[PeDAGoG] Paths to a just and sustainable society

[Pallav Das]

Hi Christine,

Are you on the REDlistserv? If not, I could add you to it - you should
upload this comment there so that a larger readership can read it and
respond to it. Let me know.

Thanks,

Pallav

On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 6:04 PM Christine Dann <christine at horomaka.org>
wrote:

> This is a really valuable discussion. My take on it is that there will be
> no one size that fits all. Ted Trainer assumes that local level communities
> can form and provide most of the necessities of life (including democratic
> governance) solely or mainly through voluntary effort. There are indeed
> excellent examples of such 'voluntarist' communities in existence (as there
> have been for over two centuries in most parts of the world) but so far
> they have never gone to such a horizontal scale as to make any significant
> dents on the market-state and capitalist industrialism.
>
> Contrast the voluntarist efforts to create eco-villages and communities in
> heavily industrialised countries with the organised/professional efforts to
> 'eco' existing villages in rural India, as described by Sujit Sinha in his
> 'Living Utopias Videos' post to the PeDaGoG list on September 29. (Excerpt
> below).
>
> Can we learn from both types of initiative?
>
> My experiences of being involved with so-called 'pre-figurative'
> initiatives in Aotearoa New Zealand (alternative currency markets and
> services, Transition Towns, co-operative enterprises, community gardens) is
> that if they are to go to scale, and persist, volunteer effort is not
> enough. Organising and managing a successful market, week after week, is a
> lot of work, and while many people may be keen to volunteer on the day,
> most people in today's market-state societies are busy earning their
> livings (and raising children) and have limited time to volunteer.
> Especially when it requires skills they may not have, such as accounting
> for money, raising vegetables, facilitating meetings, etc. This means that
> voluntary work is too often done by people who have time to spare, rather
> than the best skill-set for the job. There can also be problems around
> accountability with volunteers who are free to make up what they think is
> required as they go along. Further, matching volunteers with the tasks to
> be done, and motivating them, is a skill all in itself - but it goes
> largely unrecognised and unrewarded. Hence lots of well-intentioned and
> well-designed projects can fall over or not reach full potential through
> lack of sufficiently skilled personnel committed to making them work - week
> after week and year after year.
>
> So my big questions are
>
> (1) how do the long-lived examples of just and sustainable communities
> actually operate?
> (2) are they really all based on voluntary effort alone?
> (3) if not, what methods do they have for recognising and recompensing the
> necessary skills of community building and maintenance, as related to the
> provision of necessities and the democratic governance of the community?
> (4) are these methods usually culturally specific, and/or are they (or
> some of them) transferable?
>
> It's spring time here in NZ, and I just learned a Maori proverb: "Koanga
> tangata tahi, ngahuru puta noa" (At digging time just one person; at
> harvest time surrounded by others.) So it seems that even pre-industrial,
> pre-state societies grappled with the issue of who does what valuable work
> when. But they mostly 'solved' it - until the colonists arrived and
> destroyed their societies.
>
> Nevertheless - in our efforts to build more just and sustainable
> societies, can we afford to neglect or ignore this important dimension of
> social reality?
>
> Christine
>
>
>
> "I want to tell the whole group about my recent experience of a workshop
> with village level activists and the kind of materials and pedagogy used
> and the next level challenges we will face. I think this might be of
> interest to the whole group and people might have experience and ideas to
> share.
>
> Due to relaxations in lockdown I was able to conduct a two whole day ,
> face to face , workshops with 60 people . About 2/3rd of participants
> were working at village level in 6 districts of the state of West Bengal ,
> one district each of the states of Odisha and Jharkhand. So there were
> three language groups. 1/3rd were the urban staff of an NGO which works
> in these rural areas , primarily trying to create village discussion forums
> , to take forward many of the ideas of “alternatives to Industrialism”
>
> In three sessions I circulated a one page note with 10-12 main points each
> on Amish ( USA) , Kibbutz( Israel) , and Mendha village ( India –
> maharashtra ) . These notes were in vernacular language. In groups of 6-8
> persons they read the note, discussed , and came up with written comments
> and questions in about 20 minutes . As I collected the notes and started
> discussing , I showed them slides of still images of Amish ( not many
> available) and a 5 minute clipping from a film called “Raising the Barn” .
> For kibbutz also still images. And for Mendha a short 10 minute film. Each
> of these sessions went on for more than 2 hours with lots of animated
> discussions. The short note, the still photos , the short film were really
> helpful. We had planned to do Zapatistas but ran out of time.
>
> These activists would like to tell these stories and initiate discussions
> at district, sub-district and at village forums which they are trying to
> create. But they need more “detailed stories” of such cases in the
> vernacular so that can handle all kinds of questions . In India Vikalp
> Sangam has already started writing detailed case studies in some state
> languages and also making audiovisuals.  "
>
>
>
> On 30/09/21 2:39 am, Carlos Tornel wrote:
>
> Thanks Ariel and Tom!
>
> As I was saying to Ted, I just want to clarify that I'm not advocating nor
> think that struggling to achieve state power is the way through - We have
> the experiences of Bolivia and Ecuador with indigenous or indigenous backed
> governments that tried to take control of the state only to find that the
> state operates in a global capitalist context which meant for many of them
> an increase forms of extraction and forms of violence against them and the
> very nature that they gave rights to. So I do agree with Ted that this is
> not the way forward, as well as with many Latin American thinkers who argue
> along the same lines (Holloway, Esteva, Dinerstein, etc). What I was
> thinking about was more in the lines of what can we still demand of the
> actually existing state or use the tools that already exist within it, to
> achieve some of the goals we want to achieve. I'm thinking particularly
> about some indigenous communities' struggles that are suing the state or
> demanding their rights be granted and respected. These are of course tools
> that were built by and "inside" the master's house, so I wouldn't say these
> will necessarily lead towards a more just or equal world, but they are
> nonetheless tools we can use to resist as we move forwards in the creation
> of a new world. So long story short, should we just ignore the state or can
> we 'use it', not to conquer state power, but to use the tools at our
> disposal keeping in mind that the ultimate goal should be societies that
> are rid of the state?
>
> This might refer back to the point Ariel was making about what can be
> mediated with existing institutions. Although I'm not sure that I agree
> with what Tom was mentioning. Why assume that life-saving medicine of
> technological innovations such as solar panels of broadband need the State?
> Just thinking about this in 10 year anniversary of Occupy shows that people
> can organize food systems, health clinics, reflection and discussion groups
> all without the state, universities of hospitals. Of course this doesn't
> mean that we should get rid of the hospitals now, but we can surely work
> our way forward so that all these institutions that are not necessarily
> there for our well-being but to create and exacerbate our dependencies on
> them can be rethought or simply cese to be needed in the not so distant
> future?
>
> Apologies for the long response but I do appreciate the chance to
> continue  this debate and listening to other folk's opinions!
>
> All the best,
>
> C.
>
>
>
>
> El mié, 29 sept 2021 a las 14:14, Tom Abeles (<tabeles at gmail.com>)
> escribió:
>
>> I would be concerned, living in such a world, if I needed life-saving
>> medical services from vaccines to heart surgery. Similarly, I would be
>> concerned without universities, research and technology which has given us
>> solar panels, broadband internet and similar which is imbedded in much of
>> what we use on a daily basis. The Buddhist Gross Happiness Index ponders
>> these issues.
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 7:20 PM Ariel Salleh <arielsalleh7 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Nice point Carlos.
>>> Considering how states are historically sex-gendered institutions may
>>> offer a way forward that mediates yours and Ted’s position …?
>>> Ariel
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 28 Sep 2021, at 6:58 am, Carlos Tornel <tornelc at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi all and thanks Pallav for sharing this article!
>>>
>>> I'm relatively new on some of the lists, but I thought I could share
>>> some thoughts after the reading.
>>>
>>> I found the article quite useful for thinking about how we can start to
>>> build a post (growth, capitalism, extractive, etc.) society. I have faced
>>> similar questions and concerns when advocating for a convivial or a
>>> communal society in different spaces, such as what do we do with state
>>> power? With armies, the military, nuclear weapons, etc.? How do we move
>>> away from the Hobbian reality of power and the state? Several of the
>>> anarchist and degrowth proponentes (although not so many have looked
>>> seriously at this link until recently) have formulated proposals against
>>> this, i.e. try to reduce our dependence on the state and progressively move
>>> away from it. However this brings back the debate we've been having for
>>> some time now in Latin America, should we seek to take back the state or
>>> not? My own opinion is that we should, through several of the proposals
>>> presented in the article, such as food and energy sovereignty, we can
>>> progressively start to move away from the state, leading towards more
>>> convivial societies. However it does seem that the state will have to play
>>> a part in this transition, so perhaps we need to think of the transition
>>> from one society to another in different scales and with different
>>> agencies: I.e. What should we ask from the state? What can we do ourselves
>>> in local and communal terms and how can we continue to build networks of
>>> solidarity or communitarian entanglements at the regional, and even global
>>> level.
>>>
>>> My thanks again Pallav for sharing and to Ted for a very insightful and
>>> useful analysis.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Carlos
>>>
>>> El sáb, 25 sept 2021 a las 5:06, Pallav Das (<dpallav at gmail.com>)
>>> escribió:
>>> The "eco-anarchist" transition strategy relies on “prefiguring” the new
>>> social forms in the existing society. The most effective way to get people
>>> to see the sense and the merits of the new ways is to establish as many
>>> examples of them as possible here and now. This approach minimizes the
>>> chances of violent conflict; if we persuade large numbers to the
>>> alternative then radical change in structures might be brought about
>>> peacefully.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Friends,
>>>
>>> A new article, "The path to a just and sustainable society" has been
>>> uploaded to the "Radical Ecological Democracy" website. In the second part
>>> of his discussion on “Eco-anarchism”, Ted Trainer lays out the core
>>> characteristics of a post consumer capitalist society, operating on the
>>> principles of “The Simpler Way”.  Please share the article with your
>>> networks and join the discussion on REDlistserv. The author is copied here
>>> in case you would like to contact him directly.
>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/the-path-to-a-just-and-sustainable-society/
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Pallav
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
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