'Common-Sense Commons' as a guiding vision for a Self-Caring System & Thrivable World

 

Our World is in crisis as its systems have been pushed toward exceeding their limits of resilience. Much of what we care for and need in the various aspects of our lives is under threat. We need a whole system approach, one that enables all parts to thrive while addressing the threats that endanger the whole.

But we all have different visions and views about the crisis and how it should be met. We are driven by different interests and moved by different types of stories, even if ultimately, we all seek a more viable, sustainable, thrivable and mindful world. So we need a practical vision for our sustainability efforts to converge.

For a while I have been playing with the idea of bringing together some guiding principles that could help us coalesce streams of engagement and passion... Guiding principles that can help the system take care of itself - the physical dimension- and underpined by an archetypal vision or aspiration - the metaphysical dimension- with a power to attract and catalyze potential for action and engagement to seed and amplify emerging change and  the positive feedback of the system.

After two years of discussions with many groups involved in social change, I believe the approach of the commons as complex living system and embodiment of the change we want to see could constitute the guiding vision we need to face the challenges ahead and generate the driving force for the system to heal itself. In short, we would need to think sustainability in terms of commons, to coalesce in a self-organizing way disparate sustainability efforts.

This article is inspired from a group discussion addressing the question from UN Secretary General on an Economic Model for survival, in discussion since Feb 2011 on the LinkedIn "Systems Thinking World" forum. 7200+ posts, and many other discussions around the Commons, P2P, collaboration and technology. 

It is a work in progress written with the collaboration of Jessie Henshaw. I welcome your comments and suggestions. Here is a tool where any of us can make suggestions and additions to this text. We are also working with the Commons Action group at the UN to develop a People's Sustainability Treaty based on these ideas. 

 

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The Vision and Principles

The commons are vital for our sustenance, our social cohesion and our well-being [ An archetype?]

 

The commons is what serves mankind as a whole. We think of it as our shared environment and resources, and as a medium for interactions. It includes the natural environment we humans are all a part of, and all what we inherit and create, use and change, and then pass on to future generations.  It connects us and nurtures much of what we produce and accomplish. It is vital for our sustenance and livelihood, our individual expression  and purpose, our social cohesion and well-being.  The  commons also embody the  relationships we build between people and with the earth, our  communities and the knowledge they may share. It's an inheritance, one that all humans now need a living vision of and a feeling of common responsibility for.

The commons take various shapes [At the same time object - process - result]

The commons can be described in many different ways and along various dimensions. It is at the same time object, process and result operating at various levels and scales, from the most global -the whole system, to various nested or fractal 'local' levels -the parts.

• As objects, the commons embody the Common Wealth, the 'Assets' that are inherited or created, shared in  common, and serve a livelihood (natural, social &   cultural  resources,  genetic and biologic diversity, knowledge, etc),  that people  can take care of, nurture, replenish, grow.                        
• As a process,  the commons embody the Common Ethos, a  Culture, the ways of being and doing in common that epitomizes in commoning (caring,  sharing, nurturing, governing the assets in relationship with others with  empathy, equity, justice, mindfulness...)                        
• As a Result: - the commons embody the Common Good, the outcome of the process  (well being, quality of life, prosperity, abundance) which is the life blood of the process and a condition for the growth of the assets.

The commons is both an input to the dynamic interactions between people and their contexts, and an output thereof.  All these dimensions need each other for the world to thrive. For  progress to  materialize, output must be greater than input. Commons in all their diversity and all the types of value they create must grow. And ideally each of our sustainability initiatives would be geared to grow a part of it. 

On all dimensions, levels and scales it is a tangible condition that serves as a medium for economic and political  cooperation, development of common social and cultural values, and the  establishment  of a shared  stewardship of the  earth that can be deployed at multiple levels and scales; with a goal of satisfying needs and enabling self realization along all its various  dimensions.

The commons as guiding image for a socio-cultural shift

The crisis that threatens the survival of humanity as a whole needs a vision that can help transition to a sustainable and thriving world. One that can not only encourage desired behaviors but also inspire us all to work towards it, as we articulate and develop our own designs of who we want to be -- as individuals and as community.

 
In 1973, a team of researchers from Stanford university established that cultural  transformations occured with the presence of a strong image to embody change and crystallize imagination and action toward new visions of the world:

Images of humankind that are dominant in a culture are of fundamental importance because they underlie the ways in which the society shapes its institutions, educates its young, and goes about whatever it perceives its business to be. Changes in these images are of particular concern at the present time because our industrial society may be on the threshold of a transformation as profound as that which came to Europewhen the Medieval Age gave way to the rise of science and the Industrial Revolution. - Changing Image of man -Stanford research institute

The survey sugested a provisional list of six characteristics for transition informing image necessary to guide the current transition:

• provide a holistic sense and perspective on life
• entail an ecological ethic 
• entail a self-realization ethic 
• be multileveled, multifaceted, and integrative 
• lead to a balancing and coordinating of satisfactions along many dimensions 
• be experiential, experimental and open-ended

The image of the commons encompasses much of these characteristics. It adds to sustainability and resilience a common purpose or interest, the dimension of mutuality -the networks of things we can do with and for each other-, and a vision of the whole where humanity is meant to realize our potential and thrive. It can speak to our logic and reason as much as to our intuitions and emotions. As it speaks many languages, it can be conveyed in many different forms to many of the worldviews, aspirations and streams of initiatives that strive to create a better world, so that people from where ever they are located can learn and do what they feel the urge to do, and the system itself will put things together.

Think of the various sensitivities or movements that can coalesce under a commons sense banner (gaian, ancient tradition, legalist/human rights and expression, ecology, socio-political, risk/precaution, cooperative ownership and management, craddle2craddle/regenerative economy, conservation/malthusian, thrivability/prosperity/abundance, P2P/hacker/localist, peace/love) that are moved by different narratives and passion, all an expression of the same aspiration...

The commons as complex living system

The world, as a complex living system, operates along principles that help the system take care of itself. That's the actual invisible hand. The ultimate commons?:

• The nature of the system is a multiplicity of parts in partnership working individually as whole local parts, and operating at various integrative levels and scales, forming emergent wholes. What connects any part with a whole is most often hidden from any local viewpoint. Each whole self-organizes and self-realizes while being conscious of and responsive to each other's behaviors and locally responsive to its changing environment, not controlled by external forces, only shaped and limited them. 

• Patterns of behaviors emerge -or arise- in each part and whole out of a multiplicity of interactions, initially invisible and often coming into sight all at once (tipping points). Emerging behaviors are often the only thing visible from parts or wholes that may be hidden from sight (the unknown). 

• Change is made continuous by successions of interactions and relationships generated by the system. Radical change can occur when emergent patterns of change converge and accumulate into systemic change. Possibilities for convergence and amplification of feedback which shape a system's behavior increase with density and tightness of connections.  

In practical terms it means that a systemic approach would concentrate on:

• Encouraging self-organization and self-realization at the local level for the parts to be resilient and to thrive while learning from and empowering one another through expansion of partnerships and interactions; learning both how to work independently  and together at various integrative levels or scales to empower larger  systems and share responsibilities as a way to assure individual  freedoms.

• Encouraging the understanding of how things work and the awareness of emerging behaviors to be responsive, anticipate potential conflict or collaboration and recognize change as it unfolds; and ultimately enable positive trends to be amplified and new learning to be integrated and made applicable.

• Enabling the parts to be aware of other parts and wholes, and the whole system from discovering their behavior, even when they are hidden from view. Enabling them to be aware of how they use and depend of the whole and how they can contribute to keep the whole viable and thriving. 

As complex living systems themselves, described by Elinor Ostrom as “self-organized” and "polycentric", where the people closely involved help “develop rules for themselves", the commons mimic the conflict-free self-organization observable in natural economic systems and can help materialize the need and possibilities for a systemic change.

There are clear opportunities making a commons approach relevant today. These complementary parts seem ineffective mostly for being disconnected. The commons provide a guiding vision and operating principles for learning how to search for the matching parts as the solution, and the system itself will start putting them all together. It provides a role for everyone to play in making the transition to a sustainable future; it provides opportunities for everyone to contribute to organizing efforts in a self-organized and multi-path yet converging way.

Developing the vision - The conditions & dynamics for thriving commons

We focus both on devising means to grow the commons by acting on the most obvious amplifyers and levers, and on developing a commons vision that will inspire, empower and enable the transition, based on principles that can be easily shared, understood and customized at the various 'operational' levels:

• To amplify emerging change, encourage local organization for local needs, users to become producers or stewards of their own resources. Starting on the short term by testing innovative methods in  coordinated regional emergency interventions.

• To accelerate convergence, expand cooperation at higher levels and wider scales, and foster learning and collaboration processes that enable co-creation, co-governance and conflict resolution on multiple scales, adopting subsidiarity principles to define the boundaries of the commons. 

• To protect the viability of the commons, develop a commons sector alongside the private and  public sectors, conferring rights and responsibilities to communities over resources they create or on which they depend. Embedding the commons approach in local and national sustainable strategies. 

• To replenish and grow the commons, develop circular and [re]generative economic models that ensure the conditions under which profit and growth can be viable and sustainable.

• Use finance to grow the commons and restore the natural generative and replenishing functions of the economy, revalue future value, find KPIs that measure progress and the actual creation of common wealth and abundance.

• Stop growing toxic and harmful practices toward the environment, health, human rights. Fight abuses of power and corruption. Establish basic responsibilities.

• To make sense of emerging change, create assessment and reporting systems for transparency and monitoring of impacts, growth of the commons and compliance with sustanability goals and targets.

• Create frameworks and platforms to support the transition and collaboration, make needs and solutions as well as possible partnerships visible and actionable. 

The building blocks

We focus on the dynamic interactions that help build the social and material resiliency necessary for the development of a thriving economic and social fabric at various levels and scales, allowing at the same time for various unintended consequences of human action, and for recovery from natural disasters, pandemics, etc.. We also look into what enables an economic balance between member communities, ensuring rule of common law and accountability underpinned by monitoring and evaluation systems. A critical element is the establishment of a framework for enabling learning, conversation, evaluation in view of decisions and conflict resolution, in a way that can scale horizontally (P2P) and vertically (subsidiarity).

'We' here is the emergent 'collective', all those who undertake converging actions.

Local organization for local needs [P2P, many to many]

Principle: Communities must be encouraged to cultivate and produce their own livelihoods and co-govern their utilities, services and resources, in relational dynamics that foster self-realization and adaptation.

Emergence: A variety of  innovative, creative small and local initiatives and projects are actively pursuing alternative and more sustainable forms of agriculture, industrial production, social and economic organization,  currencies and credit systems, education, (self-)governance, and ways of life. At the edge we find the collaborative and P2P economy.

Amplificators: Communities, groups and individuals develop a sense of ownership of the process, a sense of immediacy and transparency, of shared destiny and emotional experience that foster trust and resilience, and a shared 'commons sense'. Local collaboration and peer to peer (P2P) dependencies are something graspable and immediate, and also expand awareness of what empowers one another and larger systems, creating channels by which they can discover opportunity and be brought into balance.  

Positive feedback: Continual community learning about how those regional systems work should be encouraged and  supported. This is key to sustaining the complexity of larger scales of  integration, and the specialization of remote services that empowers  them. Then trust, co-creation and co-governance  practice and working skills develop at each scale, and so also spread to the whole in a distributed manner. This encourages conflict resolution and transparency  approaches.  It develops a sense of enduring responsibility for the  commons and roles shared with future generations.

Coordinated Regional Emergency Interventions 

Application: An immediate application would be to promote the use and testing of these innovative methods and initiatives in ‘innovation zones’ established in areas damaged by disasters, or to reverse damage caused by past and current  practice.  Promote the study of how interventions affect each scale of the systems they take place in.  Responding to the threats of disasters, cultural and technological dislocations, as a need to develop resiliency and adaptability, and so also anticipating, avoiding and allowing more effective response, should all be be encouraged and funded, now aimed at making the commons work more smoothly as a whole too.   Projects directly aimed at relieving the growth of crippling debt without continued growth of demands on the earth are inseparable from reducing emissions, reversing desertification, soil erosion, deforestation, overfishing, increased disparity between rich and poor,  corruption, abuse of power. 

Expanding cooperation at higher levels and wider scales [subsidiarity principle]

Subsidiarity is an organizing principle stating that a matter ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized authority capable of addressing that matter effectively, and that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.

Principle:  Learning from grassroots community practices and early adopters, fostering growing awareness in each locality of the nature of local and global integration. This would draw from the people-context-interactions- assets-culture-resultant dynamic that defines and powers local relationships to the commons, and enable scaling vertically from there.

Emergence: Simple  principles for a  more realistic and purposeful science of economics and management for an  animated world, drawing from "systems intervention",  "action learning",  "systems thinking" and "whole system assessment"  practices, among others, to deal with the systemic complexity of the  relationships and the shift required.

Amplificators: Promoting "connections" conversations to help build on interactions and facilitate  integrated shifts in larger and smaller scale practices allowing stakeholders to discover new ways to solve their mutual problems. Adopt  appreciative methods of enquiry and conflict resolution, being open to seeing things as they are, to experiment, learn and adjust.  Encourage questioning, learning, discovery and innovation, and our capacity to bootstrap, to invent seeds of  change, plant and nurture them, and evolve. Find ways to work together and actively engage in learning processes that enable co-creation and  co-governance and conflict resolution on all scales.

Positive feedback: Expanding from the above on the "whole system" approach to learn from example, to mimic the  conflict-free self-organization observable in natural economic systems, and other "exemplars" recognized good design; to observe patterns of behaviors emerging and to recognize change as it unfolds, so that theory is always checked against reality of what is observed and emerges, and new learning can be integrated and made applicable. 
Application:  This includes finding the boundaries and governance principles best suited to the needs of the commons at local levels (subsidiarity), acknowledging multiple logically or physically overlapping or intersecting commons, and devising more practical means of enforcement for laws, treaties, and agreements at all levels by making them confirmations of nested and/or fractal common needs.

A Commons Sector, alongside the Private and public sectors

Principle: Reinforcing and developing a sector of the commons alongside the private and public sectors, conferring  rights and responsibilities to communities over resources on which they depend. There is no question here of ending private property or the role of the state. Rather it is to establish a provision for 'sanctuarizing' within appropriately governed institutions a certain number of commons from public or private overexploitation and enclosure to ensure access when exploitation and enclosure for the pursuit of profit impinges on the rights or livelihoods of the users of the commons or the viability of the common. The most obvious examples are the air we breathe or the human or natural genome, the internet is another. Defining modalities would be in the political realm.

Emergence:  New forms of cooperatively or mutually governed organizations to steward the commons at various levels, starting with the enforcement of existing common law.  

Amplificators: The commons must be acknowledged as the foundation of the collaborative free markets needed for the health of competitive free markets, enabled by effective education systems, research and development programs, and universal telecommunications infrastructure that enable distributed networks to operate mutual sense making and exchanges of all kinds.

Positive feedback: This would prevent the double risk of 'Tragedy of the  commons' either from overexploitation by individual parts detrimental to  the whole or from private enclosure and appropriation for the benefit  of the few. This would ensure that the people who have a long-term stake  in the preservation of these resources (natural, physical,  intellectual, social, cultural; from local to global) would protect  them while enabling the development of a flourishing commons-based  economy around them. 

Application: This may include linking and embedding the commons in existing systems  such as the international  commons of Outer Space, Antarctica and the  Law of the Sea.>  See approaches here: Blueprint for P2P society by Michel Bauwens, 'Stewardship Corporations' by Jack Harich; Commons Trusts and Social Charters developped by James Quilligan and the Global Commons Trust.

Transition to a circular economy

      

Our  economy's current purpose is to maximize flows (of goods, capital). It is a machine for perpetual growth that uses its profits and its  knowledge to continually escalate its demands on  humanity and on the  earth and to constantly multiply its capacity to  inflate itself as  private wealth and power. As such, it is brittle and  prone to breakdown,  undermining productive activity as well as leading  to the abuse of the  commons in a never ending spiral.

Principle: The challenge we are facing is to ensure the conditions under which profit and growth can be viable and sustainable, and improve at the same time the material and non-material (intellectual, emotional, spiritual...) wellbeing of the people, and the viability of the commons that enables it. 

Emergence: The "circular economy" model focuses on optimizing the flow of goods and services over time in relation to the size of capital and resources (stocks). It is a replenishing and regenerative model based on closed loops and systems resilience, and the rebuilding of natural and social capital. Products are designed for more complex cycles of disassembly and reuse, the out-design of waste and toxic emissions.
Amplificators: Introducing clarity between consumables and durables, it puts the responsibility of the performance of the product and its becoming as a new resource at the end of its life on the producers, leading to a whole new approach of production, consumption and ownership as it  encourages leasing, renting and sharing while giving way to new approaches of business co-evolution and integration of the commons.

Positive feedback: The circular economy can contribute to create a positive entrainment effect. In the economic sphere there is an acknowledgement that as externalised costs become internalised benefits prices will increasingly reveal full costs. This entails a natural shift towards renewables and internalization of externalities.  In systems terms the system will be exhibiting increased interdependence and the use of different scales, niches and possibiities. See The circular Economy and the Compression Institute.

Application: In the spirit of circular economy closed loop urbanization and community utility & production systems and projects and initiatives that have multiple effects, and serve several different objectives, such as co-generation, closed water/energy/food production systems or solutions such as developed by the Blue Economy or systemic approaches around buildings/energy/transport should be encouraged. 

More generally, sustainability as "circular economy", also involves that whatever available resource or asset businesses or other economic actors don't use, other parts of their environment can, with mutual benefits. This includes local policies to make use of idle resources to strengthen local economies.

Use finance to grow the commons.

Principle: The transition to a circular economy for the investment and financial commons must start at natural limits to profitable growth and for vitality and balance, sustaining investment profitability and guiding investors to higher purposes for their profits than putting money into the productive economy to take growing amounts out of it.  The world economy doesn’t yet have a "purpose" to live better, only to grow and grow even as it becomes unprofitable, brittle and toxic; ignoring a natural need for "maturation", time to turn our attention from inward to outward.

Emergence: The practical transition is for investors of all kinds to find higher purposes for their profits, such as healing both their world and environment, avoiding direct liability for growing hidden impacts, and in the spirit of the commons and well-being. Developing some responsiveness to the emerging and unexpected needs of their environment, and ready to explore errors and omissions in their own teachings and past conclusions, that
living in a changing world may make important. See articles A biomimicry for self-regulating commons and Self Organization as niche making. The Giving Pledge is a move in this direction, that needs to be adequately channelled...

Amplificators: More trivially, shifts from taxing income to taxing depletion of commons such as non renewable resources and waste will reinforce this, as will real world commodities and energy price rises. The removal of perverse subsidies which promote extraction over regeneration or stock over flow would add impetus.

Positive feddback:  Since money and money as debt is an endogenous variable in the whole game an unaltered financial sector undermines efforts and money will work best as a medium of exchange (issued debt free). Other ideas include the use of negative interest rates to promote long term investment in productive activities (see Bernard Lietaer) as against the compound growth driver which is compound interest that systemically reduces future value to negligeable.

Stop growing toxic and harmful practices

 

Application: This process can be accelerated by identifying and targeting investment practices that systemically undermine productive activity and future prospects, such as speculative manipulation of finance instruments and resource shortages, mechanisms causing systemic credit and asset bubbles, development of addictive appetites of various nature at the cost of public, environmental and financial health, the promotion of faster use of depleting resources serving to increase not decrease the economy's dependence on them, etc.  These are both some of the most profitable investments and increase rapidly as people take the profits from them to inflate their investment in them. This include creating incentives, regulations and taxes and eliminating subsidies and loopholes that encourage these practices.

>> As a leverage point: to remedy the above reinforce and enforce anti-corruption laws and eliminate 'legal' corruption and political manipulation by banning or strongly limiting the use of private funds for political financing and political speach.    See: (Larry Lessig, the founder of creative commons is campaigning against this see Republic Lost, Jack Harich's study of political power.

Methods of assessment and reporting

Promote transparency and reporting for monitoring and evaluation systems.   Create  metrics to measure impacts and outcomes, that measure each part's demand on and contribution to the whole, and not just local visible effects.  Provide open access to knowledge, data, and information to allow comparative studies and the correction of misconceptions. Promote a general knowledge commons, and creative commons, allowing all to see inside the silos of others so their different views of common subjects, their values and ideas, can be understood and connected. Share methods for recognizing irreversible processes and anticipating their tipping points of transformation as well as recognizing seeds of change and anticipation of limits of change. Set up processes to ensure that what follows is right and continues to be right, exploring means of confirmation, and a meta-process of reflection and evaluation of measures. Enable trial and error and the possibilities to readjust.  Respond to the abuse of misleading and selective metrics and evaluation systems, defining subjects with only selective variables, and generally assure the fidelity of information to its subjects and their changes.  Apply rules of fiduciary duty to the speach of corporations and lobbyists,   to be liable for being misleading about the true interests of their   investors, customers, employees and other stakeholders, as having   natural concerns for their own and their society's wellbeing. See Jay Youngdahl's expansion of fiduciary law at Harvard.

Frameworks and platforms [tightening connections - amplifying positive feedback]

These approaches would be well supported with frameworks and platforms to deal with the systemic complexity of the relationships and the shift required.  A platform would help the various problematiques and existing initiatives to be made visible to each other and encouraged in the context of a global sustainability & resilience objective, and to connect the dots in order to help people pull and pool resources and collaborate to grow what works for them and for the common good. It would enable learning, exchange of knowledge and experience, engagement,  coordination of cooperation and action, and evaluation, debate, deliberation, decisions of specific projects or outcomes. Ultimately this could facilitate the first steps and adjustments of the formation of commons governance systems that would where required enable the creation of new institutions. (see A Global Framework)

Ultimately, such frameworks and platforms could be an instrument for the transition. It would provide the support for the embodied characteristics of the transition informing principle listed above and the signs of emerging change to become visible as interconnected in a whole. It would enable the discovery of possibilities and the application of solutions at multiple levels throughout the cycles of the transition:

• setting up sensors for detection and sense-making;
• making initiatives and what emerges visible to the whole and to each other 
• understanding issues and what is at stake across silos; 
• inspiring, empowering, enabling people to collaboration and action; 
• facilitating deliberation and implementation;
  
• providing means for horizontal (P2P sharing) and vertical (subsidiarity principle) scaling of processes
  
• diffusing, applying, improving, sustaining solutions 
• monitoring performance, accountability, early detection of new issues and feedback
  

All this in an emergent manner. (See platform project)

 

Thank you to all who have engaged in a common generative and reflective conversation and provided actionable thoughts and material during this and other discussions. In particular: Jessie Henshaw, David Price,Thoebjoern Mann, Nicolas Stampf, Mary  Saunders, TA Balasubramanian, Ken Webster, Douwe Jan Joustra, Dawna Jones, David Alman, Bill Williams, Bill Smith, Dan Strongin, Nick  Ananin, KK Aw, David Hawk, Vlad Kunko, Eero Hollming, Stephen Scott Wright, Patric Roberts,  Gene Bellinger, George Por, Anna Betz, Jack Harich, James Quilligan, Michel Bauwens, Rob Wheeler, Lisinka Ulatowska, Wolfgang Hoeschele, Irma Wilson, Glistening Deepwater, Bonnitta Roy, Erika Ilves, Alex Lavigne Gagnon, Dante Gabriel Monson, Markus Loponen and all the many participants and contributors to this and other discussions.

These discussions have also inspired the intents of "Commons based economic models" submitted to the 2012 RioDialogues.org process  and the various articles on the commons I have posted here.

The various individual and small group outputs of the discussion is available here. This conversation and the Linkedin group discussion format highlighted how difficult it is to capture and harvest collective intelligence to reiterate and reprocess its content effectively, other than doing it 'by hand' in real time... A new tool has been put very recently at our disposal to search and mine the richness of this discussion. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have suggestions.

Another output in the past months is a pealtree map of the alternatives viwed via wikipedia for a start. Many of the concepts explained here can be found on the 'exploring the alternatives' pearltree I started last month: http://www.pearltrees.com/t/team/id5509379