New Wave

Musings of visions and dreams of possible futures, speaking truth in a time of lies and pondering my place in the midst of this radical awakening and fall of the Empire.

Read it at Out on a Limb
The Gentle Economic Collapse of the Empire
by Mary Hall

Warning for economically straight folks: "Utopian socialism"

I would not call this collapse of the presently cresting wave, but rather would see it as a new wave swelling up.

As I see it, there are two major forces at work in creating a major trend that is developing, and both are libertarian-anarchistic. One is anarcho-capitalism, and the other is anarcho-communitarianism. These are manifesting socially and politically as the Tea Party, on one hand, and Occupy and the 99% Movement, on the other. The mainstream has not yet grasped the underlying structure and dynamic. Therefore, mainstream perception of both is mostly a caricature of the underlying reality, and so it misses most of the substance and interplay.

In most major fields a trifecta is operative. In socio-politics it is "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité," that is, freedom, equality, and solidarity or community.

Liberty involves individual freedom and protections, as well as self-determination. Liberty includes freedom from arbitrarily imposed constraint, freedom to choose as one wills, and freedom for self-determination and self-actualization.

Equality involves rights and responsibilities, the rule of law, equivalence of persons before the law, due process, and absence of privilege. Equality recognizes diversity of individual characteristics and circumstances. Equality holds that all humans are identical as persons while being diverse as individuals.

Solidarity implies community based on voluntary cooperation of self-sufficient individuals for mutual benefit in creating and administering institutions suitable for accomplishing tasks at hand, guided by natural leadership. Solidarity recognizes that relationships among individuals in social groups is as significant socially, politically and economically as individuals as members of the group. "No man is an island." Human beings are inherently social, which implies complex webs of relationship.

The various social, political, and economic positions approach resolving this trifecta differently. History is the dialectical record of interaction among these positions and shifts in which is "king of the mountain" where and for how long.