Previous versions
http://culturalspeciation.blo
and
http://culturalspeciation.blo
Motivation
There are 3 great needs that are not met for most people, so this presents a market opportunity to provide them. These are the need to exercise one's intrinsic skills, to share them with a close-knit community, and to connect with the natural world. These needs can't be satisfied very well under the present global industrial economy, but could potentially be satisfied in the context of a village economy. The village need not be completely isolated economically, but it's something to aim for in order to create a stable village and land-based economy, since the industrial economy will outcompete a village which is not producing things in an industrial way. Once stability is reached in relative economic (not informational) isolation, the village can send out feelers, from a position of stability and generosity, not of need.
Urgency
As our civilization declines due to increasing costs of petroleum extraction, environmental degradation and socio-spiritual issues, it will become increasingly difficult to find the resources necessary for this project to take off and thrive.
Autonomy vs interdependence
Paradoxically, since interdependence gets traded off with autonomy, and since autonomy is highly valued in our culture and has a selective advantage, it is important to compensate for any loss of autonomy in one sphere, with more autonomy in other spheres.
1. So, give people a home sphere, where they are largely autonomous, or interdependent on one or a few people they are intimate with. This contrasts with some intentional communities (even ecovillages), where people give up autonomy in their home sphere.
2. Create a company where people work to produce an interdependent village, which is economically autonomous of the larger economy. At work, give people autonomy within their sphere of expertise, but expect them to answer to a boss or committee. Successful companies already do this. So do reproductively successful communities like the Amish.
Competition vs cooperation
Without the feedback of competition, evolution cannot happen. But many liberal people (including myself) dislike competition with others. I like challenge, or friendly competition in sports, but I don't like thinking that my victory is someone else's defeat. Successful companies try to incentivize both competition and cooperation, with a focus on competition with impersonal outside competing companies, not people, and internal cooperation among people.
3. Expect a product from each individual and evaluate them based on milestones towards that product. Apply selective pressures based on evaluation. This is an instance of individuals effectively competing with themselves. In the case of the village, the product has to be something that people in the village want and that will contribute to greater independence from the global economy. The product needs to be evaluated also based on what inputs it needs to be produced, as far as whether those input can be produced by someone from the village, maybe in the future. Or whether the inputs to those inputs can be produced in the village.
4. Expect a product from the community (in this case a self-contained village as the final product, but intermediate products could be produced that would be able to compete in the global economy) and evaluate the whole village based on milestones towards that product. Apply selective pressures based on evaluation. This is an example of the community effectively competing with itself.
5. Allow for redundancy of individuals (or subgroups) on certain products, which allows for competition between those individuals. If the rest of the community favors one of the individuals, the other individual has the opportunity to adapt and maintain autonomy, collaborate with the other individual and lose some autonomy, or leave. This is an example of competition among individuals.
6. The evaluation and selection is not just selection for individuals and products, but of the group product (a self-sustaining village). At first the selection happens with the foresight and wisdom of a hierarchy which always selects at the lower levels. At some point, the group can open itself up to selection by the greater external social and ecological forces, at which point the hierarchy is no longer necessary.
7. Promote a culture of collaborative debate and dialectic (as opposed to individuals competing), friendly critique, and relishing of different ideas and strategies, as long as people share the same long term vision. The goal is not to win the argument, but to come to a higher truth and brainstorm ideas collaboratively.
Governance
Selection is always external, by an entity's environment. The internal environment of a group can be the external environment of a part. That internal group environment can be controlled so that it is more conducive to some parts' thriving than a direct exposure to the external group environment. If the parts are highly dependent on each other for survival, the selection becomes for parts that serve not just themselves, but the whole the group.
Who makes decisions? Those entities that select for the whole group, or parts of the group external to them. If the people (parts) need each other because they can get their needs met from each other, then decisions will be made for the good of the group, because the good of the group is equivalent to the good of the parts. The converse is also true: if the parts do not need each other because their needs can be met from the global economy (the case with most intentional communities), then decisions will be made for the good of the global economy, not for the good of the group unless the group (and the individuals in it) aligns with the global economy.
The important question is not so much who makes the decisions and whether a hierarchy exists or not, but are cooperation, care for the earth and happiness selected for? If we produce a group where people depend on each other in a direct and transparent way for their survival, cooperation should follow. If we produce a group that depends on the earth in a direct and transparent way for their survival, then care of the earth should follow. And both of these (cooperation/care for each other and care for the earth) would synergise with autonomy and the ability to pursue one's gifts without too many constraints (at least in the home sphere) to produce happiness. I hypothesize that in such an environment, despotic hierarchy won't flourish, though some form of hierarchy could.
Evolution towards local interdependence
Until everything is produced in the village, people could buy from the global economy stuff that is not yet made in the village. But as soon as someone makes something they need, they commit to buying it from them, and the producer commits to negotiating price and taking feedback on the quality of service or good. People will be paid until they can sell their products with the money they make internally deducted from their paycheck. They will stop buying things from the external economy as soon as they become available in the village and buy them from fellow villagers. At some point no more external funding is needed and much abundance is produced and shared internally. Other people are then inspired to propagate the village elsewhere.
Funding
People who understand why this needs to be done sooner than later could help fund this. They could directly participate in the village or not. Prime candidates for funding would be the offspring of millionaires who see the emptiness of the global economy and long for connection and meaning.
Possible Obstacles
1. Many people in agrarian and industrial environments have been traumatized by having their intrinsic value be dependent on their productivity. Though I wish we could live like peaceful hunter gatherers in some ways, I don't think it is practical given the state of our environment and the fences and borders of private property. So we have to be productive, but we could also offer healing for the trauma with group rituals and activities that affirm people's intrinsic value.
2. Many young people are not able to commit to ambitious projects. They desire to have sex, to have children, to socialize with their peers and to have status (be seen as cool). Ideally the people involved in this project are older, have done the sex and children and status thing and want to do something else than the evolutionary status quo. Not that there is anything wrong with those other things; they are useful for continuing that status quo, but not for doing something radically different.
3. Outcompeted by global economy on comfort--I hope not, but possible
4. No funding because most people are brainwashed by the Religion of Progress, and don't want to learn anything from the past, or admit that industrialization was overall a mistake. All it takes is one deprogrammed millionaire to help.
Alternatively, mothers and children too young to contribute are only active in the domestic sphere so that the other people can do the work of building infrastructure without impediments and with full commitment.
