Alternative Editorial: End Of Year Report
As we move towards year’s end, where are we, The Alternative UK team and community? Probably the best term is equilibrium. We are consistent with our vision, building our influence and most importantly, holding our nerve.
The world we are observing through the pages of the mainstream media is in a state of mighty flux. In Chile, decades of right wing rule were suddenly overturned by a young, left wing Presidential victory. In a manner only too familiar from our socio-political culture, the UK is lurching between views about Covid and its variant, Omicron, that are at polar opposites. The government has lost the trust of the people and, with an (decreasing) 73 seat majority to protect at all costs, there is the beginnings of an open revolt among Tory MPs against the PM.
Many countries in Europe and also the USA are suffering the same fate. ‘The people’ everywhere are being thrown back onto their own resources to make their minds up about the safety of the public space. For some this may seem outrageous: we are ‘not the experts’, after all – who should we now trust?
In this febrile moment, there is plenty of evidence that many, in the first flush of liberating themselves from dependency on fixed and familiar authority, simply appoint another authority to fill the gap. Instead of believing representatives of the major institutions, they now ‘believe’ the rebels within those institutions. These spokespeople – for example one nurse or one doctor in a hospital - often have much less credibility or evidence on their side. As self-conscious mavericks, they have stepped out of the usual legitimate contexts.
However, what they clearly offer is a new place of belonging, a new tribe to be part of in the age of mass disillusion. On the one hand, these sudden contradictions are very destabilising to our society: it’s nigh impossible to live harmoniously in a zone where consensus itself is not valued. And today this adds up to a collective loss of health safety.
Yet who is to say that this new feeling of independence, even if it’s only a first level of reclaiming agency, isn’t a valid pursuit in itself? Particularly for those that feel their lives are quite meaningless, their jobs degrading, their security in hock to unseen forces (whether due to power elites or to activist movements). Those of us who dismiss these needs as ‘selfish’ and ‘ignorant’ might feel good momentarily - we have asserted our ‘correct values’.
Gabriel Boric becomes Chile’s millennial President
However, what is the value of our righteousness if that fails to deliver the outcomes we need? While we exclude those we judge to be wrongly motivated, others are successfully co-opting them for their project of willful disruption. Is this not what fueled Donald Trump’s success? His acceptance of those rejected by ‘liberal values’. If we feel we are morally right, we still have to do the hard work of acknowledging the needs of everyone in the process of moving to a solution.
From a developmental perspective, this may turn out to be the decade in which the socio-political contract between state and non-state actors moved into a distinctive new phase. One in which citizens began to take on the complexity of the social space and play a more active role in outcomes.
What might that look like? Bring to mind the many times you heard a politician say “what the people want is” followed by a description of their own manifesto. Usually backed up by movitational language designed to trigger frustration and deliver the listener into their hands. Like: “What the people want is more, not less, border control. How else can we take back control over our own lives in this age of rampant globalisation?”
Of course, people are free to agree or disagree privately and, once every five years, they get a chance to vote one way or another. But let’s imagine for a moment that we had real, everyday mechanisms for finding out what people actually think and want.
Not about simple binary questions which require only Yes or No. But using a wide variety of sophisticated technologies to guide us through a process of deliberation. Where emotional reactions do not leave us vulnerable to manipulation by those with clear agendas--but instead give us the opportunity to dive deeper into who we are, personally and collectively?
Sensemaking tools like Cynefin and Pol.is are already in use in places as disparate as Taiwan and Newham – but it’s early days for this experiment. Even with the help of artificial intelligence, technology is still only doing the guesswork around what our deepest intentions and desires might be.
Our own conclusion, after almost five years of observing and participating, is that it will take some time to shift to a more evolved democracy. To move beyond representative democracy – voting for MPs to make decisions on your behalf – to direct democracy where citizens might vote regularly on issues and policy themselves, has many potential pitfalls.
If it relies mostly on technology to deliver, there’s no reason to believe that the polity will be any less divided or polarized. Only when there are meaningful opportunities for hearing others - that might have an impact on your own views – can we avoid simply staying in the same trap we are in now.
Which is why deliberative participation on the ground, between people, is more promising. Community cohesion cannot be achieved without a relational culture that prioritizes the building of trust between citizens. Even so much of any good decision-making process – “good” meaning one that leads to outcomes that benefit everyone – depends upon a level of listening and facilitating that is rare in social gatherings. For people to be willing to take part in such processes, they must feel safe to do so.
At the same time, to spend precious time contributing, they must feel that progress of some sort can be made. The finding of common goals is key: desire is what releases energy and creativity and attracts even those that are generally not interested in community dialogue. So, any kind of increased participation has to arise from a better understanding of each other’s motivations as well as needs. In this sense, the development is both horizontal – the building of meaningful networks of collaboration – and vertical – towards an attractive, articulated future.
While that is demanding, it is also quite a natural way to gather – whether as a group of friends or a small town gathering. It’s always difficult to pull people together simply to discuss a process or an intention. However, it’s easier to attract people with a compelling proposition – let’s build a school/a party/a football team! If the process of imagining and planning is well-designed, it will nevertheless deliver a lot of the relationship and trust needed to bind that community together on the way.
This is a moment of urgent need for people to have somewhere to go, some deliberative space, as their traditional sources of authority prove unstable. We are already witnessing rapidly forming and growing groups of disillusioned citizens, now serving the new masters of social media. These are worryingly similar to the old masters, in that they have no qualms in peddling untruths for the sake of building numbers, to gain old-style political influence.
The best counter-balance is to offer place-based, community spaces for people to meet in well-facilitated discussion. Not to take on the old agendas and disappear down rabbit holes, but to give rise to their own authentic, imaginative ideas for a future they can look forward to together. When these are carefully designed to include the many diverse perspectives but also multiple forms of agency – driven by inquiry but also the search for solutions– something new appears. People begin to find their belonging, their purpose - their freedom - in the community they are building with each other.
As facilitators and convenors consciously build these spaces of trust and creativity, the technology needed to facilitate stronger connections between similar groups is coming into view. The tech includes subtle decision-making tools as well as effective mechanisms for giving every community access to the global commons of tools, practices, blueprints – what is known as cosmolocalism.
As we move towards the close of another drama-filled year, our commitment is clear and simple. We are investing in exactly these kinds of cosmolocal community agency networks (CANs). We aim to connect them to each other and build the kind of media system that can help to develop and amplify this work.
Please consider investing too – whether time or money — to develop a genuine alternative, in this moment of imminent danger and immense possibility.
The Daily Alternative is taking a two-week break. Our NY editorial will be published on Jan 2nd, and we will be restarting daily blogs on Jan 3rd, with the next newsletter on Jan 10th We wish you a safe and beautiful holiday season.