Is it just me, or does there seem to have been a palpable shift in people’s attitude in the last week or so? It feels like suddenly everyone is thinking about how We The People can get out from under the rule of frankly crazed bureaucracies, and are — finally, at long last — willing to start openly discussing options.
Just a few days ago I opened up YouTube to find this from Neil Oliver:
Yes, yes, me please! I fancy one! Over here, Neil!
Joking aside, I’ve been mulling over a few ideas myself and thought I’d jot them down here for you to cast a critical eye over, but before I do that, please indulge me for a brief moment for a teeny bit of Substack housekeeping.
You may have noticed that it’s been a little while since my last post. Dear reader, (and in particular, dear paid subscriber), I tried, I really did, to be one of those Substack authors who can churn out two or more essays, week in, week out, ad infinitum to a set schedule, but I’ve finally conceded that sometimes I just need a bit of thinking time to figure out what exactly I’m trying to say. I’d rather deliver up well thought through, properly researched articles than throw out any old mush in a bid to hit deadlines on a regular schedule, so I’m afraid (especially paid subscribers) you’re just going to have to take them as they come.
Speaking of ‘properly researched’, as much as I enjoyed writing the deep dive articles, 20+ hours a week of research on top of a full time (42 hours a week) job, plus writing a 4+ hour essay each week is not feasible. Until I’m actually making a living from this newsletter, I simply can’t dedicate that sort of time to it and stay sane. So if you would like to see more of my writing, I encourage you to become a paid subscriber. The more people subscribe the sooner I can quit my 9-5 and dedicate myself full time to creating the philosophical groundwork for the revolution we all yearn for.
Ok — that being done; on with the show.
The Walk Away Manifesto
A Path to Freedom for Humanity
Guiding Principles
Homo sapiens can trace its evolution through the common Tree of Life that unites all life on earth. As such, we are every bit as much a part of nature as a microbe or an oak tree. What is good for nature, is good for us and our continued existence.
As with all other species, in order to flourish, humans must live within nature’s principles and laws. These include (but are not limited to):
Take only what you need. No species can over-exploit the earth’s resources and expect to flourish indefinitely.
Diversity confers success. Change is a permanent fixture of life on Earth: what is good in one circumstance may be a liability in another. Species which show an ability to adapt to a range of niches through a diversity of lifestyles are those best equipped to survive long term.
Communities are self-regulating. Natural populations and communities self-regulate through the workings of feedback loops which keeps all members in check. This is as true for whole ecosystems as it is for troops of apes or herds of horses. Far from being chaotic, self regulation is the only system that confers enough flexibility to ensure cohesion throughout the system without unduly preferencing one group over another.
The agricultural revolution removed Homo sapiens from the natural order, creating a situation in which humans took more than they needed, causing them to converge on one way of living, and breaking human’s link with the feedback loops that self regulate communities. In order for humans to thrive, living in a world of freedom and plenty, we need to backtrack down this evolutionary cul-de-sac and return to living within nature’s principles.
Because we are part of nature, we can look to nature to discover the best ways to shape our societies for the greatest good of all.
That means creating societies in which:
We live truly sustainably, never taking more than we need.
We embrace diversity of lifestyles, never assuming that there is only one way to live.
We live within self-regulating communities, with all decisions that affect a population of individuals taken within that population. Imposition of rules or regulations from outside the community must not be tolerated.
Undoing the Bureaucratic Revolution
The promise of the agricultural revolution was that it would free us from uncertainty. Natural food supplies wax and wane with the changing seasons; taking food production into our own hands held the lure that no one need ever go hungry again.
Yet today, in 2023, “As many as 828 million people — about 10% of the global population — regularly go to bed hungry” according to World Vision. At the same time, the “global volume of food waste is estimated at 1.6 billion tonnes, 80% of which is considered edible; this represents more than 30% of all food produced,” according to Forbes.
What is true of food production is also true of other technologies. Every new innovation has been released with the promise of bringing greater equality and more leisure for all; instead, each new technological revolution has meant a more divided society and longer working hours dedicated to increasingly mechanical, specialised, repetitive tasks for those at the bottom.
As the old saying goes: the definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Now, in 2023, even as we’re working longer hours for the promise of a better life, city dwellers are finding themselves squeezed into ever smaller, ever more expensive housing, and the cost of living goes up and up as we’re forced to adopt more and more technologies which, we are assured, will make our lives easier and freer.
The Agricultural Revolution should more accurately be called the Bureaucratic Revolution. It is no coincidence that shortly (in historical terms) after people began tilling the soil for their food, writing arose. Food surpluses meant storage, and storage meant inventory keeping, which requires detailed note taking. As surpluses began to create larger populations leading to the rise of towns and then cities, again, bureaucracies were required to keep track of census data and the collection of taxes. Agriculture - or, rather, complex technologies - and bureaucracy go hand in hand.
We cannot technologically innovate our way out of our current resource crisis, and we cannot manage our way out of a management crisis. Instead, we need to rethink the way society is organised.
The only way to do that sustainably is to return to pre-agricultural revolution times in terms of how we organise ourselves as a species.
That is NOT to say that technology needs to be abandoned. Technology is a neutral resource: it can be put to good ends, or it can be put to evil. The internet, for example, has granted governments, corporations and state institutions more access into - and control over - people’s lives than ever before. At the same time, it has allowed We The People to connect all over the world, creating a worldwide push back against tyranny.
Collectively, we can choose to use technologies for the good of all. But in order to do that, the technologies must be in the hands of the masses, not within the purview only of the elites, and they must be kept in the hands of the masses. The only way to do that is to ensure that there are no elites.
To be blunt, we need to create a renaissance for tribal living: people conducting their day to day affairs not over vast distances, completely isolated from those around them, but in concert with others in their local area. We need to rebuild personal relationships.
While this may sound outlandish, it has been the way that most people have lived even within cultures created by the agricultural revolution. Even today, just a quarter of the world’s population lives in urban areas of more than 1 million inhabitants, while nearly half live in rural areas.
What is a village, if not a modern tribe? As little as 50 years ago, most villages in the UK had a local pub, a local mechanic, a local butcher and greengrocer, and a local village school. Some lucky ones still do. Why, then, are the affairs of villagers handed over to remote bureaucracies instead of being handled themselves? The answer is, plainly and simply, because it makes life easier for administrations, but the result is loss of freedom for individuals over their own affairs.
There is no need for a District or County Council to decide where new homes can be built in a village, if the people of that village are already in agreement over where they want them. There is no reason that people cannot maintain their own schools, doctors’ surgeries, food supply and even utilities. In cases where infrastructure is best shared between neighbouring villages, there is no reason that council members of those neighbouring villages can’t get together and agree on how it should be managed for the good of both communities. The only reason this currently doesn’t happen is because people in District, County, and National Government can take billions of pounds off the taxpaying public to justify ruling over them.
The New Social Contract
Using the principles of nature, we can start to formulate a basic framework for how our new tribal cultures can operate.
Note 1: due to the principle of diversity, each village must be free to innovate as much as possible. In the same way that the States of America are each able to set their own laws according to the wishes of the people of that state and what is best for them, so too must the people of each local community be able to decide as much as possible about what sort of local culture they want to abide by. What is good for one won’t be good for another - and that’s the point. No one solution to a common problem can be said to have total supremacy over all others, and no interference from outside can be permissible for the species to survive.
Note 2: I have used the word ‘animist’ to give a title to the core principles that apply to individuals. The website ‘Learn Religions’ describes Animism thus: “Animism is the idea that all things—animate and inanimate—possess a spirit or an essence. First coined in 1871, animism is a key feature in many ancient religions, especially of indigenous tribal cultures. Animism is a foundational element in the development of ancient human spirituality, and it can be identified in different forms throughout major modern world religions.”
Animism isn’t a religion in its own right; tribal people all had their own names for natural phenomena, their own stories about the spirits that inhabit natural phenomena, and their own beliefs about how they interact with humans. But they were all agreed on the fact that a spirit does inhabit creatures and inanimate objects alike, giving life to plants and animals, and movement to the wind, the seas, and even the rocks over a long enough time period. That belief is essential if humans are to live within the Community of Life on Earth and thus survive as a species, as it creates respect for natural resources. It is for that reason that I include at this point…
The Animist Seven Commandments
All life carries within it the eternal spirit, and must be respected as such.
The inanimate Earth is spirit made manifest. It must also be respected as such.
Take only what you need.
Do not wantonly store up, nor deny others of all species fair access to resources.
Give thanks for all you take and use.
Do not prescribe to others how they may live, that they will not prescribe to you how you may live.
Do not seek to throw upon others your responsibilities, lest you throw away your freedom.
Just as there are common principles that individuals must abide by if humans are to flourish, so there are common principles that must guide communities if balance is to be maintained long term.
Community Rules
Appoint council members who are known in person by all the community, and who demand the respect of the whole community, to be your judges and protectors
Council members must live within the community they lead, and walk among the people whose lives they affect.
Tithes for the public good may not exceed more than 10% of a person’s total income. No tax may be levied on assets, goods, or services, or on life events.
Fiat currency is prohibited. Coin must be of gold, silver, or platinum. Barter economies are legitimate and cannot be prohibited by councillors, although an accounting may be kept for tithing purposes, for no more than two years.
Land which falls without the boundary of any community is designated common land, and is a shared resource for all neighbouring communities. Each community must nominate someone to a shared council on management of that land.
No community can store up, or block access to, common resources - take only what is sustainable.
No community can dictate to another community how they are to manage their internal affairs.
If a dispute between two communities arises, they can appeal to the council members of a third neutral community to adjudicate the matter.
The Short Term
It should be noted that the schematic laid out above is a long term goal, for say 50 to 100 years hence. In the short term, many people are unable to move their lives to create intentional communities, and that difficulty must be recognised and accounted for.
I propose that starting today (2023), freedom seekers start to create a parallel economy through the use of co-ops. This would work as follows:
Anyone with a trade, either in physical goods or services, can join the cooperative, for a set monthly or annual fee (at a rate to be agreed among members).
Membership of the cooperative confers a reduction in price / fees for goods or services from all other members of the cooperative (at a rate to be agreed among members).
Members of the cooperative can sell their goods and services outside of the membership, but at a higher rate. Fellow members must be prioritised in the event of shortages of either goods or time to provide the service.
Members of the cooperative are also permitted to buy goods and services from other providers, but are encouraged not to do so as far as possible.
Secondarily to this, I also propose the creation alternative public services — mainly schools and health practices — along similar lines. Medical services in particular will take a bit of thought as there will be legalities to deal with, but homeschooling collectives can certainly be put into place, whereby a group of parents who homeschool join forces to host, and to teach the children. For example, say five families opt to homeschool; a parent from each family negotiates with their employer to reduce their working hours to a four day week, and each of those five takes a different day off. The children from those families would then go to Parent A on Monday, Parent B on Tuesday, Parent C on Wednesday and so on. In this way, the children can be schooled outside of the official system without parents having to give up all their income to be at home full time.
Through these methods and more, local communities will naturally start to spring up. When the community is of sufficient numbers, it should attempt to begin non-cooperation with the local official economy, by withdrawing taxes and purchasing power from government authorities and corporations.
Over to You
These are just my ideas. They are the product of well over a decade of working within the political realm, reading political philosophy, and studying history - but they are still merely my sketch at what a passive revolution to bring about self-determination might roughly look like.
I encourage you to do two things:
SHARE THIS PAGE. The more people are considering how we can exit the system, the better.
COMMENT BELOW. I would love to hear your feedback. What, among this admittedly brief sketch, appeals to you? What doesn’t? What do you think could be tweaked to make it better, and how would you do that? Let’s really start to get a conversation going.
Finally, if anyone is reading this who has a podcast or their own substack or website discussing these and related issues, I would welcome the opportunity to collaborate with you. It’s only through sharing our thoughts and ideas with each other that progress toward freedom will be made.
So, over to you!
I like your manifesto, in the longer term this seems to be the most sustainable way to organise. Human nature being what it is (our enculturation for most of us, and the psychopathy amongst us) will be the challenges to be dealt with. But we are where we are, and have no option but patiently forge forward.
Decentralisation or localisation are the locus themes around which our attention needs to gravitate as we gradually move forward. It’s a complete change in mindset and reversal of the centralising tendencies we’ve been subject to for over a century.
Thankyou for your thoughtful reflections in this area.
I shudder at the endorsement of States’ Rights in saying, “ In the same way that the States of America are each able to set their own laws according to the wishes of the people of that state and what is best for them, so too must the people of each local community be able to decide as much as possible about what sort of local culture they want to abide by.” States Rights gave us the prolongation of slavery in America, and is now creating total bans on abortion. Christian Nationalists would love to see the development of states governed by a theocracy of their making. I shudder at a future of tribalism. There will alway be the greedy and the power-hungry who will endeavor to put themselves in control of resources and people, and then to expand that control to a wider area by creating their own web of allegiances and bureaucracy. Yes, global civilization as we know it change drastically when fossil fuels run out and consequences of our overuse of the planet come crashing down on our heads, and tribalism may be the next phase of human social evolution, but I don’t see it as a desirable solution to be pursued at present.