord or even Signal to organize themselves…
So now suppose someone does decide to use Integral. Then the user will notice that Integral offers several functions that are foreign to them, or maybe not incredibly obvious at first what they’re supposed to be used for. But that exposure over time - along with the fact Integral can literally suggest organizational tips to the person based on how they’re already using the platform - will teach the user Integral principles without the user ever needing to crack open a book or a long technical article explaining new big-picture concepts to them.
I have thought about this, and talked about it with people who have similar plans as Integral, but the pull that Facebook has, is psychologically quite different from the challenge Integral is facing. Facebook effectively hacks people at the mostly unconscious instinctive-emotional level, while Integral has to appeal at a much more conscious level. Mixing those two levels will not offer the desired result, and clash with and confuse most users that were attracted to the platform because of the Facebook-like incentives.
Good points. The general public does not do well with being 'told what to do', even if is the right thing. For some strange reason, human beings are more likely to follow the group and be conditioned by the capitalist system, corporate media and coerced by debt and risk of poverty to conform to the system rather than to logically resist it and build a better one. I wish humans weren't so easily fooled. But what's that old quote? "It is easier to fool somebody than to convince them they have been fooled." Routinely proves to be true. Even good, honest, hard-working people resist sustainable change for various reasons.
When I describe how a new system could be built, a bottom-up, decentralized, commons-based solidarity economy, most open minded people think that sounds great but "Where does this exist?!" and I have to admit it only exists in pockets in communities, in some cities more than others, in some countries more than others but struggles against the capitalist order for obvious reasons: A Solidarity Economy or post-scarcity society is the logical idea of building a post-monetary, post-capitalist society based on sustainability metrics from design to processing to recycling and to improve well-being for everybody. Nobody has ever seen this, in full, before. Nobody has ever seen a whole city or a whole country do this. Not only because the bloody US Empire, CIA and forces like that will interfere and destabilize the Hell out of them to stop 'a socialist government' from helping the people, like they did in Chile in the 1970s.
The general public never change until the better path IS the most obvious thing in the world, accessible in their community and transparent, easy to adopt.
So to start answering your question, how do we approach the distrust and need for collective evolution?
We start with those ALREADY in the system change frame of mind. Those who already are anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-ecocide with pro-social values. The environmentalists, the disenfranchised young people barely scraping by looking at a Helluva burned out planet to inherit if we don't change course soon and the elders who are equally as concerned about leaving a burned out, violent, damaged planet for the next generations.
There has got to be at least 3.5% of the population in each community who feel that way, who are already in support of Integral, without even knowing what it is. They want a sustainable society, they just don't know all the parts that have to come together to get there. The backbone is an Integral infrastructure and then all the mutual aid, timebanking, tool libraries, community gardens, repairing workshops, local democratic council meetings, sustainable policy advocating and more can come together in Proto-Nodes.
I think it is super sad that there hasn't been a mass US General Strike after the last Trump election and then now, with all out fascist Trump terrorism on display, how there isn't every reason in the world for a good chunk of the 99% working class to join the US General Strike organization, check their local mutual aid reserves and stock up for a sustained mass general strike to demand the resignation of the Trump regime and the passing of a Universal Basic Services bill to lift everybody out of poverty and continue to resist the fascist regime as it tries to survive in desperation.
But that hasn't happened. So until it does, build up Proto-Nodes and support for Integral with those who get the need for it. Aim for 3.5% of your population.
Trust is earned. Social proof must be established in the community in a visible, tangible way for the majority to join in that direction.
There is a curve called the "Technology Adoption Curve" and it is a bell curve that shows in the beginning of a new, emergent technology, and we could say cybernetic Integral is like a new technology, there are 2.5% of the population who are Innovators, 13.5% are Early Adopters --- Then there is a CHASM and the rest of the population won't join until "Social Proof" is evident that the new system works better than what they are doing now. The Early Majority is 34% and the Late Majority is 34% as well. The Laggards are 16% (aka Trump cultists, they can't be changed, they need to go to mental institutions for life, they only hurt society with their insane cult-minds).
So, when you feel trust is broken, remember that many people are resisting the system and want change. Find them and work with them. But also know that you are never going to get 100% on board. Always going to be about 16% who lag behind, never wanting to change.
But once you get 3.5% of the local population educated and acting in ways that build a solidarity economy in line with Integral systems of management, you'll build social proof for the Early Adopters and Early Majority to see the new pathway is better and join.
Never will I say this is easy, but it is my best advice at this point since there are so many people who are not going to be innovators or early adopters until they see the social proof. The small minority of Integral-oriented folks need to be vigilant in finding our local sustainability council to educate them so they can spread that education and establishment of Proto-Node institutions against the odds.
Sorry for being long-winded. Any further questions? :p
I have a question. Just wondering if you have a general relatively comprehensive system/mathematical analysis of what a sustained general strike does and how I - as a mathy precautious person who doesn’t wanna put my faith in something until I can logically see how it’s going to end in the desired outcome - can be convinced that I should get behind a general sustained strike initiative.
So far I’m hesitant. But I’m not hesitant to get behind Integral because I know how the gradual growth of networks operating under Integral logic, buttressed by adequate policy infrastructure and Interface Cooperatives, will absorb resources from the market over time to build the new systems.
In fact while I’m trying to reach the same level of clarity regarding the merit of general strikes, which are much more abrupt and “aggressive” tactics by comparison, I also have to ask whether the process and outcomes of general strikes may even interfere with the growth of Integral.
Love this. I’d just caution us against treating awareness alone as the driver. Most people are decent, but agency is expensive when the incentive rails push in the other direction. That’s why I read Integral as "make the good path the easy path."
Absolutely. I would never suggest that awareness is the lone driver of system change. Most people simply do not change by being told. They have to see the better path as obviously better and more helpful to them in their own lives and communities. That's why the push for 'awareness' in my opinion is for a core sustainability group in each community to educate themselves on Integral and mutual aid foundations so they can build and promote those institutions in a way that makes it, as you say, 'the easy path' for the majority.
The core group in each community can be around 10-20 people. They can set the stage for Integral and a good goal would be to get 3.5% of the population on board, via education, mutual aid and cooperative endeavours like a tool library membership or food commons contribution (community garden and community kitchen work tied to timebanking, sort of deal). There are steps to this, milestones to look for and it is the 'long-game' to transform society from a monetary-market entrenched power structure to an federated, non-monetary, cooperative commons-based society - so we should look at this transition in steps and parts.
For example: In a city of 60,000 people, a group of 10-20 sustainability activists could get acquainted through information sessions about Integral and establishing Proto-Nodes or at least doing a needs/assets assessment to find out how much the community has and needs (such as tool libraries, repair cafes, community gardens and kitchens, mutual aid networks, timebanking, worker cooperatives, etc.) and then they could plan to watch Zeitgeist Requiem together, and then Integral can be accessible to them to engage with going forward after that.
Next step is to fortify the mutual aid foundations of a Proto-Node and gather as many like-minded community members into the federated, voluntary cooperative system. So for a city of 60,000 that's looking for 2,100 members. If you count up the number of people meeting with a sustainability group, members of a cooperative tool library, doing repair cafe stuff, tending to the community gardens and kitchen and so on, and you see yo have over 2,000, that's a milestone for sure and momentum can carry forward to success, as studies have shown.
To summarize: Education is important mainly for the key group of activists who will be the first to implement Integral and Proto-Nodes with mutual aid foundations. The rest of the community will likely be drawn in by function, by convenience, by better benefits to their lives if they contribute to Integral cooperatives.
I like how you think, mate.
At some point, you'll have to address the recent meta-analysis, specifically about the correlation between Inequality and Mental Health.
I believe that is touched upon referencing the epidemiological work of Richard Wilkinson, and beyond...
Which I have not done. Ok, thanks.
I wouldn't even debate about morality what so ever if I was delibeately apathetic to what's happening in the world.
Thank you for this, Peter. A sobering and rigorous examination of inequality as a structural outcome rather than a moral failure. There’s a lot here that lingers.
Is the answer economic equality though? In many ways it seems worse to me.
Great article and comments and discussions and further sources and links. Way to keep connecting both information, ideas, and ourselves. 👍🏻🫀🧠🫁❤️