Laws conducive to Life

Laws conducive to Life: Introduction

Maybe we are not very aware, but what really informs and shapes our society is the metaphysics we employ. Unfortunately, a metaphysics of separation and competition, of inequity and conflict is informing our society – its political, economic, scientific, social or religious realms. But first of all, it informs the legislative system.

Our old legislative system shapes and orients human relations toward exploitation, inequity and conflict of interest. It is a legislative system deeply rooted in the metaphysics of separation and conflict and is conducive to more separation and conflict. It is painfully clear that this legislative system is not at all conducive to fairness or mutual consistency between people or people and nature; it is not conducive to regeneration of planetary ecosystems. Our current laws incentives inequity, exploitation, unfairness. They were purposely designed for this outcome. It is not a mystery anymore from where it comes all our social unrest and ecological destruction. It is the time to uproot the evil from its root, the legislative system, and plant better seeds. So, how could look like a legislative system conducive to cooperation, fairness and planetary regeneration?

Butterfly Communities social space is purposely designed toward these goals. Law and science should be a convergent field. We need an “eco-legal” order. We have to incorporate into our laws the new scientific perspective, so that our laws to be consistent with the principles that sustain life on this Planet.

To prototype is a very used approach to make things. Prototyping could be used not only for innovating disruptive technologies, but for innovating “disruptive” laws too! It could be used for tinkering new “disruptive” political structures or “disruptive” social architecture.

Butterfly Communities open-project aims to prototype a small island of a parallel human society – built from the beginning in tune with Nature‘s organizing principles. Let’s imagine how European countries could allow a small Yellow-Turquoise Butterfly Society to emerge on an artificial island.

We already started to prototype materials and technologies in tune with Nature, mimicking its principles. We already have the ecological awareness and technologies that could build floating structures that are able to host, in an almost regenerative way, human-scale communities. Mimicking Nature’s organizing principles, we successfully managed, time and time again, to unite ourselves around the most basic human shared purpose – how to fulfill our material needs and spiritual aspiration working together in generative and fair ways. What we still lack is a pro-commons legal paradigm to allow and foster the proliferation of such kind of new socio-economic living entities.

Many of the young generation evolved the awareness that the hyper-centralized governance is not working anymore and what we need is a distributed peer-to-peer governance, a commons-based economic and politic world. The old order is crumbling down. As in old prophecies, the apparent strong giant has feet of mud. Goliat always is defeated by the young David! I believe that the economic/politic/ecological situation of Europe is a good place for humanity to start a conscious and proactive transition from the capitalist order to a pro-commons new order. The Butterfly Communities open-project could be seen as the perfect opportunity to prototype, in safe political condition, an incipient human society built from the beginning in tune with Nature.

If you want to know more how our dysfunctional legislative system could be replace by another conducive to fairness and cooperation, just engage this series of seminars. I said “engage” because it will be as inter-active as possible for a seminar. I would like that each seminar and each series of seminars to be engaged as a journey of discovery. Everyone of them was thought of as a puzzle of a map. Connecting these puzzle pieces in your own way, you can craft your own map that could help you better orient in our changing world.

Each seminar will have 2 parts. In first part we will talk – around only 25 minutes – about 4 or 5 ideas. I do not want to make it complicated. I will make it so you to have time to take some notes. The second part – around two hours – each of you could come with its question and I will answer. Hence, the discussion will be always oriented to your interest. Anyway, I will be glad a third part to follow – free discussion between audience triggered by the presentation. I will happily join this dialogue, ready to listen to your points of view and to improve mine.

Seminar 6.1: We need laws that are conducive to cooperation and fairness

How the laws influence human relations? It depends on what they incentive, what they praise, value and recompense. A law is never neutral, but oriented toward a specific direction and goal. What is the goal/purpose of a specific law? What is the goal of a specific action or endeavor?

Moreover: what, in the long term, is the outcome of a specific set of laws, of a specific society? Political and economic inequality or fairness? Ecological destruction or ecological regeneration? This outcome depends on its basic layer: the laws that incentives fairness or inequity; regeneration or exploitation of Nature. So, again: what do we choose? It is simple as that!

1. How the laws influence human relations? 

2. Why do we need laws consistent with the principles that sustain life on this Planet?

3. Laws that are conducive to Life: how they could look like?

4. Laws that are conducive to fairness: how they could look like?

5. Why laws that foster a holarchic organization?

Seminar 6.2: How did we end-up having laws conducive to competition and un-fairness?

We have to understand how did humanity end up with such complicated and destructive laws, if we want to escape their spell. These laws conducive to inequity and planetary exploitation are not inescapable! We can devise other laws, conducive to fairness and planetary regeneration. It is about becoming conscious of ourselves as self-determined living beings! If our current world, with its complicated and unfair laws, is killing our spirit and authenticity, we can co-create another one. Maybe a fair and ecological human society looks like a utopia, but it is in our power “to create miracles. A miracle is not the intercession of an external divine agency in violation of the laws of physics. A miracle is simply something that is impossible from an old story but possible from within a new one. It is an expansion of what is possible.” (Charles Eisenstein)

So, we will take a historical foray to understand better what has driven us to have these inhumane laws and how can we overcome their spell.

1. Holarchic tribal organization

2. Holarchic tribal confederation versus Hierarchic tribal confederation. Why we “choose” the last?

3. Commons-based world versus Hierarchy based-world

4. Enclosure of the commons

5. Colonialism, neocolonialism, capitalism and democracy

 

 

Seminar 6.3: Toward a regenerative commons-based legal paradigm

Probably everyone has heard about the “tragedy of the commons” (Garrett Hardin). It is a misleading article and I would like to show you here what commons and commoning truly are. They are not at all a tragedy, but a solution for the current crisis.

1. Commons and commoning

2. Regenerative forms of ownership

3. Commons movement

4. Butterfly Community and its ecosystem seen as a commons

 

Seminar 6.4: What might a social space informed by the principles of life organization look like?

All we have to do is to apply to human organization the same laws that build our beautiful Planet!

1. Is there a connection between our laws and our level of consciousness?

2. How laws could foster a holarchic global social structure?

3. How laws could foster cooperation, fairness and mutual-consistency?

4. How laws could foster a living human-built environment?

5. How laws could foster planetary regeneration?

 

Seminar 6.5: Prototyping a fair human society: the Butterfly Island

Let us dream a little and prototype in our imagination a fair human society! 

1. Prototyping as a common way to design things

2. Yellow-Turquoise society

3. A proactive search for a solution

4. Why an artificial island? (suitable for a clear holarchic organization)

5. An European Project 

 

Seminar 6.6: Autonomous (self-governed communities) in a holarchic global social architecture

We will speak about autonomy and self-governance from a yellow-turquoise point of view:

1. What is autonomy (from a yellow-turquoise point of view)?

2. Why at every level of Life organization we have autonomy?

3. Why we need at every level of human organization autonomy?

4. Why a global holarchic social architecture? 

5. A human society organized as an ecosystem (super-organism)

Seminar 6.7: The opportunities of a collapsing world

What laws are conducive to a fair and ecological human civilization? But first: what is our primary purpose and individuals and communities? Don’t we want to live in peace and understanding? Don’t we want to fulfill our physical needs and spiritual aspirations? That’s all we want! So, what’s pushing one against the other? the answer is painfully clear: the laws that favor inequity and exploitation. Let’s see how different human groups manage to transform – from the inside out – the law and make it conducive to the well-being of all the community and the regeneration of its ecosystem.

1. The five levels of a societal collapse

2. Co-operative movement

3. Commons movement

4. Eco-village movement

5. Degrowth movement

 

What we will learn?

We will learn that the laws that establish a community are the ones that shape its human relations. We can’t change the whole world, but we can still do something: we can organize ourselves! We can organize human communities that are functional and supportive of each other. And if we want cooperation and fairness between us, we must base our relationships on laws conducive to cooperation and fairness. We can design them!

This series of seminars gives us the understanding and the awareness necessary to organize ourselves in functional communities that have the clear purpose of fulfilling, in cooperation and fairness, our basic needs and spiritual aspirations.

Be a Collaborator!

Anyone can become our collaborator!

We are searching for artists, trainers, film-makers, web-designers and for everyone that is inspired by the same vision as us.

Whatever the challenges of the future, cooperators will have a clear evolutionary advantage compared to non-cooperators.

In the new VUCA world, we will have to survive and thrive in new ways, different from those that have been successful so far. As a multicellular organism is smarter and has better capacities to deal with its environment than a cell alone, as an ant-hill is smarter and has better capacities to deal with its environment than an ant alone, the cooperative groups will be smarter and better equipped to deal with future challenges than single individuals.

Educators, trainers or artists – those who aim to have a social impact, to spread an idea – have to cooperate, if they want to succeed. However, the evolution of Life has a clear direction: towards ever-increasing scales of cooperation.

Those who want to move forward must learn to cooperate in mutually enhancing ways.

The open project “Butterfly Communities” is an emerging community that is searching for young artists, trainers, filmmakers, etc. that have understood that we have to help each other to have a stronger social impact.