Pamela's Blog 14

Published on Monday, June 1, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“How Do You Organize – Our World (Once We're Free) – Without Hierarchy?”

by Pamela Satterwhite

Now the Myles Horton method was: everyone sits in a circle, everyone tells their tale, everyone joins in a song or two…after sitting down to food…

It’s the kind of solution that falls in the category of “making the best of a bad situation.”

It’s like the traffic circle up the street not planted with food.

You see, where I live, the city decided to put traffic circles in residential areas to slow cars down. They started in the wealthier neighborhoods and slowing worked their way to…where I live.

A year ago April the one closest to my house was constructed and I decided to plant food. But there’s another one, a block away, planted with…not-food.

Each circle is finished off with a heavy helping of redwood shreddings. The toxicity of this thick blanket discourages the flagrant partying and miscegenation that the natural world tends to, left to its own devices. And this buttoned-up coat gives the plants that encased-in-concrete look of which this system is so fond. I learned that I had to push the stuff to the fringes of the circle to perk up the spirits of the captives.

When this is not done the green tends to look under siege, like they need a rescue party and a midnight raid or something. Their situation is only slightly more cheerful than those trees you see installed in concrete that “decorate” our rigidified urban regions. This system dearly loves its captives…until it doesn’t.

Point being, once we’re free the possibilities before us will look a lot friendlier than they do now.

“How do you organize without hierarchy” is the kind of problem I think of as “the ice cube in the sun.” You don’t notice when it’s leaving and you don’t care when it’s gone.

Proportionally as we free ourselves, proportionally group decision-making becomes more relaxed…more fertile, fruitful and friendly.

Think of the difference in temperament between the man that just smoked a little herb and the man just chewed out by his ‘boss.’ Which one is less likely to snap and growl at the smallest provocation, and which more likely to smile and say, “let’s figure this thing out”?

Proportionately as we’re free, we’re happy. And happy people are much less prone to squabble.

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Pamela's Blog 14

Published on Monday, June 1, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“How Do You Organize – Our World (Once We're Free) – Without Hierarchy?”