Towards Ecority

Advancing Humanity's Evolutionary Purpose

Most readers are aware of my abiding concern that along with everything we have gained from our innate capacity for invention – the economic and material benefits especially - we have lost sight of what it really means (or could mean) to be human. We can debate until the cows come home the merits of the global economy, the nature of predatory capitalism, free markets and trade. We may even resort to using the same statistics to support diametrically opposed views.

Conversations about those things that should really concern us though - compassion for our fellow humans, a love of nature, artistic expression, appreciative relationships, and the freedom to describe how we feel without fear of repression - are increasingly conducted in hushed tones, if at all. In that context I am reminded of Winston Churchill who, when it was suggested that his cabinet put a stop to funding the arts and divert the money into fighting Hitler instead, responded, If we do that then what are we fighting for? Today, given geopolitical tensions and the imminent collapse of the “rules-based global order” that remains a particularly pertinent question.

There has to be a compelling evolutionary purpose underpinning all human activity worth preserving. But that happens to be the missing factor in almost all conversations to do with transformation, or a shift to our civilisational model. Not only that, but when conversations that matter actually do inspire actions that could make a difference, the outcomes are all too often packaged as a short-term fix or an incremental improvement to what was previously in place. It changes absolutely nothing in our global society of mind.

Stepping through an ontological portal in order to recreate our civilisation, by imagining entirely new possibilities, invariably falter at the last moment. Even new epistemes fail to gain traction. We baulk at the gargantuan nature of the task ahead, denounce the economic costs involved, or hesitate given what we might be called on to sacrifice, either ending up with a slightly better version of that which already existed or reverting to an unsatisfactory status quo.

It is possible that we might be getting bolder as we see the world turn on its dark side and splendid visions are trampled in the dust of irrational wars and bland propaganda. But it’s not just audacity that’s needed, imagination is critical – especially the invention of alternative ways of being and of exercising our humanity, alternative narratives, alternative cultures and alternative world-systems.

Let me posit a fairly mundane example: the pragmatic decision of where to locate a Trust is often based on tax considerations and the like. The main assumption is that the Trust is established in an explicit jurisdiction that aligns with the structural intentions of the Trust, enables easy compliance, and considers the needs and circumstances of each beneficiary.

But imagine that we are establishing a novel kind of Trust. The main beneficiary of this Trust is posited as humanity (as in the species Homo sapiens) while a secondary recipient is all other life on Earth. Let us also imagine that our jurisdiction is Gaia (as in Earth’s biosphere). Clearly just these two factors would give modern lawyers a migraine.

There are only two ways out of this dilemma: deny the existence of Gaia as a legal jurisdiction, or such non-human beneficiaries as legal entities (pointing to the inadequacy of the law), or formulate radically new rulings allowing Trust to operate outside of conventional nation-state jurisdictions. Voila! We’ve just stepped through an ontological portal into a new world and a new repertoire of civilisational possibilities.

Now let’s stop dreaming g and get back to reality. Almost invariably we take the first option these days, circumscribing the future with what has already been and found wanting. A zombie future in all but name. Other issues that are embedded within today’s paradigm need to be addressed in similar vein.

But first we must articulate a memetic evolutionary purpose in the form of a worldview that takes humanity from being thecentre of attention and positions us as stewards of Gaia.

Some things about what matter to us sapiens are not secreted away from view. They have no need to hide and nowhere to go. For example, the beliefs we use to sustain the illusion of progress remain in full view, yet also out of sight - undetected and unchallenged. If by any chance they are disputed it is invariably done in ways that support or oppose a narrowly defined case without altering one jot the underlying linear construct.

Another example relevant to my thesis is the rapid global heating taking place as a result of human activities. The science is indisputable. We must curb greenhouse gas emissions or risk perishing. But that challenges the dogma of the civilisational worldview – a framework that asserts our superiority over all other species. Hindu, Christian, Jewish and Islamic scriptures all endorse our right to plunder the Earth as we see fit. The ruling elite see no cause to alter direction by keeping fossil fuels in the ground, clearly evident now that the UN’s annual COP climate change meetings has been so brazenly hijacked by that industry.

Meanwhile the right to express a vociferous opinion, and have that point of view held up to be the truth, is used to confuse the issue and distort the facts. By disputing the underlying cause of global heating, most often referred to euphemistically as climate change, old doubts are injected into the conversation.

The behaviours arising from this confusion fall into three categories: those in the fossil fuel industry who are continuing with business as usual; those who act to mitigate the impact of global heating, because they can see the effects already and feel obligated to prepare for the worst; and denialists who sit on the fence, loudly asserting their right to be heard and waiting to be proven correct. At no stage do we reflect on the few fundamental tenets that give rise to such folly. Instead we are happy to vote with one group or another. While the evolutionary purpose remains in stasis, captive to industrial economism, any other ontological framework can be ruled out.

That same rule also applies to other so-called solutions to the civilisational problematique. In that regard one of the key hypotheses within which the UNs’ Sustainable Development Goals have been framed is questionable. Positioning the SDGs within the constraints of neoliberalism exhibits a distinct lack of ingenuity. By overlooking previous social transitions, and lazily setting aside other evolutionary pathways, key elements for the shift to a sustainable world are lacking. The entire raft of Goals may be unattainable as a result.

For example, there’s a complete absence of any reference to history prior to 1990 - a date arbitrarily chosen for comparisons of global poverty and hunger rates in the SDGs. It seems as though those who drafted the Goals do not adequately comprehend how the world-system came to be the way it is, nor do the SDGs as expressed show us that a different kind of economics and development is necessary and feasible.

Consequently, investigating the current worldview for potential flaws, and being prepared to craft a new worldviewintroducing alternative beliefs more aligned to contemporary conditions, becomes critical to success, particularly if the UN Goals are as important to humanity as many presume them to be. Appreciating differing modes of economic activity, and how these reinforce certain social structures and mores, also becomes a critical factor.

We can get to a future where no one starves to death, and everyone has their basic needs met. But any claim that this future is attainable with development-as-usual is as poorly informed as the climate deniers who cling to the belief that business-as-usual will be good for the planet in the long run.

The most popular economic models from the past encompass tribal egalitarianism, the various barter systems used by hunter-gatherer communities, informal trade networks, mercantilism and, more recently, the contractual prescriptions favoured by nation states. Each mode carries its own in-built conventions about what works best for the health of the society. But there are serious problems with some of these – especially in their most recent guise.

For example, many orthodox economists suppose growth, usually predicated as the consequence of a constant cycle of innovation through obsolescence, is vital for a healthy economy and, consequently, in the fight against adverse effects such as hunger, poverty and social polarisation. Most evidence, however, points to the contrary.

Under industrial capitalism the process of wealth accumulation, generated from all kinds of institutionalised production, has massively benefitted the affluent more than any other single group. Additionally, as the global economy has continued to expand, poverty and economic instability has increased. Today just 81 billionaires own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of humanity. Despite this, they are taxed the least, with only 4 cents in every dollar of global tax revenue coming from wealth taxes. In fact, half of the world's billionaires live in regions where wealth tax is not even a thing.

It would be imprudent to demonise capitalism or to ignore the positive impacts free markets have had in helping people rise out of penury. But the fact that an ultra-wealthy class are able to prosper compared with the one in every nine people who struggle to find food each day – is a demonstration of how warped we have allowed the global economy to become, and solutions will not be forthcoming from within that paradigm.

Extreme inequality of this type is as perilous as it is grotesque. It has resulted in the super-rich acquiring immense material wealth - but also the power to bend rules and policies in their favour. But this is only one factor. We have permitted the more predatory aspects of industrial capitalism to prevail almost unchecked. As a result, we’re burdened by financial systems distended with debt, a repertoire of complex and opaque devices designed to evade tax or facilitate dubious arbitrage, and trade treaties designed by a powerful elite to benefit themselves.

In so-called developed and developing countries alike, the lowest tax rates, the best and most comprehensive health care and educational options, and the chance to influence how the society works, are given to the wealthy and their children. Meanwhile many of those who suffered at the hands of slave-powered empires or were exploited by the conquering and pillaging of their lands by colonialist nations, live in abject poverty. According to the United Nations this latter group numbers around 4.3 billion people.

The neoliberal economic paradigm keeps tensions between the creation of wealth and the creation of poverty in a state of equilibrium. No system can deliver what it has not been designed to produce. If the outcomes do not match our intentions there is no other option other than to change the system’s constraints. Yet any serious proposal to effect radical changes to the global financial system are routinely ridiculed and judged far too disruptive to the established order. Of course. That is the point!

For the past century or more, we have tolerated a clumsy situation where markets siphon wealth to the top of the social hierarchy and governments use a proportion of tax revenue to provide just enough benefits to prevent the base of the social pyramid from collapsing. This system of wealth production and distribution is designed to reward the wealthy and keep the poor in check. And it does precisely that.

This steady transfer of wealth from producers to owners is the root cause of the inequality that exists in the world today. Indeed, the theory that economic gains primarily benefitting the wealthy — such as investors, businesses and entrepreneurs — will “trickle-down” to poorer members of society, creating new opportunities for the poor to attain a better standard of living, is now proven to be totally flawed. It is based on two false propositions: first that everyone eventually benefits from economic growth, and second that growth arises from those with the resources to increase productive output. In theory these both make sense. In practice it has proven not to be quite as straightforward.

If we cannot reinvent this false monetary dogma, that has been used as a justification for growing income inequality for far too long, the gap between the rich and the poor will continue to widen. But that does not encompass the full extent of the problem for this is not purely an economic issue:

• In many countries an aging population is putting untold pressure on health care, welfare, housing, infrastructure, superannuation and taxation systems.

• A potentially massive rise in unemployment figures must be factored in as services absorb the kind of artificially super-intelligent [ASI] automation previously only used in industrial manufacturing and farming.

• And then, of course, we must fathom out how to value leisure as an exchange mechanism, much as we had to do in valuing labour a couple of centuries ago.

ASI is exerting a slow but continuous degradation on the value and availability of work. It is highly likely that super-intelligent robots will soon colonise every aspect of entrenched production – impacting entire professions and eventually eliminating swathes of teachers, prison officers, managers, accountants, lawyers, drivers and construction workers.

Most work in the future will require partnering between humans and technologies. The only tasks likely to be totally quarantined from the ASI invasion, and then only for awhile, will be those requiring a creative mind, fine judgement or compassion. These obviously include people that help others find and pursue meaning in their lives - like coaches and mentors, nurses, therapists, counsellors, leisure time and experience orchestrators.

Those who can manage the link between personal desires, happiness, and the new technical possibilities will still be in demand. But traditional jobs that are routinised and susceptible to algorithms will inevitably be replaced by robots.

The social implications are too frequently ignored or misinterpreted, particularly as the consequences of automated work are likely to fall upon society unevenly. For one thing we are likely to see far less full-time work. The casualisation of the workforce that began decades ago shows no signs of slowing. Then the qualities and character traits capable of surviving widespread introduction of ASI into the workplace, such as social and emotional intelligence, a caring demeanour, experimentation and collaboration, are mostly feminine in nature – at least in terms of how we’ve structured and allocated work. It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, therefore, that jobs traditionally undertaken by women are safe (again for the time being) while work typically performed by men is more at risk.

At this stage we have not found any satisfactory answers to these issues, mainly because we are still seeking solutions from within the confines of conventional wisdom: the current supply and demand economic paradigm on the one hand, and the idea that work in itself is a necessary virtue – fundamental to our sense of self-worth and individual identity. These, after all, are two of the most important pillars of the civilisational model.

The widespread loss of jobs, declining fertility rates, the dilemma of how to cater for an aging population, and the imperative of sharing the wealth produced by society more equitably, have the potential to usher in a social and psychological transformation unlike anything we have ever experienced or imagined. This transformation will inevitably call for the adoption of a new evolutionary purpose and narrative, in addition to the discarding of obsolete dogma.

Ultimately the issue of forging a more equitable post-capitalist society must be framed by asking four morally challenging questions:

1. How can we craft an evolutionary purpose that places humanity as an integral part of nature rather than a species that preys on species weaker than ourselves?

2. How can we create an inclusive economic system that works for everyone irrespective of their status, gender, ethnicity or education?

3. How can we shift from an extractive and exploitative paradigm that threatens the survival of humans as well as other species to a more generative one nurturing all life?

4. As intellectual and physical labour both draw near to extinction how should we reconfigure the relationship between work and play such that leisure, creative endeavours, and the orchestration of social experiences, are able to replace drudgery as legitimate and vital symbols of human actualisation?

If we look to history we see clear indications that a transition to a new social democracy and economic world-system is possible. It’s also in the best interests of the super-rich to acknowledge and help facilitate such a transition – although many remain sceptical. But it requires (i) the adoption of a new teleology based upon abundance rather than scarcity, (ii) an acknowledgment that a steady state economy is more viable in the longer term than one grounded in the need for constant growth, and (iii) a universal willingness to design current inequities out of any new world-system.

These three constraints are at the heart of how wealth and poverty have been created in the past, clarify how the system has become skewed to benefit owners of material assets, and how equality can be deliberately designed into a more sustainable future worldview.

Sooner or later we will run out of jobs as currently conceived. It stands to reason that we need to redesign the viability of how wealth is produced and shared. This will require us to recast the very notion of work and its place in society. Although it has many detractors, mainly because of the myths we’ve created to justify hard work and cast shame on those who are unemployed, and is possibly only a partial solution at best, the idea of a universal basic wage makes sense in the context of a more equitable future.

It's self-evident that many of the systems and processes with which we have become so familiar and comfortable, need to be re-imagined. The UN’s SDGs retain their relevance, for example, only because they are the results of a world-system where poverty, inequality and injustice, have been deliberately engineered into the worldview. By reinventing the civilisational worldview, and by changing a few constraints in the current world-system, we can decide that poverty is unacceptable. In one metanoia we can eliminate economic discrimination and the effects this generates.

The same holds for many of our most life-critical systems that are not working for the benefit if humanity as a whole. In many respects we’re heading for a future, guided only by what we see in the rear-view mirror, texting friends about our expected arrival time, with our foot jammed firmly on the accelerator. In reality we’re heading for a cliff, and it would be best to discover that fact before we run out of options.

Making incremental adjustments to the current paradigm will not work. We already know it doesn’t work. We also know why it doesn’t work. At some stage we will need to accept the reality of the human condition: the civilisational model worked for a while but a fresh ontological framework is needed now.

The genesis of autopoietic freedom in a world inspired by love and abundance is in our grasp. The remedy lies within a new evolutionary challenge. Human civilisation is fast reaching a tipping point in which the very elements that shaped so many triumphs now pose a threat to human survival. For the first time in history we have the scientific means to design a new evolutionary path. But that means setting aside current cravings built on obsolete assumptions in order to imagine and explore a post-anthropocentric framework – radically redefining what it means to be human now and into the future.

I have no doubt that a new =civilization is waiting to be born. This different world – this different relationship between humans and the rest of the planet – can already be seen if we look through the lens of ecority. Ecority is a portmanteau term, a conflation of the words ecology and integrity. The ecority model offers an alternative way of perceiving humanity, including our relationships and responsibilities to each other and all the living organisms that share our physical world.

Ecority is a model that places interdependence between all things at its core. It allows and invites us to consciously step away from the locus of individualism – a fundamental sense of each human being as a separate closed entity, and each human collective itself as separate from others. Instead, it proposes a default model where connection and interdependence is always at the forefront of consciousness. In this world, humans take a position of planetary stewardship. We embrace a responsibility for managing a vibrant civilisation grounded in the profound belief that all life is sacrosanct. In this renascence of deep  connection and abundance, wealth is mindfully integrated into a generative economy of health, security, and wellbeing for all.

To accomplish this, concepts that are currently off the agenda because of their perceived complexity must be re-evaluated and integrated into a global balance sheet defined by what must be protected and what we should value.

This balance sheet would have to measure what contributes to the overall health and wellbeing of our planet - the key metrics of ecority - happiness, security, freedom from oppression, peaceful coexistence, cultural empathy, social opportunity and biospheric health.

Cumulatively, the daunting decisions we must take to abandon the current economic paradigm in order to embrace ecority, means an end to the human triumphalism that has animated us for centuries - trading the fading promise of technological and material progress extracted from nature as separate from us, for the project of regenerative, interdependent transformation. 

The promise of ecority is to propose the vision of a different human world, and ignite a desire for this different world – thereby creating the affective energy needed to shift our attention and habits away from present-day concerns. The sources of this motivation would be a combination of love, sufficiency, care, connection, compassion, responsibility, and stewardship. I am not proposing that ecority represents the peak experience of sapiens, but rather the achievement of a far healthier integration of all these various values and motives into a distinctively viable worldview and world-system.

Transformation (such a misused word) is not tenable or just if it only slightly improves our most life-critical systems by casually entrenching business-as-usual mindsets and the many toxic practices of industrial economism. On the contrary, the widespread collapse of those ecosystems essential for life demands that we reinvent the entire gamut of human activities, transforming in that process the essence of what it means to be human. That’s a genuine metamorphosis, not simply a half-hearted nod to a few minor modifications that will not upset people.

Positioned as a new evolutionary purpose for our species, ecority has the potential to lift humanity from out of the clutches of industrial economism.; It embodies a spiritual aspiration within a corporeal reality where new and ancient wisdom is injected into the dawn of a regenerative era, human values bend to the sacrosanct quality of all life, and the overarching motives informing progress are three-fold: love as the greatest force of transactional energy, knowledge anchored in connection, and compassion for each other and all other species.