Tag Archive for 'society'

In under a week the Dutch parliament elections will be held. I’ve always been pretty interested in this phenomenon but now its even better because of recently I acquired the right to vote. In the Netherlands we cherish a multi-party system which practically means that you hear a lot of different soundbites from politicians from very different wings. In the very right corner we have mr. Wilders who’s biggest point is the Islamization in the extreme left corner is the Socialist Party that wants to take the top-tax level up a notch to 65% (The Netherlands use a progressive, proportional tax system, currently the highest rate is 48%). And between them there’s a wide variety of parties who all have slightly different opinions on matters. The biggest matter seems to be the Economic Crisis though.

All politicians seem to think that if they find ways to give the number of jobs a few kicks upward, reduce the state’s debt and at the same time keep the people happy the crisis will be over in a whim. Most other people seem to agree, because the party that’s shouting about their measures the most (VVD) is way, way, way ahead in the polls. But the question people seem to forget to ask is: Is there a chance – and what if there is – the crisis will not be over when the money has been taken care of? What if there’s a social aspect to this Beast? You know… what if our current society is completely incompatible with the way we desire to live? Or would we all be massively afraid by the consequences?

I found this thorough video summarizing and explaining the entire problem. Towards the end it suggests four models for a future society which I consider to be the crux.

The video is loosely based on a piece of research by Michel Cartier and Jon Husband which is fully presented at the website ConstellationW.com. So what Model of Society do we choose? Do you choose?

State security, consumer society, participatory state or the green society.

As a SuperForester I may be biased to choose the fourth so I’m not going to do this. In fact, I think the video supplies us with a stereotypical view here. It’s not practical, not even possible, to create a participatory state with security. Whenever people are encouraged to give their opinions on matters (participate) they automatically create opponents that could be willing to shut the opinion, and it’s provider, up.  Instead I think it’s better to make a melting pot of the four proposals and try to design the SuperForest State.

State Security directly got me thinking about Orwell’s 1984 again. With patriotism, discipline and loyalty being among it’s core values I start to imagine individuals being forced to work hard (discipline) for the government for all their lives (loyalty) for a small amount of money. But their wage is grand, because they work for The Party (patriotism). Of course, excluding this piece from my SuperForest society would be ludicrous because the other three don’t have the faintest scent of a government in them. I think we’ll need a government for at least the remainder of this century. Perhaps if the value patterns have changed it can be abandoned, but until then lets keep voting for representatives.

The Consumer Society is a lot like what we have in the West right now. Most of us buy everything they want, and when our balance is too low we run for our credit cards. We probably will never be able to make it without consuming – since we’re not all able to retreat to Zero-One at least groceries will have to be bought, and we also like magazines, books and other forms of media. But listen to this; Apple Sells 2 Million iPads Since April Debut [equals sixty days]. Does the Global Consumer Society really need 33 thousand iPads every day?! Ask yourself two questions before buying something, whether it’s a candybar or an iPad:

1. Do I really want it?
2. Do I really need it?

Big chance the answer to Q2 is ‘no’. But I reckon, some thing we don’t need can increase or happiness very much. I like to buy books and read them (duh) for instance while I could also replace this activity with a walk around the block. So we have to make choices! Do we really have to buy everything we buy? Is there a better alternative (the green society is coming up in a second)? It’s really strange that a lot of people aren’t able to tie together the financial ends and end up bankrupt.

The Green Society is probably what a good SuperForester would go for. The Earth is the only home we ever had and will have so we better be cautious with it. As the Dutch astronaut Wubbo Ockels (now a sustainable energy professor at the University of Delft) once said: “When I was up there in space I realized that all of human history, and all that we will ever achieve, will happen on that small blue dot.” So lets preserve our home, lets invest in sustainable energy and lets figure out how to produce, consume and reduce our waste with zero damage. A reduce in consumerism is an absolute must for this type of society, because the fewer we consume, the smaller our harm to the environment is.

The Cradle-to-Cradle concept (C2C in short) by Michael Braungart and William McDonough tries to get this done. Their theory is simplified with waste=food which means that all the waste we make should become food for another organism, they also propose for a production process in which things are not downcycled (as is the case most often with recycling) but upcycled. An example is plastic; some plastics can’t be very well recycled, they go bad after a while. What happens then is that all different sorts of plastic are thrown together in an oven and are melted and blended. The result is this very sturdy black material which is used for small poles on the street for example. You start with pure material (one kind of plastic) and end with impure material (different kinds of plastic blended together).

The ideal situation would be for the plastic to be upcycled to an even purer form.

So yes, The Green Society, I’m all for it.

The Participatory State is what we see a lot nowadays. It basically means a power shift to the individual. Since the arrival of the internet we became more able to ventilate our own opinions and read others’. Facebook enables us to connect with people we wouldn’t have even thought about connecting to otherwise. This type of society is based on loads and loads of respect for differences, which can get frisky when it comes to for e.g. religion and sexual preference.

I think it would go seamless with the Green Society which is really good, because being able to express my opinion is – as you may have noticed – pretty important to me. And I think it’s necessary to have much more appreciation for differences. If this is finally, fully realized we won’t need our armies as much as we need them now, because there simply won’t be a threat because everyone appreciates each other’s differences.

Now you’ve seen what my ideal society looks like tell us here at SuperForest what your perfect little world looks like. Contact us by email and I’ll do some follow-up posts so we can get a lively discussion right here. Lets practice this Participatory State of us!