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... just that you propagate ways that unavoidably will foster a predatory monopolism - and actually do so since long - that will always hinder a fair balance in the distribution of wealth and will always hinder equality of chances and market access, not to mention that the more parts of mankind share the Western way of living, the more suicidal it becomes for all of us on planet earth.

Feudalism does nothing in itself to heal the environemt, that is correct. Democracy also does not do that. But the current economic system we have, also does not really help in it, and still causes more obstacles than assistances to the needed reorientations and speed. It is about establishing an order that allows us the needed reaction space again, and the needed reaction speed, to adress these problems before the time window closes for us - that is what it is about. the current western system stalls in these regards, and is unsuited to acchieve that. The current established order allows far too much delay, and intended delay, in fact it even has caused stallings of most dedicated intentions to adress the problems, and the current order also is extremely vulnerable and gets massively abused by economic lobbies that try to prevent very change itself, and try to prevent change taking place at the needed speed, for the sake of their shorttermed interests. To overcome this lethal hijacking, this deadlock - this is what my idea is about. It must get broken, no matter how, no matter the cost. - Damn I sound like Obama :) with all this changing, but I think he and me aim at totally different directions nevertheless.

And I dare say that we probably need to enforce change against the will of the majority of mankind, which means there must be a leading, strong authority equipped with tools of such power. That is an enormous risk. but we also have such powers today, who are abusing their might without scrupels, politically and economically. They derive from both Western and non-Western political traditions, and derive from the market economy as well as state-run economies.

Just imagine the need to enforce tight rules for strict birth control around the globe - that project alone will be a hot dance! From the confrontation with religions, over local riots in African villages, to mass hysteria spread by western ideologic politicians and human rights activists... Boy, that will be a party, I tell you, bring three pairs of dancing shoes in reserve! At the same time evading the mistake of the Chinese and not allowing over-aging of the population, while allowing the global population thinning out naturally, by several factors (as long as you are not willing to use force to kill some 5 billion people with active weapons).

the problem is still the same that was there when monarchies, or even the Greek tyrants, were ruling, and that has been the same problem in democracies as well: How to make sure that the strong authority at the top does not abuse its power for selfish intentions, but uses it to acchieve what is best for the whole and preserves the very natural basis of our survival, while balancing this against the demand of the one to be allowed as much freedom as possible and be given a fair perspective to found his existence in the system without being totally subjugated to the interest of the state like in totalitarian regimes?

Meeting two criterions is needed for such high ranking leaders: competence on the matters of politics, intercultural sociology, ecology and economy (etc. etc), and a character and mind and inner attitude that is immune to the temptations of abusing power for selfish goals and egoism, and a strong sense and dedication to serving the higher interest.

I think that already sorts out almost everybody volunteering for such an office. people craving for power and attention very often are not well-suited for being given power and attention. - Western democracy as well as tyrants in banana-republics tell tales of this.

In a feudal system, where you eventually have a social class of "noble men", in ideal circumstances the young ones are prepared for their later position from childhood on, since it is certain that as noble men they will climb to ranks and authority. This affects education and forming of the character alike. Foul characters eventually get sorted out by their families. Remember, I talk of "ideal conditions", in other words, an utopia.

Obviously, there is a risk, that is the one coming to power may or may not be competent, but may be of foul charcter for sure. then the rest of the society is screwed.

Democracy tried to cure this. It says that the key personnel gets exchanged every once in a while, that sorts out the rotten tomatoes sooner or later, but only at the price of allowing them to come back, and kicking good men as well. But this procedure does nothing to ensure that those being elected, are either competent, or are of good character, or both. Wether they get elected or not depends on their connections to the media outlets, and there ability to produce themselves and talk their audience into voting them. Competence and charcter can but must not have somethign to do with it. and often, they go amiss indeed. The same problem like in monarchies! A monarchy is fine and well as long as you have a good king. Democracy is nice and well as long as voters elect good people - which has a precondtion that good people are available. But if not, then you are screwed again.

In a democracy one would think "okay, the bad guy gets elected out of office next time". Hm, Berlusconi on my mind, and many others, or politicians falling the ladder upwards after having been kicked, and going to the EU, for example, fishing for some fatter pensions. Political parties in all Western nations have put their own power interests above the interests of their nations and their people. They are heavily allied and intermixed with economical lobbies and oligarchic structures representing the owners of economic production capacities which they can use to blackmail political decision making. And from this unhealthy mixture, the choices for the voters get formed up. In other words the voter has the choice between pleague and cholera, and necessarily votes for people spending their lifes with being politics, and showing plenty of egoism, narcissim, craving for power, and cannot imagine that people may want them to step aside and vote them out of their polticial career. in case of that, they tend to evade into other political offices, to save their pensions or even earn raises.

Democracy...?

I argued before, in earlier postings, that I think democracy only works in communities small enough that a certain ammount of personal vis-a-vis contact amongst most mebers of the community is assured, so that people do not feel responsible towards anonymous entities only, but to living people maybe they know since their childhood. Beyond this, it all becomes a thing of hear-say, unfounded belief that may find justification or not, good wishes, and hopes for the best. that's why I say I see demcoracy being equipped to work in small communities only. Or on the local level. The market, for the moment, has nothing to do with it.

So there you are, with a country of some hundred local independant democracies (or local communities in general, whos say they all want to be democratic?), or less, whatever. they may be formed on levels of small towns and small rural districts. the commmunity sizes need to make a compromise between the desired small size, and the desired small (managable) number of communities in such a nation. Huge cities and metropoles are already a problem in this model, of course.

Maybe different in scale, you already have varying incarnations of such sub-structures in several states of the present. The difference lies in the superstructure supervising them and keeping them together.

You obviously need some kind of supervising structure that coordinates the interaction between these many entities. However, you do want to avoid this structure to be vulnerable to the traps that make huge monarchies and huge democracies fail: selfishness, bad character, etc. Obviously, this higher coordination structure can not be open to democratic elections then, since it is representing a too huge community (the reason why we have limited democracies to small local communities, right?). the only alternative I see is to have a self-preserving group of persons that are dependant and independant at the same time in governing the interaction between the many sub-communities, and define the action-orientation of the whole. You need to find a method that the communities usually must follow these superior orders, but - under circumstances to be defined - have the right to refuse to obey - which then compares to a mutiny against the captain on a ship, maybe. usually, the captain's orders get followed most of the time. but he always lives with the risk that the crew rebels.

One could compare to federal states like Germany or the US. There are towns, distrits, higher districts, federal states, and the nation. Above all the federal government. the porblem is the federal government, I'm sure - though from a very different perspective - you agree. I go even further and say the givenrment of federal states, higher districts, districts and metropoles already are part of the problem too. any organisation level that includes millions and millions of citizens is a problem.

If you can figure out how to establish a tradition for a "noble class", that does not claim rights by birth only and does not understand that to be an invitation for privileges without responsibilities only, but understand their membership to this class as an obligation to serve, like a doctor pledges his oath, then you would have advanced one step. Of course you can also try to establish such an attitude of mind in the wide public of a given democracy and then let people vote amongst such candidates, but the difference is - and it is important - that in a democracy the right guy being elected, can be elected out of office soon again, which means he is prevented from certainty about the ammount of time he will be given, so that it is unlikely he will succeed with projects of longtermed perspective. the same guy as part of a feudalistic class that stays and cannot be elected in and out, has much more time available to plan from longterm strategies and order them to be followed.

this sounds profane, but might be of the essence, due to the situation we are in. Our current decision processes are far too slow (taking years, planning for implementation of climate agendas over decades, for example, and then only with minimum goals to be acchcieved), and they are far too open and too vulnerable to lobby groups, interest groups, unlegitimised interests, and generally are carried by personnel and poltiicians whose porimary concern most often is their own career.

To put it plain and simple: we need to get people moving their lazy a$$es, leaders and people alike. We need to make plenty of miles in no time in order to make up with the drastic changes we have started on this planet. that is what it all is about: becoming fast in adaptation. VERY fast. I mean: so fast that the speed makes you dizzy. And from here my argument builds that the old structures simply cannot support that speed, for a plethora of reasons, many of which lie in the realm of individual human deficits. Somehow we need to drastically reduce this human variable's repercussion. Also, this needed speed is anti-natural for human evolution, and thus will raise friction as well as intended opposition. It must be made sure that one has the needed power to break this opposition even by force, if needed. I cannot and will not rule out the use of force, yes. To use as little force as necessary, is desirable - but it is not a priority. nor is respecting any of the old ideals and values a priority - priority is to achieve what I try to outline here - speeding up our adaptation process, at all costs. If we fail on this, anything else will be in vain. speeding up decision making processes and reducing possible options to resist to them, is no self-prupose,. but part of that necessity: speeding up adaptation.

I am very sure that for the same reason sooner or later mankind will start (if given the time) to genetically "enhance" itself with traits and abilities that originally have not been part of our design. This is nothing else than a massive acceleration of biologic evolution, then. I may like that or not, but that is how it will go. It will be done, independant from official legal positions.

Under ideal circumstances, a noble class must not be something bad. Originally the term meant a social class that was independant from material work (admitted, at the cost os the slave farmer working for them), so that it had the time to care for other issues (like wars, said to be a widespread hobby of ancient times),or occupations of sometimes more sometimes less idealistic value, like arts, philosophy. this dealing with "finer arts" idealistically made the noble men "noble", compared to the farmer, who had his head in farm work all day long and in the evening fell into the bed, too tired and exhausted to care for these cultural things. for the same reason, so many social rebellions have been started or have been forethought not by workers in the factories, but intellectuals of higher social class who were more or less independant, had their living payed by others (Marx for example, which is reflected in his ideology to quite some degree - he was a precise observer and critic, but a lousy visionary since he never learned how to realistically manage resources, and that money he wants to spend needs to be earned first - that is still a fault in left thinking, which is not so much about earning, but about redistributing). In ancient Greece, cities allowed their philosophers not to participate in the ordinary work, and gave them an income, so that they had the time to spend their time with arts and philosophy instead. Seen that way, they were an early form of "noble men", too.

A feudal class that is for the most independant, and by tradition and education is trained for certain key posts in the higher, super-local adminstration from childhood on, would have the possibility to direct policies that allow to pay more attention to adressing urgent problems of the present world, unmanipulated by the economy or voters' pressure, where the western democratic order and the UN still wastes years and decades, and accievements of one legislation periods maybe get sacrificed in the last year in order to win the campaign by bribing the voters with tax presents (that's how it currently goes in Germany). It is to be considered, though, if such a noble class should be limited in the rights to own possessions and wealth, to make sure it has no chance to give in to the temptation to interfere with the economies in local communities for egoist reasons of greed and craving for gold. On the other hand they must be so independant, materiallistically and financially, that they can a.) live by it safely, and b.) are for the most immune to the temptations of wanting more. But if you allow directors and chief managers dozens of millions of income, if there policy pleases the shareholders, and by that - as you claim - serve the communal interest, then you can hardly criticise to equip my dear little noble men with some wealth for the mentioned reasons, on generally a lower financial basis than the supergreedy bosses of today.

This is only a draft, I know, and I also know the idea is neither original, nor perfect. but it is not just a falling back to the feudal systems of the past, and tries to establish a mutual dependance between the local regions and the national and supernational feudal superstructures. It is not so totally different to the modern state of the world as one may think when hearing "feudalism". a lot of feudal behavior and power already is present in today's system - only that it is allowed to act as it pleases, while I want to put it into a purporsefil harness for the higher interest of all. I think it is absolutely necessary that economy focusses back on the local regions, to save the energy it takes to shuttle goods and items around that are availabe at their target destination anyway, and reducing consummation of resources, and generally create a culture of far greater modesty . "Back to the region" and "Small is beautiful" are no new demands, but have already been raised by economists like Leopold Kohr or E.F. Schumacher since the fifties. Kohr himself for example spoke not so much of the underdeveloped nations in the third world, but the overdeveloped nations in the first world. And I think since 20 years now that he hit the nail on top by that. And in the very early 60s, the European Economy Community's president Margolin launched an EEC offensive that tried to convince it's member states to reform their inner structure and to organise them into substructures of 3-4 million people only, arguing that national states are too huge to handle them effectively on the economic and administrative level. Remarkable, isn't it!? The dispute between conservative theoretist and pragmatists seeing the nation not working well in reality, was causing high waves back then, for some time. You see, back then the European project was very differently oriented than it is today. It was not perfect, but I would have much greater sympathy with it than with the damn ideologic ursupator of brainless power the EU of the present is. That attempt back then, 1961-62, to localise Europe in the regions instead of the nations, is almost the total opposite of what they try to enforce against the will of the people today.

Our industrial and materialistic overdevelopement is what is destroying our civilisation, not just idealistically, but very physically and envrionmentally. We cannot allow all 6.5 billion people sharing our living conditions in the West, that would seal our doom, and in no way planetary ressources can support that, nor can the environment handle the resulting pollution, that is absolutely impossible. And that means we in the West have to give up - massively. And rising industrial nations must very substantially not push as far as we did. Our egoism, that you hail so very much, stands in our way, of course. Another reason why you can't be right when saying egoism will get us out of the mess (and that is what you are essentially saying, no matter how you turn words).

After several longer talks we have had, I have realised that myself already, Lance. That's why it is not possible that we come together. Your camp and my camp will battle it out in reality, and the stronger one will overcome the weaker one. Who is who and whether the winner necessarily is right or will just end up in free fall after his "victory", we will see. But as I see it, a substantial compromise worth that name between your and my views is not possible for any of us without giving up most vital key elements of our thinking. That's why our crowd leaders need to battle it out. If we win it, we all eventually will be lost nevertheless, but maybe also see a chance, a final window, to escape total loss of human heritage in the globe's history. If you guys win, we all will be lost for sure. That's mankind's status as I see it.

You see, I can eventually image that in the regions, not all communities necessarily are democracies. Socialist communities also have greater chances to function as intended, if the community size is smaller. I can imagine Kibuzzims as well as for example communities like several Spanish agricultural societies that work by almost communist models - and not only manage their business with ecological sustainability, but make black numbers while still sticking to their core business. Things must not always expand, and endlessly grow. Sustainability is so much more important, and that everybody finds a fair place in the whole and can make a satisfying living from being part if it. that is a thousand times more important than this endless progress-fetish of modern times, and unlimited economoc growth. - For you, this must sound like sheer heresy. Democratic, socialist and communist subcommunities coexisting, cooperating and being coordinated by a feudal superstructure? I would like to see your face now. :D Red like a cherry or pale like the moon, I'm sure. :lol:

Because it is new territory we need to find, and we have no experiences with and no charts for it. All my idea is a draft only, although one that has formed up over several years, while I read and contemplated over more and more different input. I know it is far from perfect, it is far from being all new and exclusively original, and it is far from being free of risks. But nevertheless tis is my imganition how it maybe could function to move away from the old order, that will destroy us if we stick to it, and maybe we already have passed beyond the point of no return anyway. but still I abandon the old order, because one can know for sure, and even prove it, that 2 plus 2 does not make for a result of 5, or 7. One can claim that and prove it - without necessarily knowing the correct result of 4.

Well, I must admit I think exactly the same about you.

I have, and I consider it to be guaranteed 100% self-destructive in the outcome, and because I am so certain about it, I reject it so determined. That the path to that outcome may be padded with cushions of temporary luxury and comfort, does not change the outcome. And on that outcome, where you said that species destroy their environment inevitably, I think of opposing examples in biology, and think that you accept that fatalism of yours for most opportunistic shorttermed interests. By that you maybe create a prohecy that you fulfill yourself.

Nichts für ungut, James! We are stubborn opponents on the matter, but not necessarily enemies on the personal level.