Historically, politicians have claimed to be the protectors of the people and it is on the basis of that claim that we are asked to accept their leadership. Party politics has a unique way of corrupting such good intention, turning each party's commitment into a proposition that the other parties are obliged to challenge. As we've pointed out many times in this editorial, our political system convinces half the country to be actively invested in the failure of the other half.

This week brought out some of the most excruciating examples of how badly party politics turns even the most virtuous causes toxic. The two 'causes' we're referring to here is the desire to have more women, as well as more people of colour (POC), in politics.

Women have historically (and continue to) fulfil the caring roles in our communities, often accepting poor or no pay for holding society together, in the face of extreme socio-economic conditions. Yet the three female Prime Ministers of the UK so far - Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss - created new standards for harsh and unforgiving, divisive politics.

In Scotland, the two women candidates vying to be the First Minister of Scotland, have both found themselves on the side of new forms of gender social exclusion - the very thing that having more women in politics was supposed to challenge.

Meantime, British politics has, until recently, been a bastion of white, male politicians despite the fact that this is a solidly multi-racial society. The hope has always been that having more POC in the higher echelons would signal more capacity for a diverse and global culture, conscious of the inequalities - and tragedies - that colonialism imposed upon the world. A richer, kinder - more imaginative - future might unfold.

Yet Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman have become the most vociferous deniers of refugee rights. Using language and metaphors that are viscerally alarming, they cause large swathes of the population to cauterise their compassion for the most vulnerable. How have Rishi and Suella come to represent such an extreme of this position? Even as we are welcoming more POC in power, they find themselves on the wrong side of 'the people's voice' as articulated by Gary Lineker last week.

Certainly, party politics preys upon a patriarchal appetite for division, competition, domination and the attractions of exerting socio-economic power from Westminster. And preying in turn upon party politics is a mainstream media with a business model that profits from polarisation. Citizens hoping to come together in the face of multiple crises find they have no agency in the face of this structure. And rather than rise up against this appalling situation, their daily lives keep them in thrall to emotional manipulation and financial traps.

Why can we not better organise ourselves, to overcome a system that is obviously self-defeating for humanity and the planet? One reason would be that we fail to disaggregate the problem, in such a way as to get traction when trying to change it. To simply protest against ‘the whole thing' suggests that we would have to start from scratch in our rebuilding. Thus, the temptation to simply put our trust in the next politician capable of capturing our imagination is enormous.

While many of us can dream of a better future, we can equally imagine being sabotaged in the process. A new socio-economic structure for a healthier planet - such as offered by Doughnut Economics, for example - could be prevented from ever coming to fruition, by this relentless polarisation of the political sphere. An evolution-minded human practice for well-being can be easily frustrated by a scathing press and the attractions of consumption. A better narrative around our vital connection to nature can easily be set aside by a global energy crisis. Optimism for the future can be easily disrupted by old cycles of war and greed.

Yet our dreams of an alternative reality are valid and come from our individual and collective yearning to survive and thrive. How can we get a sufficient grip on the current reality, enough to begin to transform it? As the above suggests, we cannot take any one of the strands of a complex system and hope it will address all the others: we have to take them on at the same time, in relation to each other.

That challenge may seem to bend the mind too much. But we might also claim, in this age of enhanced human and digital technology, that we are newly capable of doing so. In a similar way, we now understand that, when considering our health, we increasingly think not only about how each organ is operating, but how they work together to give the body a chance of thriving.

In his seminal book A Theory of Everything, Ken Wilber offers a way of looking at our own everyday reality through four interrelating perspectives (four quadrants of a whole) that are always developing:

· our own (individual) internal capacity for understanding (Upper Left)

· the corresponding actions we are (individually) capable of taking (Upper Right)

· the collective (shared) culture within which we are taking those actions that shape our individual abilities (Lower Left)

· the shared structures that enable (or prevent) our agency (Lower Right)

History, Wilber illustrates, shows us the wider progress of any society, measured by the way these four elements cohere. But they also point out the outlying developments that can predict the future. What seems clear from this theory is that little substantial change happens until individuals can develop themselves, inside supportive communities of shared value with broader structures of agency - local and global. And all this gives rise to new actions in real time. In Wilber’s mapping of this interconnected phenomena, history shows that evolution is inevitable - there are always innovations pulling us forward.

At The Alternative Global we are aligning the four quadrants of our daily realities with four incubators for change.

· Future Being - identifying a personal practice that develops us wholistically (upper left)

· Ecocivilisation Through Community Agency Networks (CANs) - how each of us can act cosmolocally in the interests of the planet (upper right)

· News from Planet A - sharing the regenerative culture emerging through a new media system (lower left)

· A New Political System - structure for individual and collective agency coming into being through relational technology (lower right)

While each quadrant has its own history and trajectory for development, how they come together as a whole is the real signifier of change. Each should be able to see the other quadrant inherent in their own design. For example, an individual taking up a practice for the first time (UL), will flourish as part of a CAN (UR) that has its own media system (LL), which culturally reports and evaluates new tools and architecture for participatory, deliberative democracy (LR).

No doubt some reading will think, so what if one community somewhere on the planet is doing this - what impact does that make on our shared future? But what if the evidence is that hundreds of thousands of communities are moving towards doing this globally? And that we have the media to share and accelerate that further? Telling a story about people coming together in a new way, to defy the forces of polarisation?

If you can't imagine that, keep reading this newsletter, read about the progress of our incubators, contribute to the endeavour and when you're ready, join in.

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Alternative Editorial: Everything All At Once