0: In the Beginning Was the Purpose

the prelude to How to Dismantle an Empire

In this video, I talk about some personal signs that things we think will never change actually can! And then I read the prelude to my book, How to Dismantle an Empire. In the coming weeks, I’ll be reading and posting the chapters that I haven’t already, in preparation for the new year. I see 2025 as the nadir point of the empire dismantling itself, and the right time to imagine and plan how we’d build our commonwealth.

In 2025, I’ll be publishing my domain a2020vision.org. On one side, it will have How to Dismantle an Empire as the prerequisite for understanding how we got here, and why nothing but system change can work. The other side will be How to Build a Commonwealth with techniques on how to come to agreement, the rules and tools, and discussion threads on specific issues.

The next five years are a time to dream in pragmatic ways. We’re entering into the Great Disillusionment, the unveiling, the revealing, the apocalypse of The Great Striptease, as I said and Kathleen Devanney developed beautifully. Don’t wait for the last shoe to drop before designing the functional, gorgeous wardrobe in which your commonwealth will be decked out. If you’re not prepared, she may be stuffed into an orange jumpsuit!

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Because the thing about a crisis this big, this all-encompassing, 
is that it changes everything. It changes what we can do, 
what we can hope for, what we can demand 
from ourselves and our leaders. 
It means there is a whole lot of stuff 
that we have been told is inevitable 
that simply cannot stand. 
And it means that a whole lot of stuff 
we have been told is impossible 
has to start happening right away.
—Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything

I have one advantage in my life: I’m not trained as an economist.  
So it is so much easier to see reality. When you have to see it through 
the kind of crazy training these guys get, it becomes very difficult.  
I admire any economist who nevertheless could talk sense— 
there’s not many of them, but it happens. 
—Johan Galtung, founder of Peace and Conflict Studies

I never had a gift but one, 
to know when the great wheel 
gives to a touch, to know and act ... 
A great delight it was 
to feel that certainty again, 
to know that I could steer 
my fortune and the world’s chance 
like a bobsled down the steep, dangerous hour.
—Estraven in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness 

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In the Beginning Was the Purpose

The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn wrote that in a true dialogue, both sides are willing to change. The engaged mind is always looking for a reason to change, not willy-nilly back to the starting point but to build up from a solid structure based on prior facts and logic. It’s not gullible but is persuadable if a new fact or a new way of looking at the facts is presented.

In this volume, I'll introduce you to some of the authors who changed my mind, and gave me a valuable clue that suddenly made sense of something that had puzzled me for decades. These books became cornerstones of my structure—places where I took a 90-degree turn into new and uncharted territory. Of course, I brought the last revelation with me, so I could map out all the interesting intersections within this new plane of thinking. And then yet another writer would shoot my imagination into thin air, and I'd have three dimensions in which to consider the implications.

These books were a revolution-in-a-box for me. If I could encapsulate their revelations in a few paragraphs, there would have been no need for them to write hundreds of pages compiling mountains of research and experience. Moreover, the points I’m making are in the valleys between these mountains, so that even the authors might not agree with my conclusions. At the end of chapters, I’ve put in questions so you can try on the paradigm shifts, like a new pair of glasses, and see if they make things more clear or more blurry for you.

What’s my point? The gist of my argument is that we, citizens of the first world, unwittingly collaborate in the enslavement of others through our taxes, our rents and mortgages, our jobs, our insurances, our educations, and especially through money itself. In order for our labor to serve the market (a euphemism for investor profits) other people’s labor needs to serve us. They need to grow and process our food, make our clothes and goods, and mine our oil and minerals at the expense of their environments, health, and safety.

At the same time, the high cost of living robs us of our time and the satisfaction of producing for ourselves. Gardening, sewing, and woodworking are expensive weekend hobbies for those who live in suburbs with lawns, spare rooms, and garages. Cooking is a gourmet luxury with raw ingredients costing more than processed meals, if you can call them that. Our creativity has been channeled into consumerism so that when someone compliments our clothing or decor, we thank them even though we've merely paid for it.

The pride and joy of craftsmanship has been turned into making trinkets from how-to videos on the internet, with no mentors or apprentices from the community. The thrill of finding your strength and endurance is reserved for the gym, while "work" is wiggling our phalanges over a keyboard. Most importantly, the family has become an accessory to the market, not the heart and the hearth of life. Children aren't eager to learn what their parents have to teach and the self-confidence that comes naturally from taking on responsibility has been replaced with something called self-esteem.

The official history of civilization is a story of heroes and villains, winners and losers, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong. In the history I’m exploring, there are no villains, just a crazy idea someone once had about how to get other people to do their dirty work. It turned out to be wildly effective and here we are. The assessment of blame is an obstacle to changing the system. It divides us and paralyzes us before we begin. But even those at the top are merely winning at a game that none of them created and none of us, individually, have the power to change. Even the winners may be looking for a way out, one that enables a secure and happy life for their children.

Having respect for everyone is the most radical idea in the book, and the one from which every world-shifting paradigm follows. Trusting in the fundamental kindness of human nature changes the potential solutions by changing how we define the problem. We no longer need to force other people to behave in a particular way, we merely need a system that allows them to be themselves, their true selves. And one that gently and gradually restores our power to do our own work while removing the power to control others.

Changing a paradigm, which is how we think before we think we’re thinking, requires a temporary suspension of judgment. It’s like rearranging the furniture in your mind and trying it out long enough to get over the novelty. It requires upending the prior assumptions that are the places from which we've viewed the world—the armchair stuck in the corner where it’s always been. It helps to postpone your discomfort until you can see the whole new decluttered space.

Many disagreements come from words being used with different meanings for the speaker and listener. Each chapter has its own lexicon to clarify how I’m using a word. If it has too much baggage, feel free to apply a different word or phrase that better describes the concept and substitute that word or phrase throughout the book. What matters is that we have a way of talking about and thinking about concepts when the words to describe them have been corrupted and often turned into their opposites, not by accident.

For many people, changing the system feels too big so why bother with things we can’t do anything about? In fact, without changing the system, changing any one thing is impossible. The forces stacked against it are insurmountable. By the end of the book, if I've done my job right, you will abandon hope that you, of all people in history, can alone make free and moral choices for your own life. But you’ll also consider whether all of us would choose kindness if the system got out of the way.

I hope that you will stay with me through the whole journey and apply your powers of critical thinking through the paradigm shifts in anthropology, colonial history, foreign policy, and economics. I'm looking forward to having the conversation that’s only possible on the other side. At that point you’ll be asking different questions than other people around you. You’ll be seeing things in a way that’s hard to communicate. You may end up like me, talking to yourself when no one else gets it.

Instead of a common enemy to rally against, there are practical questions, assessments, and calculations. Instead of marching with a list of demands, you’ll be examining our own role in systemic slavery. Instead of wasting time feeling guilty, you’ll have compassion for everyone, no matter their position.

In a world without systemic slavery, what you consume would roughly equal what you produce. In the first world, we consume almost everything and produce almost nothing. This is a problem of logistics rather than politics. To control our own labor requires the tools of banking, taxation, and credit creation in the hands of communities, the power of which few people understand enough to want.

However, a handful of individuals with deep understanding and forward-thinking imaginations could show what could be built with these tools in their communities. These acts of imagination and strategy could be tested against predictable outcomes and objectives, and honed with like-minded groups in different communities. Developing these solutions together is the purpose of the next book, How to Build a Commonwealth.

While you read, I encourage you to stay with the trouble and give yourself permission to do nothing. Relax your activism for the time being. This problem has been 3000 years in the making and will last a few more. In the meantime, take care of yourself. As the fulcrum on which the scale is tipping, you’re under a lot of pressure! Feed yourself and those around you. Love each other. Make the places where you find yourself beautiful. Get your hands in the dirt. Dance! The world will wait.

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The Utopian Imagination on Naomi Klein

In Russell Brand's interview, Naomi asks "What does the world look like after we win?" She states that we need a vision, a revival of the utopian imagination. I talk about the arrogance of hopelessness, and propose AA groups for activists addicted to it. We need to find our people, who take seriously that we will win and develop pragmatic visions. I quote Ursula K. Le Guin's speech that "Hard times are coming ... We'll need writers who can remember freedom." I suggest that our utopia-planning committee fall madly in love with each other and rigorously challenge ideas while adoring the person—something for which Russell's viewers are perfect.

Are YOU Ready to Save the World?

Looks at undoing empire-thinking as a spiritual practice. ACIM says that God only ever asks one question, "Are you ready yet to help me save the world?" I look at why our answer is "not yet" because of our attachment to our own superiority. Our message to one another should be "You are magnificent" and "Here's why I think you're mistaken," using facts, logic and consistency. I connect the comments of three magnificent viewers and convey the views of four magnificent writers on Ukraine—Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Caitlin Johnstone and Andrew Bacevich. I end with hearing from the horse's mouth.