Report from Occupy Movement in Toronto

Friday, October 21, 2011

The creature recently conceived by Adbusters in Vancouver, Occupy Wall Street, has spread to over 1,000 cities internationally. It is now called Occupy Together.

I'm actually in St James Park at King and Church at the Occupy Toronto site.

On October 15, the park next to the cathedral thronged with a huge crowd. It is hard to think of it as a protest movement, or a transformative movement like Healthcare Reform in the US. Thankfully there is no shared message that would create people who were 'for' or 'against'. It is an expressive movement where each person reaches deep inside to give their authentic contribution to the discussions and collaborations from moment to moment.

I went on my first Occupy march this evening - through Dundas Square. We saw a live newsfeed of the march (I’d be happier with ‘parade’) playing on the CITY TV billboard while we walked through the square.  Dancing at the Yonge-Dundas intersection, holding up traffic while singing "This is what democracy looks like" was both fun and informative.

Our police escorts seemed happy that they got to ride their bikes for a while after standing around all day.

Meeting lots and lots of truly amazing younger collaborators is delightful. They are consciously holding a very peaceful, non-judgmental vibe. Pacifists, anarchists, Buddhists, vegetarians, union folk, webmasters, etc. have all gathered. First we are learning to talk and be with one another without mutual oppression. Mutual oppression is what we are choosing to move beyond.

An Occu-Pie moment:
A woman from CITY TV asks the folk at the food tent where all this hot stuff comes from. A man with a ladle says, People show up with pots of homemade soup and goodies, put them on the table. Then we serve it. She asks, "You mean... ordinary people?" He says, "Yes." I felt like saying, "No. Very kind people who support this movement and contribute in their own way." I didn't say anything, not wanting to disrupt the vibe.

occupytoronto.org

 

Evolution towards Capitalism and Beyond

Here briefly are five historic precedents in terms of types of economies.  They suggest that the evolution within economies is far from over.

1. Clan-based Economies - where exchanges benefited extended families

These were precedents for what today are household exchanges (within non-markets and communal forms of organization) where labour is unpaid.

2. Hunter-gatherer Economies – where exchanges spread beyond families

Labour was then paid for in a community currency such a beads, or wampum.  These economies were the precedents for local trading systems within alternative markets and alternative capitalistic forms of organization

3. Agricultural Economies – where exchanges expanded to circulate around cities as early centres of civilization

These were precedents for non-profit state enterprises, again, within alternative markets and alternative capitalistic forms of organization where labour is paid for in 'national' coin-based currencies.

4. Manufacturing Economies – where exchanges circulate around the world via a few financial centres

These are capitalistic forms of organization where labour is increasingly paid for using electronic transfers amongst international banks.

5. Service Economies - where exchanges are increased through manipulation and control measures so as to far exceed actual public needs or demands

The manufacturing economy requires many services to solve that problems that manufacturers face. To increase sales, manufacturers require news and entertainment outlets able to attract viewers to look at their advertising plus psychologists and public relations companies to orchestrate people's buying behaviour. See the BBC's four part documentary, Century of the Self... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUYFr-uDQgg

The initial type of service was providing large loans for buying land, plus building or leasing factories. The expansion of influence of capitalism, as the means of getting things done, started in 19th century England.

The income generated through loans was ploughed into widespread speculation or gambling at stock exchanges, say in derivatives, or the future prices of currencies. By the year 2,000, widespread speculation had grown to about 1,000 times the size of the 'real economy' of labour-based markets. The Internet had become the world casino for gambling on speculative shares and 'future prices'.
By now speculation and gambling without use of labour have hopefully been exposed as relatively useless in terms of generating value for society.

The Emerging Economies

Emerging economies build on, but do not replace, prior economies.  They simply add to the complex mixture of economies that already exist.  For example, the agricultural economy once engaged most of the population of all countries.  Now in Canada, though agriculture shows no sign of going away, it only engages about 2% of the workforce. 

Emerging economies will probably rely on ever more complex forms of organization and forms of payment for services than we seen in their historic precedents.


6. Economies of coordination, for Mutual Fulfillment  –  


7. Economies of self-awareness for Conscious Evolution - Everyone knows the effects of his or her actions.


Conclusions:
Note the seven developmental stages proposed within this framework.  Say we are at stage 5.  Further stages are already occurring informally, and are becoming more apparent.  

We're not at the end of capitalism, and draw hope from understanding that we are not at the end of an evolutionary progress in terms of economies.

Thanks for input from Jim Delaney who studies various economies that exist today, with special interest in Feminist Economics.
delaney.jim@gmail.com---

Armineh Keshishian: Founder of Evolution Dance Theatre http://www.theevolution.com/, Certified Financial Planner with Investors Group:

What Andrew is doing is fabulous and really valuable। He has an amazing talent for accepting different kinds of people with an open heart.

Social Creators is a network where people can help each other bring their visions forward. Visionary people are drawn to the group to participate in a form of co-creation that can help many other people। At this point I have come for a few weeks and I am enjoying it and have invited others to join.

Natural Ways to Organize Society

To learn from "how nature organizes" doesn't mean looking at wolf packs in the wild, or how geese get together before migrating, etc. It means observing things while we think of them as "systems", or self-sustainable, constantly changing, yet complete wholes.

The simplest of all systems we can study are atoms and molecules. They are self-sustainable, functioning, moving, yet balanced organizations of electrons, protons and neutrons.

We can learn a lot from the seven stages of the Periodic Table of Elementary Properties.  A huge amount waits to be discovered in terms of similarities with other systems of higher degrees of complexity. Plants and animals are, of course, much more complex systems. But perhaps they differ from atoms and molecules mostly in terms of their degree of their complexity. 

However, if the patterns found in how atoms organize are relatively simple, these same fundamental patterns could occur again and again continually throughout the world of plants and animals. 

Perhaps we can become aware of overall patterns that lend themselves to how we can organize in more natural ways as an international society.

This way of thinking is the basis of the Healing Economy of Conscious Evolution.

A system always finds balance, or it falls apart.  Its close enough to perfect balance, or it does not exist.  Perhaps, at this and every other point in our evolution as a society, there is something perfect in terms of the inherent balance of what goes on inside each individual, and as a planet-wide society.  Our natural capacity to approach perfection of balance could continue to move society to higher levels of complexity.  

Nature will not change over to being less reliant on balance, no matter how much we may want it to be otherwise.  It is up to us to become more conscious of this evolutionary development from perfect balance towards more complex stages of perfect balance.

Coordination by Neighbourhood

Pulling away from the details of daily news reports may be a challenge.  But without standing back, we won't recognize the evolution within social and economic development that is occurring as a backdrop to the news stories.  Social and economic evolution is being created by millions of people.

Einstein pulled away from the details of nationalism.  He pointed out how nationalism was a childhood illness of humanity, much like measles.

More of us are having to find ways to prosper, or survive, with less reliance on buying new goods and services.  This is leading to evolutionary change.

As we become more efficient and learn to do more with less we will find that coordination between individuals, families, and neighbourhoods, becomes more important.  Coordination is the next big economic need that we have to find ways to fulfill.

Coordination cannot be imposed internationally, from the top-down, and remain efficient at the same time.  One government structure overseeing the world would be unbelievably out of touch with people's everyday needs.  It would be incredibly inefficient.

International coordination is better achieved amongst individuals in neighbourhoods, rather than in centralized ways.  The alternative to increased centralization is doing things in distributed ways across networks.  

International coordination is beginning to happen over aspects of the Internet that will become like a nerve system for international society.  

Using this blog we will continue to share in this new found social maturity.  We can discuss what we / you, anticipate will be subsequent stages of society, so that we all benefit.  My bet is that this will involve integrating ourselves, and all the resources around us in our neighbourhoods, into a more realistic social perspective.  I think we will find much more realistic perspectives on organizing ourselves as an international society by looking at how nature organizes things.

An Enlightened Society

I live in a country that's full of liars and saints.  We say that we love the cold winters yet travel to warmer climates to 'get away'.  It's called March Break.  


We also walk on water.  In fact we even play games on water.  The trick is to get the water to freeze first.

An idea has circulated on this land for many centuries: "Life is to be enjoyed no matter what".  We've learned to lie to ourselves about many things that go on here.  You probably know how our minds come up with ways to justify putting up with things we do not love, value, or find fulfilling.  We have even found ways to put up with things that no longer work, or have outgrown their usefulness.

We can lie to ourselves that society is well organized.  In some parts of the world you can hear, "We like our tyrant.  We need him and his strongmen to protect us from one another and maintain stability."  Or perhaps, "Electoral democracy is the best system we've been able to come up with to date."

But then we'd have to ignore all the other great ways of organizing in the world.  If we look at nature, for example, we'd see that after 14 billion years of experimentation it still favours self-organization of things and also of interactions amongst things.  That is something to ponder. 

If we look at the Great Law of Peace of the Six Nations people of Michigan, New York State and Southern Ontario, then we'd find a way of organizing recognized as having excelled for hundreds of years.  In fact the founding fathers of the USA explored the Great Law of Peace when looking for something that worked better than what was, and is still going on in Europe.  

We need to address the need to adapt our societies.  Capitalism now produces more beggars than millionaires.  We're producing an abundance of goods.  We need to ask whether things can still be considered goods when collectively their production and disposal destroys our planet. 

Is electoral democracy about spending billions of dollars to hire and fire the people we choose to represent us?

Perhaps we can take some of that energy we put into improving our own circumstances, and ourselves as individuals and families, and apply this to improving how we chose to organize as societies.

We can aim for an enlightened society.  A good place to start is to put energy into researching those methods from around the world, that already work well, but that we have not thought of using in our own society.  

Nations are essentially legal constructs that worked well to some degree.  Legal concepts of individual nations became how we drew lines in the sand.  However, these ideas of nations are a major cause of conflict, war and therefore death and ecological destruction.  Ideas of nations have stopped the people of the world coming together into a seemless whole.  

I believe humanity is able to adapt.  We can advance beyond countries full of liars and saints.  

A society of light is an international society.  It comes from enlightened responses.  We take a close look at our shadowy fears, our thoughts of revenge, posturing and exploitation amongst nations.  


A society of light is where everything that people cherish in the world is explored, and validated.  We can consider whether those things that others cherish can be implemented so as to improve how things are done locally.  

Andrew

What does the Omni-dimensional Alliance I'm hearing about refer to?

It refers to working together towards revitalization of society within a place.

Revitalization means more than putting up new buildings or working together to sell new products and services.

To understand revitalization requires learning to work creatively in ways that embrace all aspects of life.

Discovering how DNA works was not the key to understanding life, or revitalization, no matter what you've heard about in documentaries. Life is partly physical - something based on light energy, nerve impulses, and molecules that include DNA. Life also includes places for everyone and everything to grow and mature.

Life is about a shared vitality amongst people, animals, and plants, both locally and throughout the ecology of lands and oceans. Life includes our minds, emotions, the unique individuality of our creative expressions, and the unifying influence of a team spirit.

To revitalize our neighbourhoods requires us to develop and bring forward an omni-dimensional approach that embraces all visible and invisible dimensions within life.

With a mission of international renewal, why focus on revitalization of our neighbourhoods and rural areas?

Large scale renewal is the result of small responses. We respond or adapt how we do things in order to adjust to changes in our surroundings. The neighbourhoods and rural areas that immediately surround us are places where we are most able to respond, encourage learning and creativity, plus enjoy a shared vitality and team spirit.

Commuting to a factory or head office has become less important in what's new and creative about society. Entrepreneurs live, work and collaborate in neighbourhoods. Local collaborations and less commuting becomes important for a clean and healthy ecology.

Who do we partner with if we are to help local entrepreneurs?

The alliance is for people in the learning and creative field, organizations that bring people together in order for us to prosper and become all we can be -

schools, libraries, theatres, galleries,

land and building developers who want to stand out,

movie, television and web content producers who work with neighbourhoods

associations committed to professional development of their members,

hotel and resort operators that need our neighbourhoods and rural areas to thrive and be renewed if visitors are to enjoy greater experiences while working and relaxing.

The alliance is a way for organizations to enter into healthy working relationships with neighbourhoods. There will be one number to call, and one invoice to process, whenever leaders in an organization want to respond to opportunities in their working environment, and adapt how things get done. As neighbours we're partnering with organizations in an easy way so that we all benefit from the brilliance present within our local networks of entrepreneurs.

As neighbours we're facilitating how organizations link together to derive greater benefit from one another.

What's next?

Click at the end of the page to become a friend of this social creator network blog. Contact biznouveau @ gmail.com to enquire about upcoming events. Take some courses in news ways to work more creatively and effectively.

If you're with an organization, association, or a media producer, contact confercentre @ gmail.com, and find out more about alliance membership.

There's more to life and revitalization than we've considered to date. There are better ways to express ideas about vitality, spirit, revitalization, cultural renaissance, health and wellness. We're anchoring these ideas within a place. We've started where we are.

That is what the social creator network is about - starting conversations, having more rewarding collaborations, and introducing smarter ways to get things done.