“What can be expressed in words can
be expressed in life.” -- Henry David
Thoreau
We are only limited by our
thinking. This is a self-imposed limitation. Whatever we can conceive, we can
eventually achieve. Today’s dreams become tomorrow’s realities. So we must be
careful what we dream. We must be cautious of what we conceive and express in
words for what we imagine become seeds scattered in the winds of time, which
eventually come to fruition in the plans and deeds of future generations. We
could list the things, which are commonplace today, but only a few generations
ago would have seemed impossible. Air travel, space travel, the Internet, cell
phones, 3-D printing, and the list could go on for pages and pages! Among them
are a few things that I believe have not been beneficial—the
professionalization of management, work viewed as career, the collusion of big
business with big government. It struck me just now as I wrote those words that
the positive innovations have been in the area of technological products, while
the negative innovations have been cultural, or in the realm of ideas and
values by which we understand, use, and manage the technology.
It reminds me of something E. O.
Wilson said: The real problem of
humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions;
and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now
approaching a point of crisis overall.
It seems we have lost our ability
to understand and then love nature and other human beings. Or, at least, we’ve
allowed this ability to become withered and starved in our blind pursuit of the
external goods of money, power, and status, where we seek to understand nature
and other human beings only in order to exploit them more efficiently.
The wealth of nations is found in
productive labor in local communities and in work done as vocation. Today
global capitalism punishes productive labor and rewards those who trade in
speculation and profit off the imbalance in markets and the exploitation of
financial markets—all of which feeds off of productive labor without adding any
value itself. Our political system will not fix this nor will big business. The
only solution lies with ordinary people turning away from big government and
big business and engaging in local economics and local self-government.
We don’t need to work for large
corporations. We don’t need to cooperate with a predatory mass consumer
culture. We can return to and create authentic local cultures in our local communities.
Work done in local communities, with local resources, and with local management
becomes a vocation; work becomes healing and even sacred. Of course, work in
local communities cannot be managed by professional managers and rank-based
leaders. Work as vocation and genuine community require peer-based
organization, design, and management, where we all share and participate in the
competency of managing ourselves and our labor and in making the decisions,
which govern our shared lives together.
I imagine neighborhoods, each
having a corner lot with a multistoried vertical farm, where all the food they need
year-round is grown. Next to it is a shop with a 3-D printer where all the equipment
to maintain the vertical farm is made. I imagine local communities governing
themselves through community councils and ensuring the well-being of each and
every member of their community. Where education, food, shelter, health care,
and even entertainment originate and are managed by the local community. In
such authentic community, each person comes to feel irreplaceable in the
affection and esteem of others, and everyone enjoys the satisfaction of his or
her basic existential needs for security, respect, and meaningful freedom.
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I have said and imagined more
about this idea in my book: Deconstructing the Supermeme of Leadership:
A Brief Invitation to Creating Peer-Based Communities & Leaderless
Organizations. You may find the book here--http://goo.gl/qOeaue
