I am 41 and a father of two, but my personal situation and my name is irrelevant. Nameless, these words can be read on their merits, not those of the person I am as I write them. I want to set out a path to transforming the world, in as few words as possible. For the moment, I’m not talking about what is likely, but what is necessary:

MONEY

1. Money must end. It can end. If we were free to follow our destiny, and if this was understood, everything could be shared according to use value. No one would possess anything, their bodies excepted. Children would be protected. Beyond that, everything would be open to everyone who can use it; possessions would disappear and only tools would remain. Every use of a tool would be based on explaining to the present custodian the use you want to get from it. Everything you have in your immediate surroundings could loaned to others, or given, and likewise you would have the chance to loan or receive anything you needed for your journey from anyone. A global solidarity around fulfilling one’s destiny, and the destinies of others, could be created. Money would no longer have any use. The shift in consciousness would be profound, but within two or three generations globally, it could be achieved. The principles would be simple and would mark a return to community, to the value of human being, and to a primordial sense of presence in the world. The alternative, which we currently live, negates all of these things.

WAR

2. All war would be immediately illegal, cancelling the need for defensive wars or preparation for war. Military-industrial complexes would be reoriented, moving away from protecting specific communities, or amassing resources and ownership, and towards serving the pursuit of knowledge for the benefit of mankind and all beings (animate and inanimate) found in the world. Every use of technology to dominate would be abandoned. The hostility of our environment, to human beings as a species, would be understood, but our relation to danger would change as we regained balance, and developed local, communal and global solidarity among humans, and between humans and all things. One of the first things taught would be how our world as is – as we have constructed it – is killing us, and that anyway, we need to have a different relation to death. With great care, children would be taught about death as soon as it becomes graspable to them. As such, they would be taught about time, and the wider horizon of successive generations. Fear of death would be combated, while at the same time the gift of life would be affirmed. Above all, we would attempt to live in both the past and the future: learning about mistakes made, and striving towards a transformed world and way of life. Existence would be about fulfilling one’s innate sense of destiny, and how one can contribute to collective liberation and collective care. We are all present together.

STATES

3. States would be abandoned. Positive anarchism would be embraced; which is to say, the simple principle that none would exercise power over any other, ever again. This surely would entail a re-education of parents, but within foreseeable generations the example of becoming one’s destiny would take hold, and children are much more influenced by what their parents are than what they say. Free of the detailed fascism of the money economy, parents would be free to look across an open horizon and embrace their dreams, which would have a cumulative effect on generations. The transition of human life would be understood in terms of generations. It would be understood as a medium term drive, one that would entail short-term difficulties. Meanwhile, the end of the money economy would allow more free time for individuals, whether parents or not, to gather together and discuss – locally and globally – a new way forward for the human race. It is not beyond our means to organise a global discussion on human life in its essence, one that would depart from the core organising principles that have imprisoned us and breed so much violence, disease, depression and alienation: money, power and ownership. Within generations, prisons would disappear definitively. Fear would be reduced.

ALIENATION

4. Every detailed form of alienation from the world and others would be mapped and identified, and public discussion would focus on a larger horizon, which is our existence on one tiny mass amid galaxies that constitute billions in the observable universe. Nature would again be our primary field of life. Respect for nature would be paramount. Steadily, we would leave our concrete cities for other ways of living. This could be achieved over two or three generations. We would be reacquainted with the grandeur of nature. No single step would have as profound an impact as locating human life once again within the field of original nature. With money and war gone, the sources of conflict in the world would be greatly reduced. With positive anarchism established, and destiny revered, conversation would be the natural meeting point of two viewpoints. In the end, none could coerce another; contemplation would be left over when desire or needs are not met, placed within an ongoing individual task of feeling and walking the path of destiny. The condition, however, is established that communally, and individually, we all have the obligation to help others fulfil their destinies, as they would help us.

WORK

5. Everyone would share in everything, over the span of a year at first, and later longer periods. Astrophysicists would be linked again to farming, poets with administration. Work would be recast as the condition of possibility of collective survival, until the ethics of unity took hold and it became simply second nature to think of others locally and globally. In time, no one would have a single occupation. But this would not mimic the fascism of post-Fordist neoliberalism, where viciousness is bred as a virtue, with the political end of ripping all foundations from under our feet. Rather, across any given year, people would play multiple roles, in order to see so many aspects of human life, and to grow solidarity among peoples. Leaders would emerge not based on power or class, but in terms of being attuned to the possibilities of this world, in particular as relates to its beauty.

CLASS

6. The demobilisation of the money economy would occur according to a 20-30 year plan, so that the resources of the planet are evenly distributed. World hunger could be solved within a generation. Global education could be organised within a generation. Our focus would be to deal with problems of existence at a global level, and at a local level, within a self-supporting mechanism of dealing with the immediate and the distant. No one would be subject to death or ill-health by neglect. The 1% and 99% would disappear in a generation. Globally relevant projects that take great collective effort would not end, but would not be tied to the profit aspect within the money economy, but rather to global will, and hence become more immediately fulfillable. As public education on our fundamentals as beings disseminated, more and more people could be involved in vast global projects of elevation and understanding.

RELIGION, NATION, SELF

7. Every religion would be obliged to recognise commonalities with other religions, and metaphysics without proof would not be accepted. Claims to the divine, exclusive or not, would be cast aside. In time, religion would devolve down to personal ethics and disappear as a means of mass organisation or indoctrination, to be supplanted by global consciousness and the consciousness of being. Along with States, nations would be surpassed as locales of allegiance, to be replaced by simply a world of all its beings. Borders and passports would disappear. Every human being, no matter their situation, would be accepted as enjoying equal rights. In a world where none could coerce another, and where none would be coerced, everything would come down to understanding the path and desires and hopes of the other. The absolute line of non-coercion would be protected by all, while all would be open to myriad proposals on behalf of their fellow human beings. As individual desires would be expressed and fulfilled, so would be the desires of others. Global solidarity would exist at the level of individual and shared destiny.

SEXUALITY

8. All prejudice and discrimination based on sexuality would be abandoned forever. Everyone would be free to love whoever they wish to love, while in tune with the principle of non-coercion. The nuclear family would be abandoned as a dominant model, replaced by care for all human beings on a multi-generational horizon. The love of parents for their children would be celebrated, but parents also integrated into the global reality of generations, and generations within the planetary reality of myriad species. Some may choose to remain together, as couples, as parents, as companions, but obligations would disappear as humanity as a whole becomes one’s first family. Absence of coercion would lead to a liberation of all human beings, individually and collectively. Sexuality would be stripped of its moral prohibitions, while retaining its absolute beauty. People would be free to negotiate this question themselves, based on the affirmation of non-coercion and a new community of all human beings in togetherness. Listening would surpass judgement.

UNIVERSE

9. Consciousness of what exists above our heads — the universe in all its mystery and wonder — would be taught the world over. The aim would be to understand our situation as cosmic beings, not simply or only as beings on a specific planet. This elevation of consciousness could have a reinforcing effect on all the specific changes we have to make to reorientate our relation to the world, to others, and in abandoning the dominant systems that have narrowed our horizons until now. Who could imagine a prison world when they look into the night sky and see our tiny place within the vast unfolding landscape of cosmic time?

PARADISE

10. We would review the entire history of humanity with a view to changing direction, and establishing a real paradise on earth, for ourselves, our families and all future generations. The absence of a money economy following a global redistribution of resources would all but eliminate crime. The drug war would end. Children would be taught to meditate from an early age, and our relation to time would completely transform. There would be no consumer society in a world of free access to everything. There would be no more celebration of killing. Killing of other human beings would be universally banned, and likewise all the supporting mechanisms for killing. Everyone would be understood as a brother or sister, no matter what age, or from where. Everyone would care for everyone else. The absence of the money economy, and the complete redistribution of resources, and global affirmation of equal access to whatever exists on earth, within the bounds of deep friendship across gender, generations and location, would eliminate the drive to think of oneself only. The world would be an open space of possibility, with all opinions respected and heard.

With the base of consciousness that the above points constitute, and with our current means of global communication, we can transcend the limits we suffer, and in time work together as one single, massively variated, massively supportive phenomenon. We will have earned the label, “humanity”.

This could be paradise. We need not be hostage to the history of everything we did wrong until now. We can start again, in sisterhood and brotherhood, and in solidarity across generations, ending all the artificial divisions from which humankind suffers.

Let’s make this paradise.

4 June 2013

A week ago, I wrote an outline of the necessary changes — the minimum changes — to allow for a profound reorientation of human life. You can read this outline here. Immediately, and rightly, friends asked me: But how? I want to outline how.

GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP

1. First, it is necessary to declare the sovereignty of the people globally. This means a number of things in practice. Allegiance will no longer be given to any state or even any nation. We must understand ourselves as part of the global population of human animals, and more widely the totality of the world’s existence. Specifically, boundaries will no longer be recognised. Struggles for liberation in one locale are global struggles for liberation of all. As soon as the sovereignty of the people is established globally, all would understand him or herself as a member of the global population with local and global interests.

REDISTRIBUTION

2. It is a fact that in terms of wealth accumulation, the top 1,000 individuals in a world of 7+ billion people own more wealth than the rest of the human population combined. So in terms of income redistribution, the global problem is largely condensed into the wealth of a tiny number. The declaration of the sovereignty of the people globally would go hand-in-hand with notification that this global inequality of wealth (the 1% and the 99%, in popular understanding) has come to an end, and will be peacefully ended. It is then a matter of identifying these individuals and commencing immediate and targeted campaigns to put overwhelming global moral pressure on these individuals to give up this wealth and participate in a phased process of global transformation and redistribution until money itself is phased out, as outlined in the original vision, readable here.

THE POLICE

3. An accurate analysis needs to be made of the possible short-term changes in everyone’s lives — whether for those living in advanced societies, or those living in more overtly exploited societies — of the redistribution of resources in the medium term until money is phased out. The strategic goal is to reach the consciousness of the primary organ that maintains by force the global inequality of distribution of resources: the police in every society. The fight against the police has to be transcended. But equally, the police have to stop fighting society. The place of the analysis is to establish a credible vision of how equitable redistribution of massively unequal accumulated wealth can resolve near every global and local problem and conflict, including but not limited to endemic starvation, impoverishment, most forms of crime and most forms of marginalisation.

THE STATE

4. Behind the police lies the State. The global declaration of the sovereignty of the people is a frontal attack on the State and its panoply of control mechanisms. Again, the key is showing how the simple redistribution of the accumulated wealth of a minuscule minority set against global population numbers would in a phased process of redistribution elevate all beyond the immediate strictures of life that the State imposes and establishes as the core of its ordering function. No longer would the world be conceived of as a global factory for the benefit of a few, but rather a world of common resources for the use, based on need, itself based on aspirations in tune with the transformation needed, of the majority. The hierarchy system of capitalism would collapse, and with it would be rejected the entire consumer life model, to be replaced by a different conception of the purposes of existence, as outlined previously.

GEOPOLITICS

5. War having been made illegal, and global resources now conceived of as the common patrimony of all, without exception, the geopolitical structures that have locked nations and peoples into conflict will simply vanish. The massive global redistribution of resources — in the period of the controlled transition away from money — will manyfold realise the essential needs of every single person living on the planet, whether for education, health, leisure, a home, food and a network of support institutions to serve global citizens as equals. This redistribution would be so vast, and the understanding of the transformation that the people of the world would be undertaking so profound, that all violence would find no place, because, in essence, there would nothing one would need to gain. Global hunger cured within five years. Education for life guaranteed to everyone within a generation. The resources of the world pooled to invest in clean, solar energy that could serve the world’s needs within a decade, we would stop raping the planet and brutalising each other.

FLAT GOVERNANCE

6. Hierarchical institutions would be phased out. All equals, we would use our technological achievements to establish direct local and global democracy, unfolding within a conscious drive to reassess the state we had arrived to, the unnecessary suffering we had subjected ourselves and others to, and with a view to collectively lifting our eyes from the ground and seeing the universe around us and discussing all together, without pressure of the struggle for survival or profit, what we are, where we are, and where we would like to head — what paradise should look like, and how we could get there. Grounded in non-coercion, none could be forced to think alike, but still none would be without the resources to make whatever they wish from their lives. The condition would be solidarity and friendship, because none could coerce another, while none could deny (or would have reason to deny) the requests of another, if the request could be met without doing harm. The phase of redistribution would go a long way to purging the consciousness of people everywhere to own. The world is abundant. In the controlled transition, we could build the resources of societies equitably, and in the end money would become irrelevant, in part because access would not be conditioned upon it, and in part because during the controlled phase of transition, redistribution would allow people to fulfil their desires and needs, while at the broader scale humanity as a whole would lay plans for global development along a new model: common destiny, common equality, and the absence of the consciousness of ownership.

CONSCIOUSNESS SHIFT

7. Education will be key to the whole process. Leadership in a transitional phase would necessarily fall upon those with strong ethical visions. In the history of human civilisations, this dialogue has been tried many times. But it always unfolded in the context of two things that are toxic to it, and distort and ultimately corrupt individuals, groups and societies: capitalism and the State. The controlled transition would set the world inexorably onto the path of ending money, while the principle of non-coercion would simply remove the State entirely. Institutions — the products of the long and difficult struggle for human betterment in the context of deep strictures borne of private property and State appropriation of life for its own national and geopolitical purposes — would remain but be steadily reformed. Anarchism, properly understood, is not chaos and destruction. It is building together as equals.

FRIENDSHIP

8. Can 1,000 individuals continue to block the life possibilities of billions, and the very horizon of our species, and the rights of living a full life in the world? By what right would they do so? Humanity needs to profoundly embrace the principle of non-coercion, to which ownership — whether of things or people — is anathema. At the very heart of capitalism and the State is the principle of self. What this transformation would add, without coercion, is the principle of all. Focus on the self to the detriment of others would be understood for what it is: coercion of others. Destiny is not fulfilled alone. We fulfil our destinies among others, and in parallel with others. The move beyond money would put people in constant contact with others. While redistribution would take care of the basics, allowing people to focus on what they want from their lives, living that life would almost always put the one in contact with others. Fulfilling one’s destiny would almost necessarily become a global dialogue entailing thousands of new connections, with nothing denied if it is justified as an aspiration and doesn’t impinge on the honest aspirations of others. But here the key is honesty. The model as a whole would not work based on lies or deceit. But then why would people need to lie when all was open to them, just as it would be for the people with whom they come into contact? We would make our destinies together, in profound and honest friendships. Friendship is inherent among equals.

WHERE DO WE START?

9. What is the primary condition for setting the ball rolling? Two things: a) The promise of a better world is real, certainly for the billions that constitute the 99% of the current global wealth and class system; b) Individually and collectively we must understand that our aspirations should be fulfilled. Destiny is not simply a matter of ideals. It is also a physical path that we should — and have a right to — pursue. It may take longer for some than for others, but nearly everyone at one point or other in their lives recognises that there is _something_ that they want to do. So long as this something does not entail coercion of others, there is nothing can intellectually or ethically justify this path being blocked. Healthy societies are not ordered societies. They are societies — or would be, for none exist — where individuals and groups can share and realise whatever they wish. In a situation of global citizenship (a literal global equality), people would be fundamentally free, while the end of money and the State would take away what presently blocks people from being free and realising their dreams.

SAYING NO TO SAY YES

10. Would it happen easily? Doubtless there would be initial resistance from two directions: from the money economy and all its lynchpins, given that privilege at the expense of others would be phased out; and from the State, its police force and ultimately military force, because the State has an existence of its own — principally a negative view of human beings, and their regimentation into ordered (and sometimes disordered) groups, for the sake of political profit, which is the control of large groups of human animals by smaller groups, serving, sometimes conceived, the “humanitarian” purpose of running the lives of populations. It is more than time that we all stopped supporting this, walk out of the impossible prison, and breath air as free and equal global citizens. The mentality inherent in the money economy and capitalism is virulent anti-social, and indeed anti-progress, in dissolving the grandeur of presence into work and growth. The State, however, is the primary organ of mass control, below which exists the mechanism of the capitalist economy. As such, its mentality is the key one to deconstruct. It can be summed up, when all is said and done, quite simply: power over others. But on what basis would other live animals, born contemporaneous to you, assert a right of coercion over you? There is no basis. And get rid of money, with effective equal redistribution, there is not even a shred of justification. The key to all of this — both the vision and the practical steps — is our refusal to be coerced. Simply put, no one has the right to assert authority over you. Especially when you refuse. That refusal is the gateway not only to a better life for all the people on planet Earth, but is also the gateway to our species — human civilisation — raising its eyes from the ground and engaging in our true home: the universe as a whole.

We can make this paradise.

11 June 2013

Why make this paradise
What could be paradise

I am 41 and a father of two, but my personal situation and my name is irrelevant. Nameless, these words can be read on their merits, not those of the person I am as I write them. I want to set out a path to transforming the world, in as few words as possible. For the moment, I’m not talking about what is likely, but what is necessary:

MONEY

1. Money must end. It can end. If we were free to follow our destiny, and if this was understood, everything could be shared according to use value. No one would possess anything, their bodies excepted. Children would be protected. Beyond that, everything would be open to everyone who can use it; possessions would disappear and only tools would remain. Every use of a tool would be based on explaining to the present custodian the use you want to get from it. Everything you have in your immediate surroundings could loaned to others, or given, and likewise you would have the chance to loan or receive anything you needed for your journey from anyone. A global solidarity around fulfilling one’s destiny, and the destinies of others, could be created. Money would no longer have any use. The shift in consciousness would be profound, but within two or three generations globally, it could be achieved. The principles would be simple and would mark a return to community, to the value of human being, and to a primordial sense of presence in the world. The alternative, which we currently live, negates all of these things.

WAR

2. All war would be immediately illegal, cancelling the need for defensive wars or preparation for war. Military-industrial complexes would be reoriented, moving away from protecting specific communities, or amassing resources and ownership, and towards serving the pursuit of knowledge for the benefit of mankind and all beings (animate and inanimate) found in the world. Every use of technology to dominate would be abandoned. The hostility of our environment, to human beings as a species, would be understood, but our relation to danger would change as we regained balance, and developed local, communal and global solidarity among humans, and between humans and all things. One of the first things taught would be how our world as is – as we have constructed it – is killing us, and that anyway, we need to have a different relation to death. With great care, children would be taught about death as soon as it becomes graspable to them. As such, they would be taught about time, and the wider horizon of successive generations. Fear of death would be combated, while at the same time the gift of life would be affirmed. Above all, we would attempt to live in both the past and the future: learning about mistakes made, and striving towards a transformed world and way of life. Existence would be about fulfilling one’s innate sense of destiny, and how one can contribute to collective liberation and collective care. We are all present together.

STATES

3. States would be abandoned. Positive anarchism would be embraced; which is to say, the simple principle that none would exercise power over any other, ever again. This surely would entail a re-education of parents, but within foreseeable generations the example of becoming one’s destiny would take hold, and children are much more influenced by what their parents are than what they say. Free of the detailed fascism of the money economy, parents would be free to look across an open horizon and embrace their dreams, which would have a cumulative effect on generations. The transition of human life would be understood in terms of generations. It would be understood as a medium term drive, one that would entail short-term difficulties. Meanwhile, the end of the money economy would allow more free time for individuals, whether parents or not, to gather together and discuss – locally and globally – a new way forward for the human race. It is not beyond our means to organise a global discussion on human life in its essence, one that would depart from the core organising principles that have imprisoned us and breed so much violence, disease, depression and alienation: money, power and ownership. Within generations, prisons would disappear definitively. Fear would be reduced.

ALIENATION

4. Every detailed form of alienation from the world and others would be mapped and identified, and public discussion would focus on a larger horizon, which is our existence on one tiny mass amid galaxies that constitute billions in the observable universe. Nature would again be our primary field of life. Respect for nature would be paramount. Steadily, we would leave our concrete cities for other ways of living. This could be achieved over two or three generations. We would be reacquainted with the grandeur of nature. No single step would have as profound an impact as locating human life once again within the field of original nature. With money and war gone, the sources of conflict in the world would be greatly reduced. With positive anarchism established, and destiny revered, conversation would be the natural meeting point of two viewpoints. In the end, none could coerce another; contemplation would be left over when desire or needs are not met, placed within an ongoing individual task of feeling and walking the path of destiny. The condition, however, is established that communally, and individually, we all have the obligation to help others fulfil their destinies, as they would help us.

WORK

5. Everyone would share in everything, over the span of a year at first, and later longer periods. Astrophysicists would be linked again to farming, poets with administration. Work would be recast as the condition of possibility of collective survival, until the ethics of unity took hold and it became simply second nature to think of others locally and globally. In time, no one would have a single occupation. But this would not mimic the fascism of post-Fordist neoliberalism, where viciousness is bred as a virtue, with the political end of ripping all foundations from under our feet. Rather, across any given year, people would play multiple roles, in order to see so many aspects of human life, and to grow solidarity among peoples. Leaders would emerge not based on power or class, but in terms of being attuned to the possibilities of this world, in particular as relates to its beauty.

CLASS

6. The demobilisation of the money economy would occur according to a 20-30 year plan, so that the resources of the planet are evenly distributed. World hunger could be solved within a generation. Global education could be organised within a generation. Our focus would be to deal with problems of existence at a global level, and at a local level, within a self-supporting mechanism of dealing with the immediate and the distant. No one would be subject to death or ill-health by neglect. The 1% and 99% would disappear in a generation. Globally relevant projects that take great collective effort would not end, but would not be tied to the profit aspect within the money economy, but rather to global will, and hence become more immediately fulfillable. As public education on our fundamentals as beings disseminated, more and more people could be involved in vast global projects of elevation and understanding.

RELIGION, NATION, SELF

7. Every religion would be obliged to recognise commonalities with other religions, and metaphysics without proof would not be accepted. Claims to the divine, exclusive or not, would be cast aside. In time, religion would devolve down to personal ethics and disappear as a means of mass organisation or indoctrination, to be supplanted by global consciousness and the consciousness of being. Along with States, nations would be surpassed as locales of allegiance, to be replaced by simply a world of all its beings. Borders and passports would disappear. Every human being, no matter their situation, would be accepted as enjoying equal rights. In a world where none could coerce another, and where none would be coerced, everything would come down to understanding the path and desires and hopes of the other. The absolute line of non-coercion would be protected by all, while all would be open to myriad proposals on behalf of their fellow human beings. As individual desires would be expressed and fulfilled, so would be the desires of others. Global solidarity would exist at the level of individual and shared destiny.

SEXUALITY

8. All prejudice and discrimination based on sexuality would be abandoned forever. Everyone would be free to love whoever they wish to love, while in tune with the principle of non-coercion. The nuclear family would be abandoned as a dominant model, replaced by care for all human beings on a multi-generational horizon. The love of parents for their children would be celebrated, but parents also integrated into the global reality of generations, and generations within the planetary reality of myriad species. Some may choose to remain together, as couples, as parents, as companions, but obligations would disappear as humanity as a whole becomes one’s first family. Absence of coercion would lead to a liberation of all human beings, individually and collectively. Sexuality would be stripped of its moral prohibitions, while retaining its absolute beauty. People would be free to negotiate this question themselves, based on the affirmation of non-coercion and a new community of all human beings in togetherness. Listening would surpass judgement.

UNIVERSE

9. Consciousness of what exists above our heads — the universe in all its mystery and wonder — would be taught the world over. The aim would be to understand our situation as cosmic beings, not simply or only as beings on a specific planet. This elevation of consciousness could have a reinforcing effect on all the specific changes we have to make to reorientate our relation to the world, to others, and in abandoning the dominant systems that have narrowed our horizons until now. Who could imagine a prison world when they look into the night sky and see our tiny place within the vast unfolding landscape of cosmic time?

PARADISE

10. We would review the entire history of humanity with a view to changing direction, and establishing a real paradise on earth, for ourselves, our families and all future generations. The absence of a money economy following a global redistribution of resources would all but eliminate crime. The drug war would end. Children would be taught to meditate from an early age, and our relation to time would completely transform. There would be no consumer society in a world of free access to everything. There would be no more celebration of killing. Killing of other human beings would be universally banned, and likewise all the supporting mechanisms for killing. Everyone would be understood as a brother or sister, no matter what age, or from where. Everyone would care for everyone else. The absence of the money economy, and the complete redistribution of resources, and global affirmation of equal access to whatever exists on earth, within the bounds of deep friendship across gender, generations and location, would eliminate the drive to think of oneself only. The world would be an open space of possibility, with all opinions respected and heard.

With the base of consciousness that the above points constitute, and with our current means of global communication, we can transcend the limits we suffer, and in time work together as one single, massively variated, massively supportive phenomenon. We will have earned the label, “humanity”.

This could be paradise. We need not be hostage to the history of everything we did wrong until now. We can start again, in sisterhood and brotherhood, and in solidarity across generations, ending all the artificial divisions from which humankind suffers.

Let’s make this paradise.

4 June 2013

How to make this paradise
Why make this paradise

I am 41 and a father of two, but my personal situation and my name is irrelevant. Nameless, these words can be read on their merits, not those of the person I am as I write them. I want to set out a path to transforming the world, in as few words as possible. The following is necessary:

MONEY

1. Money must end. It can end. If we were free to follow our destiny, and if this was understood, everything could be shared according to use value. No one would possess anything, their bodies excepted. Children would be protected. Beyond that, everything would be open to everyone who can use it; possessions would disappear and only tools would remain. Every use of a tool would be based on explaining to the present custodian the use you want to get from it. Everything you have in your immediate surroundings could loaned to others, or given, and likewise you would have the chance to loan or receive anything you needed for your journey from anyone. A global solidarity around fulfilling one’s destiny, and the destinies of others, could be created. Money would no longer have any use. The shift in consciousness would be profound, but within two or three generations globally, it could be achieved. The principles would be simple and would mark a return to community, to the value of human being, and to a primordial sense of presence in the world. The alternative, which we currently live, negates all of these things.

WAR

2. All war would be immediately illegal, cancelling the need for defensive wars or preparation for war. Military-industrial complexes would be reoriented, moving away from protecting specific communities, or amassing resources and ownership, and towards serving the pursuit of knowledge for the benefit of mankind and all beings (animate and inanimate) found in the world. Every use of technology to dominate would be abandoned. The hostility of our environment, to human beings as a species, would be understood, but our relation to danger would change as we regained balance, and developed local, communal and global solidarity among humans, and between humans and all things. One of the first things taught would be how our world as is – as we have constructed it – is killing us, and that anyway, we need to have a different relation to death. With great care, children would be taught about death as soon as it becomes graspable to them. As such, they would be taught about time, and the wider horizon of successive generations. Fear of death would be combated, while at the same time the gift of life would be affirmed. Above all, we would attempt to live in both the past and the future: learning about mistakes made, and striving towards a transformed world and way of life. Existence would be about fulfilling one’s innate sense of destiny, and how one can contribute to collective liberation and collective care. We are all present together.

STATES

3. States would be abandoned. Positive anarchism would be embraced; which is to say, the simple principle that none would exercise power over any other, ever again. This surely would entail a re-education of parents, but within foreseeable generations the example of becoming one’s destiny would take hold, and children are much more influenced by what their parents are than what they say. Free of the detailed fascism of the money economy, parents would be free to look across an open horizon and embrace their dreams, which would have a cumulative effect on generations. The transition of human life would be understood in terms of generations. It would be understood as a medium term drive, one that would entail short-term difficulties. Meanwhile, the end of the money economy would allow more free time for individuals, whether parents or not, to gather together and discuss – locally and globally – a new way forward for the human race. It is not beyond our means to organise a global discussion on human life in its essence, one that would depart from the core organising principles that have imprisoned us and breed so much violence, disease, depression and alienation: money, power and ownership. Within generations, prisons would disappear definitively. Fear would be reduced.

ALIENATION

4. Every detailed form of alienation from the world and others would be mapped and identified, and public discussion would focus on a larger horizon, which is our existence on one tiny mass amid galaxies that constitute billions in the observable universe. Nature would again be our primary field of life. Respect for nature would be paramount. Steadily, we would leave our concrete cities for other ways of living. This could be achieved over two or three generations. We would be reacquainted with the grandeur of nature. No single step would have as profound an impact as locating human life once again within the field of original nature. With money and war gone, the sources of conflict in the world would be greatly reduced. With positive anarchism established, and destiny revered, conversation would be the natural meeting point of two viewpoints. In the end, none could coerce another; contemplation would be left over when desire or needs are not met, placed within an ongoing individual task of feeling and walking the path of destiny. The condition, however, is established that communally, and individually, we all have the obligation to help others fulfil their destinies, as they would help us.

WORK

5. Everyone would share in everything, over the span of a year at first, and later longer periods. Astrophysicists would be linked again to farming, poets with administration. Work would be recast as the condition of possibility of collective survival, until the ethics of unity took hold and it became simply second nature to think of others locally and globally. In time, no one would have a single occupation. But this would not mimic the fascism of post-Fordist neoliberalism, where viciousness is bred as a virtue, with the political end of ripping all foundations from under our feet. Rather, across any given year, people would play multiple roles, in order to see so many aspects of human life, and to grow solidarity among peoples. Leaders would emerge not based on power or class, but in terms of being attuned to the possibilities of this world, in particular as relates to its beauty.

CLASS

6. The demobilisation of the money economy would occur according to a 20-30 year plan, so that the resources of the planet are evenly distributed. World hunger could be solved within a generation. Global education could be organised within a generation. Our focus would be to deal with problems of existence at a global level, and at a local level, within a self-supporting mechanism of dealing with the immediate and the distant. No one would be subject to death or ill-health by neglect. The 1% and 99% would disappear in a generation. Globally relevant projects that take great collective effort would not end, but would not be tied to the profit aspect within the money economy, but rather to global will, and hence become more immediately fulfillable. As public education on our fundamentals as beings disseminated, more and more people could be involved in vast global projects of elevation and understanding.

RELIGION, NATION, SELF

7. Every religion would be obliged to recognise commonalities with other religions, and metaphysics without proof would not be accepted. Claims to the divine, exclusive or not, would be cast aside. In time, religion would devolve down to personal ethics and disappear as a means of mass organisation or indoctrination, to be supplanted by global consciousness and the consciousness of being. Along with States, nations would be surpassed as locales of allegiance, to be replaced by simply a world of all its beings. Borders and passports would disappear. Every human being, no matter their situation, would be accepted as enjoying equal rights. In a world where none could coerce another, and where none would be coerced, everything would come down to understanding the path and desires and hopes of the other. The absolute line of non-coercion would be protected by all, while all would be open to myriad proposals on behalf of their fellow human beings. As individual desires would be expressed and fulfilled, so would be the desires of others. Global solidarity would exist at the level of individual and shared destiny.

SEXUALITY

8. All prejudice and discrimination based on sexuality would be abandoned forever. Everyone would be free to love whoever they wish to love, while in tune with the principle of non-coercion. The nuclear family would be abandoned as a dominant model, replaced by care for all human beings on a multi-generational horizon. The love of parents for their children would be celebrated, but parents also integrated into the global reality of generations, and generations within the planetary reality of myriad species. Some may choose to remain together, as couples, as parents, as companions, but obligations would disappear as humanity as a whole becomes one’s first family. Absence of coercion would lead to a liberation of all human beings, individually and collectively. Sexuality would be stripped of its moral prohibitions, while retaining its absolute beauty. People would be free to negotiate this question themselves, based on the affirmation of non-coercion and a new community of all human beings in togetherness. Listening would surpass judgement.

UNIVERSE

9. Consciousness of what exists above our heads — the universe in all its mystery and wonder — would be taught the world over. The aim would be to understand our situation as cosmic beings, not simply or only as beings on a specific planet. This elevation of consciousness could have a reinforcing effect on all the specific changes we have to make to reorientate our relation to the world, to others, and in abandoning the dominant systems that have narrowed our horizons until now. Who could imagine a prison world when they look into the night sky and see our tiny place within the vast unfolding landscape of cosmic time?

PARADISE

10. We would review the entire history of humanity with a view to changing direction, and establishing a real paradise on earth, for ourselves, our families and all future generations. The absence of a money economy following a global redistribution of resources would all but eliminate crime. The drug war would end. Children would be taught to meditate from an early age, and our relation to time would completely transform. There would be no consumer society in a world of free access to everything. There would be no more celebration of killing. Killing of other human beings would be universally banned, and likewise all the supporting mechanisms for killing. Everyone would be understood as a brother or sister, no matter what age. Everyone would care for everyone else. The absence of the money economy, and the complete redistribution of resources, and global affirmation of equal access to whatever exists on earth, within the bounds of deep friendship across genders and generations, would eliminate the drive to think of oneself only. The world would be an open space of possibility, with all opinions respected and heard. With the base of consciousness that the above points constitute, and with our current means of global communication, we can transcend the limits we suffer, and in time work together as one single, massively variated, massively supportive phenomenon. We will have earned the label, “humanity”.

This could be paradise. We need not be hostage to the history of everything we did wrong until now. We can start again, in sisterhood and brotherhood, and in solidarity across generations and all the artificial divisions from which humankind suffers.

Let’s make this paradise.

4 June 2013

What could be paradise
How to make this paradise