"As I have argued before, real communitarianism is never top down, it is never meted out by power."
Whenever I have poked around on the web trying to get a handle on the meaning of the word "communitarianism" I have always come to be at least a little less clear about what the word means than I had been before inquiring more deeply into its meaning and popular usage. But such is the case with most of the big (important) nomenclature used in our discourses of culture, politics, etc. Even those two terms, culture and politics, turn out not to have especially clear and universally accepted definitions. Same with the word "civilization". And the political terms, left, right, libertarian, and so on, are not entirely settled matters.
None of this has to be as problematic as it might seem. After all, we can use our preferred terms and then define (as best we are able) what we mean by them--and do so in the very same text or speaking.
I tend to call myself a communalist. But that's just another word with a thousand contending meanings. What I mean by it, at base, is that I believe turning everything into private property -- and especially land! -- was a bad idea from the beginning, and that most things are better shared rather than owned. And this includes power of both the political and the economic kind.
I like to talk about political and economic power in such a way which emphasizes that power tends to exist on a spectrum from very "centripetal" on one end of the spectrum and "centrifugal" on the other. Centripetal power -- both economic and political -- is power in the mode of concentration and centralization. Centrifugal power is power in the mode of decentralization and distribution and disbursement. The first form of power is arranged hierarchically. The latter form is non- and anti- hierarchical.
The kind of communalism I believe is most healthy is the centrifugal kind. But the culture of "modernity" (which has other names, too) is decidedly centripetal in nature. And so most of us have little actual experience of sharing and distributing power in egalitarian fashion. The intra- and inter- personal skill set required within a culture of centrifugal power-sharing has been deeply neglected in "modernity", as is its way of thinking and feeling -- and belonging.
In small, local communities we can cultivate those skills, these insights, this way of being together. But it has to be a deliberate practice if we were raised up within "modernity". It has to be a shared and deliberate practice, or we will not travel very far down this trail of personal and social transformation.
Thanks for your part in helping us travel this trail, Patrick. Oh, and also for helping us wander off the trails and into the wild openness of it all.
Thanks for this James, yes language is a dance and the beauty of it is no one owns the meaning of words. However, when liberal and conservative medias use the word 'economy', for example, they only ever mean one reductive (and destructive) meaning.
Many words can shapeshift, which is not the same thing as weasel words, and we think such shapeshifting is a beautiful and magical thing.
There is something here too about centralisation and decentralisation that may need a little further consideration. We've watched global capitalism become a highly effective decentralised colonial force in recent years. Globocap's appropriation of mycelial networks as an operating form doesn't mean it has become ecological in nature, rather it's operating like a forest blight (a single species dominating fungus) that is killing off the forest. This blight has only been able to do this because of the reductive management techniques humans have brought to that forest in the first place, such as over burning it to control the fire cycles. The forest's immunity is depleted by the management; the blight gets the upper hand. Sounds familiar?
We too have long seen decentralisation as a strategy worthy of pursuing because it speaks to distributed power relations, but after the past three years we can see how decentralisation itself has been misappropriated as a strategy of control. So this changes the meaning of this term, for us.
It's fascinating to contemplate how decentralized patterns and systems of organized human activity can, in fact, concentrate decision-making and economic power into strata of a centralized hierarchical sort. So some aspects of the system are wildly descentralized, while others are centralizing in how they concentrate these forms of power into a hierarchy with a few at the very top, less few at the next rung down, and so on. All systems which concentrate power, rather than distributing it, have at least some system components which are centralizing. So we have to ask, sometimes, how is this very decentralized system also centralizing, and what does it place at its center?
Globocap may be decentralized in many respects, but it certainly does manifest, wherever it manifests, as a system for concentration of power in the political and economic sense. It's pattern for doing this is the employment of hierarchy in both of these forms of power.
"As I have argued before, real communitarianism is never top down, it is never meted out by power."
Whenever I have poked around on the web trying to get a handle on the meaning of the word "communitarianism" I have always come to be at least a little less clear about what the word means than I had been before inquiring more deeply into its meaning and popular usage. But such is the case with most of the big (important) nomenclature used in our discourses of culture, politics, etc. Even those two terms, culture and politics, turn out not to have especially clear and universally accepted definitions. Same with the word "civilization". And the political terms, left, right, libertarian, and so on, are not entirely settled matters.
None of this has to be as problematic as it might seem. After all, we can use our preferred terms and then define (as best we are able) what we mean by them--and do so in the very same text or speaking.
I tend to call myself a communalist. But that's just another word with a thousand contending meanings. What I mean by it, at base, is that I believe turning everything into private property -- and especially land! -- was a bad idea from the beginning, and that most things are better shared rather than owned. And this includes power of both the political and the economic kind.
I like to talk about political and economic power in such a way which emphasizes that power tends to exist on a spectrum from very "centripetal" on one end of the spectrum and "centrifugal" on the other. Centripetal power -- both economic and political -- is power in the mode of concentration and centralization. Centrifugal power is power in the mode of decentralization and distribution and disbursement. The first form of power is arranged hierarchically. The latter form is non- and anti- hierarchical.
The kind of communalism I believe is most healthy is the centrifugal kind. But the culture of "modernity" (which has other names, too) is decidedly centripetal in nature. And so most of us have little actual experience of sharing and distributing power in egalitarian fashion. The intra- and inter- personal skill set required within a culture of centrifugal power-sharing has been deeply neglected in "modernity", as is its way of thinking and feeling -- and belonging.
In small, local communities we can cultivate those skills, these insights, this way of being together. But it has to be a deliberate practice if we were raised up within "modernity". It has to be a shared and deliberate practice, or we will not travel very far down this trail of personal and social transformation.
Thanks for your part in helping us travel this trail, Patrick. Oh, and also for helping us wander off the trails and into the wild openness of it all.
Thanks for this James, yes language is a dance and the beauty of it is no one owns the meaning of words. However, when liberal and conservative medias use the word 'economy', for example, they only ever mean one reductive (and destructive) meaning.
Many words can shapeshift, which is not the same thing as weasel words, and we think such shapeshifting is a beautiful and magical thing.
There is something here too about centralisation and decentralisation that may need a little further consideration. We've watched global capitalism become a highly effective decentralised colonial force in recent years. Globocap's appropriation of mycelial networks as an operating form doesn't mean it has become ecological in nature, rather it's operating like a forest blight (a single species dominating fungus) that is killing off the forest. This blight has only been able to do this because of the reductive management techniques humans have brought to that forest in the first place, such as over burning it to control the fire cycles. The forest's immunity is depleted by the management; the blight gets the upper hand. Sounds familiar?
We too have long seen decentralisation as a strategy worthy of pursuing because it speaks to distributed power relations, but after the past three years we can see how decentralisation itself has been misappropriated as a strategy of control. So this changes the meaning of this term, for us.
Thanks for your engagement, James.
It's fascinating to contemplate how decentralized patterns and systems of organized human activity can, in fact, concentrate decision-making and economic power into strata of a centralized hierarchical sort. So some aspects of the system are wildly descentralized, while others are centralizing in how they concentrate these forms of power into a hierarchy with a few at the very top, less few at the next rung down, and so on. All systems which concentrate power, rather than distributing it, have at least some system components which are centralizing. So we have to ask, sometimes, how is this very decentralized system also centralizing, and what does it place at its center?
Globocap may be decentralized in many respects, but it certainly does manifest, wherever it manifests, as a system for concentration of power in the political and economic sense. It's pattern for doing this is the employment of hierarchy in both of these forms of power.