I don’t know many Latin words, but the word for crossroad — “bifurcatio” – sticks in my head for some reason. It’s been clinging to my mind this week as we start settling in to the results of the election. Because we did just pass a bifurcatio. We could have turned the other way, but we managed to choose this road, and the turn makes a difference.
We still don’t know what’s down this road. We didn’t leave covid behind, the climate is still in collapse, the corporate state is still in charge, and the president’s followers are glumly trapped on the bus with us… and they might bring guns. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
I hope you don’t worry that we picked the wrong road. Remember that the bottom line for the road to a culture of peace is that the road bed is built on values that can support it. That means nurturant (or progressive) values…. rights and well-being for people, planet and community. If the road is only leading to what’s good for business, that’s not the culture of peace. That’s the other road.
To survive this bumpy ride, we need to do some things differently. Lots of people are saying that, though there’s not real good consensus on just what needs to be done.
I’d like to introduce the idea of “self-organizing” to the conversation. That’s one of the principles of network weaving. Network Weaving is one approach to a science of transformational human networks. The main idea isn’t hard to understand, but it’s not part of the mental toolkit we get in an authoritarian culture. Against our will, we assume a boss is lurking somewhere with “the plan” that we have to follow.
In network weaving the plan comes from the observations of members of the network. A small group comes together, finds the problems, and looks around for some way to fix it. The solution might be a small thing, like a phone call. Or it might require that wrongs be righted, or laws be passed, or businesses be built. Small groups can do amazing things as they build trust and find wisdom in themselves.
We start out from bifurcatio and pretty soon we’re moving toward a North Star at the other end of the universe. Where do we end up? The authoritarian system that birthed us is not where we want to be. What’s the vision for what we do want? What does the North Star look like up close and personal?
Network theory would postulate that the road to the North Star will be built one brick at a time, by local people working together, with whatever materials they have on hand. They start by casting one brick. The way that works out in Network circles is to encourage small groups to self-organize to cast the bricks and invite their friends over to start laying the road with ‘em.
What they mean is that small groups self-organizing to do small, strategic projects will learn skills and test ideas in safe ways. It allows projects to scale up toward success on very firm foundations of knowledge, experience, and trust in one’s teammates.
Doesn’t that sound like a rugged-individualist-old-Arkansas-Scot could start from there? With luck he’d start with a brick and end up with a community of friends. To think of self-organizing as a frame for building networked communities is not such a vast leap. Every brick moves us closer to the North Star.
To encourage networks for self-organizing is part of Omni’s directional plan post-covid. It’s similar to what we’ve been doing for 20 years, but it has a different aroma, and hopefully will include more and different people, doing more and different things pushing toward the North Star.
The virus, the climate, fierce storms, the fires, looming fascism, are all deep chasms in the road we just turned on to. We’re riding in a rickety bus, and our lil strategic plan is to build a brick road, when what we need is a rocket ship. We’re not there yet, but the network weaver strategy has interesting potential, once you look in to it. I wish I could explain this perfectly, but can’t find the right words. Here’s one way of thinking about it:
Re-weaving the web of life is a healing from a terminal injury. Every inhabitant of the authoritarian order is in deep need of this healing. Race, gender, class, whatever, we’re all damaged by it. To make us the rugged individuals we are we were ripped from that web and cast out to the profit-based wilderness we still live in.
The web may be torn, but it’s mostly still there. Until we find healing for it we’re trapped in that rickety bus with the Trump supporters. The healing of the network is the healing of the world is the healing of each radiant inhabitant of the world. In spite of all appearance, the network still surrounds and links us together. It tries to care for us even though the imposed systems block it on every side.
We may be trapped on the bus, but we are on the right road. I promise the road is going the right direction — toward rights and well-being for people, planet and community. Somewhere out there we’ll find the Rocketship to the North Star and blast off. It’d be better if we did it together.
I find this piece to be inconsistent – self contradictory. On the one hand, it extols self-organizing and small groups getting things done. That is the part I like – the individualist pro-liberty part. But it quickly switches to a collectivist “we are all riding the same rickety bus” conformity stance, assuming that all of the diverse small groups agree on … something unspecified. It appeals to the authoritarian notion that there is only one road, only one North Star, that everyone must agree with … or else? Also, it seems to brainlessly accept a false dichotomy, aka the bipolar fallacy, with its premise of “bifurcatio.” To anarchists like me, who see pluralism and amazing diversity of ideas in a freed society, the article comes off as written by an authoritarian that is trying to hide his fascism with occasional appeals to individuals and small groups. Also, passing references to the lame socialist class war myth are rather annoying. Profit is good, people! So is an honest business.
Thanks for reading Bill.
You’re right about some of this stuff. And this clarifies the difference in the way you and I see things. You’re definitely on the side of the rugged individual making their way in the individualist world, and I feel confident that when it comes to creating a world that actually solves the overwhelming and complex problems we’re facing, we’ll only be able to do it as a collective social endeavor. Which will involve giving up some – not all – of the rugged individual elements of our society. The rugged individual is one of the characters in our story that got us to where we are. To rebalance and heal ourselves and our planet we need to rediscover our connection to both – ourselves and nature.