"Too Idealistic!"

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Yup.  That's the Number One objection.

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Variations include:

-"too bold"

-"too audacious"

-"too far out there"

-"too utopian"...

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...pie in the sky...

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...you get the picture.

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Here's a recent question from a reader:

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"I've been reading a bunch of stuff on here, and WHOA... this is SO far out... I mean, don't get me wrong, I LIKE these ideas, they're GOOD, in fact they're, like, PERFECT, in the sense that, if we could *actually* figure out a way to implement this vision, it would be the best possible world conceivable.

But... that's exactly why I'm afraid that it WON'T work - it's TOO utopian.  It's so far out of the mainstream of what the current public currently accepts.  We're having quite enough trouble as it is, getting the public on board with really moderate progressive ideas, and you're talking about transforming into a totally enlightened society, like, almost overnight?

How will you get the public to go along with something this brazenly utopian, when they're already resisting even the small, incremental changes?

I mean I get that we definitely could use a little *dose* of utopianism right about now, I'm not gonna deny that.  We need progress.  We need some new thinking.  We need evolution - major evolution.  But this stuff is just SO utopian, SO out there, SO perfect... it's like, completely zero-ly possible.  Utopia doesn't win elections."

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Thanks for the very honest question.

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Yes, we get it.  You were a starry-eyed idealist once.  You believed in utopia.  You had faith in humanity's potential. 

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But then you saw the world, and you saw defeat, and disappointment.  You got belittled for being an "idealist."  You lost elections, and you needed an explanation for why.  And everyone was all too happy to provide you with one:  You were too idealistic.  You asked for too much.

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We get it.

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But they were lying to you.

You didn't lose because you were too idealistic.  You lost because you weren't idealistic enough.

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It's because you held back.

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Yes, that seems counter-intuitive.  It goes against everything we were taught.

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Conventional politics tells us that electability is inverse to idealism.  In other words, the more idealistic something is, the less electable. 

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All our lives, we've been bombarded with that message:  "idealness and electability are inverse variables."

​Represented visually, it looks like this:

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This is considered to be "common knowledge" - a basic fact about how politics works. 

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The pundits acted like this was some kind of immutable property of physics, derived from the fabric of reality itself. 

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But we believed it, because it was hammered into our minds, so relentlessly.  "Repeat a lie often enough... and it becomes truth..."

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Whenever we won a victory, the public dialogue attributed it to us having compromised, and having been "moderate".

And whenever we suffered a defeat, the blame was placed on us for having been "too idealistic."

They've really done a number on us, when you think about it.  They've gotten us thinking that the very goodness of something is inherently the reason why it's unattainable... and that this is some kind of metaphysical law of the universe - that the more good and ideal something is, the less practicable.

The healthier and saner a world is, the less likely it is to come about.

Purely because of its healthiness and saneness.

Wow.

What a mindfuck.

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So, we learned to hold back - to hold our tongues, to conceal the fullness of what we believe.  We may have a vision - a beautiful vision of the way the world could be - and one that's entirely practicable (if other people would just agree to it) - but we hold back from sharing it.

We think it's "too much" to share "all at once."  At most, we can share only a tiny sliver.  We only give people one small glimpse at a time.

All dreamers, idealists, utopians...  all progress-minded people... are in a near-constant condition of "holding back."

Haven't you noticed that?

And aren't you getting tired of it?

Aren't you tired of always refraining from speaking the fullness of what you know to be true?  Tired of being afraid?

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Aren't you tired of the game?

You know, the game we play, where we try to find a "balancing point" between "progress" and "electability."  Not too much of one or the other.  If we say "too much", then we'll alienate the audience.  So we try to find this "sweet spot", to fit the most progress into our message without going over the line at which the audience would shut down.  

It's like Blackjack.  You try to get as close to 21 as you can, but not over.

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Or like those games at the amusement park, like Roller Bowler, where you push a ball down a ramp and then up a hill, and try to get it in that little valley without going over the hill again.   You try to exert just enough force to get it over the hill the first time, but not so much that it goes over it the second time.  Sorta like that.

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All progress-minded people have been playing this game, to one degree or another.  We've been watering down our messages, to avoid going over 21, or over the hump that second time.

Aren't you getting tired of this?

Don't you realize that we don't have time for this nonsense anymore? 

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The planet can't afford this!  

The rainforests are in flames, the Arctic is in flames, the oceans are turning acidic and hypoxic, and species are going extinct at 10,000 times the background rate.  We don't have time for this crap.

We don't have time to hide the truth.  The world needs the truth, the REAL truth, and the WHOLE truth - and it needs it right NOW.  

The first thing you do when facing an existential crisis is you tell the truth.  You assess the situation - the real situation.  Then you ask yourself this question:

"What will solve the problem?"

You do NOT ask, "what's politically feasible", or what's "sellable", or what's mild enough that you can persuade others to support it."  You worry about all that stuff LATER - AFTER you do one thing first.

And the thing you do first is, you ask:

"What will solve the problem?"

And then you find the TRUTH.

Then, AFTER you've done that, without giving a hoot about what's "palatable" to others, and you have your real, true, uncorrupted, unadulterated answer - THEN, and only then, do you start dealing with the "public relations" aspect of it.  Only after you find the answer without influence from public opinion, do you start thinking ABOUT public opinion.

What does this world need?  

What will solve the problem?

And the answer, which you know in your heart, is all the utopian things that you were told aren't possible because of how utopian they are.

We need the end of money.  We need the abolition of borders.  We need universal recognition of natural law.  We need economic democracy.  A resource-based economy.  We need to re-establish the Village as the primary human social unit, and return the production of basic necessities of food, water and energy, to the local sphere, within walking distance of where we sleep.  We need to abolish lawns and replace them with gardens.  We need to tear up the concrete, and let it be living soil.  We need to clean up the oceans and clean up the land.  We need to restore the forests.  We need to abolish dominionism, and capitalism, and speciesism.

And we need to figure out a way to do all this in as smooth a way as possible, that avoids shocks and upheavals, and includes everyone - not just the rich, and not just those in rich countries, but everyone.  We need to learn how to share with those who don't look like us, who live far away, and seem like they're "other" because of nationalistic mind-control telling us we're only citizens of one "country", and that the people on one landmass matter more than people on another landmass.  We have to get over that immature shit.  We are citizens of the Earth.

And we need a healthy humanity, a mass-consciousness that has healed, in order to pull this all together.  And that requires the complete legalization of all visionary plants and fungi, and not only their "legalization", but their full embrace by society as the first and primary method of psychological medicine.  

That's what we need to do.

If we don't do this, we probably won't make it.

This is not optional.  This is what we need to do, to survive.  If we don't do this, then we will all die by either starvation or war.  Sorry not sorry.  We need the truth.

For a more detailed description, the Earth Party provides a master plan, called the Blueprint for a Mature Civilization.  Read it here.

That's what will solve the problem.

And we need to do it in the face of a mountain of ignorance, an ocean of propaganda, a corrupted voting system, and all the other pressures of surviving day-to-day in this world.

But... we have an advantage, now.

You see, we now KNOW what to do.

We've admitted it to ourselves, right there in those specially color-coded green paragraphs!

With the knowledge of the truth, we can now speak it.

And once we speak it, it's all out on the table, and we KNOW what we're aiming for.  We can SEE our goal.

And when you can SEE it, even if just in your mind, you now have something REAL to convince others of.  Oh, it might not be physical yet - but it's still REAL, as long as you can truly SEE it in your mind's eye.  The vision is the first step in the manifestation of any change.  

We weren't manifesting it before, in years past, because we didn't have that vision yet.  We were too afraid of it.  Too afraid to picture it.  To show it to others.  We hid it.

But we can't afford to play this game of hiding anymore... just look at the planet.  The capitalist dominionist paradigm has entered its endgame - the phase where it completes its consumption of the host planet, eradicating most life, and then spawning spores to go out and colonize and devour other planets, via billionaires in space capsules.  We're running out of time.

So it's time now to say FUCK PUBLIC OPINION, go within, come up with a Vision of how we want the future to be, and then fight for our lives to spread that message, as far and wide, and as unapologetically as possible.

Vision first... public relations second.

And if you don't want to spend the next 10 years living as a hermit in the forest or on the mountaintop, searching for the clarity to come up with such a vision, and put it together piece by piece over the span of months or years, and you want to get active NOW, and start getting into conversations, and doing the work of bringing others on board NOW, then the Blueprint for a Mature Civilization can serve as a handy guide.

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Now you might be thinking:

"I understand the "cycle."  You have a point, for sure.

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But what's the solution?  It would seem to be... that we should go in the other direction.  Get more ideal.  More progressive.  Start being bolder.  Asking for more.

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But what about the graph?  The curved green line thingy with the downward slope.  Doesn't more progress mean less electability?  Or... is the graph wrong?"

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It's not "wrong" - but it is only half-true.

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Because they're only showing you half of the graph!

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It continues!

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The first part of the graph is the same one from before... but if you go all the to the end of it, the downward trend reverses, and there's a whole other curve that takes shape, going upwards!

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In other words, if you present a more ideal vision, it will be less electable.  But if you go really, really ideal - past that bottoming-out point - you start becoming more electable.

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They'll never ever tell you this on the corporate news shows.

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It seems to be the biggest secret in politics.

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"OK.  I understand the concept.  It's interesting.  But it just doesn't match my personal experience.  I've tried advocating for utopian ideas before.  But people just laugh at me!  Or, even if they take me seriously, they think my ideas sound absurd.  It's so different from what they're used to.

And frankly, I don't blame them.  Utopian ideas are just so... out of place.  The word "utopia" literally means "no place."  It's like describing a wholly different world."

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You've just expressed a deeper truth than you might realize!  It is part of a different world.  You're right about that. 

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Utopian ideas are not tweaks or adjustments to the existing social system.  They're components of an entirely different system.

And hence, they don't appear to make sense when you look at them within the wider context of the current system.

When they're evaluated in the context of the current system, they appear wacky.  It's about context.  

No borders?

No money?

No nation states?

No private land ownership?  

Economic Democracy?  

Natural Law?

If you offer these things as standalone ideas - when you insert them, one at a time, into the current system - they appear completely out of place. 

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Because they are wacky!  In the context of the current system.

They do, however, make sense in the context of a different system.  Far more sense than anything in the current system.  (The current one is turning the planet into a barren toxic garbage heap.  Any system makes more sense than that system.)

The different system is necessary for our survival.  We don't want to call it a "new" system, because it's not, in fact, "new."  It's ancient.  It's what humanity grew up with, for many thousands of years, before the current system supplanted it.

Yet, since it's been so long, and most of us have so thoroughly forgotten it, it appears new - and mysterious, unknown, and alien.  

But some of us remember.  And we try to bring it back.  To spread the message.

The problem is - and this is very important:

We usually only bring that message in fragments.  We bring each idea as a standalone concept, without bringing along the full picture of the new system that the idea is a component of.

And so, when our audience evaluates the idea, they do so in the context of the current system by default, since they have no other system in which to evaluate it.  And it looks out of place.

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It's like a jigsaw puzzle.  Look at a just a single piece, and it looks wacky, doesn't it?  If all you did was look at just one piece, without seeing the cover (or without even knowing that there is such thing as a cover), it would seem to be one of those nonsensical "modern art" works, where a person just scribbles and splashes paint randomly.  Since the audience doesn't have the full PICTURE from the cover yet, they can't fit your piece into any larger context.

So, they'll do the only thing they have available to them:  Try to fit it into the existing system, that they know.  Which is a completely different picture.  And since your piece - your idea - is now being evaluated in the context of a picture it's not even supposed to be part of, it looks... wacky.

And you know whose ideas do make sense, in that picture?  Theirs.  The rightwingers'.

As long as you're using their picture - presenting your ideas within the context of the current system - it's just not gonna work.

You have to show them a new picture - the cover of the puzzle box.

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The far end of the Electability Graph is not simply "more progressive", or "super-duper progressive."  It's the acknowledgment of the need for an entirely new system for organizing human society.

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To make this work, you've gotta think really outside the box.  But the good news is... once you get out of that box... all the utopian ideas that previously "didn't make sense in the current system" suddenly start to make sense - a lot of sense - far more sense than anything in the current system.

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With the whole picture in view, the specific piece has an actual context to go in - and it finally makes sense.

Got it?

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"Can you give an example of a specific issue, so I can see how this works in practice?"

Sure.  Let's talk about nations and borders.

Right now, we're all using a governing system.  It's called the "nation-state system."  You're familiar with it.  It involves the carving up of the planet into chunks, with each chunk being a self-governing unit, which can do basically anything it wants within its borders, including decide who, from a different chunk, may come in, and for how long, and under what conditions.

If we're going to use that system - and have these things called "borders" - then it makes sense to have a secure border.  The right-wingers are correct about that.  Like, come on!  Why even have a border, if you're not going to secure it?

And, furthermore, what do you do if you're having trouble securing it?

Well, it would require more resources.

But what if no amount of human vigilance - i.e. guards and patrols - is able to fully secure it?

Well, then it you'd need to build some kind of... physical barrier.

A wall.  

They're right about that too.

If we're operating within the current system - the nation-state system - then such ideas make sense.

And it's like this with just about every issue.  On every issue, the conservatives, the right-wingers, their ideas do make more sense - in the context of the current system.  

And progressives have to acknowledge this.

We have to acknowledge, that as long as we're advocating for our ideas from within the context of the current system, they're not going to make sense, and the right-wingers will continue looking like the "sane, reasonable" ones, in the eyes of the majority of the population.

Which means that they're going to keep winning (for as long as we keep advocating in the context of the current System).

"So what do we do?"

If you want to stop them from winning, then there's only one way to do that:  by shifting to a completely different System entirely - a system in which their backwards ideas don't  make sense, because the new System makes more sense.

On the issues of borders and immigration, this means evolving beyond the system of nation-states, and recognizing that we are all one planet, and adjusting our society's shape and organization to reflect this truth.

We have to go all the way.  

All the way to utopia.

But even that idea - what we call planetary consciousness - is itself just a component of an even larger solution - a jigsaw piece of a still larger puzzle picture.

That picture - the big, big picture - is the Mature Civilization.

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This is the idea that the "center" of any debate is formed by the location of the two opposing poles.  And it implies that, if you want to gain ground, you have to move your own pole, to be more extreme, in order to move the center in your direction.

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"But what would it look like if we started using the Overton Window to our advantage?  How can we put this knowledge to work?"

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For a quick example, let's say you think there's too much inequality, and 1% of the population shouldn't have 50% of the wealth.  And you want to put a 25% tax on all wealth over a billion dollars.

Your opponents, the billionaires and their bootlickers, are going to come at you with a position of not taxing billionaires at all, and allowing the entire corporate class to run roughshod over the working class and the planet.  (They pick such an extreme position because they understand the Overton Window).

So, the center of such a debate would be a 12.5% tax - halfway between 0% and 25%.

That's the Overton Window.  It's a window covering the range of debate, between the two poles.  And on the issue of this billionaire-tax, the Overton Window would cover tax proposals from 0% to 25%, because those are the two positions you've defined as the poles.  Anything between 0% and 25% would be considered "mainstream", and anything outside of that range would be seen as "radical."

And the "center" - that magical sweet sugary spot that every party and politician wants to seem like they're firmly anchored in - is 12.5%.

So what this means is, if you actually want 25%, you should really start by demanding 50%!!! 

Because then the "center" would be the 25% you originally wanted! 

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Get it?

Even if you don't really want 50% - even if you think 50% is too high - you should still demand it, as your initial position, because doing so will "shift the Overton Window" further in your direction, so that it covers the 25% you actually want, and features it in its Center.

And if you want 50%... then you should demand 100%.  Just demand a cap on all wealth over a billion dollars, and confiscate all excess!

And if you want THAT... you should demand a cap on all wealth over 500 million.

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And if you want THAT... you should demand a cap on all wealth over 100 million.

And if you want THAT, then you should start at a position of demanding that all billionaires be placed into custody and held in psychiatric facilities until doctors determine the cause of their sociopathic behavior - why they hoarded so much for themselves, while others had so little - and have them prosecuted in criminal court for their ecocide and other crimes. 

And if you want THAT...

...then you should start with a position of demanding that all billionaires be physically subjugated by tax-funded Dominatrixes wearing vegan faux-leather, with cameras broadcasting their humiliation before the world.

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Like, you don't "actually" want that - but stating the dominatrix idea as your initial position "moves the Overton Window" to cover the previous solution (i.e. psychiatric evaluation and criminal prosecution of all billionaires) as the Center of Debate.

Get it?

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The opposition gets it...

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And they've been using it.  Whenever you hear something like, "You're too idealistic", or "You're too far Left", or "You have to compromise", or "You have to come back towards the Center to win", that's not just bad advice - that's the opposition using the Overton Window against you.  They're trying to shift the Window back towards their side.  And if you take their advice, you're shifting the Window, and losing ground.

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When you keep moving your proposals towards the "center", you're actually shifting to Overton Window away from your ideals - towards those of your opposition.

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Every time you compromise, you're redefining the poles of the debate, further towards your opposition.

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The opposition - the forces of capitalism, dominionism, nationalism, and speciesism - they understand this.  The corporate media understands this.  And that's precisely the reason why the "mainstream" (propaganda) newsmedia complex tells you to keep compromising - because your compromising shifts the window.  In their direction.  And they know it!

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Get it?

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"Wow... sneaky!"

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Yup.

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Here's what happens when you fail to understand the Overton Window:

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Every time the Left moves to the Center, the Center shifts.  It shifts over to the Right. 

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Which then means the Left now has to move even further to the Right, to keep up with where the Center has shifted to!

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If we keep concealing the fullness of our truth, for fear of alarming our audience, we continue the Political Ineffectiveness Feedback Loop, or PIFL.

First, we try going "moderate" - we try watering down our message.  We shrink it down to a level where it "couldn't possibly be too much" for anyone.  We just ask for a little teeny tiny trickle of progress.  Surely no one will object!  Surely such weak incrementalism will be so non-threatening, people will certainly be nice and acquiesce to it!

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And we still end up losing. 

Even with a huge compromise.  Even with a watered-down message.  It's still not popular enough to win.

And then, we ask "why."

And what does the "conventional wisdom" tell us?  

"You were too idealistic.  You asked for too much."

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​And the prescription is, of course, (like always), to be even less confident in our vision - to water the message down even more.  

But this gives off a stench of weakness.  It comes across as spineless, and uninspiring.  Which leads to even more defeats.

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Which we might take to mean that we were still too idealistic and so we have to water it down even more than that!

Agghhhh!

It's a self-reinforcing cycle. 

A feedback loop.

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Losing elections leads to loss of confidence, which leads to philosophical compromise, which leads to looking weak and uninspiring, which leads to losing elections... which leads to loss of confidence... and so on.

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The eventual result of this loop is an ideology called neoliberalism - an ideology whose own loyal proponents can't even tell you what it stands for.

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Can anyone tell us what these two icons stand for?

Not who they stand for, but what they stand for?

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And that's where we've ended up - we progress-minded people - after so many years of playing the same game, and swirling down the drain of the Political Ineffectivenes Feedback Loop.

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"So how do we break out of this?"

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It's simple.  Just tell the truth.

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Whatever you know to be true,... just speak it.  And stop apologizing.  Stop holding back.

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Be a leader.  Take advantage of the emotional power of Audacity.

A leader is someone who does something audacious.

Someone who governs without audacity is a manager - not a leader.  And progress-minded people, in recent decades, have embraced an identity of "manager", rather than "leader."

A manager asks what the public wants, and then tries to do that.

A leader asks what's necessary, and then makes the public want it.

A manager responds to the desire of the public.

A leader SETS those desires.

A manager lets the public tell them what to do.

A leader TELLS the public what they ought to be telling the managers to do!

When a manager sees a person who OPPOSES him, he backs away, and asks for LESS, in an effort to gain his opponent's good will, and extract a trickle of concessions out of them.  "Better a little bit, than nothing."  

But when a leader sees opposition, he states his own truth even more emphatically than before, to win over the people who aren't yet decided - to win them over to his side, and overwhelm his ideological opponent with the power of numbers.  

If a manager doesn't have enough support, she asks for something closer to where the support is.

If a leader doesn't have enough support, she CREATES IT.

The key difference is audacity.  The leader, by definition, is someone demanding something that *does not yet have public support.*  The fact that she creates that support, implies that the support *didn't yet exist* when she came along.  She is, by definition, asking for something un-popular.

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And if you're not asking for anything un-popular...

...then you're not a leader.  You're not using the power of audacity - not tapping into the emotional power of leadership.

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And as you probably know all too well, politics largely hinges on feelings.  People are drawn to the power of leadership, emotionally.

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Leadership is brave.  And human beings feel an emotional pull towards bravery.  It inspires us.  It makes us FEEL something.  

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And when we see a person being brave - being a leader - it makes us want to agree with whatever they're saying. 

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Most belief bubbles are impossible to puncture with logic.  They require emotion.  Emotion is the only way to have an effect.     beliefs....

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The only way to overcome a belief system, is through a stronger belief system.  A stronger emotion. 

A leader doesn't ask what's electable.  A leader asks what's necessary, and then speaks that, and MAKES it electable.

You don't just take whatever the public believes, and just resign yourself to it.  You're supposed to decide what the public believes.

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Don't change your beliefs to match the public's.  Change the public's beliefs to match yours.

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That's a leader.

The forces of anti-progress understand this.  They use it all the time.  That's why the Orange Man got elected.

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You know... the Cheeto.  Mango Mussolini.  Twitler.

He catapulted to the front of the field, because of his audacity.  It's the reason why he even caught any traction in the first place.  It's what made him originally stand out of the Republican primary field, what made him different from all the other candidates running for the party's nomination.  His audacity put him on the map, and lodged him into the public consciousness.

He said things that were unthinkable.  Things that should have tanked his campaign immediately.  Should have.  By all conventional wisdom.  Should have, but obviously didn't.

The power of audacity itself was so great, that he, with its help, was able to overshadow the indescribably egregious badness of his ideas, and get elected despite his horrible agenda.  Walls and bullying and cruelty and ignorance of all kinds, and the total disregard for the value of planetary ecology.

He used the Power of Audacity, and the Overton Window. 

His supporters knew about it, too.  By name.  They talked about the Overton Window on 4chan.  And about "alpha male dominance" (another way of saying the Power of Audacity).  Every one of his core supporters knew these terms, and talked about these terms with their friends, and sought to utilize the power behind them.

When people take a stand - a ballsy one - one that reflects what millions think but few are brave enough to say aloud - no matter what it's for - whatever it's in service of - whether love or fear, good or evil, or anything in between - others look up to them, and follow them, and leaders are born.

And leaders shape the thinking of the people they lead.

So here's the good news:  If a person with terrible ideas can win with audacity alone, then surely a person with GOOD ideas is at least as capable of winning, if they're able to muster the same level of audacity.  

But a little tiny pinch of audacity is not enough.  It's got to match the audacity of that which it's fighting.  Evil audacity can only be overcome by an equal or greater amount of good audacity.

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What the Left - the mainstream Left, at least - is asking for is no longer audacious.  It's not audacious because it's not forward.  It merely asks to return, backwards, to a more palatable time in the past.  It's asking for things we've already done.  It pines for the "golden days" of 90's neoliberal capitalism.  The Clinton Era.  Or perhaps the Obama Era, for those more socially-liberal.  But either way, it's seeking a time in the past.

And that is quite simply not audacious.  It's wimpy.  Who's inspired by the 90's?  Who's inspired by Obama, at this point?  The president who expanded the imperial wars, increased the bombings from 2 countries to 7, spread fracking all around the country and the world, and expanded fossil fuel infrastructure more than any president before him - and continues to brag about it, even to this day?  What about that is inspiring, or audacious, or brave?

When the Left pines for these two bygone and deeply flawed periods, they're going backwards...

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Liberalism - progress - has run up against a wall.  There is nowhere further for it to go, without completely upending the social system.  And its advocates are too scared to make that argument.  So the entire Left has stagnated, beside this wall.

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At high levels of idealism, we have the "pie-in-the-sky far left hippy utopians", whose electability drops of precipitously.

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On the opposite side, at very low levels of idealism, we have the far right.  They're SO un-idealistic, they turn people off.

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The main electability is the range between mainstream "conservatives" and "liberals." 

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The "conservatives" are usually perceived as the most electable, with "liberals" slightly less so, but still within striking distance.  And the way liberals typically win is by either having a more effective organizing machine, or by exploiting public anger at an incumbent conservative candidate or government.

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If you cross a certain threshold of idealness, it starts to get more feasible and possible, because it's approaching what the world is actually supposed to be - and when people see the vision as it's truly supposed to be, it inspires them to pay attention, to get up off the couch, and to rally.  

For decades, our ruling elites have given us an option between:

A) On the one hand, a horrible, regressive world in which the wealthy and powerful brazenly run roughshod over everyone else and ravenously consume the biosphere, without even the slightest checks or balances...

vs...

B)  On the other hand, a mediocre world in which some things are kinda sorta OK, and other things are still quite regressive, and we make slow, incremental progress of solving perhaps 1% of each problem, each year.

In America, these two visions are represented by the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively.

And it's been difficult enough just getting politicians elected who espouse the kinda-sorta-somewhat-less-regressive world.  Even though they're not demanding much (and if you look at it a certain way, they're hardly demanding anything at all), it's still difficult for them to beat the outright regressives who brazenly pine for maximum oppression and unchecked ecological destruction.

But the reason why the half-ideal, mediocre vision doesn't work is not because it's too ideal, but because it's not ideal enough.  It's the wrong vision of the world.  Well, it's half wrong.  Half right, but half wrong, and the wrongness is the reason why it fails to inspire pepole and doesn't gain any traction - not the rightness!

How crazy is it that most people assume the half-ideal vision fails to gain traction because it's too right - rather than recognizing that the gaping wrongness of it might be the reason for its lack of traction!

Nobody pays attention to the half-ideal visions, because they're mediocre, and there are tons of them - each with a different combination of rightness and wrongness.  Some are right on this but wrong on that - while others are right on that but wrong on this.  And since there are so many of them, their myriad number divides people.  People don't know which to join.  Everybody picks a different one.  And hence, none stands out as THE one, and there's no unity.  But we need unity.

And THE IDEAL vision makes that possible.  When we put forward the true ideal - and don't shy away from parts of it because we're afraid of looking "too idealistic", but fully put it forth without reservation - then it inspires people, unites people, and gives everyone a central banner to rally around.  

So think of the world, as it's supposed to be, truly.  The most ideal world you can think of, where all problems are solved, in a compassionate and sustainable way.  

Then, we come up with a step-by-step plan to get to it.  

Vision first, plan second.  That's important, because if we let the plan affect the vision, then we're altering the vision based on what we think is "expedient", which puts us on a course back to the mediocre half-wrong vision that's been preventing our evolution for these many decades in the first place!


A comprehensive vision of how we want the world to be.  


 

"This whole thing is too idealistic.  I'm sorry, but I like to live in the real world.  This plan is a pie-in-the-sky, rainbows-and-unicorns, fairy-godmother fairy-duster utopian pipe dream."

You want to know what's idealistic?  

Thinking we can keep doing what we're doing, forever, without any consequences.

That's idealism.

​Thinking that we can keep cutting down trees, torturing animals, throwing innocent people into cages, poisoning the oceans, drilling oil, fracking, strip mining, burning, and pillaging this planet into oblivion, and our society will be just fine, and never collapse.

That's a pipe-dream.

Thinking we can have infinite economic expansion on a finite planet.

​That's pie-in-the-sky.

Thinking we can keep using the same economic system and political system that got us into this mess, to get out of the mess.

​That's fairy dust.

​The Master Plan for the New Civilization is the very definition of realism.  It recognizes the true laws of social dynamics and morality, and acknowledges the real limits that exist on a biological planet.  There is nothing more realistic than demanding that our civilization live within its means, and nothing more idealistic than wanting to continue eating away at our own foundations and expecting continued social stability.

This plan is realism.  The status quo is idealism.

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"What about incrementalism?  Maybe a world that recognizes the Law of the Earth is achievable, in the long run, but not all at once.  We can adopt a little bit at a time, by passing piecemeal bits of legislation, one small improvement at a time."  

​We just don't have enough time for it.  The forests are falling, asphalt is choking the land, the permafrost is melting, billions of our furry brothers and sisters are being tormented in the most heartbreakingly gruesome ways imaginable, and more and more nations are getting pulled into war.  CERN could blow up the planet at any moment.  

Our species has tortured itself into suffering so unbearable that it longs for collective suicide, and we've assembled all the machines necessary to go through with it.  

And in this climate, you want to deliberately postpone correcting the bulk of the wrongness, because correctness isn't "realistic"?

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Finally Getting It Right.

Humans have a reputation of never getting things right.  And for a portion of history, this became a trope, a cliche, a stereotype about us - that no matter what we do, we're a bunch of screwups, and our social systems have to be dysfunctional just like we are.  

To even suggest the idea of a functioning, well-run society - one that's stable and sustainable, in which everyone is healthy and sane, and humanity lives in harmony with Nature - is to invite the dreaded term, "utopia."  

"An ideal world is impossible - because that would be utopia."

And why is utopia impossible?  "Because it's ideal."  

And ideal is impossible, of course, because it would be utopia.  

See the circular logic there?  

But this type of thinking has to end now, because it's threatening our very existence.  The current model of civilization has grown so dysfunctional that it's putting the foundational systems of Life on this planet into jeopardy.  If left to its own devices, it will cannibalize the entire world, and eventually, itself.  

We can no longer afford to be cynical.  Continued cynicism will prevent our evolution to the new systems we need in order to survive as a species.  

It used to be that enlightenment was a luxury, reserved for the lucky few.  It used to be that a world of peace and wisdom was nothing more than a thought-experiment to lift our spirits - a dream, always residing in the future, existing solely to make us feel good in the midst of the mess around us.  

But it's no longer optional.  It's not a choice anymore between sanity and pain.  It's a choice between sanity and death.  We either evolve into what most people are calling "utopia", or we vanish.  

With such a stark ultimatum, change finally is possible.  The human mind will do anything to hold onto its delusions.  But it will also do anything to survive.  Including letting go of its delusions!

All over the world, people are "snapping out of it", refusing the keep buying into the alleged inevitability of dysfunction.  People are realizing that it's a ruse - that our natural state is harmony, not dissonance, and that "utopia" is not only possible, but easier than what we've got now.

And so, this plan has come forward.

 

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Humanity may be slow to change in most scenarios, but not when survival depends on it.  When the choice is "A good life" vs. "a crappy life", many people will choose a crappy life.

But when the choice is "A good life" vs. "death", then people get off their butts and act.

The threat of death is the one thing that motivates human societies to do difficult, inconvenient things.  And death is what our world is facing if we don't change our ways.  The biosphere is already heading towards collapse.   

We all know the system is screwed up, but too many of us tend to meet the wrongness of it with resignation.  We say things like, "Oh well, that's life, the world ain't perfect, we humans are flawed, the world is f***ed up, and that's just the way it is."

And thus we explain away the wrongness of the system.

But all that wrongness doesn't just exist in a vacuum.  It affects things.

​Over time, it accumulates, and builds on itself, compounding upon itself.

We've had so much wrongness in our social systems for so long, that the system is approaching the point of wrongness-saturation, a point at which the system cannot absorb any more wrongness without collapsing.




 

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If the public doesn't embrace the truth, KEEP SPEAKING IT, until they DO.

This is how LEADERSHIP works.

A wannabe leader hides their beliefs, in order to get elected.
 

And that's exactly the logic of a non-leader.  That's exactly why he won't win.  Leadership requires courage to speak the truth - not just "even if" it's unpopular, but specifically BECAUSE it's unpopular.  That's how leaders emerge.  They don't kowtow to public sentiment - they go AGAINST public sentiment, and CHANGE the sentiment.  If you do it ballsily enough (or ovariesily enough), you get attention and you inspire a movement.