Friends, Every society has a resonant field, part of the culture, that keeps people aligned with the essential operations of that society. In the Middle Ages, the field was aligned with the structure-elements of the society...the nobility, the peasantry, the priesthood, the merchant class, the military, etc., and their various relationships. People were 'aligned with operations' by knowing what was expected of them in their role within these structures. The resonant field helped stabilize the structure-elements. Today, in our capitalist societies, the resonant field is 'economic growth', and people at all levels are aligned out of their need to survive and compete in this particular economic game, a game that has been set up to achieve that end. With growth as a resonant field, structure-elements themselves become subject to 'market forces', and subject to change, contrary to the stabilizing nature of the Middle Ages field. Given my investigations into the possibility of real democracy, I find myself wondering about a particular kind of resonant field-- one that some of us think might be possible to achieve. Wisdom Councils, for example, envision the emergence of a 'We the People' consciousness, a sense of unanimous public understanding and intention. That is the kind of idea I'm thinking of, but some elaboration is required to get at the full depth of the resonant field I'm thinking of. Let's consider a strong form of 'We the People'. Let's imagine a society has somehow gotten to the place where there is unanimous common understanding of 'societal direction' at each level of society, an understanding that each citizen 'owns'. In this case the 'resonant field' would be 'our (multi-level) society agenda'. People would align because they own the agenda (at each level). The 'field' would be expressed not mainly as 'dialog processes', but in the way people work together; it would be expressed in collaboration and collaborative forms at all levels. In considering how such a society might develop, I think the metaphor of an organism, a social organism, is useful. The cells of this organism are citizens -- intelligent beings -- and the nerve & muscle connections are the various relationships among the cells and clusters of cells. Such a society would strive to behave coherently in pursuit of its goals -- and it would evolve distributed, non-linear means of doing so. In holding ownership of the 'field', citizens would also own the prerogative to make changes to systems and seek new synergies for relationships. One would expect 'neural connections' and 'body linkages' to optimize themselves by means of organic developmental processes. Each cell of our organism is intelligent, and the organism generates a universal resonant field, which provides a measure of 'success' and 'failure'. If results of initiatives disappoint, then everyone holographically takes that on board, as regards 'how we did things', and 'what we could do better', and 'what new linkages we need'. There's a positive feedback loop toward operational optimization and flexibility, and no way to tell how it might play out (as with neural nets). But as an end result, one would expect such a society to just 'know' how to respond to a given emergency or event, without much needing to be said. And if a new direction were adopted in the resonant field, everyone would go out and do what they knew needed to be done, by themselves and through relationships, to bring operations into resonance. When Republics came into existence, their armies proved to be formidable, in comparison to Royal troops. This was because the personal motivation of the soldiers was brought into resonance with the imperial project -- they fought with a will! In a similar way, our liberated social organism would exhibit a 'new level' of coherence, resourcefulness, and resiliency, in comparison to other social forms. It would be able marshal its resources and 'get things done' in a way no other society accomplishes except perhaps in wartime. It seems to me that this is the kind of society that would have the capacity to guide our transition from today's systems and infrastructures, to a sustainable, peaceful, and healthy future. rkm ____________________
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