Alternative Editorial: We Have To Build The Alternative To War
For many of us, watching the acceleration of the violent conflict in the Middle East this week has been excruciating (listen here for Amisha Gadhiali on the impact of social media at this time).
Watching the two protagonists - the military arm of Hamas, the State of Israel (not implying the people of either of those polities) - is like witnessing two historically traumatised men re-enact their earlier abuse, intent on destroying the abuser. It seems we are in a full-blown episode of PTSD and there is nothing we can do to stop the most vulnerable around them going up in flames, again.
But it doesn't stop there. Our own helplessness - watching from afar - is exacerbated by the poor representation of the crisis in our name. Political leaders who take sides are choosing to back one combatant over another and missing the point: that war is always a lose-lose situation.
History is shouting at us right now: war only deepens conflict! Winners have to face the future with the losses sustained (thousands of dead, millions displaced, mutilated, grieving) and will find it hard to forgive. Losers store up their humiliation and resentment for another day, which always comes.
Politicians, meantime, can too often be looking for votes, intent on making their mark. Aided and abetted by a media that sells outrage, they deliberately polarise the public space. The UK Home Secretary (whom we shall refrain from naming), already famous for her cruel insensitivity to refugees and more recently the homeless (ref), chooses to label the mix of protests calling for a ceasefire, a 'hate' march. As Gary Lineker easily said: "marching and calling for a ceasefire and peace so that more innocent children don’t get killed is not really the definition of a hate march."
When there is an exception such as Scottish First Minister Humza Yusouf's call for peace, his words are edited to suit the war agenda. Citing his gratitude for the help that brought his parents in law to safety, within the frame of 'rescuing British nationals', the BBC omitted his ongoing declaration that "the rights and lives of Palestinians and Israelis are equal."
What could be more aggravating for UK citizens - many of whom are directly related to the war - than the prospect of a government intent on preventing a march for peace on Armistice Day? A day especially created to honour the lives of those who died in the two World Wars? Rather than disrespectful, isn't such a march a clear sign that we, the people whose older generations had their lives ruined by war in the past, have learnt a lesson that the leaders cannot learn?
Is there a truth to be observed here that international leadership itself is dysfunctional? Not only the historical facts around the over-arching powers of the USA and Europe in creating the future conditions for war in 1945 (ref). But the evidence that national leaders find it hard to keep their heads in the crossfire of international relations.
For example, take Tony Blair. Blinded by the attention from George Bush and his chance to make history in response to the atrocity of 9/11, the British PM lost his head in waging war on Iraq - a trigger for ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and now this. The UN - founded to stop global level war ever happening again - was helpless then and now. Their offices in the region, offered as sanctuary for citizens in distress, have also been bombed.
See our blog this week from Noema's Nathan Gardels on California's decision to shift power away from the nation state. Their view departs from the old “realist” school of foreign policy that regards nation-states as the principal actors on the world stage engaged in an endless struggle against others in pursuit of securing their own national interests:
Reality these days dictates that this new realism supplants the old when it comes to the convergence of critical common challenges that are beyond the scope of remedy by any one nation or bloc of nations. As the Earth’s biosphere cascades toward unlivable conditions, the security of each depends inextricably on the other.
This is just as true for zones of conflict: Israel has long been a battlefield for competing superpowers.
Yet people all over the world - including from within Israel and Gaza are risking their lives and freedom to take a stand in the name of peace. Despite a biased, hostile media, people are taking to the streets in their tens of thousands. Citizens from both sides of the divide are joining hands, seeing the humanity in each other and demanding to be released from further bloodshed.
That the leaders are not able, or willing to hear them at this moment of their own ultimate challenge for survival, is ultimately a failure of the structures of democracy. The people have no tools for peace.
Those who have been reading the Daily Alternative for over six years now will be very familiar with the evidence that the solutions to our problems are available, but not accessible. For over 30 years, people everywhere have been waking up to the causes and effects of our immature and ineffective party-political systems worldwide, but have no structures within which to enact their insight or agency. These structures have to be built.
As we have been saying from the beginning, this is not a call for direct democracy: endless polls and referendums asking for a vote. There is no evidence within the current public space - including mainstream and social media – that more participation would change our outcomes, since our preferences have already been set in advance. Polarisation would continue and possibly deepen.
What we are calling for is a system of deliberative democracy: multiple spaces providing a range of opportunities for people to come together and think through the biggest issues. Never moving to decisions until all the questions are answered. But more importantly, to imagine and then plot a future we could look forward to. In so doing, the most important barriers to change - our lack of connectedness to each other and to our greater potential - can dissolve. Without trust in ourselves and our communities, we remain in thrall to a socio-economic-political system that is destroying our world.
Every week we hear more news about new pieces of architecture that are beginning to add up to a system of cosmolocal - place based, virtually connected - participation in decision making. For the time being they are scattered and disconnected: uses of pol.is, peoples' assemblies, citizens' assemblies, global assembly,community assemblies, collaboratories, cooperatives, mutual-aid networks, DAOs, Huddles, flatpack democracy, town teams, neighbourocracy, sociocracy and liberating structures of all kinds.
In these spaces people learn through experience that not all power is coercive. Not all conflict is violent. They change their minds and hearts about what to expect from others. They begin to trust themselves to speak up, listen hard and weigh up the pros and cons of saying yes or no to a proposal. They liberate their imaginations about what is possible and get access to the resources - research, models, technology - to make things happen. At their best these spaces of deliberation and participation introduce a kind of individual and collective agency never taught at school.
At this point in the development of these tools it seems an uphill struggle to test them out in relatively hostile environments. Local councils holding onto their traditional powers and accountable to party political structures from on high do not welcome new, more democratic and people held structures. New independent representatives of deliberative communities, sometimes taking over councils, cause waves that others resist. What would it take to lift them together off the ground into a new wider culture of collaboration?
Might this be a task for AI to take on? In the same way, for example, that Manu Gupta in India collects data from multiple sources in disaster zones and uses AI to calibrate the best response to people's needs. Can we not integrate multiple data inputs from people across regions, making large and small decisions through deliberation, and create clear strategies for getting needs met better across towns, cities and nations? We think that should be possible.
You might ask: how does this affect war in the Middle East? At the moment, the lack of deliberation amongst citizens makes us complicit in the vast amounts of our own resources being invested in a military-industrial complex – one that keeps war not only viable but necessary for the economy. By not paying attention and having the chance to deliberate together, we are maintaining a war culture that is backed up by a war news media.
If you doubt that, ask why you are told so little about the multiple peace processes that are going on, even as you read? Why does the news not report Humza Yousuf's stance alongside Rishi Sunak's? Why is there a war cabinet, but no peace cabinet? Why do we never read about Israeli citizens’ calls for a cease-fire in the national newspapers?
For the sake of superpower domination and the industries they rely on, the wars must go on. Admittedly, such an assertion has the ring of conspiracy theory: yet in peace processes and institutions worldwide - including the UN - it's a long-understood reality. We are not describing evil leaders plotting to kill innocent children. But it is an expectation - often unconscious in the broader bureaucracies of power - that reaching for hard power solutions keeps control and maintains our status in the world.
It's like a bully flexing his muscles at any sign of challenge, not hesitating to reach for his gun when trouble flares up. And to be effective you have to have your weapons ready. On ceremonial days you parade them and dress your men up in uniforms that show them ready for action at any time. To keep your machine constantly poised, you have to keep inventing new planes, guns, tanks to demonstrate you are ahead of other countries: buying and selling arms is a huge industry. The figures are astronomical - especially for countries with nuclear weapons that need 24/7 full-alert maintenance. We live in a war culture. How many of us know?
Add these figures to those industries actively invested in planet toxification, pharmaceutical addiction andfinancial rigging of markets and we have plenty for an intelligent electorate to begin to say no to...if we but had the architecture to deliberate and agree. These structures are in process of forming, but they need attention, investment and availability. Those who are building them need help. We are asking you to contribute in whatever way you can.