It's all so confusing, where do you start?

Are we just too dumb, too blinkered, too blinded to find our way out of this?

If you’re anything like me, sometimes it all seems so broken on so many levels, that you don't know where to start. The environment is obviously important, the poverty is morally unconscionable, political corruption is muddying the waters, ‘war’ runs off the tongues of so many so easily and that’s before we even start on the global interactions of nations. And yet we instinctively know it's not all completely broken -- after all we have increased the overall wealth of our societies and some of us do get to vote once in a while.

That’s what makes it so confusing. Our societies are so monstrously large and complex nowadays, the problems so multilayered and yet despite all the chaos, bloodshed and waste we have not, at least so far, managed to wipe ourselves off the face of the earth. So we haven’t completely failed yet but on the other hand, were not scoring much higher than the E- on reaching either our potential or our aspirations. We can do better! But where do we start? How do we know what’s broken and what we need to change? How do we change what's broken, without destroying what's working?

To get the answers to these questions, we have to understand how it all works, what the basic, underlying, fundamental process is and how it's supposed to work.

Take a deep breath and ask yourself a question: "What is it all for? Why are we engaged with each other in mutual societies?"
Isn’t it all about creating sustainable peace and sustainable prosperity?
Isn’t my peace and prosperity is intertwined with the peace and prosperity of everyone I live around?

Now, still breathing slowly and deeply, ask yourself how we create that sustainable peace and prosperity. (Bear with me, we’re really going back to basics here.) I think the answer is that we create rules, within which we all operate individually and collectively to create the wealth, that allows us to build the infrastructure, that supports the rule making process. This is the virtuous cycle of society.

Let's explore that in a little more detail. We emerge from the swamp figuring that we would be better off working with each other, than against each other, to create a future. We sit around the campfire on the first evening and decide that we better have some rules about how we are going to behave with each other and we all pretty much agree on not hurting each other, not taking what is not freely offered and that kind of basic framework for friendly interaction. As we look around the campfire at the faces of our neighbors, we realize that this process of making the rules by which we are going to operate is going to be subject to the participation of and dependent on the cooperation of the vast majority of the group, if it is going to succeed. So that success is in turn dependent on all of us being able to bring our best selves to the campfire for these rule-making sessions. If Joe and Mary, over there, are the only ones starving the next time we meet, they're not going to have much input about anything that doesn't relate to getting them some food. So it's in all of our interests to make sure that Joe, Mary and everybody else is well enough supported by the common wealth of our society that they can positively contribute to the rule-making process.

As our group grows it is no longer practical for all of us to meet around the campfire and so we start to send representatives to the rule-making sessions, who we trust will act on our behalf. Now the whole society is dependent on the quality of those representatives and it remains true that the use of our common wealth to support all of our citizens sufficiently such that they can positively contribute to the representative selection process is just as important as it was when every citizen was sitting around the campfire themselves.

It seems that the whole business of living with other people is dependent on the rule-making process and therefore is equally dependent on the sharing of the fruits of the society to support quality rulemaking.

The cycle looks like this, in various of its manifestations:

The rule making process involves the selection of leaders, who act on behalf of the greater society in deciding what the rules should be. The whole premise of a peaceful and prosperous society rests on the quality of the rules and the process by which rule makers are chosen. If the selection process breaks down, the society is doomed to drown in a quagmire of malapropos rules. Rule making is such a skilful and nuanced activity, that surely any society that fails to leverage the collective wisdom of its people will most certainly fail to select good leaders.

So the vital link in the virtuous cycle of a society is that the wealth that is created must be used to support the citizenry, so that they can make good leadership selections. If the wealth of the society is only being used to support the few at the top, then it will soon seem pretty natural that only those at the top should do the leadership selection. If the wealth is used only to support those at the top but the power to vote remains with all the members, then it is almost inevitable that those at the top will deem it necessary to manipulate the mass electorate so that they don’t make such poor leadership decisions that they endanger the whole game for everyone.

Okay, to observe where we are in our own society, let’s stop the circle spinning and have a look at what's working and what isn't.

We do seem to have enterprise, business and wealth creation happening and there are some rules but we have a generally poor record on choosing leaders and making choices. Hmmm, why is that? Is it because the closing step of converting wealth into social infrastructure is the most broken part of our cycle? Are our citizens sufficiently supported and informed to choose quality representatives that will set the rules appropriately? Perhaps not, eh?

In considering what can or should be the focus of any change, many are scared that if we change the rules, we will break the one part of the cycle that seems to be the most functional – wealth-creating business and enterprise.

The truth is that the health of our enterprise is dependent on good rules. Without good rules enterprise will destroy itself, in the same way that every innovating small business has a natural tendency towards becoming a large monopoly. Without good rules, it is in the fundamental nature of enterprise to influence the entire system towards a stagnating, inefficient process designed only to protect the entrenched status quo, thus squeezing innovation and efficiency out. It’s called ‘beating the competition’. Unforeseen events and time will eventually see the stumbling giant fall to its knees, broken by the rigidity of its own rules and the lack of innovation in the face of new circumstances.

What's broken is that we haven’t been using our prosperity and wealth to develop the infrastructure of our societies, to support the making of good choices in the selection of our rule makers. That is where we need to change things.

Without the supporting infrastructure that yields an informed and active citizenry, the tendency is to lose trust in the ability of citizens to make good choices, so their ability to choose is taken away (central state control) or their decision-making process is manipulated (consumerist demoncracy i.e. the manipulation of the masses by distracting them with consumption and manufactured demons). Either way, we lose the collective wisdom of the citizenry and inevitably make worse and worse decisions, that result in worse and worse rulebooks, until we break the system completely. This is the fate of empires but it is not the destiny of humankind.

We can and must act to restore the virtuous cycle of our societies to its full and complete state. We can do this without breaking what is working because the process is about adding and restoring, not taking away and destroying.

We must act on as many aspects of the cycle as we can, as soon as we can, but it is the restoration of the social infrastructure of our societies that needs the most concentrated attention. The restoration of our collective ability to choose good leaders, who will help us create good rules, must be the beacon that guides us.

So, it’s not too confusing after all! We can arrive at a clear understanding, that it is through investing in the infrastructure of our society that we can heal the system as a whole. An infrastructure that lifts the citizenry out of survival mode and provides access to the information necessary to make informed choices, is our hope for survival and progress. It’s not rocket science but it does help to know where we need to start, what we need to focus on.

It is the lack of social infrastructure that threatens our collective survival, not the quality of our citizenry.