Seeing the post-scarcity idea You have been talking about for Years come into Integral is very motivating. I am a huge fan since first Zeitgeizt. I am planning to start an Integral Village in Polish mountains. I already have a circle of like-minded families that are looking to live like this. I also copied and posted Your article on Qortal's Q-Blog: here is the proxy link for preview: https://qortal.link/APP/Q-Blog/Simon%20James/pq/Integral-An-Introduction-LyrfFT My idea is to synchronize Integral with Qortal as baseline framework. I would suggest You to look into this: https://qortal.dev/wiki
I know Qortal at first glance might seem to have coin called QORT, but there are people on Qortal that decided to never sell QORT for any price as QORT is priceless in the old system and worthless in post-scarcity. It is only a utility token thanks to which You can publish content which is saved on the ledger. You get it for free by simply running the node. You can think of it as insurance from the monetary game, so that You don't have to be bothered with money and trade and start living in Integral.
Qortal is distributed internet infrastructure replacement, true web3, totally open-source, actively building Reticulum Mesh network so it can bypass centralized DNS-based legacy internet. Content sharing platform, working like torrents but for the entire internet.
This same idea on a high level has been coming through to me starting a few months ago and after years of tapping into the issues with our current system and tapping into a more natural flow of human behavior at the individual level as well as the collective level. What I've seen is not as technical, which I do appreciate you articulating, but it echos that we are truly a communal and cooperative species, that we can easily mirror systems we seen nature, such as a neural network for information sharing and a mycelium network for resource sharing. I see that humans have already created technologies to support cooperative and communal living and now actual system plans, like the one one you are proposing, are starting to come online. This IS where we are headed, IMO. I don't think it's a dream, but a real shift that is unfolding in front of us at this very moment. I also see that our new system will have to happen peacefully. Otherwise the mentality (or vibration, if you will) of competition, and all that comes with it, will remain and subvert any progress. However, I do believe one critical component will be necessary for the new systems to blossom and flourish. The rug will need to be pulled from those in power. I believe that our current system developed over time from the sustained belief in hierarchical systems and this has led to competition and a vicious cycle that maintains hierarchy and competition. The main lever of those in control at the top echelon is oil and gas (energy). Energy is what controls production. Production controls the illusion of scarcity. And controlling energy and production allows those in power to maintain and aggregate more power via aggregation of money / currency. When energy becomes (nearly) free and available at the community level, and possibly the household level, the old system collapses like a house of cards. This is the event that moves us from one system peacefully to another more natural, cooperative and communal system. IMO free energy exists (just my intuition based on my research) and if its going to be distributed successfully, the DIY, 3D printing instructions will need to be given away freely, globally and in one instance. However, we need to be prepared to know what to do with free energy once this gets in our collective hand and having a plan like the one Peter mentioned and being mentally and technically prepared to execute, will be essential. I'm not nearly as smart at Peter by any stretch, but I am hopeful for the future. TY Peter for all the brainpower you have put into the concept of decentralizing our world and moving to a more peaceful, cooperative future.
Great piece, and a much-needed move beyond the old “market vs state” binary. The structural diagnosis of growth and competition is very much in the anarchist tradition, where it’s long been understood that crises aren’t caused by “bad actors,” but by the logic of hierarchical systems themselves.
Your approach to transformation as a process rather than a single rupture strongly echoes Bookchin: building parallel institutions, federating from the ground up, and changing society through practice rather than by seizing the state. The post-scarcity angle and “doing more with less” reads like a contemporary extension of his observations about the efficiency of collective organization. The idea of “nodes” almost feels like his communalism translated into a cybernetic framework.
There’s also a clear echo of Kropotkin — especially in the view that cooperation and mutual aid aren’t utopian ethics, but real social mechanisms that can be strengthened through supportive conditions rather than through markets or state compulsion.
I also see overlap with anarcho-syndicalism — particularly in the idea that an alternative system emerges by building its own structures of coordination, production, and mutual support, gradually replacing market logic rather than appealing to it.
The only thing that feels missing is the political dimension of this transition. In your framing, it appears as if such a transformation could unfold in a neutral environment — without state pressure, capitalist interests, sabotage, or attempts at co-optation. Yet history shows that every real alternative — from Spain ’36 to Rojava to the Zapatistas — eventually comes into conflict with existing institutions.
There’s also a lack of clarity about who would actually carry this process out and how. You describe the architecture of a future system, but again without identifying the active subject or the pathway to get there. The attractiveness of a better model doesn’t eliminate resistance, even when expressed in elegant language and grounded in solid theoretical references.
Looking forward to future parts — especially a development of what happens next, once Integral starts genuinely challenging the status quo and becomes a threat to existing elites.
Let me lend my thoughts on the concerns your brought up and how they might be addressed. Note that this is not the full white pages for Integral, this is more of an overview. So the 'how exactly' it will work should come out in full, later, with the film and a website showing the mechanics and how it should function.
As for appearing as those this transformation will unfold in a neutral environment without state or market pressure, sabotage and the like --- I mean, have you been listening to Peter for very long? He's hyper aware of the market/state pressures that move against anything that provides true freedom, abundance and democracy for the people to detach from the market/state hierarchical power structure.
I think the method forward is two fold: 1) Have local infrastructure that is visible to the people and starts helping people in a new way, via mutual aid, time banking, cooperative businesses, tool libraries, community land trusts, etc. and popular education and neighbourhood assemblies where people are invited to share thoughts, learn what Integral is about, how a new way forward can work and be better for themselves, their children and future generations AND 2) Be prepared for sabotage and push back. That's why it needs to be decentralized in many ways. You can't stop a critical mass of people who have an idea whose time has come and will not stop until it has been achieved - and they are aware of the coercive forces and resilient to them. Anark's channel talks a lot about being prepared for 'the revolution" in this way and it is smart to try to have at least a small group in every town hyper aware of the threats to stop such an Integral movement by having them engage in Intelligence and Self-Defense outside of the market-state reach.
Hope that makes sense. If not, I can clarify. What are you thoughts?
Thanks for your reply. I appreciate you taking the time to expand on the points. What you wrote does make sense, but in many ways it actually reinforces the concerns I was trying to raise.
1) Many of the things you listed: mutual aid, time banking, co-ops, tool libraries, community land trusts — already exist. And they have existed for years. They’re great and necessary, but they face the same recurring limitations:
they remain scattered, loosely connected, easy to isolate, and the moment they grow, they quickly become targets of state or market pressure.
Which is why I’m asking:
What makes an Integral node fundamentally different from these existing grassroots structures that repeatedly hit those same limits? If the model doesn’t solve that, then we’re essentially repeating old patterns under a new label.
2) You mention being prepared for sabotage and resistance.
I agree but how, exactly? By whom? Based on what kind of structure? With what coordination? How are decisions made?
This isn’t nitpicking — it’s pointing to a core issue:
decentralization alone does not create the capacity to resist centralized repression.
3) You say that “a critical mass of people with an idea whose time has come cannot be stopped.” But history shows the opposite. Spain 1936, Rojava, the Black Panthers, indigenous movements, anarchist worker federations — all had massive support, but were still crushed by state or capitalist force.
The problem was never the idea. The real problem has always been power and Integral still sidesteps that dimension instead of naming it clearly.
4) You bring up “intelligence and self-defense.” Fair enough but those structures don’t appear spontaneously. They require political education, strategy, federated coordination, accountability mechanisms, and material support. Without that, “self-defense” remains symbolic or confined to small, isolated groups.
Which brings me to the main question: Who is the actual subject of this transformation? Not abstractly “the community,” but concretely:
which groups, with which interests, through which organizational forms?
In anarchist thought, the answer is clear: workers, tenants, the precariat, oppressed communities — people with a material stake in change, who historically built their own structures: syndicates, communes, councils, federations.
In Integral, that actor hasn’t really appeared yet.
There is an architecture but no agent.
And one more thing.
You highlighted the idea that criticism assumes the transition happens “in a neutral environment without state/market pressure.” But that’s precisely the issue — a neutral environment only exists in two scenarios:
I. After a systemic collapse
II. when the state and capital perceive the alternative as non-threatening.
If Integral requires the system to “not interfere,” then the transformation becomes possible only after existing power structures are weakened or disrupted.
That’s not a strategy — it’s waiting for catastrophe...
To sum up:
I’m not questioning the tools. I’m questioning power, actors, and political strategy without which those tools end up in the same place they’ve been for the last century: tolerated, isolated, or neutralized by the system.
Good questions, I appreciate these deep questions because they make me have to raise my level of understanding and communication and they are all questions worth answering. I'll do my best to answer them sequentially:
1) Indeed, mutual aid, time banking, co-ops, tool libraries, community land trusts — already exist. And they have existed for years. But as you correctly point out - they remain scattered, loosely connected, easy to isolate, and the moment they grow, they quickly become targets of state or market pressure.
So, what makes an Integral node fundamentally different from these existing grassroots structures that repeatedly hit those same limits? Integral is designed to IN-TE-GRATE all of those institutions into a network of commons, mutual aid and cooperatives with cybernetics and yet still autonomous management, when possible, to strengthen the stability of the post-scarcity movement because those institutions and organizations remain in solidarity with the ideals and practices of Integral and a post-scarcity economy, but they aren't technically 'one big corporation' that can be easily taken down.
Let's take the example of a tool library using the Integral system. Let's say there is a main Downtown cooperative tool library, public facing, has paid memberships (affordable) and acts as a main repository of tools of all kinds - somewhat like the public library. Firstly, a tool library is an almost instantly beloved service if it ever is available in a community, just like even small towns have a public library of books, often, because people know it is voluntary to access and can be very handy, sustainable and cost-saving in a pinch. So, 'the state' trying to attack the main tool library is fairly unlikely because most people in town would be outraged if it 'suddenly caught on fire' or a new law passed saying 'lending libraries are banned.' Even if it DID happen, there are two things that can help the resilience of this particular institution in the Integral network: 1) Neighbourhoods could be encouraged and supported to start their own tool, lending library sheds at community centres or corner garages or whatever. Decentralizing the stock of tools to multiple neighbourhoods making it very hard to sabotage it all. Side note: In my community, like many, there are these little wooden Free Libraries set up where people can take a book, leave a book and they are very well received by the community. Even the rebellious teenagers don't seem to mess with these little libraries much at all. And 2) If any of the tool libraries did face damage, the community would have enough people who care about these sharing institutions to rebuild them and restore them. "The state" isn't actually a thing, in real life, "the state" is a power structure that coerces paid thugs, like cops or military folks to sometimes try to protect neoliberal status quo in the guise of 'safety' or whatever - but if there are MORE people resisting the thugs than thugs willing to carry out that dirty work - it won't get done. That's a process and easier said than done in many communities BUT that is still the goal. Gain the trust of the community for the new way forward and the community will protect it, to the best of their abilities.
2) How to be prepared for sabotage and resistance? Based on what kind of structure? With what coordination? How are decisions made?
For a more in-depth answer check out Constructing the Revolution by Anark, especially starting at 5:40 when he explains: Councils, Economics, Intelligence and Defense.
This ties into an answer for the 4th question you brought up, too.
My personal, fairly simple answer, is that each community needs 4 Pillar Organizations to see a successful post-capitalist revolution: 1) Nonprofit Sustainability Advocacy Group. The 'first' democratic council, if you will, with norms and policies for fairness but open to all, doesn't have to be many people 10-20, but always advocating and EDUCATING the people on how to build a sustainable society - maybe a good one is screening Zeitgeist Requiem once it comes out and referring people to Integral to get engaged. This nonprofit can also have small break-off councils that have to do with Intelligence and Defense. Maybe a group of anti-capitalist tech nerds who work on gathering Intelligence and also help at the local Makerspace or Fab Lab. Maybe a group of anarchist trained public safety and defence specialists. Their loyalty is to the community, not market/state forces. And then 2 is a Cooperative Development Incubator like Cooperation Buffalo, 3 is that idea of the expanding Library of Things Ecosystem, multiple locations and types of lending libraries throughout the city and 4 is a Food Commons with networked community gardens, greenhouses and community kitchens preparing and giving out local food - connected to Integral time credits for "free" meals (no money exchange) for the contributors.
The other points you brought up:
“a critical mass of people with an idea whose time has come cannot be stopped.” But history shows the opposite. Spain 1936, Rojava, the Black Panthers, indigenous movements, anarchist worker federations — all had massive support, but were still crushed by state or capitalist force. Yes, history shows those movements were absorbed and beaten down by capitalist forces - but to be fair, those movements were isolated. Were they all advocating for the end of capitalism, money and markets, and a post-scarcity economy with Cybernetic management? No, they weren't.
The liberation of the world's people from the power structure of monetary-market capitalism will take a new Design Architecture such as Integral that is decentralized where needed and local context cannot be known for all, but 'norms' such as local democratic councils making decisions with people affected by those decisions is pretty much gonna be a standard - and free association - meaning people 'bad actors' who don't want this to happen, maybe a rich billionaire who is worried their power structure built on exploitation and money is gonna go away might show up to these meetings and yell and scream - but they council members will just sit, listen and then tell them you are free to disassociate with our group, do your own thing, but WE are deciding to move forward with Integral post-scarcity development and even billionaires once they see they don't have the control over the people's minds and access to essential resources will realize it is time to give in or flee. They'll flee to their islands and bunkers or they'll accept the new paradigm, perhaps begrudgingly, but accept it nonetheless because the critical mass of people are united, finally.
Sorry for the lengthy response, I tried to keep it succinct and relevant. If this response spurs on any more questions or concerns from you, please let them be known. I couldn't cover every aspect I wanted to and maybe you'll bring up something I forgot to address.
Thanks for the detailed reply, I appreciate the effort. Some of your points clarify the general direction, but they also reinforce the concerns I raised in the first place.
1. What you describe is still a set of existing initiatives but the problem lies elsewhere. Mutual aid, time banking, co-ops, CLTs, tool libraries — all of these already exist and have been functioning for decades. Their limitations don’t come from a lack of integration but from the balance of power that restricts their growth and makes them vulnerable to isolation or suppression. Simply “integrating” them under a shared label doesn’t answer the question of what structurally changes their situation.
2. Your description of resilience assumes a de facto neutral environment after the transition. Much of your answer deals with how Integral institutions would work once the system is already established, the community supports it, and decentralization is in place. That vision is appealing but it describes a society after collapse, not a theory of transition.
The key question remains:
How do we get to that stage when the very process of implementation happens within a hostile, unequal, and heavily controlled environment? This is precisely the gap I was referring to earlier — blending the conditions of transformation with the conditions after transformation.
3. Public sympathy ≠ actual capacity to withstand repression. History gives us movements far larger than local libraries or co-ops — sometimes counting millions of supporters and they were still crushed by states or capital.
Public support alone has never been a shield against centralized violence.
4. The four pillars you describe are valuable institutions but they still don’t answer the question of power. They are local NGOs, councils, co-ops, defense groups. Good tools, but: hey lack the structure needed for higher-level conflict; they cannot counter centralized institutions; they don’t articulate a political mechanism that allows local initiatives to scale into systemic change. This is a problem of strategy, not enthusiasm.
5. The claim that earlier movements “never abolished money” is historically incorrect. Spanish Revolution 1936: money was abolished in large regions, work-coupon systems replaced currency, distribution ran without money, industries were managed by workers’ councils.
Other examples worth looking into: workers’ councils of 1917 (before Bolshevik centralization); the Korean Anarchist Commune in Manchuria (1929–1931) — a federation of villages with collective production and no centralized authority;
the Free Territory in Ukraine under Makhno (1918-1921); Chile’s Project Cybersyn (1971-1973) — more advanced cybernetically than most present-day proposals.
These movements didn’t fail due to a lack of “post-scarcity theory.” They were destroyed by military and political violence. Ignoring that history leads to the belief that a better design is enough. It isn’t.
6. The central problem remains unresolved: who is the actual subject of this transformation? We don’t live in a neutral society, and “the community” is far too vague. Historically, transformative actors have been: workers, tenants, the precarious, oppressed communities, unions, syndicates, councils, federations.
They have the material interest, the organizational experience, and the revolutionary capacity. In Integral, we see the architecture, but we don’t yet see the actors. Without an actor, any project remains a romantic vision rather than a viable strategy.
In summary:
Your response is thoughtful, but most of it describes the conditions after Integral is implemented — not the process of getting to that stage. And it’s precisely during that transition phase that questions of politics, power, and strategy become unavoidable. This is also where Integral still leaves the most empty space.
I’d genuinely like to hear more of your thoughts on this specific issue:
Who, how, and on what basis is meant to bring Integral into existence in the first place?
I see your concerns are well placed. The history of attempts to push back against capital power have been almost entirely futile, only small changes and improvements can be noted up until now and capital is ever more accumulated in the hands of the oligarchs, many of whom occupy powerful positions in the US Empire.
I will say this: The goal of Integral is clearly to end capitalism ASAP via a bottom-up, decentralized community-led cooperative process that replaces the power of debt-based money with non-transferrable, reciprocity time tokens over time. Not one month or one year. Transition beyond capitalism will not happen overnight, obviously, and some communities and regions are gonna be further ahead than others - I can't predict the future. And I'm WELL AWARE the push back from the market/state forces that will come if Integral gets any momentum that the oligarchs just can't ignore.
Also, no country on Earth will be able to be truly free until the US Capitalist Empire and its military is taken down. The world's terrorist is the US Empire, holding the rest of the world hostage via threat of violence.
Okay, so let's reverse engineer this Integral movement to end capital power, with your concerns about interference in mind. Again, I refer you to the "Constructing the Revolution" plan for dual power involving, 1) Councils, 2) Economics, 3) Defense and 4) Intelligence. That'll be important for every sizeable community to have in place. It wouldn't take that many in the Defense or Intelligence groups to be effective, maybe 3-4, with replacements ready who are working towards self-determination economics and in the councils of those communities already on board with the solidarity economy movement. This IS the transition. Not 'post-transition' this is the foundation of constructing the revolution. Give it 3 years AT LEAST to get these tent posts in place.
As for the suggestion you made that mutual aid, time banks, co-ops, CLTs and tool libraries have been around for a while and the problem *isn't* integration. I respectfully disagree, that is the issue. These things haven't been properly integrated in a network of support, pretty much ever. Or very rarely.
As it stands now, I am with a sustainability group in my community, only for a little over a year, and we are activist in trying to build a sustainable future, we have achieved nonprofit status, we have projects in the works to develop a resourceful website, we started doing a "Repair Cafe", we are on board with setting up a Tool Library (none exist in the city as of now - a city of over 50,000) and working with the University for a sustainability group of students and to do educational outreach. In my city, I'm not aware of us having ANY Community Land Trusts, not one. As I said, we don't have a tool library, we don't have many co-ops, even just a grocery store and a few very small co-ops, and we don't have a mutual aid-time bank set up, either. We have almost none of those pillars of Integral, but we CAN, we SHOULD and we ARE capable of building those in over the next few years and the integration of Integral would be a huge help.
I was unaware of the Spanish Revolution attempts to remove money from economics. Thanks for the information. I guess it goes without saying that money was reintroduced into Spanish society and here we are today with a US Empire terrorizing the world with debt, invasions, coups, sanctions and military force to maintain capital hegemony.
But going back to the point: The US Empire needs to be dismantled. How to dismantle an Empire? Bleed the beast dry. As much as the capitalists try to scare the workers into stay divided and angry at each other, the capitalists know they are useless if the workers unite, the people abandon and walk away from capitalist market economics rapidly because they see a better way. Studies show it takes only 3.5% of a population to engage with a nonviolent movement for it to be successful because that is enough that the ripple effect spreads to the majority and the revolutionary change is unstoppable. Education IS a big part but also showing a better way is huge.
As Buckminster Fuller said, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - That's what Integral is set up to do. Be a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
I may have been jumping to different points here and there, so let me try to answer you main question below:
Who, how, and on what basis is meant to bring Integral into existence in the first place?
- Integral is an architecture, as you can see. Local groups in local areas need to see the value of using Integral as a tool for system change and putting the Councils, Economics, Intelligence and Defense pieces in place to move the system evolution along, EXPECTING push back, along the way. I mean, sustainability activists are no strangers to push back. Don't you know? They get yelled at, garbage thrown at them, demeaned and threatened in the media and sometimes in person just for standing on street corners or protesting for a better, healthier, more just society. It will not be a stretch to get a sustainability group to take their main Council and create sub-committees that deal with Intelligence (countering the state/market pressures that are to come) and Defense (preparing for defense against market/state physical violence like cops and military on the streets).
- One of the ways to defend this Integral new way forward is to help people directly, those most suffering and vulnerable - give them quality food, quality opportunities to contribute, quality housing, quality time to heal and socialize and then, maybe a few years down the road, the community can say "we have reduced poverty and homelessness by 90 or 99%" and it gets in the papers and very quickly most citizens in town will perk up and go "That's amazing! And it wasn't the corporation 'donating' or the local government 'spending my tax dollars' to reduce poverty and homelessness, it was this Integral Collective, this nonprofit organization network, I can't be mad at that, I support it."
You might even get current cops and military personnel to support Integral and re-think their involvement in those jobs which are rooted in protecting capital, state-market assets, because Integral has developed to the point where they have local food, local co-op housing, local co-op jobs and popular education that tells the truth but doesn't blame individuals for being part of a system, just asks them to consider the consequences and what society they want to help develop for themselves, their kids and grandkids.
I can't say - I won't say - this will all go smoothly. But because Integral will remain free and voluntary to join, it isn't a government institution or a private capital corporation - it is separate from the flack that many people hold towards those institutions - there is a good chance, once most working class people see what Integral is about, how it works and how they can contribute to it to make a better future - it will have a lot of support, pretty fast.
One other thing, Peter has mentioned that once some basic elements of Integral have started in a community, "Integral" can also be a related political movement for better policy to help bring about the changes needed. Even if an "Integral Party" doesn't win, their voice can be very influential especially if there is already social infrastructure that citizens are aware of that help people like food commons, tool libraries, mutual aid healthcare and the like.
Ok, I've rambled on enough. How's that? Any further questions or concerns?
Thanks for the detailed response, it’s clear you’re genuinely trying to build a coherent vision. But I have to address the key part of what you wrote:
“It wouldn't take that many in the Defense or Intelligence groups to be effective, maybe 3-4, with replacements ready who are working towards self-determination economics and in the councils of those communities already on board with the solidarity economy movement. This IS the transition. Not 'post-transition' this is the foundation of constructing the revolution. Give it 3 years AT LEAST to get these tent posts in place.”
And this is where I have the biggest problem, because it reads more like an assumption than an analysis of reality. History shows that even tens of thousands of organized people were unable to withstand concentrated repression and you’re talking about 3–4 people per neighbourhood as if that could realistically build system-level resilience. This isn’t a criticism of your intentions — it’s simply that the scale you propose does not match the scale of the opposition.
You also say that “this is the transition,” that these four elements alone constitute the beginning of a revolution. But that still doesn’t answer the question I’ve been trying to raise from the beginning:
Who actually has the power and motivation to build these structures before any protection against top-down pressure exists?
This is the fundamental difference between your approach and how real movements historically emerged: Anarchist, worker, and communal forms of dual power didn’t arise because people had an inspiring system architecture. They arose because people were forced into self-organization by material conflict. These weren’t NGOs or groups of enthusiasts — they were mass movements forged in real confrontation with state and capital. That’s why the issue isn’t that councils or defense groups are bad — they’re necessary. The issue is that without a CLASS SUBJECT, they remain purely theoretical constructs.
As for integration, I understand your point, truly. But again: the problem wasn’t that grassroots movements “weren’t connected.” The problem was that the system actively destroyed them exactly at the moment they began to connect on a larger scale. It wasn’t a failure of integration. It was a political conflict and that conflict emerges every time a movement becomes a real threat to power. And the reference to Buckminster Fuller doesn’t resolve this. Yes, the quote is inspiring: “Build a new model that makes the old one obsolete.” But that only works in a world where no one actively defends the old model — where there is no apparatus of repression, propaganda, and economic coercion working to ensure the new model never grows.
Fuller is talking about model competition.
The political reality is a struggle of forces.
A better model has no transformative power if there is no subject capable of defending it. Which leads to the core issue:
Historically, transformation doesn’t begin with institutions — it begins with movements and social conflict. Integral assumes the opposite order: institutions first, movement later. And that is the crux of the problem.
To finish the point: regardless of what anyone thinks about anarchism on a theoretical level, the fact remains that anarchism is the only tradition that has spent 150 years developing practical tools for building bottom-up social power — under conditions of repression. And that is exactly what Integral currently lacks. What it does have is excellent system architecture. If Joseph were willing to take a less “apolitical” stance, he could genuinely strengthen his project by drawing from the anarchist tradition instead of keeping it at arm’s length. And anarchist movements could benefit from the cybernetic clarity and systems thinking Joseph brings.
That combination could be precisely the missing element that turns a beautiful cybernetic blueprint into a real strategy for change. And honestly, it would be great if Peter were willing to take that step. I see no reason why these worlds should exist separately. At their core, they complement each other perfectly:
Cybernetic precision + the lived experience of social movements.
With that kind of synthesis, we might actually get closer to achieving our shared hopes for freedom, peace, and collective well-being. What do you think?
Peter, this is a profound crystallization of what so many of us have been sensing but struggling to articulate. Reading through the "Nervous System" and "Cooperative Organization System" (COS) concepts, I felt an immediate resonance with the work we are doing at Changemappers.
We have been focusing on the "human layer" the changemakers, the burnout, and the need for deep, value-aligned connections. We’ve also recognized that without a rigorous structural backbone like Integral, these networks often remain fragile.
We are currently prototyping a platform that aims to bridge global insights with local action (a "glocal" approach), and I see massive synergy here. Specifically, your concept of Open-Access Design (OAD) is exactly what our network of local pilots needs to move from "sharing stories" to "replicating solutions."
We would love to explore how Changemappers’ focus on the people (inner development, psychological safety, matchmaking) could interface with Integral’s focus on the structure (cybernetic feedback, time credits).
I'm not Peter but I appreciate what you are saying here. My thought is that Peter is putting out Integral so that any activist groups can use Integral like a structural backbone and enhance their ongoing work. It doesn't need 'official approval' of Peter to work 'with it' it just needs your people to start using Integral when it is released.
Like, in my context, in Canada, I see so much 'stuff' that needs to become common pool resources. That's where I see the need for a Nonprofit Cooperatively-Run Tool Library in every community (mine doesn't have one... yet). So I look at building "Libraries of a Solarpunk Future" (To borrow Andrewism's title on his YouTube video about that topic), and I see how Integral would help with that.
I also work with a sustainability group in my town, and I plan to introduce them to the value of Integral and have us start using it when we do mutual aid, time banking and educational events. Like I hope to have a screening of Zeitgeist Requiem and then answer audience questions and refer them to how Integral helps with sustainability in our community and, honestly, the goal is to improve well-being and affordability for all, because the aim is a post-scarcity, post-monetary society (but everybody interacting with Integral may not know that or care about it, but they will see the benefit of a free tool or a free plate of food from a community food commons connected to Integral volunteering and time banking, for instance).
What about ethics/code of conduct to keep someone from abusing it in some way or just trying to create chaos (bots/trolls) Also, what can be done to create a new universal education and other social programs people will need in order to transition? How can it help people get from A to B?
If I may be so bold as to offer a model that you could pursue in your community that would compliment Integral, take a look at the Build and Fight Formula with Cooperation Jackson, and others like them with New Economy Coalition.
They are building the solidarity economy now, through the challenges of late stage capitalism and they employ local councils and governance models and ethics from the get go. Open councils, but with norms.
The simplest answer: you don’t stop abuse with codes of conduct alone, but with decentralization and transparency. When decisions are collective, rotating, and open, no single person (or troll) can hijack the system. Education during the transition happens through learning by doing: workshops, cooperatives, assemblies, shared resources. And moving people from A to B happens when they see real, practical benefits — cheaper food, shared tools, housing support, mutual aid — and start using these systems because they genuinely work better than what they have now.
This isn’t my prediction. It’s simply the pattern that AI models identify across hundreds of documented community transitions and it matches what actually works according to history and social science. ;)
I would love to know of ANY parallel community within the empire that not only started a community, but did so with clear intentions of challenging the current order.
"And moving people from A to B happens when they see real, practical benefits — cheaper food, shared tools, housing support, mutual aid — and start using these systems because they genuinely work better than what they have now."
This may be the correct outlook, but not while the current system still exists. Every one of the ABC letter agencies that control commerce would be committed to shutting it all down. People won't switch systems until a) empire falls or b) we create social programs as a safety net to reduce public dependency on the capitalist system so they can have the liberty of making that choice free from uncertainty.
I am confident that digital governance technology is the future. However, for it to even be allowed to exist, we have to restore some power back to the people starting with our basic rights/freedom and especially our anonymity online.
A theory of constituent power in crisis societies holds that populations can reclaim the authority to define legitimate order when entrenched systems become visibly unstable and unjust. As structural harms and internal contradictions erode both material security and perceived legitimacy, the taken-for-granted authority of existing institutions becomes contestable, and the resulting vacuum is filled not automatically by “something better” but by whichever actors combine a coherent normative framework with sufficient organizational capacity to act on it. In this view, a movement’s function is to supply a shared moral baseline that operates as higher law in the collective imagination, together with a distributed infrastructure—organizations, mutual aid, and coordinated non-cooperation—capable of withholding labor, compliance, and consent from arrangements judged to fall below that baseline. Constituent power from below is thus understood as a concrete capacity to delegitimize specific institutions and make their continued reproduction costly or unworkable, so that, under systemic crisis, transitions are filtered through a common standard that makes the restoration of intensive structural violence and mass disposability significantly harder to reimpose in the name of “order.”
Thanks for the excellent comment, you really get to the heart of the issue. And yes, I agree with you on a fundamental level: no parallel community can survive in an intentional form if it openly declares conflict with the empire from day one. History is brutally clear on this. Every project that tried to operate alongside the capitalist core in an explicitly anti-system way — from the Black Panthers and MOVE, to the free communes in Appalachia, Spain ’36, the Zapatistas, Christiania, Freetown, ZAD, Exarchia, Rojava — was immediately treated as a threat and suppressed economically, legally or militarily.
This is why I think your point is absolutely crucial: people won’t switch systems until the empire is either destabilizing, or until a parallel social safety net exists that reduces dependency on capitalism enough to make choosing an alternative something other than a survival risk.
That’s exactly the structural gap where “pure” architectural projects — RBE, The Venus Project, and now Integral — run aground when they aren’t rooted in real social movements and people capable of organizing resistance, mutual aid, and coordinated non-cooperation.
This connects directly to your analysis of constituent power. When institutions lose legitimacy, a vacuum opens but it isn’t automatically filled by a “better system.” It’s filled by whoever has a narrative, an organized base, and the capacity to act. This is precisely why authoritarian movements often win during periods of crisis: they already exist and already operate before the transition begins.
And this brings us back to Integral. The problem isn’t the vision, the problem is the carrier. If Integral isn’t grounded in actual movements — labor, tenants, environmental struggles, commons-based organizing, cooperatives, mutual aid, open-source communities — then there is no actor who can defend new institutions, delegitimize repression, or step into the power vacuum when the existing system begins to wobble (I’ve said this in another thread already).
In practical terms, this leads to a simple but paradoxical statement:
Integral needs social movements far more than social movements need Integral. A movement can exist without a perfect architecture. An architecture cannot exist without a movement.
Therefore, the most realistic path forward is exactly the one you describe: building parallel social safety networks that gradually reduce reliance on the state and the market, until non-cooperation with the dominant system is no longer an act of desperation. Only at that point do architectures like Integral become viable — not just inspiring maps of the future, but something materially grounded and defensible.
I want the parallel society/system to work which is why I started focusing on this issue.
I literally just finished writing this piece that breaks down what I was trying to say in more concrete details. Imagine if the strategy mentioned throughout the back half of this article was implemented using the Commons.
Integral is on a whole other level than "voting and democracy" what so ever, let alone the failed Soviet experiment. The last thing that Integral is ever going to be is Donald Trump.
Excellent piece. The Integral architecture you articulate and the governance framework I posit (https://substack.com/home/post/p-178952109) describe the same emergence problem from different angles—and each illuminates what the other leaves implicit.
I've been focused on the constraint: damaged populations cannot select wisdom, yet wisdom is necessary to heal populations. My answer is architectural—noocratic 'tournaments' and parallel systems as bootstrap mechanisms.
You invert the problem: remove the systems generating damage. Your five integrated systems don't manage dysfunction; they prevent it at the substrate level.
But here's where I think they must converge: both require transition. My governance model is Phase 1—temporary wisdom-selection protecting the emergence of reciprocity. Your Integral is Phase 2—post-authority architecture where distribution eliminates the need for it.
The synthesis isn't sequential but simultaneous: governance mechanisms create conditions for better economics. Economic restructuring creates conditions for distributed governance. Each enables the other to evolve.
The communities that build both simultaneously—Integral economics under noocratic protection—are positioned to survive intact.
Brilliant Peter. Again, you’re doing all of the heavy conceptual lifting. I read Integral as a move from moral pleading to mechanism. Instead of asking people to be nicer, it wires dignity into the architecture: open knowledge as default memory, participatory deliberation that leaves a trace, cooperative operations instead of firm-to-firm combat, a non-accumulating reciprocity token that’s spent and gone (not hoarded), and a feedback layer that watches the whole organism for drift. It’s systems literacy turned into rails.
Where I’d add nuance is emphasis, not disagreement: Integral already treats this as a sequence - start narrow, iterate, federate. I’m simply foregrounding the bridges and the muscle-memory piece: bounded pilots with published falsifiers, legacy interfaces kept alive while people learn the cadence, and culture training so cooperation runs at “normal speed.” Success spreads by practice, not proclamation.
Think addiction: you don’t go cold turkey on something this entrenched; you taper and train. That means hard ecological caps, open ledgers, universal basics, pooled accommodation costs, total-cost procurement that rewards durability and inclusion, flexible-work defaults, and enforcement via pre-committed thresholds. Run it in bounded pilots with clocks (time-boxes and checkpoints) and kill-switches (automatic pause/rollback rules) so competence grows from the ground up.
What I appreciate most with Integral is that it closes the loop in ways price never could. Prices compress the world into a single number and call it wisdom. Integral listens to multiple signals at once - ecology, throughput, equity, resilience - and corrects in real time. This is cybernetics at work. The village notebook, upgraded: deliberation as cortex, open designs as genome, co-ops as musculature, time credits as metabolism, feedback as immune system. Organism, not ideology.
My testing frame is Incentive Gravity: rails (structure) × stacks (pressure) shaped by agency (choice). The rails are credible if they stay auditable, scoped, and reversible. The pressure shifts are the heart of it. Make inclusion, longevity, and repair the path of least resistance; make overshoot and waste the uphill slog. And don’t erase agency, train it. Apprenticeships, rotating roles, and blame-free retros build the human capacity that keeps the rails honest.
For legitimacy, I'd publish falsifiers up front. Lead times for a defined good should fall cycle over cycle without ecological metrics worsening. Access to essentials stays universal while variance in non-essentials trends down. Governance overhead must remain livable; if cooperation demands a second job in meetings, it won’t scale. If black-market pricing emerges around credits, the response should work within a cycle, not a year.
Best starting ground: where open design obviously wins - assistive devices and repair/refurbish. Scope the full loop just for those lines. Run 90-day cycles with public criteria for success and pre-committed stopping rules. Keep a bridge to the legacy system for taxes, procurement, and inputs. Share ledgers and retros in the open so other nodes can copy what works and avoid what doesn’t.
To me, the promise of Integral is that it makes markets unnecessary by practice. Multi-signal coordination beats price-only once people have the muscle memory to run it. That’s the real transition: not a flip of ideology, but a growth of competence. If pilots show shorter lead times, lower footprints, fairer access - and do it with less governance drag each cycle - then scaling stops being a leap of faith and becomes practice, extended.
I've been working on an application called Direct Democracy Platform (DDP) that may be useful to Integral nodes. It is under development, so perhaps some of the planned functionality could be tailored specifically to help nodes organize some of the 5 Integral systems. The first DDP feature I hope to make available is the Issue ranking system. It will be the impetus for affinity groups to work together to get as close to a true understanding of our Issues as possible, and rank them. I would love to work with tech savvy members of Integral nodes to role out functionality together. The currently static website that I hope to make functional before too long is https://ddpus.org
Gor é o caralho, seu anāozinho feiozo de 1 metro e meio, lide com isso! Lide com essa personalidade fragmentada em mil “coisas” se odiando no espelho, vai se foder com os caralho das travestis que vc pega! (e olha que eu nem estou bêbada dessa vez) seu filho de uma puta!
Interesting idea. If this were my project, I would put together a working prototype, eg. within a single intentional community. Only once that was mostly working would I look at expanding it to, say, a network of intentional communities. I'd want to see something operational at this scale before investing in a giant Database Of Everything. Can you point to any operational prototype community?
Theory is always fine in theory, but not always in practice, in practice.
A working, developing prototype, that would be enhanced by Integral is Cooperation Jackson, Cooperation Tulsa and other organizations of that type with New Economy Coalition who are building the solidarity economy out of the shell of outdated, late stage capitalism.
They aren't out on a farm in the middle of nowhere, but they are reclaiming the commons in their neighbourhoods. That's the way to go. See the Build and Fight Formula described by Kali Akuno who is with Cooperation Jackson or see how Anark (Daniel Baryon) works with Cooperation Tulsa and describes the 4 pillars of revolution (Economics, Councils, Intelligence and Defense) on his YouTube channel.
Hi Peter! Great stuff and thanks for all your work.
Don’t listen to the ‘Dukes’ of this world (re: previous comment by AuthorDuke), one day they will have to apologise for their ignorance. The people that mind don’t matter and the people that matter don’t mind.
It looks like the link to the white paper isn’t working right now, so maybe my comments should wait… but I’m ecstatic, so here goes anyway!
I’ve been looking forward to this level of detail for a viable transition plan for years — ever since watching Economic Calculation in a Resource-Based Economy way back (2013, was it? Not Googling!). From TNHRM, I really appreciated the concept of inherent design principles that embed recycling components into the design from the start. I’m assuming that’ll be a process when the OAD process kicks in, but I’d love to see that made more explicit. For example, under ‘Micro-scale OAD: Optimizes: nudges designs toward using fewer materials, less energy, and better performance’ — perhaps also adding: prioritizing ease of component replacement.
On a lighter note, instead of calling our communities “nodes,” could we go with something more inviting? Like Super-Happy-Team-Rainbow-Club. But seriously, names matter — I feel like even the word “Zeitgeist” scared people off back in the day, possibly our less cognitively able members but still members. Something warmer and more approachable could make a big difference.
And one quick thought on time credits: I noticed you say “can’t be saved.” Someone working flat out for a few months so they can take time to travel to some far-off node seems fair to me — as long as credits aren’t transferable or sellable, just giving access to non-essential resources for yourself (and maybe a child?) then it’s ok no?
Can’t wait to dive deeper once that link is fixed! and appreciate your thoughts on my thoughts above. Cheers
By the way, I’d like to launch a Dublin, Ireland node once I feel I’ve got a full understanding and the know-how to kick it off — wish me luck!
This is a creative articulation of a new way of life grounded in current science and technology. I can’t evaluate the integration of its five cybernetic systems, but the vision shows little wilderness consciousness—something distinct from mere sustainability or homeostasis with the Earth. Conservation biology makes clear that we need large, diverse, and connected wilderness areas capable of sustaining at least 90% of biodiversity, which requires rewilding half the planet. This is the necessary condition for the survival and flourishing of Life on Earth, including human life. How would your new way forward ensure this outcome?”
speaking for myself and not the project or Joseph:
the entire population of earth could fit in a single state
, two states with large mansion rooms
four at most if we include agricultural land
this is not even accounting for multi level agrologies and indoor food production
the limiting factor is markets and price systems, belief systems
not technology or need
starting from that truth, not everyone would need to move to one place, that is not what i am suggesting, but you could build, assuming you move beyond capitalism, to the ocean in large stable floating constructs, or even stay on land in more efficient structures
not everyone can build or live in Burj Khalifas, under capitalism
but everyone could post capitalism
what no one can do is keep using five earths worth of ecological output a year without replenishing five worth
My view is that humanity’s proper place on Earth is at the Edge—the boundary between wilderness on one side and high civilization on the other—so that we can move freely and routinely between these two fundamental and irreducible realities. Modern science and technology have finally made such a life possible, provided we reorganize society along lines similar to those outlined by Peter Joseph and accept a significant reduction in human population, perhaps to around two billion.
My concern about the Integral vision presented in the White Papers is that it remains blind to the need for real wilderness as the essential counter-reality to any kind of civilization, even an ideal one. Sustainability and homeostasis alone will never lead to a global system of wilderness preservation unless wilderness consciousness is built into the very architecture of the new civilization. That is how I see it.
I don't know how you could think, if you've followed Peter's work for any amount of time, that he doesn't consider it important to preserve wilderness as a pat of a healthy social ecology balance. Where do you come off thinking Peter doesn't care about the wilderness and rewilding?
And by the way, he can't do it all himself. If YOU care about rewilding, then you can form a group in your community and use Integral, if you like, to help reduce people's dependence on market-state forces and they can free up some time to go help rewild and protect wilderness areas where you live. People all over the world have to help if we are gonna get out of this mess.
Wilderness protectors have a place in Integral.
Gardeners have a place.
Librarians have a place.
Scientific researchers and inventors have a place.
Care workers have a place.
Everyone who understands this New Human Rights Movement has a place.
Seeing the post-scarcity idea You have been talking about for Years come into Integral is very motivating. I am a huge fan since first Zeitgeizt. I am planning to start an Integral Village in Polish mountains. I already have a circle of like-minded families that are looking to live like this. I also copied and posted Your article on Qortal's Q-Blog: here is the proxy link for preview: https://qortal.link/APP/Q-Blog/Simon%20James/pq/Integral-An-Introduction-LyrfFT My idea is to synchronize Integral with Qortal as baseline framework. I would suggest You to look into this: https://qortal.dev/wiki
I know Qortal at first glance might seem to have coin called QORT, but there are people on Qortal that decided to never sell QORT for any price as QORT is priceless in the old system and worthless in post-scarcity. It is only a utility token thanks to which You can publish content which is saved on the ledger. You get it for free by simply running the node. You can think of it as insurance from the monetary game, so that You don't have to be bothered with money and trade and start living in Integral.
Qortal is distributed internet infrastructure replacement, true web3, totally open-source, actively building Reticulum Mesh network so it can bypass centralized DNS-based legacy internet. Content sharing platform, working like torrents but for the entire internet.
Thank you. I haven't had a chance to look into this, but I appreciate the nudge
This same idea on a high level has been coming through to me starting a few months ago and after years of tapping into the issues with our current system and tapping into a more natural flow of human behavior at the individual level as well as the collective level. What I've seen is not as technical, which I do appreciate you articulating, but it echos that we are truly a communal and cooperative species, that we can easily mirror systems we seen nature, such as a neural network for information sharing and a mycelium network for resource sharing. I see that humans have already created technologies to support cooperative and communal living and now actual system plans, like the one one you are proposing, are starting to come online. This IS where we are headed, IMO. I don't think it's a dream, but a real shift that is unfolding in front of us at this very moment. I also see that our new system will have to happen peacefully. Otherwise the mentality (or vibration, if you will) of competition, and all that comes with it, will remain and subvert any progress. However, I do believe one critical component will be necessary for the new systems to blossom and flourish. The rug will need to be pulled from those in power. I believe that our current system developed over time from the sustained belief in hierarchical systems and this has led to competition and a vicious cycle that maintains hierarchy and competition. The main lever of those in control at the top echelon is oil and gas (energy). Energy is what controls production. Production controls the illusion of scarcity. And controlling energy and production allows those in power to maintain and aggregate more power via aggregation of money / currency. When energy becomes (nearly) free and available at the community level, and possibly the household level, the old system collapses like a house of cards. This is the event that moves us from one system peacefully to another more natural, cooperative and communal system. IMO free energy exists (just my intuition based on my research) and if its going to be distributed successfully, the DIY, 3D printing instructions will need to be given away freely, globally and in one instance. However, we need to be prepared to know what to do with free energy once this gets in our collective hand and having a plan like the one Peter mentioned and being mentally and technically prepared to execute, will be essential. I'm not nearly as smart at Peter by any stretch, but I am hopeful for the future. TY Peter for all the brainpower you have put into the concept of decentralizing our world and moving to a more peaceful, cooperative future.
And thank you, I feel much less alone now!
Thank you, too, my friend.
Great piece, and a much-needed move beyond the old “market vs state” binary. The structural diagnosis of growth and competition is very much in the anarchist tradition, where it’s long been understood that crises aren’t caused by “bad actors,” but by the logic of hierarchical systems themselves.
Your approach to transformation as a process rather than a single rupture strongly echoes Bookchin: building parallel institutions, federating from the ground up, and changing society through practice rather than by seizing the state. The post-scarcity angle and “doing more with less” reads like a contemporary extension of his observations about the efficiency of collective organization. The idea of “nodes” almost feels like his communalism translated into a cybernetic framework.
There’s also a clear echo of Kropotkin — especially in the view that cooperation and mutual aid aren’t utopian ethics, but real social mechanisms that can be strengthened through supportive conditions rather than through markets or state compulsion.
I also see overlap with anarcho-syndicalism — particularly in the idea that an alternative system emerges by building its own structures of coordination, production, and mutual support, gradually replacing market logic rather than appealing to it.
The only thing that feels missing is the political dimension of this transition. In your framing, it appears as if such a transformation could unfold in a neutral environment — without state pressure, capitalist interests, sabotage, or attempts at co-optation. Yet history shows that every real alternative — from Spain ’36 to Rojava to the Zapatistas — eventually comes into conflict with existing institutions.
There’s also a lack of clarity about who would actually carry this process out and how. You describe the architecture of a future system, but again without identifying the active subject or the pathway to get there. The attractiveness of a better model doesn’t eliminate resistance, even when expressed in elegant language and grounded in solid theoretical references.
Looking forward to future parts — especially a development of what happens next, once Integral starts genuinely challenging the status quo and becomes a threat to existing elites.
Let me lend my thoughts on the concerns your brought up and how they might be addressed. Note that this is not the full white pages for Integral, this is more of an overview. So the 'how exactly' it will work should come out in full, later, with the film and a website showing the mechanics and how it should function.
As for appearing as those this transformation will unfold in a neutral environment without state or market pressure, sabotage and the like --- I mean, have you been listening to Peter for very long? He's hyper aware of the market/state pressures that move against anything that provides true freedom, abundance and democracy for the people to detach from the market/state hierarchical power structure.
I think the method forward is two fold: 1) Have local infrastructure that is visible to the people and starts helping people in a new way, via mutual aid, time banking, cooperative businesses, tool libraries, community land trusts, etc. and popular education and neighbourhood assemblies where people are invited to share thoughts, learn what Integral is about, how a new way forward can work and be better for themselves, their children and future generations AND 2) Be prepared for sabotage and push back. That's why it needs to be decentralized in many ways. You can't stop a critical mass of people who have an idea whose time has come and will not stop until it has been achieved - and they are aware of the coercive forces and resilient to them. Anark's channel talks a lot about being prepared for 'the revolution" in this way and it is smart to try to have at least a small group in every town hyper aware of the threats to stop such an Integral movement by having them engage in Intelligence and Self-Defense outside of the market-state reach.
Hope that makes sense. If not, I can clarify. What are you thoughts?
Thanks for your reply. I appreciate you taking the time to expand on the points. What you wrote does make sense, but in many ways it actually reinforces the concerns I was trying to raise.
1) Many of the things you listed: mutual aid, time banking, co-ops, tool libraries, community land trusts — already exist. And they have existed for years. They’re great and necessary, but they face the same recurring limitations:
they remain scattered, loosely connected, easy to isolate, and the moment they grow, they quickly become targets of state or market pressure.
Which is why I’m asking:
What makes an Integral node fundamentally different from these existing grassroots structures that repeatedly hit those same limits? If the model doesn’t solve that, then we’re essentially repeating old patterns under a new label.
2) You mention being prepared for sabotage and resistance.
I agree but how, exactly? By whom? Based on what kind of structure? With what coordination? How are decisions made?
This isn’t nitpicking — it’s pointing to a core issue:
decentralization alone does not create the capacity to resist centralized repression.
3) You say that “a critical mass of people with an idea whose time has come cannot be stopped.” But history shows the opposite. Spain 1936, Rojava, the Black Panthers, indigenous movements, anarchist worker federations — all had massive support, but were still crushed by state or capitalist force.
The problem was never the idea. The real problem has always been power and Integral still sidesteps that dimension instead of naming it clearly.
4) You bring up “intelligence and self-defense.” Fair enough but those structures don’t appear spontaneously. They require political education, strategy, federated coordination, accountability mechanisms, and material support. Without that, “self-defense” remains symbolic or confined to small, isolated groups.
Which brings me to the main question: Who is the actual subject of this transformation? Not abstractly “the community,” but concretely:
which groups, with which interests, through which organizational forms?
In anarchist thought, the answer is clear: workers, tenants, the precariat, oppressed communities — people with a material stake in change, who historically built their own structures: syndicates, communes, councils, federations.
In Integral, that actor hasn’t really appeared yet.
There is an architecture but no agent.
And one more thing.
You highlighted the idea that criticism assumes the transition happens “in a neutral environment without state/market pressure.” But that’s precisely the issue — a neutral environment only exists in two scenarios:
I. After a systemic collapse
II. when the state and capital perceive the alternative as non-threatening.
If Integral requires the system to “not interfere,” then the transformation becomes possible only after existing power structures are weakened or disrupted.
That’s not a strategy — it’s waiting for catastrophe...
To sum up:
I’m not questioning the tools. I’m questioning power, actors, and political strategy without which those tools end up in the same place they’ve been for the last century: tolerated, isolated, or neutralized by the system.
Curious to hear your thoughts.
Good questions, I appreciate these deep questions because they make me have to raise my level of understanding and communication and they are all questions worth answering. I'll do my best to answer them sequentially:
1) Indeed, mutual aid, time banking, co-ops, tool libraries, community land trusts — already exist. And they have existed for years. But as you correctly point out - they remain scattered, loosely connected, easy to isolate, and the moment they grow, they quickly become targets of state or market pressure.
So, what makes an Integral node fundamentally different from these existing grassroots structures that repeatedly hit those same limits? Integral is designed to IN-TE-GRATE all of those institutions into a network of commons, mutual aid and cooperatives with cybernetics and yet still autonomous management, when possible, to strengthen the stability of the post-scarcity movement because those institutions and organizations remain in solidarity with the ideals and practices of Integral and a post-scarcity economy, but they aren't technically 'one big corporation' that can be easily taken down.
Let's take the example of a tool library using the Integral system. Let's say there is a main Downtown cooperative tool library, public facing, has paid memberships (affordable) and acts as a main repository of tools of all kinds - somewhat like the public library. Firstly, a tool library is an almost instantly beloved service if it ever is available in a community, just like even small towns have a public library of books, often, because people know it is voluntary to access and can be very handy, sustainable and cost-saving in a pinch. So, 'the state' trying to attack the main tool library is fairly unlikely because most people in town would be outraged if it 'suddenly caught on fire' or a new law passed saying 'lending libraries are banned.' Even if it DID happen, there are two things that can help the resilience of this particular institution in the Integral network: 1) Neighbourhoods could be encouraged and supported to start their own tool, lending library sheds at community centres or corner garages or whatever. Decentralizing the stock of tools to multiple neighbourhoods making it very hard to sabotage it all. Side note: In my community, like many, there are these little wooden Free Libraries set up where people can take a book, leave a book and they are very well received by the community. Even the rebellious teenagers don't seem to mess with these little libraries much at all. And 2) If any of the tool libraries did face damage, the community would have enough people who care about these sharing institutions to rebuild them and restore them. "The state" isn't actually a thing, in real life, "the state" is a power structure that coerces paid thugs, like cops or military folks to sometimes try to protect neoliberal status quo in the guise of 'safety' or whatever - but if there are MORE people resisting the thugs than thugs willing to carry out that dirty work - it won't get done. That's a process and easier said than done in many communities BUT that is still the goal. Gain the trust of the community for the new way forward and the community will protect it, to the best of their abilities.
2) How to be prepared for sabotage and resistance? Based on what kind of structure? With what coordination? How are decisions made?
For a more in-depth answer check out Constructing the Revolution by Anark, especially starting at 5:40 when he explains: Councils, Economics, Intelligence and Defense.
This ties into an answer for the 4th question you brought up, too.
My personal, fairly simple answer, is that each community needs 4 Pillar Organizations to see a successful post-capitalist revolution: 1) Nonprofit Sustainability Advocacy Group. The 'first' democratic council, if you will, with norms and policies for fairness but open to all, doesn't have to be many people 10-20, but always advocating and EDUCATING the people on how to build a sustainable society - maybe a good one is screening Zeitgeist Requiem once it comes out and referring people to Integral to get engaged. This nonprofit can also have small break-off councils that have to do with Intelligence and Defense. Maybe a group of anti-capitalist tech nerds who work on gathering Intelligence and also help at the local Makerspace or Fab Lab. Maybe a group of anarchist trained public safety and defence specialists. Their loyalty is to the community, not market/state forces. And then 2 is a Cooperative Development Incubator like Cooperation Buffalo, 3 is that idea of the expanding Library of Things Ecosystem, multiple locations and types of lending libraries throughout the city and 4 is a Food Commons with networked community gardens, greenhouses and community kitchens preparing and giving out local food - connected to Integral time credits for "free" meals (no money exchange) for the contributors.
The other points you brought up:
“a critical mass of people with an idea whose time has come cannot be stopped.” But history shows the opposite. Spain 1936, Rojava, the Black Panthers, indigenous movements, anarchist worker federations — all had massive support, but were still crushed by state or capitalist force. Yes, history shows those movements were absorbed and beaten down by capitalist forces - but to be fair, those movements were isolated. Were they all advocating for the end of capitalism, money and markets, and a post-scarcity economy with Cybernetic management? No, they weren't.
The liberation of the world's people from the power structure of monetary-market capitalism will take a new Design Architecture such as Integral that is decentralized where needed and local context cannot be known for all, but 'norms' such as local democratic councils making decisions with people affected by those decisions is pretty much gonna be a standard - and free association - meaning people 'bad actors' who don't want this to happen, maybe a rich billionaire who is worried their power structure built on exploitation and money is gonna go away might show up to these meetings and yell and scream - but they council members will just sit, listen and then tell them you are free to disassociate with our group, do your own thing, but WE are deciding to move forward with Integral post-scarcity development and even billionaires once they see they don't have the control over the people's minds and access to essential resources will realize it is time to give in or flee. They'll flee to their islands and bunkers or they'll accept the new paradigm, perhaps begrudgingly, but accept it nonetheless because the critical mass of people are united, finally.
Sorry for the lengthy response, I tried to keep it succinct and relevant. If this response spurs on any more questions or concerns from you, please let them be known. I couldn't cover every aspect I wanted to and maybe you'll bring up something I forgot to address.
Thanks for the detailed reply, I appreciate the effort. Some of your points clarify the general direction, but they also reinforce the concerns I raised in the first place.
1. What you describe is still a set of existing initiatives but the problem lies elsewhere. Mutual aid, time banking, co-ops, CLTs, tool libraries — all of these already exist and have been functioning for decades. Their limitations don’t come from a lack of integration but from the balance of power that restricts their growth and makes them vulnerable to isolation or suppression. Simply “integrating” them under a shared label doesn’t answer the question of what structurally changes their situation.
2. Your description of resilience assumes a de facto neutral environment after the transition. Much of your answer deals with how Integral institutions would work once the system is already established, the community supports it, and decentralization is in place. That vision is appealing but it describes a society after collapse, not a theory of transition.
The key question remains:
How do we get to that stage when the very process of implementation happens within a hostile, unequal, and heavily controlled environment? This is precisely the gap I was referring to earlier — blending the conditions of transformation with the conditions after transformation.
3. Public sympathy ≠ actual capacity to withstand repression. History gives us movements far larger than local libraries or co-ops — sometimes counting millions of supporters and they were still crushed by states or capital.
Public support alone has never been a shield against centralized violence.
4. The four pillars you describe are valuable institutions but they still don’t answer the question of power. They are local NGOs, councils, co-ops, defense groups. Good tools, but: hey lack the structure needed for higher-level conflict; they cannot counter centralized institutions; they don’t articulate a political mechanism that allows local initiatives to scale into systemic change. This is a problem of strategy, not enthusiasm.
5. The claim that earlier movements “never abolished money” is historically incorrect. Spanish Revolution 1936: money was abolished in large regions, work-coupon systems replaced currency, distribution ran without money, industries were managed by workers’ councils.
Other examples worth looking into: workers’ councils of 1917 (before Bolshevik centralization); the Korean Anarchist Commune in Manchuria (1929–1931) — a federation of villages with collective production and no centralized authority;
the Free Territory in Ukraine under Makhno (1918-1921); Chile’s Project Cybersyn (1971-1973) — more advanced cybernetically than most present-day proposals.
These movements didn’t fail due to a lack of “post-scarcity theory.” They were destroyed by military and political violence. Ignoring that history leads to the belief that a better design is enough. It isn’t.
6. The central problem remains unresolved: who is the actual subject of this transformation? We don’t live in a neutral society, and “the community” is far too vague. Historically, transformative actors have been: workers, tenants, the precarious, oppressed communities, unions, syndicates, councils, federations.
They have the material interest, the organizational experience, and the revolutionary capacity. In Integral, we see the architecture, but we don’t yet see the actors. Without an actor, any project remains a romantic vision rather than a viable strategy.
In summary:
Your response is thoughtful, but most of it describes the conditions after Integral is implemented — not the process of getting to that stage. And it’s precisely during that transition phase that questions of politics, power, and strategy become unavoidable. This is also where Integral still leaves the most empty space.
I’d genuinely like to hear more of your thoughts on this specific issue:
Who, how, and on what basis is meant to bring Integral into existence in the first place?
I see your concerns are well placed. The history of attempts to push back against capital power have been almost entirely futile, only small changes and improvements can be noted up until now and capital is ever more accumulated in the hands of the oligarchs, many of whom occupy powerful positions in the US Empire.
I will say this: The goal of Integral is clearly to end capitalism ASAP via a bottom-up, decentralized community-led cooperative process that replaces the power of debt-based money with non-transferrable, reciprocity time tokens over time. Not one month or one year. Transition beyond capitalism will not happen overnight, obviously, and some communities and regions are gonna be further ahead than others - I can't predict the future. And I'm WELL AWARE the push back from the market/state forces that will come if Integral gets any momentum that the oligarchs just can't ignore.
Also, no country on Earth will be able to be truly free until the US Capitalist Empire and its military is taken down. The world's terrorist is the US Empire, holding the rest of the world hostage via threat of violence.
Okay, so let's reverse engineer this Integral movement to end capital power, with your concerns about interference in mind. Again, I refer you to the "Constructing the Revolution" plan for dual power involving, 1) Councils, 2) Economics, 3) Defense and 4) Intelligence. That'll be important for every sizeable community to have in place. It wouldn't take that many in the Defense or Intelligence groups to be effective, maybe 3-4, with replacements ready who are working towards self-determination economics and in the councils of those communities already on board with the solidarity economy movement. This IS the transition. Not 'post-transition' this is the foundation of constructing the revolution. Give it 3 years AT LEAST to get these tent posts in place.
As for the suggestion you made that mutual aid, time banks, co-ops, CLTs and tool libraries have been around for a while and the problem *isn't* integration. I respectfully disagree, that is the issue. These things haven't been properly integrated in a network of support, pretty much ever. Or very rarely.
As it stands now, I am with a sustainability group in my community, only for a little over a year, and we are activist in trying to build a sustainable future, we have achieved nonprofit status, we have projects in the works to develop a resourceful website, we started doing a "Repair Cafe", we are on board with setting up a Tool Library (none exist in the city as of now - a city of over 50,000) and working with the University for a sustainability group of students and to do educational outreach. In my city, I'm not aware of us having ANY Community Land Trusts, not one. As I said, we don't have a tool library, we don't have many co-ops, even just a grocery store and a few very small co-ops, and we don't have a mutual aid-time bank set up, either. We have almost none of those pillars of Integral, but we CAN, we SHOULD and we ARE capable of building those in over the next few years and the integration of Integral would be a huge help.
I was unaware of the Spanish Revolution attempts to remove money from economics. Thanks for the information. I guess it goes without saying that money was reintroduced into Spanish society and here we are today with a US Empire terrorizing the world with debt, invasions, coups, sanctions and military force to maintain capital hegemony.
But going back to the point: The US Empire needs to be dismantled. How to dismantle an Empire? Bleed the beast dry. As much as the capitalists try to scare the workers into stay divided and angry at each other, the capitalists know they are useless if the workers unite, the people abandon and walk away from capitalist market economics rapidly because they see a better way. Studies show it takes only 3.5% of a population to engage with a nonviolent movement for it to be successful because that is enough that the ripple effect spreads to the majority and the revolutionary change is unstoppable. Education IS a big part but also showing a better way is huge.
As Buckminster Fuller said, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - That's what Integral is set up to do. Be a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
I may have been jumping to different points here and there, so let me try to answer you main question below:
Who, how, and on what basis is meant to bring Integral into existence in the first place?
- Integral is an architecture, as you can see. Local groups in local areas need to see the value of using Integral as a tool for system change and putting the Councils, Economics, Intelligence and Defense pieces in place to move the system evolution along, EXPECTING push back, along the way. I mean, sustainability activists are no strangers to push back. Don't you know? They get yelled at, garbage thrown at them, demeaned and threatened in the media and sometimes in person just for standing on street corners or protesting for a better, healthier, more just society. It will not be a stretch to get a sustainability group to take their main Council and create sub-committees that deal with Intelligence (countering the state/market pressures that are to come) and Defense (preparing for defense against market/state physical violence like cops and military on the streets).
- One of the ways to defend this Integral new way forward is to help people directly, those most suffering and vulnerable - give them quality food, quality opportunities to contribute, quality housing, quality time to heal and socialize and then, maybe a few years down the road, the community can say "we have reduced poverty and homelessness by 90 or 99%" and it gets in the papers and very quickly most citizens in town will perk up and go "That's amazing! And it wasn't the corporation 'donating' or the local government 'spending my tax dollars' to reduce poverty and homelessness, it was this Integral Collective, this nonprofit organization network, I can't be mad at that, I support it."
You might even get current cops and military personnel to support Integral and re-think their involvement in those jobs which are rooted in protecting capital, state-market assets, because Integral has developed to the point where they have local food, local co-op housing, local co-op jobs and popular education that tells the truth but doesn't blame individuals for being part of a system, just asks them to consider the consequences and what society they want to help develop for themselves, their kids and grandkids.
I can't say - I won't say - this will all go smoothly. But because Integral will remain free and voluntary to join, it isn't a government institution or a private capital corporation - it is separate from the flack that many people hold towards those institutions - there is a good chance, once most working class people see what Integral is about, how it works and how they can contribute to it to make a better future - it will have a lot of support, pretty fast.
One other thing, Peter has mentioned that once some basic elements of Integral have started in a community, "Integral" can also be a related political movement for better policy to help bring about the changes needed. Even if an "Integral Party" doesn't win, their voice can be very influential especially if there is already social infrastructure that citizens are aware of that help people like food commons, tool libraries, mutual aid healthcare and the like.
Ok, I've rambled on enough. How's that? Any further questions or concerns?
Thanks for the detailed response, it’s clear you’re genuinely trying to build a coherent vision. But I have to address the key part of what you wrote:
“It wouldn't take that many in the Defense or Intelligence groups to be effective, maybe 3-4, with replacements ready who are working towards self-determination economics and in the councils of those communities already on board with the solidarity economy movement. This IS the transition. Not 'post-transition' this is the foundation of constructing the revolution. Give it 3 years AT LEAST to get these tent posts in place.”
And this is where I have the biggest problem, because it reads more like an assumption than an analysis of reality. History shows that even tens of thousands of organized people were unable to withstand concentrated repression and you’re talking about 3–4 people per neighbourhood as if that could realistically build system-level resilience. This isn’t a criticism of your intentions — it’s simply that the scale you propose does not match the scale of the opposition.
You also say that “this is the transition,” that these four elements alone constitute the beginning of a revolution. But that still doesn’t answer the question I’ve been trying to raise from the beginning:
Who actually has the power and motivation to build these structures before any protection against top-down pressure exists?
This is the fundamental difference between your approach and how real movements historically emerged: Anarchist, worker, and communal forms of dual power didn’t arise because people had an inspiring system architecture. They arose because people were forced into self-organization by material conflict. These weren’t NGOs or groups of enthusiasts — they were mass movements forged in real confrontation with state and capital. That’s why the issue isn’t that councils or defense groups are bad — they’re necessary. The issue is that without a CLASS SUBJECT, they remain purely theoretical constructs.
As for integration, I understand your point, truly. But again: the problem wasn’t that grassroots movements “weren’t connected.” The problem was that the system actively destroyed them exactly at the moment they began to connect on a larger scale. It wasn’t a failure of integration. It was a political conflict and that conflict emerges every time a movement becomes a real threat to power. And the reference to Buckminster Fuller doesn’t resolve this. Yes, the quote is inspiring: “Build a new model that makes the old one obsolete.” But that only works in a world where no one actively defends the old model — where there is no apparatus of repression, propaganda, and economic coercion working to ensure the new model never grows.
Fuller is talking about model competition.
The political reality is a struggle of forces.
A better model has no transformative power if there is no subject capable of defending it. Which leads to the core issue:
Historically, transformation doesn’t begin with institutions — it begins with movements and social conflict. Integral assumes the opposite order: institutions first, movement later. And that is the crux of the problem.
To finish the point: regardless of what anyone thinks about anarchism on a theoretical level, the fact remains that anarchism is the only tradition that has spent 150 years developing practical tools for building bottom-up social power — under conditions of repression. And that is exactly what Integral currently lacks. What it does have is excellent system architecture. If Joseph were willing to take a less “apolitical” stance, he could genuinely strengthen his project by drawing from the anarchist tradition instead of keeping it at arm’s length. And anarchist movements could benefit from the cybernetic clarity and systems thinking Joseph brings.
That combination could be precisely the missing element that turns a beautiful cybernetic blueprint into a real strategy for change. And honestly, it would be great if Peter were willing to take that step. I see no reason why these worlds should exist separately. At their core, they complement each other perfectly:
Cybernetic precision + the lived experience of social movements.
With that kind of synthesis, we might actually get closer to achieving our shared hopes for freedom, peace, and collective well-being. What do you think?
Amazing! Thank you for your work as always Peter!
Peter, this is a profound crystallization of what so many of us have been sensing but struggling to articulate. Reading through the "Nervous System" and "Cooperative Organization System" (COS) concepts, I felt an immediate resonance with the work we are doing at Changemappers.
https://changemappers.org/
We have been focusing on the "human layer" the changemakers, the burnout, and the need for deep, value-aligned connections. We’ve also recognized that without a rigorous structural backbone like Integral, these networks often remain fragile.
We are currently prototyping a platform that aims to bridge global insights with local action (a "glocal" approach), and I see massive synergy here. Specifically, your concept of Open-Access Design (OAD) is exactly what our network of local pilots needs to move from "sharing stories" to "replicating solutions."
We would love to explore how Changemappers’ focus on the people (inner development, psychological safety, matchmaking) could interface with Integral’s focus on the structure (cybernetic feedback, time credits).
If you're open, let me know when we could talk!
I'm not Peter but I appreciate what you are saying here. My thought is that Peter is putting out Integral so that any activist groups can use Integral like a structural backbone and enhance their ongoing work. It doesn't need 'official approval' of Peter to work 'with it' it just needs your people to start using Integral when it is released.
Like, in my context, in Canada, I see so much 'stuff' that needs to become common pool resources. That's where I see the need for a Nonprofit Cooperatively-Run Tool Library in every community (mine doesn't have one... yet). So I look at building "Libraries of a Solarpunk Future" (To borrow Andrewism's title on his YouTube video about that topic), and I see how Integral would help with that.
I also work with a sustainability group in my town, and I plan to introduce them to the value of Integral and have us start using it when we do mutual aid, time banking and educational events. Like I hope to have a screening of Zeitgeist Requiem and then answer audience questions and refer them to how Integral helps with sustainability in our community and, honestly, the goal is to improve well-being and affordability for all, because the aim is a post-scarcity, post-monetary society (but everybody interacting with Integral may not know that or care about it, but they will see the benefit of a free tool or a free plate of food from a community food commons connected to Integral volunteering and time banking, for instance).
What about ethics/code of conduct to keep someone from abusing it in some way or just trying to create chaos (bots/trolls) Also, what can be done to create a new universal education and other social programs people will need in order to transition? How can it help people get from A to B?
one step at a time. all those things are already considered in the documents coming
Fascinating. I'd like to help in anyway I can ✊️
If I may be so bold as to offer a model that you could pursue in your community that would compliment Integral, take a look at the Build and Fight Formula with Cooperation Jackson, and others like them with New Economy Coalition.
They are building the solidarity economy now, through the challenges of late stage capitalism and they employ local councils and governance models and ethics from the get go. Open councils, but with norms.
The simplest answer: you don’t stop abuse with codes of conduct alone, but with decentralization and transparency. When decisions are collective, rotating, and open, no single person (or troll) can hijack the system. Education during the transition happens through learning by doing: workshops, cooperatives, assemblies, shared resources. And moving people from A to B happens when they see real, practical benefits — cheaper food, shared tools, housing support, mutual aid — and start using these systems because they genuinely work better than what they have now.
This isn’t my prediction. It’s simply the pattern that AI models identify across hundreds of documented community transitions and it matches what actually works according to history and social science. ;)
I would love to know of ANY parallel community within the empire that not only started a community, but did so with clear intentions of challenging the current order.
"And moving people from A to B happens when they see real, practical benefits — cheaper food, shared tools, housing support, mutual aid — and start using these systems because they genuinely work better than what they have now."
This may be the correct outlook, but not while the current system still exists. Every one of the ABC letter agencies that control commerce would be committed to shutting it all down. People won't switch systems until a) empire falls or b) we create social programs as a safety net to reduce public dependency on the capitalist system so they can have the liberty of making that choice free from uncertainty.
I am confident that digital governance technology is the future. However, for it to even be allowed to exist, we have to restore some power back to the people starting with our basic rights/freedom and especially our anonymity online.
A theory of constituent power in crisis societies holds that populations can reclaim the authority to define legitimate order when entrenched systems become visibly unstable and unjust. As structural harms and internal contradictions erode both material security and perceived legitimacy, the taken-for-granted authority of existing institutions becomes contestable, and the resulting vacuum is filled not automatically by “something better” but by whichever actors combine a coherent normative framework with sufficient organizational capacity to act on it. In this view, a movement’s function is to supply a shared moral baseline that operates as higher law in the collective imagination, together with a distributed infrastructure—organizations, mutual aid, and coordinated non-cooperation—capable of withholding labor, compliance, and consent from arrangements judged to fall below that baseline. Constituent power from below is thus understood as a concrete capacity to delegitimize specific institutions and make their continued reproduction costly or unworkable, so that, under systemic crisis, transitions are filtered through a common standard that makes the restoration of intensive structural violence and mass disposability significantly harder to reimpose in the name of “order.”
Thanks for the excellent comment, you really get to the heart of the issue. And yes, I agree with you on a fundamental level: no parallel community can survive in an intentional form if it openly declares conflict with the empire from day one. History is brutally clear on this. Every project that tried to operate alongside the capitalist core in an explicitly anti-system way — from the Black Panthers and MOVE, to the free communes in Appalachia, Spain ’36, the Zapatistas, Christiania, Freetown, ZAD, Exarchia, Rojava — was immediately treated as a threat and suppressed economically, legally or militarily.
This is why I think your point is absolutely crucial: people won’t switch systems until the empire is either destabilizing, or until a parallel social safety net exists that reduces dependency on capitalism enough to make choosing an alternative something other than a survival risk.
That’s exactly the structural gap where “pure” architectural projects — RBE, The Venus Project, and now Integral — run aground when they aren’t rooted in real social movements and people capable of organizing resistance, mutual aid, and coordinated non-cooperation.
This connects directly to your analysis of constituent power. When institutions lose legitimacy, a vacuum opens but it isn’t automatically filled by a “better system.” It’s filled by whoever has a narrative, an organized base, and the capacity to act. This is precisely why authoritarian movements often win during periods of crisis: they already exist and already operate before the transition begins.
And this brings us back to Integral. The problem isn’t the vision, the problem is the carrier. If Integral isn’t grounded in actual movements — labor, tenants, environmental struggles, commons-based organizing, cooperatives, mutual aid, open-source communities — then there is no actor who can defend new institutions, delegitimize repression, or step into the power vacuum when the existing system begins to wobble (I’ve said this in another thread already).
In practical terms, this leads to a simple but paradoxical statement:
Integral needs social movements far more than social movements need Integral. A movement can exist without a perfect architecture. An architecture cannot exist without a movement.
Therefore, the most realistic path forward is exactly the one you describe: building parallel social safety networks that gradually reduce reliance on the state and the market, until non-cooperation with the dominant system is no longer an act of desperation. Only at that point do architectures like Integral become viable — not just inspiring maps of the future, but something materially grounded and defensible.
I want the parallel society/system to work which is why I started focusing on this issue.
I literally just finished writing this piece that breaks down what I was trying to say in more concrete details. Imagine if the strategy mentioned throughout the back half of this article was implemented using the Commons.
https://open.substack.com/pub/empathphilosophy/p/people-v-empire?r=62kuhy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Integral is on a whole other level than "voting and democracy" what so ever, let alone the failed Soviet experiment. The last thing that Integral is ever going to be is Donald Trump.
Excellent piece. The Integral architecture you articulate and the governance framework I posit (https://substack.com/home/post/p-178952109) describe the same emergence problem from different angles—and each illuminates what the other leaves implicit.
I've been focused on the constraint: damaged populations cannot select wisdom, yet wisdom is necessary to heal populations. My answer is architectural—noocratic 'tournaments' and parallel systems as bootstrap mechanisms.
You invert the problem: remove the systems generating damage. Your five integrated systems don't manage dysfunction; they prevent it at the substrate level.
But here's where I think they must converge: both require transition. My governance model is Phase 1—temporary wisdom-selection protecting the emergence of reciprocity. Your Integral is Phase 2—post-authority architecture where distribution eliminates the need for it.
The synthesis isn't sequential but simultaneous: governance mechanisms create conditions for better economics. Economic restructuring creates conditions for distributed governance. Each enables the other to evolve.
The communities that build both simultaneously—Integral economics under noocratic protection—are positioned to survive intact.
Don't hate me, but I threw this into ElevenReader and I've listened to it three times.
Great stuff!!
Brilliant Peter. Again, you’re doing all of the heavy conceptual lifting. I read Integral as a move from moral pleading to mechanism. Instead of asking people to be nicer, it wires dignity into the architecture: open knowledge as default memory, participatory deliberation that leaves a trace, cooperative operations instead of firm-to-firm combat, a non-accumulating reciprocity token that’s spent and gone (not hoarded), and a feedback layer that watches the whole organism for drift. It’s systems literacy turned into rails.
Where I’d add nuance is emphasis, not disagreement: Integral already treats this as a sequence - start narrow, iterate, federate. I’m simply foregrounding the bridges and the muscle-memory piece: bounded pilots with published falsifiers, legacy interfaces kept alive while people learn the cadence, and culture training so cooperation runs at “normal speed.” Success spreads by practice, not proclamation.
Think addiction: you don’t go cold turkey on something this entrenched; you taper and train. That means hard ecological caps, open ledgers, universal basics, pooled accommodation costs, total-cost procurement that rewards durability and inclusion, flexible-work defaults, and enforcement via pre-committed thresholds. Run it in bounded pilots with clocks (time-boxes and checkpoints) and kill-switches (automatic pause/rollback rules) so competence grows from the ground up.
What I appreciate most with Integral is that it closes the loop in ways price never could. Prices compress the world into a single number and call it wisdom. Integral listens to multiple signals at once - ecology, throughput, equity, resilience - and corrects in real time. This is cybernetics at work. The village notebook, upgraded: deliberation as cortex, open designs as genome, co-ops as musculature, time credits as metabolism, feedback as immune system. Organism, not ideology.
My testing frame is Incentive Gravity: rails (structure) × stacks (pressure) shaped by agency (choice). The rails are credible if they stay auditable, scoped, and reversible. The pressure shifts are the heart of it. Make inclusion, longevity, and repair the path of least resistance; make overshoot and waste the uphill slog. And don’t erase agency, train it. Apprenticeships, rotating roles, and blame-free retros build the human capacity that keeps the rails honest.
For legitimacy, I'd publish falsifiers up front. Lead times for a defined good should fall cycle over cycle without ecological metrics worsening. Access to essentials stays universal while variance in non-essentials trends down. Governance overhead must remain livable; if cooperation demands a second job in meetings, it won’t scale. If black-market pricing emerges around credits, the response should work within a cycle, not a year.
Best starting ground: where open design obviously wins - assistive devices and repair/refurbish. Scope the full loop just for those lines. Run 90-day cycles with public criteria for success and pre-committed stopping rules. Keep a bridge to the legacy system for taxes, procurement, and inputs. Share ledgers and retros in the open so other nodes can copy what works and avoid what doesn’t.
To me, the promise of Integral is that it makes markets unnecessary by practice. Multi-signal coordination beats price-only once people have the muscle memory to run it. That’s the real transition: not a flip of ideology, but a growth of competence. If pilots show shorter lead times, lower footprints, fairer access - and do it with less governance drag each cycle - then scaling stops being a leap of faith and becomes practice, extended.
Care to upload the white paper to GitHub / gitlab / bitbucket instead? The webpage tends to be attacked by hackers all the time. :(
it will be
check out radicle.xyz too!
I've been working on an application called Direct Democracy Platform (DDP) that may be useful to Integral nodes. It is under development, so perhaps some of the planned functionality could be tailored specifically to help nodes organize some of the 5 Integral systems. The first DDP feature I hope to make available is the Issue ranking system. It will be the impetus for affinity groups to work together to get as close to a true understanding of our Issues as possible, and rank them. I would love to work with tech savvy members of Integral nodes to role out functionality together. The currently static website that I hope to make functional before too long is https://ddpus.org
Gor é o caralho, seu anāozinho feiozo de 1 metro e meio, lide com isso! Lide com essa personalidade fragmentada em mil “coisas” se odiando no espelho, vai se foder com os caralho das travestis que vc pega! (e olha que eu nem estou bêbada dessa vez) seu filho de uma puta!
Interesting idea. If this were my project, I would put together a working prototype, eg. within a single intentional community. Only once that was mostly working would I look at expanding it to, say, a network of intentional communities. I'd want to see something operational at this scale before investing in a giant Database Of Everything. Can you point to any operational prototype community?
Theory is always fine in theory, but not always in practice, in practice.
A working, developing prototype, that would be enhanced by Integral is Cooperation Jackson, Cooperation Tulsa and other organizations of that type with New Economy Coalition who are building the solidarity economy out of the shell of outdated, late stage capitalism.
They aren't out on a farm in the middle of nowhere, but they are reclaiming the commons in their neighbourhoods. That's the way to go. See the Build and Fight Formula described by Kali Akuno who is with Cooperation Jackson or see how Anark (Daniel Baryon) works with Cooperation Tulsa and describes the 4 pillars of revolution (Economics, Councils, Intelligence and Defense) on his YouTube channel.
Hope that helps.
It does, thanks.
Hi Peter! Great stuff and thanks for all your work.
Don’t listen to the ‘Dukes’ of this world (re: previous comment by AuthorDuke), one day they will have to apologise for their ignorance. The people that mind don’t matter and the people that matter don’t mind.
It looks like the link to the white paper isn’t working right now, so maybe my comments should wait… but I’m ecstatic, so here goes anyway!
I’ve been looking forward to this level of detail for a viable transition plan for years — ever since watching Economic Calculation in a Resource-Based Economy way back (2013, was it? Not Googling!). From TNHRM, I really appreciated the concept of inherent design principles that embed recycling components into the design from the start. I’m assuming that’ll be a process when the OAD process kicks in, but I’d love to see that made more explicit. For example, under ‘Micro-scale OAD: Optimizes: nudges designs toward using fewer materials, less energy, and better performance’ — perhaps also adding: prioritizing ease of component replacement.
On a lighter note, instead of calling our communities “nodes,” could we go with something more inviting? Like Super-Happy-Team-Rainbow-Club. But seriously, names matter — I feel like even the word “Zeitgeist” scared people off back in the day, possibly our less cognitively able members but still members. Something warmer and more approachable could make a big difference.
And one quick thought on time credits: I noticed you say “can’t be saved.” Someone working flat out for a few months so they can take time to travel to some far-off node seems fair to me — as long as credits aren’t transferable or sellable, just giving access to non-essential resources for yourself (and maybe a child?) then it’s ok no?
Can’t wait to dive deeper once that link is fixed! and appreciate your thoughts on my thoughts above. Cheers
By the way, I’d like to launch a Dublin, Ireland node once I feel I’ve got a full understanding and the know-how to kick it off — wish me luck!
This is a creative articulation of a new way of life grounded in current science and technology. I can’t evaluate the integration of its five cybernetic systems, but the vision shows little wilderness consciousness—something distinct from mere sustainability or homeostasis with the Earth. Conservation biology makes clear that we need large, diverse, and connected wilderness areas capable of sustaining at least 90% of biodiversity, which requires rewilding half the planet. This is the necessary condition for the survival and flourishing of Life on Earth, including human life. How would your new way forward ensure this outcome?”
speaking for myself and not the project or Joseph:
the entire population of earth could fit in a single state
, two states with large mansion rooms
four at most if we include agricultural land
this is not even accounting for multi level agrologies and indoor food production
the limiting factor is markets and price systems, belief systems
not technology or need
starting from that truth, not everyone would need to move to one place, that is not what i am suggesting, but you could build, assuming you move beyond capitalism, to the ocean in large stable floating constructs, or even stay on land in more efficient structures
not everyone can build or live in Burj Khalifas, under capitalism
but everyone could post capitalism
what no one can do is keep using five earths worth of ecological output a year without replenishing five worth
My view is that humanity’s proper place on Earth is at the Edge—the boundary between wilderness on one side and high civilization on the other—so that we can move freely and routinely between these two fundamental and irreducible realities. Modern science and technology have finally made such a life possible, provided we reorganize society along lines similar to those outlined by Peter Joseph and accept a significant reduction in human population, perhaps to around two billion.
My concern about the Integral vision presented in the White Papers is that it remains blind to the need for real wilderness as the essential counter-reality to any kind of civilization, even an ideal one. Sustainability and homeostasis alone will never lead to a global system of wilderness preservation unless wilderness consciousness is built into the very architecture of the new civilization. That is how I see it.
I don't know how you could think, if you've followed Peter's work for any amount of time, that he doesn't consider it important to preserve wilderness as a pat of a healthy social ecology balance. Where do you come off thinking Peter doesn't care about the wilderness and rewilding?
And by the way, he can't do it all himself. If YOU care about rewilding, then you can form a group in your community and use Integral, if you like, to help reduce people's dependence on market-state forces and they can free up some time to go help rewild and protect wilderness areas where you live. People all over the world have to help if we are gonna get out of this mess.
Wilderness protectors have a place in Integral.
Gardeners have a place.
Librarians have a place.
Scientific researchers and inventors have a place.
Care workers have a place.
Everyone who understands this New Human Rights Movement has a place.