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Covid as an Expression of Collective Grief of Western Societies

By Ziri Rideaux and Brendan Miller © March 2021

For a year now, the world has been listening to scientists and politicians and trustingly followed their ever-changing findings, opinions and directions on Covid. Initially it was 2 million dead Americans in a few months, then just 100,000. Masks were initially declared unnecessary, then vital for all, then maybe not. We endured curfews, road signs warning us to stay home to save lives, closed hair salons, gyms, parks, beaches, had them reopened, reclosed. It was declared OK to fly but not to meet your neighbors. The vaccines were supposed to save us, then declared unsafe, then declared ineffective against infections – and even pointless against new virus strains. While Covid numbers are finally down, things are looking up, people are longing for spring sun and the end to loneliness, poverty and bankruptcy, we’re still being bombarded with new warnings of a coming 4th wave.

The lockstep, pre-chewed media digest feeds us Covid as a medical event, as an economic disaster and a social strain. Any other narrative has been discredited, censored and eliminated. Yet it’s high time for another perspective:

Covid19 is a virus that mainly impacts the lungs. In Chinese and Shamanic medicine, the lungs represent the place where grief resides. We hold our personal (and collective) grief in our lungs. Coughing is a well-known shamanic practice of “purging” emotions like grief and anger. Part of the healer’s self-clearing after a ceremony is to cough in order to expel the energy the Shaman has absorbed from a patient. In 2021, no one even dares to cough in public anymore.

Could it be that Covid is an expression of collective grief we feel? What are we grieving? Who is grieving?

Covid19 appeared at a time when the Western culture was already in deep crisis. Just when Covid hit, millions of young people mainly in Western countries were protesting “business as usual” in governments, Davos and Wall Street. The growing environmental catastrophe was threatening to destroy their future. The young no longer wanted to follow in the footsteps of their elders. They had lost trust and demanded profound change. At the same time, the international banking system experienced a crisis like never before. Additionally, the political power of the West was waning. The American empire was in free fall, economically, morally and socially. Covid didn’t cause this collapse. It just accelerated a long hidden trend.

Could it be that Covid is a collective, physical expression of the secret grieving process in the West about the loss of leadership position? Could it be that Covid (no matter if man-made or transmitted by animals) finally makes apparent the subconscious grief we all feel? Hidden, long-held guilt about the ill-gotten gains from colonialism and slavery? Anxiety about being found out and judged? Fear, that billions of down-trodden people will rebel against an self-appointed “Elite” who for so long has absorbed way more than their fair share and produced most of the pollution? Depression about the loss of a myth we believed in: that we were “bringing Democracy and Christianity”. There is a secret, collective knowing (even though never mentioned in the mass media) that things will radically change. That the tables are turning and that we will lose many of our privileges. That we will have to share. That we might not be the “good guys”.

The illusion of absolute control, which has entered our culture with the arrival of Science, is coming to an end. This illusion has been used for centuries to justify why the West should be “superior” to indigenous populations. It is still used by American politicians today in their self-delusion expression that “the world wants America to lead”.

Science and medicine were hijacked by big business and their financial interests over a century ago. Just last year, a whopping $47 billion (1) were spent by the 10 biggest pharmaceutical companies on advertisement. This is how much it costs to make us believe their lies. To create the bubble of ignorance we now confuse with our reality. Big pharma paid the mass media to create mass hysteria. They created a culture of mistrust and denunciation, where no neighbor can trust another. Where we’re supposed to stay home, wear masks, fear each other. Using our propensity for guilt, they told us we might be responsible for each other’s deaths if we disobey the “rules”. Anyone who questioned this narrative was and is attacked as right-winger, as reckless or plain stupid. After they sowed the fear, they now reap the rewards: They told us that only they, Big Pharma, can save us from Covid – with medication, masks, vaccines and immediate intubation in the ICU.

Just when we were waking up, at the cusp of rebelling against corrupt politicians, their paymasters and propaganda machinery, they “put us to sleep”. In the ICUs, they put us into artificial coma and intubate us. They don’t allow families to visit and second-guess their high-risk treatments. They trained us daily to “watch the Covid numbers” like a lottery, as they are presented out-of-context (showing growing positive case numbers – without telling us that testing has equally increased). In an ongoing propaganda storm nothing short of a premeditated psy-op, we have been pushed into hopeless panic and fear since over a year now. That’s how afraid they are. Afraid that the sleeping giant will finally wake up. The giant, that’s us, the people.

Our bodies are designed for short time crisis response, fight or flight. The propaganda media has keep the finger on the trigger non-stop – and people experience psychotic breakdowns as well as financial ruin. In exhaustion, we yield. We wear masks, social distance and get vaccinated. Everyone who doesn’t comply is “cancelled” and de-friended. But even despite our slavish obedience, there’s no “safety” in sight: even once vaccinated, we still have to wear the mask and social distance or we become social outcasts. The bullying culture makes people comply and shuts up uncomfortable questions. This is not Democracy.

Covid has placed a finger on the wounds of Western capitalism. In America, a population with 40% obesity and 50% addiction and no comprehensive public health system to speak of, only the richest can afford adequate medical care. With no real social safety net, the lockdowns have driven millions into unemployment, poverty and homelessness. The total lack of social infrastructure and government services have become glaringly obvious. As has the corruption of America’s “elites” who don’t share. The U.S. has more per capita death than most developing countries. And still, American politicians don’t even consider public health insurance for all. The exhausted population remains silent. Down for the count.

Who is most-affected by Covid?

Interestingly, in most of the so-called developing world, Covid is not as big a deal. Their media is not hounding them like us. There is less testing. There is less money to be made by big pharma. The developing world watches the West imploding. It feels their chance is finally coming. Covid is the least of their worries.

In the West, men suffer the most during the current paradigm shift as men have benefited the most in the past 2000 years. White male governments were the first to buy into the idea to “control” the virus with more “Science” AKA Big Pharma. And with unprecedented lockdowns. We want to offer a feminine perspective:

This is a phase of mourning and reconsideration of our path. The powers that be (white old males) try everything to hold on to their paradise lost and they go about it in ruthless, dishonest ways. In order to develop a positive narrative for our future, we first need to re-establish our inner balance and understand our place in this world.

Since Science in conjunction with Capitalism has dominated our lives for centuries, we have experienced ourselves increasingly as individuals, consumers, supposedly in control of our lives. Part of this control system is an established hierarchy that put white males on top of the pyramid. Women and people of other skin tones have suffered as second class citizens. But even white men have suffered in the unjust hierarchy of the past: They were not allowed to feel or show weakness. They must be in control or at least pretend to be. This is what happened with Covid as well: white old men pretending to be in control when they’re anything but.

Over the centuries, Science has developed into just another religion: a paradigm that can not be questioned. A paradigm that claims to be the only way to KNOW and understand the nature of our world. Science, like Religion, has worked hard to eliminate mystery from our world. To show off our rationalism, we have fallen out of touch with our true spiritual Selves. We have been lost and lonely, looking for answers in all the wrong places. All known ancient cultures honored our ancestors and believed that we consist of a divine eternal spirit and a human material form. Science told us that only our material form “matters”. It postulates that the brain creates “consciousness”. That when the brain dies, we become extinguished, like a candle light. All our collective spiritual knowledge about continuity, about our connection between the worlds, was ridiculed as “primitive beliefs”.

The only way how a white, men-led society accepted spirituality was in form of regulated, strictly hierarchical churches which taught us we are unworthy and too lowly to directly commune with Spirit/(”God”, another male title). We have felt disenfranchised and lost ever since.

We suggest another narrative: imagine our Spirit as a football coach on the sideline. We humans run all over the playing field that is our life, interacting with other players. We play best if we look to the coach for instructions and guidance every now and then. We don’t have the full picture (yet). Together we are a great team.

Covid is a crisis designed to remind us to get in touch with our Spirit, with the Spirit of the earth, of nature and with our heart. Humanity is changing its “operating system”, from a head-based, mechanical approach to a heart-based, spiritual approach. It is no surprise that the old white male who has run things for so long does whatever he can to hold on to control. It is his last, desperate attempt to stem the tide of an egalitarian, participatory and aware society in the making. But “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.” (Victor Hugo) Time is on our side. So don’t despair in loneliness, but reconnect to your higher self, reach out to your neighbors, families and friends. Don’t give in to fear. Learn to trust again. Together we are the neurological network of Life itself. We need each other more than ever as we are rebuilding the “Commons” – the ancient knowledge that this world consists of all of us. That it doesn’t belong to any single person, company or party. It’s time to take the power back. Love unites our worlds. Our Ancestors, all Earthlings, all future Life. UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL.

(1) “Dose of Reality” Breaking Down the Big Pharma Dollar

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Walking in Beauty

How can the idea of “Walking in Beauty” inspire us today? What might it mean in our modern, everyday lives? Ziri and Brendan share a recorded conversation that explores this topic in both personal and public contexts. Enjoy!

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Taking the Power Back

Our new essay describing how decentralized technologies will stimulate a transition past the age of representative democracies and corporations to a new age of practical direct, deliberative democracies at every scale was recently published by the Nesta Innovation Foundation.

You can read it here online: Taking the Power Back

Our essay is part of a collection of essay on Decentralized Futures. The full PDF is also available: Decentralized Futures Full PDF

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Lessons from Covid-19

By Ziri Rideaux and Brendan Miller

The spiritual and mythological lessons from Covid-19 are still unappreciated. We are confronted with the “Hero’s Journey” as described by Joseph Campbell. Other than in the Hollywood version of heroism, the mythological “hero’s journey” is about the “Dark Night of the Soul”. We are faced with seemingly overwhelming odds and come to our individual and societal breaking points, where we lose hope, abandon our dreams and can’t see a positive way forward.

In indigenous cultures, an initiation ritual is performed during adolescence to induce this breakdown of the ego. The individual realizes s/he has to surrender to nature and accept being a part of it instead of aspiring to rule and control it. Western societies have failed to offer this to us. American society as a whole has reached “grown up age” without ever encouraging a breakdown of the ego that teaches humility. Instead, men are expected to be loud-mouthed leaders and always claim to have the answers. For Western cultures, Covid-19 is the mass-induced initiation ritual into real adulthood. We need to break down to break through.

With excessive aggressiveness, Western societies have forced a male-dominated worldview onto human cultures all over the globe. Science, which is perfectly aligned with the male, reductionist and deductive perspective, is expected to answer all questions. In comparison, the female perspective focuses on the intuitive understanding of complex networks in societies and nature and allows for a wider, inclusive perspective.

By their very nature, men have been conditioned for 1000s of years to be individualists. Traditionally the hunters and warriors of the tribe went out on adventures, while women and children stayed behind. Women created complex social support systems to rear children and care for the old together, to gather, prepare and share food and services. Their natural instinct is to work together, to negotiate and share. The female idea of wealth stands in opposition to the current, male-dominated societies that create value by exclusivity and scarcity, instead of inclusivity and abundance for all.

The Covid-19 challenge has again been handled with an all-male attitude: We are being told by (male) scientists that “we are at war”. We have been ordered to “social distance” and separate from others as the only way to “fight” the virus. No efforts have been made to understand the role of the virus in our evolution. The male warrior approach wants to kill the strange and unknown. It’s the female approach to inquire and negotiate – and eventually integrate. Only a few women-governed countries like Sweden and Iceland have embraced the female approach: they have not shut down. As people are exposed to each other, they develop herd immunity. Strength in numbers, healing through mutual support. Their strategy has been successful and has not caused the trauma of separation, being locked in and scarcity.

True to their exclusive nature, the Western, male approach for how to deal with Covid-19 is only possible for a tiny segment of this world’s population: it only works for the wealthiest societies, dominated by male values of separation and control. It doesn’t work for people that live communally, in close quarters. Social distancing in India and Africa is nearly impossible.

The Covid-19 crisis is a healing crisis that encourages us to question the male approach towards governing, sharing and healing. The current “solution” has brought on loneliness and despair, panic, increased suicide numbers and poverty. The clear message is: “United we stand, Divided we fall.”

Covid-19 has been a very effective teacher to understand that our societies are only as strong as their weakest link: We learned that our health care system is only effective if EVERYONE receives equally adequate care. We learned that we have to guarantee each individual basic supplies of food and shelter. Otherwise, their physical or mental sickness will spill over, into us. We learned that we need to limit greed in the individual for the benefit of all: If the most predatory individuals hoard 100 toilet paper rolls, the rest of us will get nothing. We learned that we can act fast in a crisis – and to apply this resolve to avert global warming. 

As above so below: We learned we cannot trust the elites to distribute our wealth evenly to end suffering. They have taken the lion share of our resources for themselves in bailout money and left us with taxable $1200 checks.

The feminine wisdom knows how to intuitively and gracefully act and live in the face of uncertainty. It adjusts with lightning speed. The masculine rigid logic demands certainty in numbers that cannot be obtained quickly enough to navigate fast-changing situations. It’s always a step behind.

The Covid-19 crisis requires a turn towards a feminine-system solution. It is an invitation for men to integrate their denied female side and learn to listen to their intuition. It is an invitation for women to integrate their inner maleness so they garner the courage to speak up and finally be heard. We are faced with the same challenge bacteria faced billions of years ago: to competitively fight each other and all go extinct – or to cooperate and build multicellular organisms (like humans), egalitarian societies and sustainably live together.

The aggressiveness displayed by the male scientists, politicians, media and even FB-commentators shows: they are collectively fighting for survival. To contradict the male interpretation of the Covid-19 experience is to shake the foundation of male absolute power. We are at a watershed moment: we can emerge from this crisis as a more just, green and sharing society. We can integrate feminine wisdom, learn, grow and change. Or we can return to the old masculine status quo and the next crisis (like climate change) will wipe us out. This was an important warning shot to learn from, not an enemy to defeat.  Let’s take this opportunity and change!

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Don’t Let the Blockchain Get Pwned

How to Combat Creeping Centralization and Create a More Open #ForkandMergeEconomy

by Brendan Miller and Ziri Rideaux, June 2018.

tl;dr

The blockchain has the potential to enable a revolution of decentralization, but only if current blind spots and pitfalls are addressed head-on. Major avenues of creeping centralization are outlined as well as ways to combat them. Perhaps most importantly, corporations as highly centralizing entities are part of the problem, not the solution. We describe a new, naturally decentralizing organizational structure called #coorganisms designed to replace corporations as the default way to organize ourselves in the age of the blockchain. Coorganism are possible today but more can be done to encourage their growth and advance the coming Fork and Merge Economy.

1. The Blockchain Will Revolutionize Our Society More Than the Internet

We are all excited about the blockchain because it decentralizes power but still provides trustworthy, transparent and enforceable contracts and enables collective decision making on large scales. We can create a new economy and society together in a free, bottom-up way. For example, the Ethereum Yellow Paper calls its protocol a new “social operating system.”

A recent summary from Consensys about the 2018 Blockchain for Social Impact Conference noted an emerging shared perspective “that blockchain is a new way of thinking about ownership, trust, and human systems. No one (everyone) owns Ethereum.”

This is a beautiful and inspiring vision, one we share.

There is another important word for this type of decentralized, non-hierarchical system: a democracy. Let’s ensure the blockchain is as democratic as possible by being mindful of our blind spots and examining potential pitfalls that erode our vision. The more diverse voices that are engaged in this conversation, the better the result will be. In a wonderful fractal, emergent way, that is the first real test of this new “social operating system.”

Direct democracy is the ultimate non-hierarchical decentralized system

There is nothing more decentralized than a direct democracy, one in which each person has one equal vote. Such a system has never before been practical beyond the scale of a small village, so we ended up with the compromise called representative democracy. In a representative democracy, we elect a small number of people to make decisions on our behalf, but our “representatives” quickly forget they work for us and abuse their power to enrich and entrench themselves. The cost of elections goes up astronomically as special interests do everything they can to gain control of the representatives, and the will of the people is forgotten.

Once the control over the “representatives” is assured, our public institutions succumb to “regulatory capture” by these special interests and what started as a representative democracy, in theory, ends up as an oligarchy in practice. This is where we are today. Princeton University researchers have demonstrated that this “Economic-Elite Domination” is what we have in the United States. Regular people truly don’t matter, which means we don’t really have a democracy… every Native American, African-American and woman knows that we never did.

This is what happens when the foundations of social systems are compromised from the beginning: they go awry. A poisonous hemlock seed will never grow into a delicious apple tree. We must design our social systems carefully and ensure their full integrity from the very start.

Let’s be clear: the blockchain is not just a cryptocurrency, nor just a computing platform – it is the foundation of a new social system. We find ourselves at the watershed of a historic moment. Now the question is: What type of system are we creating?

Whether we realize it or not, we find ourselves in a Thomas Jefferson-like dilemma. Are we willing to carefully consider what is truly fair for ALL people, or do we like our slaves too much? Or maybe you prefer the analogy of Christopher Columbus: Do you think because you got to the New World of the blockchain first that you deserve a huge land grant, or crypto wallet, as the case would be today? That’s not very democratic nor decentralized of you. 😉 If you think anyone anywhere deserves the benefits of the blockchain more than others, then you are not really taking democratization/decentralization seriously. The change must start with us!

2. The Democratic Potential of the Blockchain is Under Threat

These threats, which result partially from naivete and partially from greed, include:

  • Concentrated ownership of cryptocoins – If the coins disbursed through a blockchain are owned by too few, they can control our economic future and become the new oligarchs. This means that as cool as Vitalik Buterin or Joe Lubin may be, it is incorrect for them to hold such large concentrations of Ethereum. The Gini Coefficient is a measure of inequality and currently Ethereum and Bitcoin, for example, demonstrate extreme inequality. Starting the “social operating system” of the future in such an unequal way is ominous and seems to perpetuate rather than fix the issues that come from wealth and power concentration.Maybe we should even change how we think of our stake in a blockchain from the analogy of money or coins to the analogy of a vote, in which each person gets an equal unit from the very beginning. If we need to somehow subdivide our equal units, we could base it on time: we each have approximately the same amount of time on this planet. Whatever we come up with, we also need to consider fairness towards future generations: they too are stakeholders in the system we fashion today and relying on inheritance also fails the decentralization test.
  • Concentrated blockchain node ownership – With too many nodes in the hands of a few, they can seize control of our blockchain for their private purposes.
  • Unnecessary middlemen and gatekeepers – The peer-to-peer structure of the blockchain is beautiful and powerful and does not require middlemen nor gatekeepers. We need to be careful not to let them reinsert themselves into our evolving commons. Strong safeguards must be established to control profit-motivated power-grabbers and prevent monopolies. Capitalism has not proven itself a trustworthy steward of human well-being. Let’s learn from earlier mistakes and retain the ability to discipline or kick out interlopers by popular referendum as needed.
  • “Proof of Stake” – Proof of Work and Proof of Stake are two ways to determine “consensus” on the blockchain, meaning the state of the blockchain. While “Proof of Work” has important limitations, “Proof of Stake” is a terrible idea and no real alternative. It basically proposes that the more cryptocoins you own, the more votes you should have to determine the state of the blockchain. In other words, the wealthiest people on the blockchain will get to determine reality for everyone else. “Proof of Stake” aims to centralize power and will recreate the wealth-based oligarchies that are currently in charge of our world. It betrays the entire idea of decentralization and should not be implemented.A viable, more democratic alternative is a “permissioned” blockchain in which each real, human person gets one equal vote in the consensus process. This will require validating that people have one and only one root or primary account on the blockchain, and developing efficient mechanisms for exercising that vote (e.g. statistical sampling), but these are solvable challenges.
  • Concentrated ownership of blockchain companies – If you believe in decentralization, it is also wrong for blockchain startups to be funded and owned by VCs, large corporations, or a small number of accredited wealthy investors through ICOs. Only truly democratic crowd funding is aligned with the principle of decentralization. It also means that if you believe in decentralization you need to forgo your stock option deals and your own ownership stake in your firm. It does NOT mean that you cannot or should not be adequately, or even generously, compensated for your work. As a specialist with a valuable skill you should be highly compensated – you just don’t get to own the future at the expense of everyone else.
  • Economic thresholds to participation in the developing blockchain platforms and apps – Are we truly willing to equally share the blockchain revolution with people around the globe? Or are we holding on to “First World” privileges from Silicon Valley to Zug (Switzerland)? Are we just creating another generation of Rockefellers or Koch brothers in rich nations, home to most venture capital investment? Limiting the creative opportunity available through the blockchain to only wealthy tech elites will perpetuate the same problems of inequality and resentment we find on display in San Francisco between haves and have-nots.
  • Lack of diversity among blockchain participants – If everyone working on the blockchain is a nerdy white guy, we’re going to end up with the failings of the Silicon Valley “bro” culture all over again. If the vast majority of people working on the blockchain are from the US and Europe, there will be tremendous missed opportunities simply through lack of experience with all of the solutions it could facilitate. For example in developing countries, cell data access is lagging cell voice and text service. We need to consider solutions that work over voice and text from the very beginning.

These represent some of the blind spots in most conversations about the blockchain, and they are all critical to address. There are precious few voices warning to take these potential pitfalls seriously and protect the decentralized nature of the blockchain. This is surprising given the professed zeal around decentralization generally. If we are serious about decentralization and democracy, our goal can’t be to become blockchain billionaires!

3. Corporations are Incompatible with the Decentralized Blockchain Paradigm

One of the largest blind spots while developing a new platform for peer-to-peer exchange and direct democracy is the very organizational entity we choose to facilitate deep change in our social and moral fabric. It affects the way we relate to each other, do business and distribute power and responsibility. While representing perhaps the biggest challenge, change in this area might turn into one of the biggest opportunities.

Specifically, we argue that we need to reconsider the role of the corporation as the dominant organizational structure of the blockchain revolution. Corporations have several failings and are very poorly suited to fostering decentralization:

  • Corporations have concentrated ownership and control in their shareholders and senior management. Customers and workers rarely have any ownership stake. Corporations quickly throw off the mechanisms designed to ensure their accountability to society and develop a will of their own, even as they consume and spit out the staff they chew up.
  • Corporations are simplistic and vicious beasts. As per definition, they can have only one goal: to maximize profit. They are ruthless in their pursuit of that goal, trampling all other human values in the process. No matter how creative we try to get within the structure of a corporation, by inventing approaches like the Balanced Scorecard or Triple Bottom Line, corporations and the people who run them know that when push comes to shove everything else must be sacrificed before profit…by law. Trying to civilize corporations is like trying to domesticate a T-Rex, it’s an impossible task and likely to get you mauled.
  • Corporations are ultimately extractive, not creative. If we want to create amazing futures together, we need organizational structures that are creative at heart. Corporations may create, but only to extract value, and as we see with every innovative company like Apple or Google, they inevitably succumb to the pressures to extract value for a few shareholders and turn their customers into rent producing serfs and vassals.With the blockchain we can organize ourselves directly on a peer-to-peer basis to pursue a tremendously wide range of very nuanced goals. Everything from coordinating ride shares for soccer moms, to deciding on budget priorities in a small town, to tracking and coordinating global supply chains. Trying to achieve these goals through structures intent on extracting profit is inefficient, poorly designed and misaligned.A political representative might have “forgotten” his job is to serve his constituents. But corporations were never designed to “serve” anyone but themselves. Some people worry that artificial intelligence will produce killer robots, but most people don’t realize we have already been colonized by very brutal machines: corporations.To fulfill the promise of the blockchain and decentralization, we must create new organizational structures that function like direct democracies, organic and able to pursue goals as diverse as humans on the planet. We need to ensure they are fully accountable now and forever to their real human stakeholders.

4. Introducing #Coorganisms: Evolving Beyond Corporations

Is there an alternative to corporations? Yes, with the blockchain there certainly is.

A decentralized, emergent social operating system requires a less hierarchical, more participatory and organic method of organization. It is fitting that we pick a biological metaphor rather than a mechanical one.

To have a term to describe this new structure, let us call it a coorganism. Some of the criteria coorganisms should have include:

  • Decentralized ownership – The blockchain enables crowd-funding and ownership and it should be leveraged to the fullest extent. There are currently startup tools like Kickstarter and Indiegogo and crowd-lending mechanisms like Prosper or Kiva, but crowd-sourcing equity and ownership has proven more difficult. Fortunately, newer efforts like StartEngine seem to have cracked this nut as well (with implementation of the 2012 JOBS Act). This leaves no more barriers to democratizing access to capital and every facet of new venture and project creation.
  • Efficient and effective decentralized decision-making and coordination – One of the excuses for the centralization of management in corporations was that it seemed necessary for speedy, efficient decision-making. How can a large group of people efficiently decide on all of the day-to-day matters of a large project?We already have effective tools for remote project management (think JIRA or the open-source Phabricator). These can be combined with video calls, instant messaging, etc. to enable effective team collaboration. Various large open source projects like Linux and Node.js show decentralized coordination of serious efforts is very possible.There is also research on deliberative democracy by social psychologists that may be relevant. It is possible to have good decision-making involving large groups of people if we design and iterate them carefully. We can leverage statistical sampling to assign more intensive deliberation to small subgroups (e.g. like a jury deliberation) to avoid attention overload and expedite time sensitive decisions. We only need to take the challenge seriously to develop the right tools and processes.
  • Accountability – Majorities of actual humans must exercise ultimate control over each and every coorganism, just as in a direct democracy, with true referendum power over its actions at all times. The referendum power of the coorganisms members is always the ultimate authority and can control, override or replace any representatives who fail to serve the members as mutually arranged.To provide accountability, the blockchain will provide a permanent record of what efforts and projects people have worked on as well as of the results achieved. This allows us to track if we are being true to our word and delivering on agreements we enter into. The net result will be much greater accountability all around, with the potential to eliminate fraud, false claims, empty campaign promises, bad advice and propaganda that plagues our media and economy today.
  • Identity – A key requirement to make this possible is that each person has one and only one identity online. Companies or legal entities cannot own an root or primary identity nor vote in referendums. A singular ID is the only way to know who is behind various projects. This way, no individual can hide behind a coorganisms in order to act irresponsibly. Furthermore, these identities should be “self-sovereign,” meaning under the control of that person and not dependent on any third party or government.
  • Permeable boundaries – Anyone who supports the mission of coorganisms can join the effort, through commitments to offer time, money or other resources. This allows the coorganism to grow organically.
  • Egoless – Coorganisms should have no life, identity or will separate from the aggregate will of its stakeholders. This means that they serve the will of its members rather than the other way around.As a cautionary example, consider how political parties, now run by elite managers and accountable only to super-delegates rather than the people, have followed the corporate playbook and developed an independent will of their own, at times even violating their own guiding principles. Partisanship forces members to adhere to the party line dictated from the top down, violating democratic decision making principles.Another benefit of egoless organizations is that it becomes natural and easy for them to merge, split or overlap as the interests of its constituent members align and diverge over time. Just as within open source efforts, there are many reasons and times when a “fork” is necessary, or when a merger is appropriate (e.g. fork of io.js from node.js and subsequent re-merger).We can align our method or organization through coorganisms with this Fork and Merge pattern to create a #ForkAndMergeEconomy, or better yet a #ForkAndMergeSociety. Finally, when a coorganism has achieved its purpose or been abandoned by all of its supporters, it ceases to exist with no further effort needed.
  • No Walled Gardens – Corporations all want to own the platforms of the future and are competing for those spoils. The incentives to abuse customers with “lock in” policies like those used by existing platforms provided by corporations like Facebook or Microsoft are limiting our free choice. Coorganisms do not incentivize misguided competition like that: they simply fork and merge voluntarily, progressively growing consensus on the best approaches.Fork and Merge also solves the platform predicament” currently afflicting the blockchain ecosystem. The Linux ecosystem is a good example of how well this can work. The result is a rich and diverse ecosystem of projects and services with enhanced “genetic” evolution, better serving all stakeholders.
  • Room for human values – Coorganisms exist to serve humans and human values very directly. This will result in accountable, egalitarian organizations that become an infrastructure jointly owned and controlled inclusively by everyone. This will revolutionize how we relate to each other and work from the bottom up. Coorganisms are well suited to an increasingly crowded planet where interdependence must be taken seriously. Peaceful coexistence in close quarters will fosters bottom up initiative and creativity like never before.
  • Financially sustainable – Any viable project must be able to sustain itself financially, and projects operating as coorganisms are very capable of this. Through the blockchain, customers and beneficiaries can pay for the use of the service easily and transparently through smart contracts that withdraw agreed upon fees, based on usage. If the project is in a startup phase, it can raise funds through crowdfunding or through prepayment by interested users.Anyone working on the project will be paid from the funds collected as prearranged, and this compensation can and should match going market rates. Understanding this requires letting go of the outdated conceptions of “for profits” and “not for profits” – coorganisms are “for creation,” meaning that funds collected go directly towards creating the desired benefits. As there is no middleman nor corporate profits to pay, money will be spent much more effectively. The emphasis on “selling” and manipulating people to purchase things they don’t need will diminish greatly as information asymmetries (advertising) are reduced. The peer-to-peer referral/review process will be more effective.
  • Scalable – The system we are describing here can be used for the smallest personal projects to the largest national and global efforts. Coorganisms can work at any scale. Over time, experimentation and a fork and merge approach will get us there.

5. Action Plan

If you are inspired by the potential of the blockchain for true decentralization and democracy, these are some things you can do:

  • Be mindful and thorough in assessing where we are decentralized and where centralization of power still exists. Push for greater decentralization and power sharing on all of the levels outlined above.
  • In recognition of the broad impact these changes can have on all of humanity, reach out to under-represented constituencies so that their voices and perspectives can be included in developing this future together. If you are not good at that kind of thing, find some bridge builders to help close the gap. In the blockchain future, value will be created through inclusion, not exclusion.
  • Let go of wanting to own the future. Yes, you are a highly qualified person with in-demand skills. You should be well compensated for your work. But please reject the desire for stock options or wanting to exclusively own and control what you produce – the increased beneficial influence you will have on the world will ultimately be a much greater reward.
  • Develop ever better process tools for decentralized coordination and decision-making. Learn from the best open-source initiatives but also from social psychology and research on deliberative democracy. Remember, creativity is fun!
  • Create new, truly fair blockchains and cryptocurrencies that are egalitarian and democratic from the start. No one should have more of a stake, more of a say, or more resources than anyone else in this generation or future generations. This will maximize creativity and the highest value for the greatest number. (If that seems too daunting, create smart contracts that automatically trigger greater and greater decentralization until this goal is reached as the project moves from startup to maturity.)
  • Organize as a coorganism, not a corporation! Corporations suck at decentralization so don’t use them. Try coorganisms! Remember you are not just creating a product, you are creating the better, more joyful and free future for our civilization, one process innovation and experiment at a time.

Can we create coorganisms today? Yes!

All of the essential pieces are available:

  1. Crowd-fund all of the debt and equity you need to get started through an open offering and give them equal voting rights.
  2. Put in place a great deliberative and democratic decision process with referendum power over direction of the project. Get help with this if you need it. (Use managers and coordinators as appropriate on a daily basis if it is helpful, but consider first if they are just an unnecessary crutch.)
  3. Operational funding can come through smart contract controlled payments from your customers (i.e. through small fees linked to purchases).
  4. Use the blockchain to record key decisions and enforce key agreements.
  5. Persuade most of your core staff to be paid in cryptocoins, and pay them well! This is not a non-profit! 🙂 Pay for your servers and most of your expenses with cryptocoins as well.
  6. If you need to accept payment in old-fashioned money rather than cryptocoins, or some contractors or employees need to be paid that way, there are services that make the transfer very easy.
  7. Pay your taxes and file your 1099s so that everyone knows coorganisms are a tool for good. You can start a coorganism under a foundation, until coorganisms will be legally accepted entities: see section 6 below.
  8. Indicate your willingness to collaborate on shared platforms with other efforts. Merge with other efforts when it furthers your goals.
  9. Know that even temporary failure is a part of ultimate success because of the invaluable learning. Share what you learn!

6. How Can the Coorganism Economy be Accelerated?

Public foundations with interest and experience with open source initiatives like the Mozilla Foundation, Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative can play a critical role in building the ecosystem and providing supporting services.

Foundations like these can create a “greenhouse” for incubating coorganisms, creating a climate controlled buffer between the coorganism ecosystem and existing institutions and government.

Unlike corporate incubators, these greenhouses should be open to all legal projects and initiatives. Screening should only be used to check for illegal activity so that screening does not become another mechanism of censorship and centralized control.

The core services coorganisms need scale very well and are not expensive to the foundation. Some beneficial services would include:

  • Providing a legal entity in which the coorganisms can operate and be recognized, in a similar way to how not-for-profit organization can serve as “fiscal agents” for unincorporated projects they support.
  • Facilitating transfers between dollars and cryptocoins, for a fee. Because coorganisms are not individually incorporated, it may be hard for them to establish bank accounts. These financial transfers will be a big help.
  • Filing tax forms (e.g. 1099s), for a fee.
  • Fostering process learning between coorganisms

Thank you for being an advocate for true decentralization and democracy. We look forward to co-creating a better future together with you, from the bottom up.

Many of these ideas first appeared in our submission in September 2017 to the New Shape Prize from the Global Challenges Foundation.

This article was posted on United States of Mind, our blog. We look forward to the day when we can post directly to a censorship resistant, permanent, decentralized blog managed by the blockchain. 2Gather is our project advancing these goals. We can be contacted at info  [at]  2gather.one.