Alternative Editorial: A New Reality Beckons
As The Alternative Global begins a new phase of work on Planet A we notice a new level of fragility in the wider socio-economic-political system, as reported in the news media. A deepening of the global crisis of democracy, matched by widespread alarm about the future of technology. It feels like we’re in a burning building, with several of the possible escape routes blocked.
Dominique Moïsi, writing in Les Echos, describes how three 'model democracies' are currently coming 'unglued'. It's worth sharing her overview:
"I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat," reads the t-shirt of a Republican Party supporter in the U.S.
"We need to bring the French economy to its knees," announces the leader of the French union Confédération Générale du Travail.
"Let's end the power of the Supreme Court filled with leftist and pro-Palestinian Ashkenazis," say Israeli government cabinet ministers pushing extreme judicial reforms
The United States, France, Israel: three countries, three continents, three situations that have nothing to do with each other. But each country appears to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown of what seemed like solid democracies.
How can we explain these political excesses, irrational proclamations, even suicidal tendencies?
The answer seems simple: in the United States, in France, in Israel — far from an exhaustive list — democracy is facing the challenge of society's ever-greater polarization. We can manage the competition of ideas and opposing interests. But how to respond to rage, even hatred, borne of a sense of injustice and humiliation?
Can peaceful dialogue between those in power and the rest of society resume, in one form or another?
Moisi does not offer any simple answers. The last time the gilet jaunes erupted on the streets of Paris Macron held a national conversation to bring people together. But that détente did not last long and a similar appeal cannot be made twice. A political party, representing only one side of a divided culture, is unlikely to be the instrument of peace. There are no vehicles in any of these democracies to bring people together: only plenty to increasingly polarise them.
Even so, while many are fixated on this breakdown of traditional structures of authority, there are also new levels of anxiety that seem out of the reach of any party-political programme at this time. Take this week's proliferation of alarm at the prospects of artificial intelligence getting out of control, which seemed to place tech owners as the arbiters of whether or not a coming revolution should be heavily regulated:
Social media is buzzing with the news that more than 1,000 tech and AI luminaries signed a petition for the industry to take a six-month moratorium on the training of artificial intelligence (AI) systems more powerful than OpenAI's GPT-4.
The signers are a diverse list that included tech titan Elon Musk, tech legend Steve Wozniak, and former Democratic presidential candidate and futurist Andrew Yang.
Yang's Twitter post with New York Times technology reporter and author of "Futureproof," Kevin Roose, in which Roose shared a survey on Yang’s podcast that asked if AI automation would displace millions of jobs by 2030 — roughly 75% to 80% said "yes" — and if AI would replace their job by 2030, only 20% said "yes."
“We have this idea that these tools are amazing and powerful and creative and disruptive and will change the entire economy in the next 10 years, but not my job,” said Roose. “I’m special. I’m unique. I’m creative. I’m human. I’m untouchable. So I do think there’s a lot of wishful thinking and almost hubris around this. I’ve made peace with my own eventual obsolescence; I just hope that the robot overlords will be merciful when they put me out of a job.”
Governments have not yet responded to this demand in any way, possibly because they are each weighing up the possibility of being the 'world leader' in developing this field, irrespective of the danger. Given the nuclear arms race and the energy wars, this race to oblivion would not be novel. All such competitions make the demand for political upheaval more urgent than ever, while at the same time making it almost irrelevant: what can we expect from a party-political system that leads us into the dangers of polarisation by design?
Both worries--about the breakdown of democracy and the onslaught of technology—point at the need for a renewal of the social contract. This is not a new demand and indeed, today there are many offers on the table from those who shaped the old social contract. Here is one from the International Monetary Fund. And see here for the World Economic Forum's proposal. Here is how the WEF described it for Davos 2022:
A social contract is a real or hypothetical agreement between a government and its people setting out the rights and duties of each. The social contracts on which society is currently based largely emerged in the post-war era, and are no longer fit for purpose. As we consider the impact and lessons from COVID, new social contracts could help bring about more equitable prosperity.
However, true to form, the WEF does not hesitate to tell us what form a new contract should take:
These new social contracts should be based on key principles including stakeholder capitalism, skill development, economic security and a transition to net zero
For a social contract to be new in a way that might meet the new demands and opportunities of this time, surely it should be co-created with the people? In particular any such exploration should involve RegenA - the young people whose future is most at stake. What is it they want from their elders - including, but not limited to political leaders? What life could they look forward to and how might it be enabled?
At this moment, there are no mechanisms for this kind of deliberation. Of course, people can respond to surveys but, without resources, cannot meaningfully initiate them by themselves. And when old authorities claim the right to frame the questions and set the agenda for the future, it is increasingly likely that groups of those impacted will object.
Take Extinction Rebellion’s demand for a Citizens Assembly for the Climate as an example. Because the government set the boundaries for permissible inquiry, participants only considered net zero carbon emissions for 2050 - twenty years later than XR's demand. Another example is Oxford City Council's Citizen's Assembly on air pollution, that led to protests from populist movements, concerned for their freedom of movement.
For the time being, it is the responsibility of those who want to see a meaningful new social contract to be developing their capacities–particularly the ability to see the whole picture of our fragmented society. Not be tempted to champion only those they resonate or share values with. If you side only with progressives, you will be sabotaged by others who are likely more in number. If you make allegiance with populists, you will be trapped in endless culture wars. Our task is always to transcend and include - but how?
At the Alternative Global, our own observation and reporting on the steady development of community agency networks (CANs) will certainly offer the architecture for what we call a parallel polis. Complex, diverse groups of people coming together across divides to plot a future they can look forward to. Not simply solving problems or meeting material needs, but creating the sorts of containers that can hold communities as they come back to life.
People are waking up to the mistakes of the past and the shutting down of their own potential. And redesigning the social contract, one which sees them as fully human. There’s a slow build of the communications architecture that can help them share tools and experience, practice, and self-governance. Check out our incubators to see how you can co-create this accelerating form of cosmolocalism.
What will be crucial in the successful building of an ecocivilisation that regenerates our planet? Some groundedness in the flourishing of the human spirit. We cannot expect socio-economic-political transformation based on the same extractive relationships we accepted in the past. The vast majority of people cannot be treated as machine parts for the growth economy, while expecting the wider planet to continue enabling such societal dysfunction.
One of the most painful and yet hopeful insights we saw recently was the following TikTok video - under the #corecore hashtag. Each person speaking is calling to be seen as profoundly human with emotional, spiritual and creative needs. While some will find the demands the young people make here impossible to meet, our sense is that, unless we get behind such demands, we cannot guarantee a future for the planet.