A regular political conversation and making-progress get-together, followed by a friendly social dinner for those that have time to stick around. This is an opportunity for you to listen to what other people are thinking and to share your ideas. Discussing problems and opportunities and establishing a flow of concrete action, making change happen and transforming society together. English, Français, Deutsch, with translations as needed.

'What kind of society do we want?', and more specifically, 'How do we want society to operate?'

This topic emerged from the first session of Wednesday, November 7th. Present were Stephan, Javier, Salony, Rosette, Chris, Richard and Roger ....

We started off with the question, 'What are we not doing that we could be doing, and what is blocking us?'. The first answer that was offered had to do with spirituality. The claim was that we are 'not really human'; we don't have 'love in our hearts'; we have 'lost our souls', and our sense of respect. We need to recover our humanity through appropriate practices, such as Buddhism. Our society is how it is because of how individuals are, and only if individuals change, society can change.

An observation was then offered, that social collapse leads people to think in new ways. In Benghazi, for example, with the collapse of Libyan society, people began to self-organize, creating a voluntary police force, organizing medical care, etc. But unfortunately, people then reverted to familiar hierarchical ways. They lacked the self-confidence to continue on the self-organizing path.

From this observation, there is hope that the general economic collapse could be a path to change, leading people to leave behind bad emotions and start a new way of life. But there is also the possibility that the collapse could lead to the re-emergence of fascism, or some other kind of bad outcome.

A suggestion was offered that it might be good to begin developing self-organization in small groups, organizing our own food etc. This could be an example to others and could spread. The observation was offered that we don't need to read anarchists books to do this, but simply need to follow our instincts and gut feelings.

Returning to the question of 'lacking self-confidence', the suggestion was offered that we can gain the necessary self-confidence through the experience of participating in collective decision-making. This could lead to a feeling of collective empowerment. As evidence for this, it was observed that 'primitive' tribes do make their decisions collectively, and do have the necessary kind of self-confidence. It was also observed that such societies have a strong sense of spiritual awareness, along with respect for the Earth and things spiritual.

Toward the end, it was suggested that in order to overcome hierarchy, people need to be unified. It was suggested that unity could be achieved by further inquiry of the question 'What kind of society do we want?', and more specifically, 'How do we want society to operate?'.

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