A Cosmolocal Community Primer, Part One

Introductions and Roots

Preface

We’re in a nightmare together, and we can wake up from it. Our main problem is our imagination.

Most of us have often, or always, imagined that the modern world made sense, and it would keep on going. We imagined an economy based on unending “growth”. We imagined that markets mean meritocracy. Americans, of course, imagined that America meant freedom. Some of us, all over the world, imagined our government or religion colonizing the whole world with its “truth”.

More essentially, we imagined that might makes right, or at least that might is the main force in society. We imagined that the powerful may impose their will on the powerless, that the rich may impose their will on the poor, and that a majority may impose its will on any minority— and in imagining these things, we’ve made them be.

We’ve imagined and embodied many things which can’t last, and most of us are starting to realize that. We know that we need to organize resistance to our dominant economic and political forces.

Some of us have long known that we can and must organize differently. We have tools to do that, but we’re still (perhaps rapidly, now!) building the willpower we need. We’re building the willpower to grow grassroots movements which nurture and inclusively network our personal and collective power, instead of feeding it into bureaucracies which are (inevitably) prone to corruption. Such deeper grassroots movements are the latent power behind Inclusive Organizing and many other frameworks for rebuilding society more justly and sustainably.

The term grassroots is far from trendy! It seemed to get lost along the road between 20th century community organizing— which centered on IRL interactions and old-timey tools such as flyers and phone calls, and isn’t quite dead— and our recent avalanche of elaborate, tech-centered theories on how we’d all (surely!) organize if only we follow their authors’ instructions. These techy theories are usually trying to sell us something. They promote grand unified digital platforms and/or “perfectly decentralized” systems based on peer-to-peer interactions, or even the idea of “flat organizations”.

Decentralize is an odd term. It rightfully applies to many things we should do, but also to some we should not. It doesn’t encompass anything which could possibly emerge from the sea of soul-devouring, world-devouring systems we’re swimming in. It doesn’t recognize the tyranny of structurelessness which makes flat organizations practically impossible. Many people in Web3 and related communities fail to realize that key fact. Others, however, use this ”wrong term” decentralize to mean the right thing, which is cosmolocalize.

This series will focus on cosmolocal community as the key to unleashing our personal and collective power from the dominant forces we feed.

Introduction

Neither civilization nor democracy have quite existed yet, anywhere beyond the best of our close relationships, but that’s okay. We’ve been approaching an inevitable sea change for years.

“Civilization”, as used above, is innately prosocial; it recognizes that personal liberty, welfare and justice can only begin in community. Such civilization must be based on what Riane Eisler calls partnership systems. This civilizing influence has been suppressed for millennia by dominant economic and political forces. To reveal what lies beneath, we must develop partnerships which scale resiliently for relationships and communities of all sizes, shapes and purposes. We must develop cosmolocal community— and to do that, we’ll need consent-based cosmolocal governance. While consent-based cosmolocal governance is just one (wordy) aspect of prosocial organizing, it’s the antidote to our collective decision-making problems.

Let’s unpack that unusual ten syllable concept. Consent is permission. Consent-based systems are systems-- including organizations-- which function with the consent of all agents who govern them. Cosmolocal systems (and subsystems) are organized “locally” according to social and/or geographic criteria, up to massive or cosmic scales, by responsible stakeholders. Governance is anything to do with rules or systems of rules. Therefore, consent-based cosmolocal governance is anything to do with rules, and systems of rules, which are self-determined by the mutual consent of responsible stakeholders. Such governance can develop on any scale, from brief personal interactions to regional, global or (eventually) interplanetary networks with billions or trillions of teammates.

If you’re still here, we should note that consent-based cosmolocal governance is practically anarchism, as in practical anarchism or (arguably) “anarchism done right”. In fact, we could simply say that it’s anarchism that’s done, instead of indefinitely discussed by people who love to argue! And if you’re still still here, but not cheering yet, please consider our cosmolocal conception of anarchism with this earnest admission: Governments have not been unnecessary, and there’s never been a time that we could simply dissolve or destroy them. However, we can develop consent-based systems which steadily infiltrate, enervate and replace the bureaucracies— governments and big businesses— which steal our personal and collective agency.

To that end, this series will describe our latent ability to scale anarchism consistently and effectively, without any contradictions or exceptions, by untangling key misconceptions and oversights which have contaminated our experience of consent-based systems amidst domination culture. We can scale anarchism steadily, even quickly, if we understand our unique historic moment.

To put this conception of anarchism in perspective, we can zoom out to see cosmolocal community or “right-sized relationships” as the high level overview of Inclusive Organizing. Right-sized relationships begin in conversation, and can only scale (in their complexity and community size) through shared languages, inclusive practices, inclusive governance and cosmolocal networking. Consent-based cosmolocal governance is the blueprint, and key, to that framework’s inclusive governance. It’s the missing technical link which will enable us to overcome dominant forces by expanding inclusive practices throughout our projects, partnerships and communities. We’ll grow communities which become ineffably beautiful, productive and playful superintelligent organisms, in the plural— no singularity (with or without AI overlords), but a cultural Big Bang or pluralistic explosion, a “Civilization 2.0” where we begin to explore our greatest personal and collective potentials.

But to do any of that, we must mindfully nurture the development of consent-based cosmolocal governance.

Revered Roots of Partnership

Consent has always been the basis of healthy adult relationships. This has often been noted, even by those who’ve argued or apologized for limiting consent’s scale or applicability in some contexts. The following quotes are far from comprehensive!

“If you want to govern the people, you must place yourself below them. If you want to lead the people, you must learn how to follow them.” -- Tao te Ching, 4th Century BCE

“It is not enough that a law is just, nor that the judge should be convinced of its justice; those from whom obedience is expected should have that conviction too.” -- Tertullian, Apologeticum, 197 CE

“[Civic power] can have no right except as this is derived from the individual right of each man to protect himself and his property. The legislative and executive power used by government to protect property is nothing except the natural power of each man resigned into the hands of the community…and it is justified merely because it is a better way of protecting natural right than the self-help to which each man is naturally entitled.” -- John Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 1689 CE

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” -- Thomas Jefferson, United States Declaration of Independence, 1776 CE

The drafting and adoption of the Declaration of Independence was a deeply consent-oriented process. Years later, the US Constitutional Convention was also consent-oriented, and resulted in the supermajority approval of the Constitution by 70.9% of delegates. We may well wonder if the illustrious “Founding Fathers” assumed that such ambitious consent-oriented design and decision processes could only work for well-bred men! However, they were quite familiar with using trial juries of peers who make decisions by unanimous consent. That jury standard has grown stronger since then, with diverse juries of unpaid strangers who work together to find common ground on crucial-- sometimes, life-and-death-- subjects.

Despite many such revered roots of consent and partnership, however, we’re immersed in domination systems in almost all governable spaces. We’re practically drowning in domination everywhere beyond the healthiest of families, tightly-knit teams, and our temporary trial juries of strangers or “consenters we haven’t met yet”. Our domination-based, coercive systems come in three main types, as well as many mixtures thereof: authoritarianism, the tyranny of the majority, and the tyranny of structurelessness.

Authoritarianism prevails in many private organizations and, unfortunately, in most governments. The tyranny of the majority prevails in most other governable spaces, including many private organizations and governments. Such “democratic” governance does, admittedly, include safeguards to limit the dangers of factionalism which rightfully obsessed the Framers of the US Constitution, but those safeguards are obviously failing, and “democracies” have failed to address our impending reckoning: we rise together, in deeply genuine and resilient partnerships, or our systems implode and (at best) some survivors rebuild from broken pieces.

The third main type of domination system is the lesser-known tyranny of structurelessness as conceptualized by Joreen/ Jo Freeman in the early 1970s. Freeman brilliantly distinguished formal structures from informal structures, the nature of elitism, the “star” system of leadership, and the political impotence (i.e. unscalability) of “unstructured groups”. These conceptions led to her principles of democratic structuring. These principles will, I believe, be dependable bedrock in developing prosocial partnership systems and anarchism (i.e. actual democracy) which scales. These democratic principles are foundational to consent-based cosmolocal governance. They include delegation of authority, the responsibility of delegates, broad distribution of authority, rotation of tasks, allocation/ assignment of tasks by rational criteria, sharing information, and equal access to resources which are needed by each group.

We will explore those principles of democratic organizing, and evolutionary 21st century principles, later in this series. We’ll explore the futility of factionalism, the unrealized promise of anarchism, and “all the wrong things” which have contaminated anarchism efforts. That will lead into missing links for developing consistently consent-based cosmolocal governance. Once the general framework for consent-based cosmolocal governance is established, we will consider some timely possibilities for transforming our historic moment into cosmolocal communities and a more just, sustainable world.

In other words, this series will be a whole bunch of words suggesting that we should simply go ahead and try some inclusive mvp practices together. But, people love words.

I linked the Inclusive Organizing website in this introductory post, but please note that I’m not selling anything. I’m just describing an opportunity for conversation, reflection, and perhaps some efforts to share and build power together. I hope to see you all sooner or later!