We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, February 21, 2011

Can “Leaderless Revolutions” Stay Leaderless: Preferential Attachment, Iron Laws and Networks

by zeynep from Technosociology

I found this article challenging, but so right on the crucial questions about constructing alternative political structures. The writer is an academic who uses some very specialized concepts, but uses them in an attempt to shed light on the crucial questions for our time. The questions, of course, have immediate relevance for the evolving social-political situation in Egypt.
...few revolutions remain leaderless—which is exactly why it is very important to understand that the diffused nature of this revolution is hardly an inoculation  against the emergence of this dynamic [the tendency for non-hierarchical structures to evolve into hierarchical ones]; in fact, it might even contain the seeds of extreme hierarchy.
I think it is imperative for the human race and its survival that this species must quickly learn how to construct inclusive democratic systems of governance. We have lost a valuable insight since we left the small hunting and gathering societies: our survival depends on the contributions of everyone and upon our natural setting, the planet, for our survival. We must show respect to all human beings and live in harmony with the environment if we are not to self-destruct through wars, famine, climate change, and resource exhaustion.

The main barrier, as I see it, is all the cultural baggage we've inherited since the beginning of the agrarian era that bestowed to us hierarchical systems to organize our societies. It has now become almost second nature for us to move toward such systems.