March 30, 2004 Contributions (w/attribution) to this “Living Essay”: aikidosphere at earthlink.net
To reach society’s perpetual goal – a healthy, happy and sustainable community – individuals and the community must make healthy, happy and sustainable choices. Community choices come from a community’s consciousness. Aikido Activism aims to advance the center – especially the center of community consciousness.
CONCISE PROBLEM-SOLUTION STATEMENT
Three interrelated traditions are quickly becoming antiquated: Adolescent Capitalism, spurred to great excesses by Free-Market Fundamentalism, flourishing unopposed in a predominantly “Not for Aikido” activist culture. The most potent mode of community consciousness – the mobilization of free independent thought via the Internet – must inspire and be inspired by Aikido Activism to advance a newly evolving progressive meme: the Noble Corporation in an age of Individual Empowerment Capitalism.
TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH This essay aims to reveal the natural simplicity of a solution already beginning to happen. With the components of the solution already at hand, we actually stand poised for mobilization against the seemingly insurmountable inertia of errant tradition. Understanding this problem and pursuing its solution is all that is necessary to turn Tragedy of the Commons into Triumph of the Commons.
BASIS OF ANY SOCIAL CHANGE IS IN COMMUNITY CONCSCIOUSNESS Society is the sum of its parts. Individual choices sum up to empowering society – or to inhibiting progress. Making better individual and collective judgments requires greater awareness – so greater fidelity in community consciousness is fundamental to health, happiness and sustainability.
PROBLEM PART 1: ADOLESCENT CAPITALISM The first dimension of the problem, Adolescent Capitalism, is about expanding capability and authority while minimizing responsibility – privatizing profit while socializing (often ignoring) cost. Adolescent Capitalism decreases awareness and inhibits society by influencing government, media and popular opinions to a narrower, self-promoting view, professed to be in the interest of society, yet often concealing tragic consequences counter to that interest. Perhaps the most consequential irresponsibility of Adolescent Capitalism is its undermining of reason by corrupting our community consciousness. Adolescent Capitalism is synonymous with myopic focus on profit.
Adolescent Capitalism has lead to such Tragedies of the Commons as: the tobacco industry’s exploitation of human health for profit, Wall Street’s exploitation of misinformation (human informational health) for profit, the petroleum industry’s unsustainable exploitation of the environment (that supports human life) for profit, and government’s exploitation of misinformation and the office of power (which should support human life) to advance the interests of military industries. In each of these cases, the exploitation was known by some in society who pursued that exploitation because of a popular sentiment that greed is good, and because people felt they could get away with it. Community consciousness was insufficiently conscious (aware) to curb the abuse. Adolescent Capitalism promotes community ignorance, rendering Adolescent Capitalism all the more effective.
PROBLEM PART 2: FREE-MARKET FUNDAMENTALISM The second dimension of the problem, Free-Market Fundamentalism, is a theory produced and supported by Adolescent Capitalism to expand its “commons” – its range of influence – to all countries via international treaties. Free-Market Fundamentalism purportedly argues that the greatest economic efficiency is when markets are self-policing. The expansion of Free-Market Fundamentalism serves Adolescent Capitalism’s goal: maximizing corporate Laissez Faire, permitting greater exploitations and greater profit.
No doubt there are quite a few who truly believe in the free-market extremist viewpoint of Free-Market Fundamentalism, but its potency arises more from its ability to be used as a tool to obscure greed (the myopic-profit motive), enshrouding a campaign of economic hegemony in the veil of “lifting all boats”. It is a debilitating hegemony that expands the influence of corporations from Free-Market-Fundamentalism-oriented national governments to all governments, from Free-Market-Fundamentalism -oriented media to all media, and from Free-Market-Fundamentalism -oriented communities to all communities – promoting Adolescent Capitalism, globally expanding capability and authority while globally minimizing responsibility.
Free-Market Fundamentalist Adolescent Capitalism is better than unjustly exploitive communism, and it is good that the former achieved hegemony over the latter as long as the latter threatened to engulf the world in an unjustly exploitive form of communism; but in a globalized world the new enemy is not the enemy without but the enemy within – the unjust exploitations of our own ascendant Adolescent Capitalism, seeking global expansion for its Free-Market Fundamentalism: expanding global capability and global authority while minimizing global responsibility. In an age of increasingly immense global capabilities, global irresponsibility is global risk of immense proportions, especially when combined with the race to the bottom of international labor and environmental arbitrage!
PROBLEM PART 3: “NOT FOR AIKIDO” ACTIVISM The third dimension of the problem, “Not For Aikido” Activism arises in the tradition of segregating “not for profits” from “for profits.” This tradition, true to the pattern – is about expanding capability and authority of “for profits” while minimizing responsibility by marginalizing activism. Conscientious mobilization (i.e., mobilization aiming to advance responsibility) is marginalized and inhibited when it is relegated to the “not for profit” sector. Apache web-server software (with nearly 70% market share) stands as a Pyrrhic success story of majority adoption of “not for profit”, “open source” information technology. It is interesting to imagine that the open source community’s altruistic leanings might have been largely behind Apache’s success – achieving greater functionality, utility, and applicability (especially to programmers by opening access to the source code). But it is equally interesting to note that its authors gave it away, but it did not have to be this way.
In the future, a similar exploit might instead become the basis for a “moderate profit” initiative, opposing Adolescent Capitalism’s myopic focus on maximizing profit. Such a “moderate profit” initiative can make broader impact by not relegating itself to impoverishment and economic marginalization in the “open source”, “not for profit” sector, but instead advancing a new vision of Individual Empowerment Capitalism directly into the “for profit” sector. “Not for profits” supporting independent thought and community discourse will continue to have keen relevance; but reason, truthfulness, trustworthiness, transparency and accountability will be far more real – more realized – when advanced into the mainstream of commerce. Activism that uses the full power and weight of corporations and governments to achieve transformative progress for the very center and essence of corporate and government culture and behavior is referred to as Aikido Activism.
SOLUTION PART 1: INDIVIDUAL EMPOWERMENT CAPITALISM Individual Empowerment Capitalism stands in stark contrast to Adolescent Capitalism: in the former, capability, authority and responsibility are retained together while also advanced to constituents; whereas, for the latter, capability and authority are the focus, with responsibility often avoided.
Individual Empowerment Capitalism means that the only sustainable collective empowerment has individual empowerment as its goal – avoiding unjust exploitation of the masses.
Is greed good?
Scenario 1: Define greed as "getting more than others" and define good as "good for me". Then I believe the majority of individuals would say that greed is good because they see getting more than others is good for me. But this is a sparking point for global conflict and unjust exploitation.
Scenario 2: Define greed as "getting more than others" and define good as "good for us". Then I believe that the majority of groups (and perhaps the majority of nations) would say that greed is good, because they see getting more than others is good for us. Again this is a sparking point for global conflict and unjust exploitation.
Scenario 3: Define greed as "getting more than others" and define good as "good for all of us" (all humans). Then I believe that the majority of aware individuals and societies would say greed is not good, because they see getting more than others as being unjustly exploitive rather than good for all of us.
When collective empowerment has the goal of individual empowerment, then individual, group and community objectives harmonize, and only ambition that is not unjustly exploitive of others is seen as good, while greed (or the tendency towards unjust exploitations) is seen as bad. But this is an ideal. Practically-speaking, it is society’s conscience – knowledge and information sharing in society – that helps society approach such an ideal by gradually rejecting bad and embracing good ideas and models.
SOLUTION PART 2: DEMOCRATIC MEDIA – COMMUNITY DISCOURSE Free-Market Fundamentalism, via its myopic focus on profits, imposes the inertia of tradition on progress by penalizing responsible and sustainable choices by corporate managers when those decisions adversely affect profitability. It is little coincidence that the opportunity to reverse the imposition of Free-Market Fundamentalism awaited a major inflection point in community awareness – recently made possible by the Internet.
Tragedy will turn to triumph in the commons when – through truer community dialogues enabled by revolutionary democratic media technologies (the Internet, et al.) – community consciousness is raised to awareness of:
How we have been collectively duped into following Adolescent Capitalism’s model of Free-Market Fundamentalism,
How this has weakened society’s immune system – its active watchfulness,
How “not for profit” vs. “for profit” segregation is an inhibiting fallacy,
How global capability and global authority require global responsibility – watchfulness – to avoid immense risks to global society’s health, happiness and sustainability,
Embracing tools of democratic media can unleash tectonic forces of progress and restore society’s immune system: an aware, watchful community consciousness. To do this, a new model is needed, and is already beginning to appear (Individual Empowerment Capitalism). In the new form of capitalism, a Noble Corporation – operating not only responsibly but also accountably – will become celebrated in society and preferentially treated in law.
The basis of Individual Empowerment Capitalism is a culture of active, engaged, watchfulness (democracy in capitalism and communication) leading to truer, more pragmatic knowledge in individuals, empowering individuals and expanding their influence in commercial, governmental and environmental affairs. Noble Corporations are just one, very important, result.
Many corporations already behave responsibly – with due consideration for humanity and environment. To the degree that Adolescent Capitalism is alive and well, even its excesses are impelling new initiatives that constitute the beginnings of Individual Empowerment Capitalism and Aikido Activism: Socially Responsible Investing, Triple Bottom Line accounting, and Total Corporate Responsibility [add attributions to their inventors and practitioners].
LEVERAGING TRANSFORMATIVE MEDIA TECHNOLOGY Which industry segment is ripest for revolution? One clear option is democratic media technologies. Transformative technologies offering intellectual property (IP) protections can build huge defensible enterprises. Is it possible that such power could be turned in another direction beside the myopic-profit objective? In addition, democratic media can also act to catalyze further social and environmental literacy and activism/responsibility.
AIKIDO ACTIVISM Kevin Danaher, in his book “Insurrection” explains how Global Exchange and other progressive organizations are beginning to use corporate practices, such as public relations campaigns (PR), to influence corporate behavior – as Aikido aims to leverage the total momentum in any engagement towards a positive outcome. In some cases, simply the threat of using such PR Aikido Activism impelled progressive change.
The opportunity to use variant forms of Aikido Activism (especially IP Aikido Activism) in high-tech with an empowering result to individuals and society is huge. High-tech industries are known to have occasional major inflection points – a vast shifting of emphasis stemming sometimes from basic innovations – elegant and axiomatic innovations with broad implications. IP Aikido Activism will employ the massive empowerment of IP protections, but instead turn that power into curbing the pressure to conform to exploitation or unsustainability – to build a Noble Corporation with the goal of transforming corporate objectives and culture.
Could Aikido Activism be a sustainable light growing amidst the darkness of resignation to the expansion of Free-Market Fundamentalism, human exploitation, and environmental destruction?
GET INVOLVED This essay was written not just to reveal the new frontier of Aikido Activism – but also represents an effort to bring together fellow pioneers of the Aikidosphere and to mobilize new campaigns within the new model. Please share your thoughts either within this forum LBO-Talk, by emailing the author directly ( aikidosphere at earthlink.net ), or by responding to any of the other forums where this essay has been posted (see below).
Forum URL Post Date No other forums yet (LBO-Talk is first!), although others will be added later today.
Individual Recipients Court Skinner dczd Laina Taylor dcy Maria Chan dcy Van Jones dcz
Historical notes:
Charles E. Roth – an environmental and educational activist – known as the father of environmental literacy (1968)