Operating New Civilization, Model One
New Civilization,
a California non-profit, public-benefit corporation
March 21, 1995
Why We Need to Design, Build and Test New Civilizations
Yes... we are building and testing Model One of a New Civilization -- but
why? You have heard many complaints about the present civilization. The
New Civilization project ultimately will address all of the many complaints
levelled at the "Old Civ," but in a way that is systemic rather than
specific or "band-aid" in nature. For instance, most people complain they
can't make enough money, don't like their job or can't find one, fear crime
but feel powerless to deal with it, regret the decline of the environment
but don't know where to begin to effectively save it. Our approach is to
look at the underlying assumptions that lead to these problems, replace
these with fresh sustainable assumptions, and then put them into action to
test and improve them.
And why do we say 1) design, 2) build, and 3) test? The idea here is that
since this is a truly new civilization, we had better "get organized."
Part of the overwhelm is from the clutter of thoughts that race through
your mind when you try to imagine what putting together a new civilization
would be like.
So just beginning, just taking those oft-mentioned first steps, seems quite
staggering to many. But we propose to minimize staggering and missteps --
and maximize evoluting!
New Civilization offers a productive, creative role to everyone who wants
one, not just to a few as the Old Civ does. New Civ seeks to assemble a
multitude of variously visionary, smart, creative, useful new (and old)
practices, processes, ideas, experiments, and social inventions into a
holistic, potentially global new civilization that is sustainable and
healthy, works for everyone (in space and in time), and respects Nature --
the planet and its principles.
What Seems to Work and What Doesn't
Discussing how to build a new civilization of course doesn't lead
automatically to doing it. This is not to say that a lot of discussion
isn't valuable. We have been involved in several types of periodic and
irregular in-person and by-mail/modem discussions since the early 1980s.
But when it came to creating specific projects to advance the overall idea
of building a new civilization, we found from several false starts that it
wasn't simple or easy to get people moving in the same direction at the
same time toward unified goals. So in late 1992 we decided on something
that seemed a bit strange in the utopian sense: we would use an organized,
very humanized, non-profit, non-state money business structure! We also
found that the monthly by-mail discussion multilogues we had had for some
10 years were helping us in ways we had not anticipated, so we rolled them
into the business structure and split them into two, creating a monthly
Staff Report to supplement our long-standing monthly open-space discussion.
What's New and Improved about the New Civ?
Ultimately, everything! But for now, the next sections of this essay will
briefly catalog the basic human needs that we are addressing in our "Model
One" New Civilization. One thing that is new and improved in all areas is
that this is a truly cooperative effort -- there is no monetary profit
motive or power grab. We are all at the same single level in the
organization: everyone has a say if they want to have it. Everyone has as
many "jobs" as they want, since we have more things to do than we can
expect to ever complete, and we are all dedicated to helping each other on
the crucial assumption that what is good for all is good for "me."
The Human Way Company and its Eight Divisions
One key idea in setting up the business structure, which we call the Human
Way Company of New Civilization, is that we must eventually provide all of
the basic goods and services that the present civilization does or should
provide, and do so sustainably. If we could not offer a viable practical
near-term alternative to the present civilization, we felt we would not
succeed.
So we decided to pursue eight areas of endeavor: FoodCo, HealthCo, LearnCo,
SpaceCo, BankCo, RetireCo, InsureCo, and ThinkCo. These are organized as
Divisions of the Human Way Company. They are staffed by volunteers who are
not paid in state currency, but who earn volunteer credits (one hour of
work earns one credit) in what we call our Time Money system, patterned
after the Time Dollar system that is operating in some hospitals and
service organizations. These Time Money credits are used by the volunteers
to buy the goods and services that are produced by the Division they work
in as well as from the other seven Divisions.
How, and how soon, does this all get to a point where there are enough
goods and services to make the Time Money credits attractive so someone
would want to work for them? We know it will take time to bootstrap the
operations to that point. We have issued our first Services and Products
List and Ordering Form that describes a number of items we are offering for
sale by mail/UPS for Time Money. And the list is growing as we find new
products and services we can add in the near future.
As of this writing we have over 50 volunteers, some local, most outside our
Southern California home base, some of them incarcerated, some overseas,
some only infrequent contributors. We are linked up by our monthly
multilogues, e-mail, phone, fax, and in-person meetings. We find that the
combined use of these communication methods works well. We are also making
plans to develop our donated nine-and-a-half-acre wilderness site near
Ojai, California into a Demonstration Center to show how persons can live
in concert with the land with the help of sustainable low- and mid- tech
devices such as solar energy cookers, solar water distillers, low-volume
water pumps using simple photo-voltaic cells, home-made composting toilets,
solar-heated showers, low-cost low-impact housing structures (which might
also function as a demonstration of possible transitional "micro-houses"
for the urban homeless and very poor), and so on.
Creating Alternative Basic Assumptions that Will Drive New Societies
On a philosophical level, what we are doing is reframing the basic
assumptions we all have about money, health, food, learning, insurance,
banking, retirement, lifestyle and its consequences for others and the
planet, and thinking itself. By so doing, we see how great, intelligent,
much more loving civilizations are possible. We notice that things have a
chance to work better by changing our inherited and mostly unexamined
assumptions about the need to work to "make" money, but not necessarily to
help people, serve society, or preserve our planet. In essence, we are
creating new constructs for these eight areas: one example already noted is
a new form of money that is simply a credit or a debit in an accounting
system that allows the volunteers to buy what they need from the Human Way
Company and its Divisions in which they produce these very same goods and
services. This does two things. It creates a surplus of "money" and local
control over the production of goods and services. And this meshes with
the desire to respect the environment and the need to sustain life on
earth.
In the health area, we are striving to coordinate alternative medicine with
conventional medicine, while taking care to avoid harmful aspects and to
synthesize a greatly improved and much cheaper approach to health.
This ties in with much better food, produced as certified-organic and
without harming the land (we are testing such techniques at our
Demonstration Site). And with this goes effective learning from new
curricula geared to the needs of Model One and beyond.
Banking in this paradigm looks a bit like banking today, but with a lot
more added on. The banking function is designed to tally Time Money in and
out, but after that things look a lot different. Our bankers, like those
in the Mondragon Cooperative in the Basque region of Spain, are eager to
see business enterprises succeed and take an active role in their
management. And the same with insurance, where we take a self-help
approach in which we all assist each other through the difficult times in
our lives.
And so with the retirement function, which operates from cooperative
efforts to care for our much valued older and unemployed brothers and
sisters. And all this is driven by the think-tank function of ThinkCo,
where new ideas and systems are created continuously (daily, when we're
really hot!) to assure we stay on an innovative, positive, fruitful track.
The land, buildings (for offices, residences, retail stores, service
centers, schools and research-and-development), equipment and
infrastructure needed in the New Civilizations are the domain of the
SpaceCo Division, which operates the Ojai Valley site, seeks donations of
real estate and equipment, and does research and development of new devices
to support the other Divisions.
The Next Few Years
It is impossible to forecast what may develop in this work, since there are
many external forces working on society, there are many synergistic
connections yet to come, and technology and human- relations systems and
understanding continue to develop. We know what we presently think we will
be doing in the next few years -- but this, of course, is subject to
change. Ours is an open-ended model that will lead to many iterations of
New Civ Model One and some later versions we can't even conceive of right
now.
The programs in place that we plan to continue include:
1. Marketing and expanding our products and services, including the core
idea of New Civilizations as a guiding concept.
2. Recruiting new volunteers, and creatively associating with existing and
new organizations, projects and networks, looking for every possible venue
and mode of mutual help. ("New Civilization" increasingly will be "New
Civilizations.")
3. Taking the small and large steps to build the eight Divisions and the
administration function into fully operational and well-integrated business
and social units.
4. Expand our local, U.S.A., and international reach.
5. Introduce more and more sophisticated and innovative concepts of
civilizational design into the building and testing process in all areas of
our work.
A Vision of New Civ Life
Life in the never-ending series of improved models of the New Civs will be
happy, creative, healthy, non-competitive, non-adversarial, non-violent,
environmentally sustainable, very intelligent, well-informed, locally
governed, and globally linked by a vast flow of shared information and
inspiration via electronic communications as well as conventional mail and
fax. There will be no patents or copyrights protecting New Civ ideas. All
intellectual property will be freely given and received, and all persons
will be encouraged to be innovators and builders. There will be no
shortage of "money," since all one will need do is work for Time Money
credits in any fashion that contributes to the general good and basic needs
of near and far humanity. It will be a single planetary organism working
-- and having fun -- in concert and balance. But there will continue to be
amazing progress toward better ways of living. Once people realize how
powerful they are when working cooperatively, they will achieve a good
world beyond our present dreams.
For Further Information:
NEW CIVILIZATION
P.O. Box 18155
Encino, California 91416
U.S.A.
Voice Mail: 818-725-3775
E-mail: 71210.177@Compuserve.Com
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