Not all Y2K breakthroughs would be desirable. For example, collapsing
governing systems could be replaced by local mafia bosses, as
happened in some areas of the former Soviet Union. So I will be
explicit about the directions I would like our culture to evolve
in. You can decide if you agree, and weigh my comments accordingly.
Local self-reliance -- communities capable
of functioning independently of centralized systems -- whether
corporate, economic or governmental. Like healthy individuals,
self-reliant communities are not isolated, but are able to choose
their associates and activities, rather than being drawn into
degrading dependencies. One requisite for community self-reliance
is a good relationship with local land and ecosystems, what some
call bioregionalism. (read
the paper Why Community-Based
Responses Make More Sense than Survivalism.)
Sustainability, or resilience
-- cultures which can sustain themselves over time, operating
in such a way that they can produce benefits for all the generations
of the present and the future. This includes ecologically wise
technology and a collaborative bias in all things, great and small.
All systems in such a culture have responsive, corrective aspects
-- such as answerability, democracy, dialogue,
checks on extremes, statistical
measures of "quality of life," etc. Things never
get too far off course, and are capable of evolving when the situation
warrants.
Holism or integral
culture -- a recognition that everything fits -- and
that that Fit has power. The whole is greater than the sum of
its parts. The part is greater than its role in the whole. Everything
is interconnected
-- and awakening to those interconnections makes us wise. People
in an integral culture realize that whenever they make one thing
more important than another -- such as the individual or the society,
or humanity or nature -- they lose sight of something even more
important: the way the two fit together, the dynamic through which
they co-create each other and their world. This is the fundamental
insight of co-intelligence.
Such a cultural vision includes freedom and competition, but freedom
and competition in the context of community health. It includes
justice, but justice in the context of whole people and healthy
relationships. It includes order, but order that derives from
synergy and self-organization rather than control. It includes
peace, but peace based on mutual understanding, not denial and
force. It includes wealth, but a wealth measured more by the quality
of life than the quantity of things. It includes power, but the
power to realize possibilities for life, which seldom involves
the power to dominate.
Remember: This is a direction for growth, not a utopian plan.
Local self-reliance, resilience and holism are yardsticks with
which to measure our progress. Are we more or less dependent on
centralized systems? Are we more or less capable of bouncing back
in crises? Are we more or less fragmented and alienated than we
were before? Y2K is an opportunity to move in either direction.
Which way we move is up to us, collectively.
See also Robert Theobald's article: Alternative
scenarios for Y2K: Will we break through to a new era of collaboration?
, Thomas Greco's Sustainability,
Y2K, and the New World Order and Tom Atlee's How to Think about Y2K and
Why the Year 2000
Problem is an Environmental Issue.
And in Y2K and Our Big Bet,
Larry Shook provides exciting evidence that we
can establish decentralized, sustainable agriculture and energy
systems throughout the U.S., if we just decide to do it in
time.
For more articles and leads on appying these principles in communities,
see Y2K Community Action, Preparedness
and Resilience, and Strategizing
for Community: Preparedness for Y2K-induced collapse