The Pocket Revolution Demystified
“Pocket revolution takes no great risk, but mediates the risks we already face. It does not complicate or confuse, but rather deconstructs the complexity to find reason and benefit of local relevance.” Symbioticfuture ~ 2015
It’s an understood that those ambitious for power and wealth will often take advantage of others in forging opportunities to achieve their ends. It is just as understood and that so called evils of society will fill vacuums of power and create harm and oppression. Bitter or angry people will look for opportunities for revenge either on those they hate, or on the vulnerable people and beauty in their path. That said; the average of all humanity and life is empathy compassion and care for others. The average of humanity and creatures is ambition for prosperity and a drive to goodness, health, and stewardship. Is it not likely than, that poorly designed or previously manipulated systems are serving to amplify malice, oppression and greed while undermining the human desire for the simple good? Are we victims of systems? Certainly we are, but those are our human systems and if they are not there to serve for good, what are they there for? What is good? Societal good is healthy richly rewarding life available to those who have the slightest portion of ambition and will for goodness, without harm to others. In that is liberty, personal choice, diversity, and access to the basics that nature provides for vibrant health.
“It [pocket revolution] is a defiant action of local diplomacy to create contrived economy of scale and build intelligent prosperity.” Symbioticfuture ~2015
Can 200 people in a home create goodness? Resources can limit the societal good, but society today is more likely to limit the resources in a dance called supply and demand. It is a card to play, or a shackle of slavery if you will allow a stretch, which is controlled by legal and illegal cartels occupying contrived power vacuums. The fundamental resource of our living planet is the functional ecosystem which cycles, cleans and amplifies the production of all that life requires in an elegantly endless self repairing system for the diversity of life. It functions in so far as mass of life finds non-destructive contributory form and a relevant balance and even then demands the balance without apology. Parasites draw off and draw down the excess including any life out of balance. It is a system harsh in a way, and yet nothing more than governmental teeth to impose a fair and balanced equity on its subjects. This is the dance of life, that we have catastrophically disrupted to maintain the “endless growth” that is needed for our economic miracle to succeed. Our economic miracle cannot succeed for it is not a miracle it is instead a growing debt to nature and a drawdown of the fundamental resource of life. How far it can be drawn down, no one knows. Yet one thing within grasp is an analysis of whether the system as a whole is creating goodness equitably and in balance. Is our faltering freight train of industrial rampage creating gross national happiness, prosperity and a future for civilization?
No; unequivocally, the answer is a flat-out and blatant unquestionable no. Can we do better? We are repeatedly told that we cannot through fear and endless streams of confusion and turmoil experts contradicting experts with believable predictions of gloom and doom. We even have religious anecdotes suggesting it is a divine fate that we, willingly or unwillingly, will succumb to. Most choose than to live for today in a submission to command and dictate reveling in shallow rewards of colors, games, and magic machines with ever more labor saving devices that we give our endless gift of labor for. Deconstruct any single issue and it seems mystically simple, then move on to experts and debates of those more informed than yourself and we are left to assume that anything only seems simple because of the simple ignorance of the non-expert. Besides, we are tired and we need the extra hours to recoup with someone else doing the thinking and spoon feeding it back to us. It is easier that way. When it is confusing we can always buy something, or watch a game. If we are younger, we can play a game or perform some electronic cleverness with…er … I mean to friends.
“The old system steamrolls ahead as we, using the support offered by the old system, build the new in our best interests and in a global brotherhood of common interest with the diversity of other local communities across the globe.” Symbioticfuture ~ 2015
In nature we had basics and some would say the deep and enduring dream is to show what we can do with basics to create a prosperity and richness of existence worthy of our long 80 years of life. “Prosperity and richness of existence” in nature is called a niche. How do we hold our access? By filling a niche, that’s all. We carve out a clever or a brilliant niche according to our talent and ambition and we fill it with ourselves, our chosen support and companion creatures, and our friends and family. Find a place of value in the whole and you have life and health. If there is no niche, there is no life and health. And if the niche destroys its support system—ecosystem—there is no hope and no future.
“Pocket revolution is a compromise with preconception giving those we differ from in community the benefit of the doubt.” symbioticfuture ~ 2015
In our modern era, placeholders withhold the space and the basics for life; they reserve the niches and create artificial ones with artificial support systems that they control, and then they meter them back to those who concede and obey by labor in a dance called industrial civilization. Basics that the earth provides for free are withheld to use as a carrot to coax labor and energy from people. When the carrot becomes the only choice, they demand and it becomes the shackle of civilized modernity allowing for soft enslavement of the masses by those who hold power and therefore reserve access to the most basic resource convincing us that it belongs rightly and lawfully to them. This is accepted under several labels; Nietzsche’s right of the greater to control the lesser, fate, manifest-destiny, but more often now days it is called hopeless and helpless to change things. Those who previously prospered or successfully play the system, amass wealth and power and control of the vast width and depth of the earth’s “resources” and useful land. They print and loan back ‘paper power’ to buy trinkets major and minor and luxuries as the world has never seen before. The struggling are buoyed by their “prosperity” which is metered as a function of their docile submission of time, labor, and human energy. Wealth and Poverty are defined by the count of monthly “paper power”, access to credit, and the collected wealth of new trinkets or lack thereof. The theoretical goal is to employ everyone at a pay level that is defined by an ability to purchase that which is produced by the employing system even if it is with loaned ‘paper power’ paid back with interest. Employment means ability to borrow and repay over time and to buy a lifetime’s succession of product with money that pays for the labor and production of what is bought. This is also known as ‘alleviation of world poverty.’ It is the dance of our age, melancholy and wearisome as it may seem, it has plenty of fringe benefits also known as distractions, propaganda, entertainment, toys, and addiction. Dignity, self determination…hmm, well you can’t have everything, after all, if we upset the balance that ‘they’ have the world precariously maintained in, we might all suffer starvation, torture, or worse. You understand, the lesser of two evils: a life of servitude to build up the wealth and power of a few at the expense of the earths beauty and functionality and hope for future generations, to avoid that scary sort of monster of the implied reality we don’t understand but are constantly and systematically reminded of.
Pocket revolution is a quiet revelation understood in the soul of a people that life is too precious to be victims of past and present mistakes. It is a decision to act collectively in local community to create a local prosperity with strength of standing. The underlying assumption is in the intrinsic good sought by the average person and therefore the majority of people. Desire for good however, is not wisdom and clarity of vision and purpose, and this cannot be expected of the mass of people in organic form. Organization to empower a democracy that fulfills the soul desires of the people as a whole is through thoughtful evaluation and grassroots strategy. It is girded with ongoing stewardship and adaptation as we build culture locally that truly breeds dignity, liberty, self determination, prosperity, peace and amplified good in community and in sustainable ecosystem. The old system steamrolls ahead as we, using the support offered by the old system, build the new in our best interests and in a global brotherhood of common interest with the diversity of other local communities across the globe. Pocket revolution is a compromise with preconception giving those we differ from in community the benefit of the doubt. We understand that all of us will ere in assumptions, beliefs, and actions over our lifetimes, and aside from those effecting radical consequences to others, we owe fellow pilgrims grace and a space for their chosen route to life, liberty, and discovery.
What might the process look like?
“Then the complexity of the external top down imposition sloughs off like the scab of a wound leaving the renewed and self regulating community…” Symbioticfuture ~ 2015
Each community, in an allegorical sense, is a collection of tribes with different underlying assumptions and therefore a different path and motive. Pocket revolution requires that we look past our differences and alley with one another over commonalities, needs and the hope of a future for our children. What is crucial? What is crucial to me but not my right to impose on another? What is crucial to a sustainable and regenerative local culture with a future prospectus of overflowing prosperity? That is our commonality? Every community is different just as every situation and environment is different. What is crucial? What is crucial to our community, but of debatable consequence outside? What is crucial to us in the global reality that this world is a vast collection of communities just like us? What simple principles and compromises can we agree on with all the various local communities of the world to effect greater durability of our own local community and culture? You see? pocket revolution is an understanding that the greatest complexity is in the ideals of the individual, then progressively simpler to family, to “tribe” to community, to regional foodshed, to nation, and to the other collective tribes of world nations. By the time we get to the top and look, very little remains except an expectation of local stewardship and goodness driven governance. Even terms need not, in fact must not, be over defined.
Influence outside is gained not primarily by force of action, but by the sharing of local excess and success where it fits the struggles of another locale. Excess should be shared with an eye to prevent future lack in fellow communities by building up the degraded soils, hope, and ambition. This is one of the the sticky widgets of the whole deal. Local communities done right are balanced local economies complete with collectivism, cooperation, and competition balanced out by culture built out of an amalgam of intentional indigenization and the underpinnings of the people involved. Regionally, we share our greatest degree of excess in the local ambition, talent, food, fiber, and biomass region. Again the sharing beyond the locale should trail off in relation to distance and efficient trade routes. We may rather see, if not agreed upon in advance, outside communities as our productive competitors. No, that is not a good relationship outside of the locale’. The competition that we should revel in is to be the best stewards and the greatest multipliers of good. Again a sticky widget, we should agree upon in advance to promote transparency and honesty that we could be proud of something real and tangible, that we feel and secrete from the pores of existence. Simple local and regional competition, deemphasized but understood, patriotic pride in a job well done in so far as it makes its honest showing through the ebb and flow of prosperous and happy people excelling at life in the direction of their priorities toward the general stewardship is enough.
So pocket revolution changes our world but not by force. It is a defiant action of local diplomacy to create contrived economy of scale and build intelligent prosperity. Pocket revolution is soft activism, the kind that agrees on commonalities wherever there is the will, and never infringes or threatens liberty, dignity, or self determination. Pocket revolution takes no great risk, but mediates the risks we already face. It does not complicate or confuse, but rather deconstructs the complexity to find reason and benefit of local relevance. It creates more culture than system and more humanity than contrivance.
Where does it start? It starts with a change of perspective. It starts by leaving the self who was a victim and finding the heroic and active self. It progresses through reasoned strategy to simplified common needs and desires. Finally, one step at a time the local people build relevant prosperity, cultural values, and a supportive environment. Then the complexity of the external top down imposition sloughs off like the scab of a wound leaving the renewed and self regulating community, its nation, and its world. “If not me then who, if not now then when?” Pocket revolution bolters it with an emphatic ‘us’ coupled to the obvious ‘now’ and a grassroots strategy of ‘how’ that we can all understand.
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