Alternative Editorial: launch of a new political project from the Alternative Global— SPRING
It's been seven years coming.
We put a question to you on March 1st, 2017 - ‘if politics is broken, what's the alternative?’ We not only have an answer, but we are launching it today, March 1st, 2024.
Spring is a new political project, heralding the evolution of a new socio-political system.
In the very midst of a Winter defined by polycrisis, permacrisis and metacrisis the idea of Spring has until now been a promise, a hope, a yearning. But today we are revealing its structure, culture and long-term programme for transformation. With that, a sense of where you are already in the system and a chance to develop further—if you're up for it.
As our long-term readers know, The Alternative Global has been acting as system convenors for seven years. We have observed and reported on socio-political innovation in the fields of personal, communal, global and planetary self-organisation, joining up the dots to project a future of whole system transformation. Yet the vehicle for such a shift has never been named.
From today, Spring is that vehicle - made up of four mutually inclusive parts:
1) Spring, the parallel polis - meaning the people recognising themselves as cosmolocal, and participating at various levels in the task of building an ecocivilisation. As the parallel polis becomes coherent, self-organising for deliberation and decision making, it constitutes itself as an entity through the appropriate technology - which makes it easier to join and gain traction.
Such an entity can then be represented in the partner state in the form of a new political party. That process (modelled in microcosm by Flatpack Democracy) can occur anywhere in the world and is already taking shape through municipalities and CANs.
2) Spring, the praxis of agency - which we describe as Natality (see our blogs). Driven by a willingness to innovate, to take courageous leaps, to play our way out of crises. Policy alone will not change our fate: we are bringing ourselves back to life, to becoming interconnected and interdependent in our daily actions.
For this we need new language, new values, a new understanding of our senses, including emotions. We see it in the public sphere as the rapid advancement of self-development literacy; new curriculums for learning; and a proliferation of new tools and social software for community empowerment.
3) Spring, the economy - arising from the working-out of cosmolocal, community agency networks with a view to ecocivilisation. The parallel polis can only maintain a certain autonomy with the development of a strong 4th sector, permaculture, land reform, community wealth building and a commitment to permaculture principles that give rise to new forms of capital and value other than financial. New kinds of jobs, new uses of time and space are all part of what is arising to deliver ecocivilisation.
4) Spring, the communications system. Maybe even more effective than the hard power structure offered by the parallel polis is the soft power that attracts the future into being (often referred to as the Third Attractor). For the past seven years, The Alternative UK / Global has produced a media system that integrates innovation in the realms of self, community and planet. It tells a new story in the face of crisis.
Essential to the new narrative is the feel, the energy, the attraction of that message which can be carried as much by music and drama, festivals and art. In that sense, Spring is a sensibility - an ontology - that is substantiated through news/information, events and ways of being together.
Different locations for the development of a parallel polis within a new political system
We invite you to view our introductory video, embedded at the top - the (very) soft launch of a project that will unfold over the course of this year. Until now, the territory that Spring describes has been the phenomenon of cosmolocal, community agency networks (CANs) of all kinds springing up around the planet. But as long as these CANs sit within an old framework of political power and culture, their progress is slow.
Many of you are already actively taking part and have a shared goal in mind - but even if you know who you are acting together with, you're still facing a hostile environment. Climate Action Networks are a good example of positive community response that nevertheless depends upon febrile meanwhile contracts for their survival .
More people are participating in a period of socio-political development – for example the occasional use of pol.is to make local decisions - that could still go badly wrong. Where those disaffected by the old politics are vulnerable to being hijacked by new representatives - largely men, shouting, leading from the front - of the old ways of doing power.
Spring is a radical new space for the coming together of many different desires for energy, agency, beauty, joy, meaning, purpose, belonging - because the connection between people getting their emotional needs met is what brings everything back to life.
Every cafe, neighbourhood, municipality, bioregion, small country/state can act as a space for connection within the bigger picture of an ecocivilisation taking shape as we shift ourselves.
From today, Alternative Global will be an engine for Spring - a new political system allowing the 'springing forth' of human potential. Planet A continues to be the place where we 'live', where the ecocivilisation can be seen developing. The four overlapping incubators we have been running are entry points to that future—but now occurring in the place you live as much as on-line.
Working with tech entrepreneurs, we are part of a community of practice that connects the data arising from cosmolocal gatherings, using it regeneratively rather than extractively—in ways that will help to shape artificial intelligence for the future. Without wholistic intelligence, the ecocivilisation cannot manifest.
With governments lagging badly behind and still in hock to the growth economy, we see the parallel polis as comprised of those who actively take responsibility for the flourishing future, not waiting to be told.
Meantime, Spring represents – and offers in real time – a space for conscious co-creation. We hope you will join us in opening rooms for connection and generative feeling wherever you are. At our location in Edinburgh, Scotland, we will be crafting new gatherings with local artists and makars that spark the future we are looking forward to. Feeling our way forward.
Over time, any book or learning club, food hub, community development space - whatever form connecting takes - that wants to be part of an evolving ecocivilisation will be able to apply for a Spring kite mark, thereby connecting with the global movement of those determined to flourish through the participation of all of us.
To keep sharing the energy, Spring will host a regular cosmolocal podcast as part of our developing media channel. We will also begin to develop the Daily Alternative as a media system more cosmolocalities can begin to generate for themselves.
To be an active designer of the space, sign up as a co-creator here. To share your own projects and initiatives mail us on info@thealternative.org.uk
EVENT: Meantime, join us on the global Connectathon, March 19 as part of a 24-hour virtual gathering hosted by Ecocivilisation, Social Systems Lab, and The 8one Foundation. Over two hours, between 20.00 - 22.00 (GMT), we bring together Mansi Jasuja, Jeremy Lent, Violeta Bulc, Uffe Elbaek, and Indra Adnan/Pat Kane to explore how a new politics for our time can serve the unfolding of ecocivilisation.