Urban Commons

Beyond separative modern urbanism: looking for the connective design that’s already ‘out there’

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by Øyvind Holmstad:

But there’s a problem. We have fractured these urban networks, and rebuilt much more dispersed, “dendritic” systems, connected not by pedestrians, but by automobiles, dispersed suburban campuses and parks, and single-family monocultures, supplemented by telephones and now, computers. The majority of us lives in encapsulated houses, in encapsulated neighborhoods, and travel in encapsulated cars to encapsulated work places, stores and other destinations. – Michael Mehaffy

Has humanity entered an everlasting stage of encapsulation, like a pupae never entering the stadium of a butterfly, free and full of colors? We know what happens with a pupae not leaving its pupping, it dries out, missing its higher purpose of life. Well, I’m sad to say I think this is what our societies have become today. Probably even more in Norway, as we are more encapsulated because of our climate.

Our modern lives as encapsulated pupae

Why did this happen? Of course, because of ideology, with Le Corbusier as a main inspirational. It’s a sad truth, but for modernist ideology to survive it needs to cut all bounds between people, nature and tradition. What is left is technocracy, a shallow, false and withered replacement of true community. The Scandinavian welfare state is a good (sad) example.

By suppressing local particularities and turning distinctions and differences into injustices inclusiveness suppresses self-organization, and therefore social spontaneity and voluntary initiatives of all kinds. 

Ordinary people can’t act effectively unless local discretion is widely diffused and the informal good sense of the people is accepted as a generally sound basis for action. Inclusiveness rejects both. If there’s significant local discretion inequalities will result, and “the informal good sense of the people” is shot through with settled prejudgments—that is, with prejudices. 

For that reason inclusiveness requires suppression of local initiative and self-rule. Those things are unjust from the standpoint of social justice in any event. If I do something that benefits brother Bob, that’s unfair because cousin Dick and uncle Harry get left out. More generally, informal arrangements like mutual assistance based on local networks and moral codes make the benefits of social life depend on group membership. That’s obviously unjust, so such arrangements must be destroyed. 

That’s one reason schools teach children to throw off parental, communal, and religious authority. Those authorities aren’t based on liberal principles, and they lead to particular local connections that don’t benefit everyone equally. It’s also one reason antidiscrimination laws force institutions to treat the attack on traditional and natural authorities as part of their reason for being. (If they don’t insist on their total commitment to “celebration of diversity,” they’re likely to get sued.) 

The natural result of such policies is degradation of functional communities and families. Our rulers view that as a good thing. It eliminates competitors to the liberal state, frees individuals from traditional bonds that are understood as irrational and discriminatory, and clears the ground for a truly rational and just ordering of society. – James Kalb 

Yes, I’m encapsulated into the straitjackets of the welfare state and the liberal market, so I don’t need anyone anymore, and nobody needs me. The networks of old times are gone, community is replaced by experts. Local initiatives and self-rule is ruled out. This in spite of that every natural system is self-organized, and real science, not the quasi-science of the liberalist state, states this.

Within this promising field, no topic is likely more promising than “self-organization” — the ability of complex adaptive systems to grow, order, and organize all by themselves, without any master controller. We observe this phenomenon at work in complex termite colonies that lack architects and blueprints, in biological cells organizing and differentiating into organs without any additional controls, and as we now see, in the very processes that gave rise to life itself. – Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros

Tallinn old town model, an example of a self-organized design that could not been drawn out on a clerks office. To live an encapsulated life here were impossible, as in an organic system everything is interwoven. Photo: Jennifer Boyer

Tallin old town in real life, the true beauty of  a morphological process! Photo: Iifar

A system that is not self-organized is not resilient, it cannot be whole and is heading for collapse. A state that  tries to organize its citizens, not helping the citizens to organize themselves, is tyrannical, not biological and organic. It’s NOT permaculture! I think we here see the main reason why the world’s governments are so reluctant to incorporate permaculture, they will loose their power and their ideologies will loose their glory. They will hate to see you free from their encapsulating threads, revealing yourself in all your hidden colors, dancing in the air like a butterfly. For the bureaucratic welfare state this is the worst of their nightmares come true.

A nightmare? Photo: Bresson Thomas

My skills and experience—as a facilitator, as a trainer, as a legal professional and as someone linking different communities and movements—were all targeted in this case, with the state trying to depict me as a ‘brainwasher’ and as a mastermind of mayhem, violence and destruction. . . . It is clear that the skills that make us strong, the alternatives that reduce our reliance on their systems [emphasis added] and prefigure a new world, are the very things that they are most afraid of. – Leah Henderson

While the main purpose of the welfare state is to implement dogmas like “inclusiveness” and “comfort“, the highest of all liberalistic dogmas is largely left for the market. This is fulfillment of desire, in former times a sin, today the highest of all virtues. Gifts have not a place in a world of desire, not the gifts from the shopping mall, but gifts of dependence. To be dependent is after all not such a bad thing.

Com­mu­nity is nearly im­pos­si­ble in a highly mon­e­tized so­ci­ety like our own. That is be­cause com­mu­nity is woven from gifts, which is ul­ti­mately why poor peo­ple often have stronger com­mu­ni­ties than rich peo­ple. If you are fi­nan­cially in­de­pen­dent, then you re­ally don’t de­pend on your neigh­bors—or in­deed on any spe­cific per­son—for any­thing. You can just pay some­one to do it, or pay some­one else to do it.

In for­mer times, peo­ple de­pended for all of life’s ne­ces­si­ties and plea­sures on peo­ple they knew per­son­ally. If you alien­ated the local black­smith, brewer, or doc­tor, there was no re­place­ment. Your qual­ity of life would be much lower. If you alien­ated your neigh­bors then you might not have help if you sprained your ankle dur­ing har­vest sea­son, or if your barn burnt down. Com­mu­nity was not an add-on to life, it was a way of life. Today, with only slight ex­ag­ger­a­tion, we could say we don’t need any­one. I don’t need the farmer who grew my food—I can pay some­one else to do it. I don’t need the me­chanic who fixed my car. I don’t need the trucker who brought my shoes to the store. I don’t need any of the peo­ple who pro­duced any of the things I use. I need some­one to do their jobs, but not the unique in­di­vid­ual peo­ple. They are re­place­able and, by the same token, so am I.

That is one rea­son for the uni­ver­sally rec­og­nized su­per­fi­cial­ity of most so­cial gath­er­ings. How au­then­tic can it be, when the un­con­scious knowl­edge, “I don’t need you,” lurks under the sur­face? When we get to­gether to con­sume—food, drink, or en­ter­tain­ment—do we re­ally draw on the gifts of any­one pre­sent? Any­one can con­sume. In­ti­macy comes from co-cre­ation, not co-con­sump­tion, as any­one in a band can tell you, and it is dif­fer­ent from lik­ing or dis­lik­ing some­one. But in a mon­e­tized so­ci­ety, our cre­ativ­ity hap­pens in spe­cial­ized do­mains, for money.

To forge com­mu­nity then, we must do more than sim­ply get peo­ple to­gether. While that is a start, soon we get tired of just talk­ing, and we want to do some­thing, to cre­ate some­thing. It is a very tepid com­mu­nity in­deed, when the only need being met is the need to air opin­ions and feel that we are right, that we get it, and isn’t it too bad that other peo­ple don’t … hey, I know! Let’s col­lect each oth­ers’ email ad­dresses and start a list­serv!

Com­mu­nity is woven from gifts. Un­like today’s mar­ket sys­tem, whose built-in scarcity com­pels com­pe­ti­tion in which more for me is less for you, in a gift econ­omy the op­po­site holds. Be­cause peo­ple in gift cul­ture pass on their sur­plus rather than ac­cu­mu­lat­ing it, your good for­tune is my good for­tune: more for you is more for me. Wealth cir­cu­lates, grav­i­tat­ing to­ward the great­est need. In a gift com­mu­nity, peo­ple know that their gifts will even­tu­ally come back to them, al­beit often in a new form. Such a com­mu­nity might be called a “cir­cle of the gift.”

For­tu­nately, the mon­e­ti­za­tion of life has reached its peak in our time, and is be­gin­ning a long and per­ma­nent re­ced­ing (of which eco­nomic “re­ces­sion” is an as­pect). Both out of de­sire and ne­ces­sity, we are poised at a crit­i­cal mo­ment of op­por­tu­nity to re­claim gift cul­ture, and there­fore to build true com­mu­nity. The recla­ma­tion is part of a larger shift of human con­scious­ness, a larger re­union with na­ture, earth, each other, and lost parts of our­selves. Our alien­ation from gift cul­ture is an aber­ra­tion and our in­de­pen­dence an il­lu­sion. We are not ac­tu­ally in­de­pen­dent or “fi­nan­cially se­cure” – we are just as de­pen­dent as be­fore, only on strangers and im­per­sonal in­sti­tu­tions, and, as we are likely to soon dis­cover, these in­sti­tu­tions are quite frag­ile. – Charles Eisenstein

To free ourselves from our encapsulations, our hard and dry pupae capsulars, we need to get rid of the bureaucratic welfare state and the liberal market. I’m sorry, we have no choice. Of course, this will be a hard process, as our pupae capsulars have grown thick and resistant. Leaving the “technologies of death” behind, the dead capsular, entering the technology of life. What is awaiting us is a world of connections, gifts, self-organization, true communities and relationships, love and life. The world of a butterfly!

Further studies:

14 Comments Beyond separative modern urbanism: looking for the connective design that’s already ‘out there’

  1. AvatarPatrick S

    I find Holmstad’s direction of disapproval at the Welfare State, particularly of the Scandinavian variety, very strange and misplaced.

    The whole point of a Social democratic society is that it protects people from the worst excesses of the capitalist market and seemingly inevitable sharp inequalities which result – but leaves very considerable room for self-expression and liberty.

    That is, whilst they are very much free to develop their own multiple local communities, they are required to recognise the larger society-wide community and a sense of both obligation towards others but also social rights – something which neoliberalism tried to stamp out.

    Yes, no doubt there are unfortunate instances of the welfare state being combined with a technocratic expert driven worldview in the mid-late 20th C producing unfortunate results.

    But in my view, social democracies are much better positioned to creatively balance the personal with communal goods in an uncertain future – taking in ideas around the Commons and P2P in the process.

  2. AvatarMichel Bauwens

    I agree with you. P2P societies require the achievements of the welfare states as their basis. But they also go beyond it by maximally deburocratising the state. On to the communification of state and public-commons partnerships in the context of a Partner State model which enables and empowers direct social production by its citizens.

    Michel

  3. Øyvind HolmstadØyvind Holmstad

    “free to develop their own multiple local communities”

    @Patric, I can ensure you we don’t have this freedom. If you just want to change your window, to make your house more pleasant to live in, you have to pay several thousand kroners for permission from a bureaucratic servant.

    The fact is that the Scandinavian welfare state is a terrible example of a society created within system -B, and within the context of system -B human interactions and deeper forms of human life cannot thrive. Just think about the isolation of children in kindergartens and old people in old people’s homes. I have a daughter, and the state gives me two options; either to isolate her in a kindergarten without being part of a larger society. Or to isolate her in suburbia without being part of a larger society.

    I’ll recommend you to read Alexander’s latest book: The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World-Systems: http://creelmanresearchlibrary.wordpress.com/the-battle-for-the-life-and-beauty-of-the-earth/

    The strange thing is that neither the liberal market nor the Scandinavian social democratic models are able to come up with anything else than system -B. This is because they are in their essence expressions of the same thing, a mechanical world-view.

    I also want to remind about that the Norwegian welfare state is a HUGE energy consumer, with a tube straight down to the oil and gas-fields of the Norwegian coast. Here you still get 100% salary from first day sick, while in Sweden you don’t get paid the two first days and after that you only receive 80% of your salary. Probably we have enough
    oil, gas, hydropower, coal, thorium, and so on, to keep it running the old way until the ecosystems collapse globally.

    What I aim for is to replace the welfare state with a far more energy-sparse model, called Integrative Ecosocial Design: http://permaliv.blogspot.no/2011/10/integrative-ecosocial-design.html

    It will be a completely different model, although you might find fragments of the DNA of the “welfare state” within it.

  4. Øyvind HolmstadØyvind Holmstad

    I too want to stress that when the old patterns of interactions, both physical and traditional, are destroyed, replaced by an ALL-EMBRACING technocratic welfare state, and when we run out of energy and recourses simultaneously as these old patterns are destroyed, we’ll be left with NO hope!

  5. Øyvind HolmstadØyvind Holmstad

    “But, by contrast, in the early phases of industrial society which we have experienced recently, the pattern languages die.

    Instead of being widely shared, the pattern languages which determine how a town gets made become specialized and private. Roads are built by highway engineers; buildings by architects; parks by planners; hospitals by hospital consultants; schools by educational specialists; gardens by gardeners; tract housing by developers.

    The people of the town themselves know hardly any of the languages which these specialists use. And if they want to find out what these languages contain, they can’t, because it is considered professional expertise. The professionals guard their language jealously to make themselves indispensable.

    Even within any profession, professional jealousy keeps people from sharing their pattern languages. Architects, like chefs, jealously guard their recipes, so that they can maintain unique style to sell.

    The languages start out to being specialized and hidden from the people; and then within the specialties, the languages become more private still, and hidden from another, and fragmented.” – Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building,Page 231-232.

  6. Øyvind HolmstadØyvind Holmstad

    For those who look to Norway as a pride example to follow for the world, please remember that our welfare-state floats in energy. Last year we discovered several oil fields outside our coast, the biggest comparable with the first findings decades ago. And we still have not started drilling in the north and in our arctic waters. We produce more electricity from hydro-power than what we use in average. We have the third largest reserves of thorium after Greenland and India. And we have significant reserves of coal at Svalbard.

    Even the very word welfare gives me a bad taste, as it at least here more and more has come to mean comfort. And again, comfort, like culture, more and more has come to mean being separated from nature.

    In a way the welfare state flattens inequalities, but personally I believe much more in incorporating a diversion of scales. I outlined this in a former comment elsewhere:

    “Personally I come from the small minority on the right that is positive to environmentalism, as I’m a nature conservative.

    I’m sorry to inform you that you have misunderstood completely. It’s not small that is beautiful, it’s scale that is beautiful. Yes, I understand that you are obligated to your hero Le Corbusier to hate scale, and especially the small scales, as he was a mega-maniac. But scale is, in spite of modernist ideology, a natural law that is fundamental for the universe. This is why Christopher Alexander has set “Levels of Scale” as the first and most fundamental property of wholeness: http://www.tkwa.com/fifteen-properties/levels-of-scale-2/

    In fact, levels of scale is fractal and is ? 2,7: http://meandering-through-mathematics.blogspot.no/2012/02/applications-of-golden-mean-to.html

    I find your misunderstanding so serious that I’m determined to write an article called “The Beauty of Scale”.”

    A positive side effect of a diversion of scales is that it will do away with mass production, which is not consistent with morphogenesis, the way we have to produce to live sustainable.

    Another way to do away with inequalities is by introducing flat income. Flat taxes have been discussed sometimes, but flat income is a much better idea.

    Still, what I believe in most is to combine the pattern technology of Alexander with the handicap principle. The handicap principle is a very strong force. While capitalism utilizes the dark side of the handicap principle, the dark force of the power, we need to grow the bright side of this force. I outlined this in a former comment elsewhere:

    “I really look forward to that! Personally I find it immensely promising to combine the good forces of the handicap principle discovered by Amotz Zahavi, with the pattern technology developed by Christopher Alexander. To mix these two are in my eyes dynamite, and can be a major contribution for a more human society.

    Unfortunately I know of no others that share my enthusiasm for this idea, I don’t think neither Alexander or Bongard has seen its full potential.

    As I see it there is a close relationship between Alexander’s A Pattern Language and Bongard’s The Biological Human. It’s like Alexander’s pattern-technology is made for utilizing the good forces of the handicap principle. I really don’t understand why I’ve not yet met any others that share my enthusiasm for these possibilities?”

  7. Øyvind HolmstadØyvind Holmstad

    For those who look to Norway as a pride example to follow for the world, please remember that our welfare-state floats in energy. Last year we discovered several oil fields outside our coast, the biggest comparable with the first findings decades ago. And we still have not started drilling in the north and in our arctic waters. We produce more electricity from hydro-power than what we use in average. We have the third largest reserves of thorium after Greenland and India. And we have significant reserves of coal at Svalbard.

    Even the very word welfare gives me a bad taste, as it at least here more and more has come to mean comfort. And again, comfort, like culture, more and more has come to mean being separated from nature.

    In a way the welfare state flattens inequalities, but personally I believe much more in incorporating a diversion of scales. I outlined this in a former comment elsewhere:

    “Personally I come from the small minority on the right that is positive to environmentalism, as I’m a nature conservative.

    I’m sorry to inform you that you have misunderstood completely. It’s not small that is beautiful, it’s scale that is beautiful. Yes, I understand that you are obligated to your hero Le Corbusier to hate scale, and especially the small scales, as he was a mega-maniac. But scale is, in spite of modernist ideology, a natural law that is fundamental for the universe. This is why Christopher Alexander has set “Levels of Scale” as the first and most fundamental property of wholeness: http://www.tkwa.com/fifteen-properties/levels-of-scale-2/

    In fact, levels of scale is fractal and is ? 2,7: meandering-through-mathematics.blogspot.no/2012/02/applications-of-golden-mean-to.html

    I find your misunderstanding so serious that I’m determined to write an article called “The Beauty of Scale”.”

    A positive side effect of a diversion of scales is that it will do away with mass production, which is not consistent with morphogenesis, the way we have to produce to live sustainable.

    Another way to do away with inequalities is by introducing flat income. Flat taxes have been discussed sometimes, but flat income is a much better idea.

    Still, what I believe in most is to combine the pattern technology of Alexander with the handicap principle. The handicap principle is a very strong force. While capitalism utilizes the dark side of the handicap principle, we need to grow the bright side of this force. I outlined this in a former comment elsewhere:

    “I really look forward to that! Personally I find it immensely promising to combine the good forces of the handicap principle discovered by Amotz Zahavi, with the pattern technology developed by Christopher Alexander. To mix these two are in my eyes dynamite, and can be a major contribution for a more human society.

    Unfortunately I know of no others that share my enthusiasm for this idea, I don’t think neither Alexander or Bongard has seen its full potential.

    As I see it there is a close relationship between Alexander’s A Pattern Language and Bongard’s The Biological Human. It’s like Alexander’s pattern-technology is made for utilizing the good forces of the handicap principle. I really don’t understand why I’ve not yet met any others that share my enthusiasm for these possibilities?”

  8. Øyvind HolmstadØyvind Holmstad

    I just came above this:

    “The next twenty to forty years will see an enormous political battle, not about the survival of capitalism (which has exhausted its possibilities as a system) but about what kind of system we shall collectively “choose” to replace it – an authoritarian model that imposes continued (and expanded) polarization or one that is relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian.”: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-12-15/austerity-at-whose-cost

    What is for sure is that a relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian system for the future cannot be depending upon energy, recourse and ecosystem abuse.

  9. AvatarPatrick S

    Hi Oyvind,
    thanks for the reply, and much to ponder here in both your original and extended comments.

    I realise your critique of the ‘welfare state’ is quite complex – it reminds me to some extend of the idea of a need for a more ‘Relational State’ that I think was posted here recently – http://bit.ly/UyjVjA . And in Scandinavia, I saw a talk by Dan Hill (@cityofsound) recently who’s now at SITRA in Finland arguing something a bit similar. Another Scandinavian example (which Michel wrote a chapter towards) is the http://co-p2p.mlog.taik.fi/ book.

    But on the energy example in particular, as a good example – contrast Norway’s approach of taking a big share of oil revenue for a sovereign wealth fund, with my home country of Australia’s approach – where the vast majority of our mineral wealth being rapidly extracted is going to multi-nationals, and only a small portion to workers and the state. Of course, there is the Alaskan alternative of just paying an equal dividend to all citizens – a step towards a ‘basic income’ which it seems many of us are in favour of.

    I know a little of Alexander’s thinking but haven’t read his books in full – is on my todo list for next year, haven’t come across Zahavi or Bongard.

    Whilst I’m generally interested in subsidiarity, devolution etc my current research interest in public transport systems does seem to suggest that in the developed world we do need a strong (but ideally both democratised and readily transparent) state to at least play a strategic and tactical role in organising and providing such services.

    As you point out though, the point is not to go backward but imagine forwards, and energy and other environmental constraints suggest a new pattern is needed. One possible future I’ve been thinking about lately is one with a much more democratically controlled industrial sector providing much of our material needs with minimal employment (using automation, P2P principles etc) but with surplus distributed more evenly e.g. a basic wage – along with a flourishing civil society and private sector in service provision, farming, and environmental remediation.

    The latter because the issue of ‘unemployment’ does seem persistent and pressing. But there are plenty of useful things to do in our environmentally-stressed world (thinking along permaculture lines etc) – just not within the constraints of a profit-driven capitalist market. So some kind of new settlement with the state (basic income etc) could seem to unlock this potential as a benefit, rather than liability. But as Keynes suggested in ‘Economic prospects for our grandchildren’, this would be a v. difficult social and psychological transition to go through, not just a new economic approach.

  10. Øyvind HolmstadØyvind Holmstad

    Hei Patrick!

    Yes really, my governments have been really clever in making most of the oil income become a “benefit” for its people, only a fraction of the income goes to the corporations. Here you can see the speed of which the oil billions trickle in (the moving number in the heading): http://www.aftenposten.no/okonomi/Boom-er-ordet-som-gar-igjen-i-oljebransjen-7088824.html

    As you see the oil money flows into our economy with a speed of 100.000 N.Kr. every 5 sek., or 1.200.000 N.Kr. every minute or 72.000.000 N.Kr. every hour or 1,73 billion N.Kr. every day. The Oil Fund named “The Government Pension Fund – Global” of the Norwegian State is on about 3700 billion N.Kr., making it the worlds largest pension fund. Still, the pension obligations for the state only to public workers is on 4300 billion N.Kr. And note that this fund is invested into corporations, so the welfare state is completely depended upon the benefit of the corporations.

    Note also that the number of public workers increased with 110.000 just the last 7 years, about the size of Norway’s fourth largest city. Or an increase with 15 percent.

    Anyway, I’ve changed my original text from getting rid of the bureaucratic with getting rid of the corporate welfare state, from inspiration of Michel in another comments thread here recently. He also wrote we need to replace it with a partnership state: http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/video-of-the-day-the-story-of-change/2012/12/18/comment-page-1#comment-495695

    Bongard will soon launch his book “The Biological Human being” in English! Here’s an interesting comment from him I just came above:

    “Godt observert, Jens Andreas. Som du vet har vi i boken vår “Det biologiske mennesket” (Akademika 2010) laget en skisse over en mulig vei å gå for å få kontroll over disse problemene som oppstår i store samfunn, gjennom å benytte nettopp de egenskapene som dukker opp i nære relasjoner (raushet, samarbeid, kontroll over korrupsjon osv). Kaller det for Inngruppedemokratiet, det innebærer blant annet demokratisk styring av produksjon og fordeling. En kombinasjon av Høyres selveierdemokrati og det egentlige målet for miljøbevegelse og venstreside: Rettferdighet, fordeling, bærekraft og trygg framtid.” : http://darwinist.no/er-vi-domt-til-a-gi-opp-velferdsstaten/

    My translation:
    “Well observed, Jens Andreas. As you know we have in our book “The Biological Human Being” sketched out a possible way to overcome these problems which arise in huge communities, to play on these properties which arise in close relations (generosity, cooperation, control over corruption etc.). We call it In-Group Democracy, it means among others democratic control of production and distribution. A combination of the self-owner democracy of the right and the true goal of environment movements and the left: Justice, distribution, sustainability and a safe future.”

    Why I really write you now is because I just got a comment that summarizes perfectly the essence of what I wanted to say with my article, on the Norwegian Deep Ecology blog Kulturverk: http://www.kulturverk.com/2013/01/20/gudstru-pa-avvegar/

    “Avhengigheten av en velferdsstat har tatt bort ansvarfølelsen den enkelte hadde overfor det nære fellesskapet. Dette er ikke noe forsvar for liberalisme som kun erstatter velferdsstaten med avhengighet av private institusjoner som utfører de samme tjenester, men da er man i tillegg bundet til et rotterace. Ansvar og fellesskap må være organisk om det ikke skal utvikles til et passivt mekanistisk forhold mellom stat og borgere.” – A. Viken

    Translated:

    “The dependency of a welfare state has taken away the responsibility the single person felt for his nearby community. This is no defense for liberalism, which only replace the welfare state with dependency on private institutions performing the same services, but when you in addition is bound to a “rats race”. Responsibility and community must be organically if it shall not develop into a passive and mechanistic relationship between state and citizens.”

    In these words A. Viken has masterly said everything I wanted to say with my essay.

    Also I was tired of everybody criticizing the corporations while nobody criticized the corporate welfare state, I think these people are cowards. Actually I sent my article to permaculturenews.org before giving it to Bauwens, but the editor there was almost mad at me for complaining about my welfare state. Also Bauwens said he didn’t agree with me, but he didn’t mind. For him it was ok to put it up as long as it was somewhat p2p-oriented and might got someone to think.

    About transportation I think the most important is to design for walk-ability, and a recent study shows this is best done through self-organizing: http://bettercities.net/news-opinion/links/15408/messy-street-patterns-boost-walking

    ‘Messy’ street patterns provide the most functional urban space:

    “Venice has 1,725 intersections per square mile. “It’s very complex, it’s very messy, and people walk,” said Allan Jacobs, urban design consultant, former San Francisco planning director, and author of Great Streets.

    Brasilia, near the opposite end of the spectrum, “has 92 intersections, and you don’t walk there,” The Vancouver Sun reported Jacobs as saying. “Irvine, California is the classic automobile city. It has just 15 intersections, the lowest I’ve ever counted.””

    On Zahavi, who discovered the “handicap principle”, his work and it’s significance is brilliantly explained in Bongard’s book, I’ll let you know when it’s published in English and German language. Bongard’s point is that we only have a basic salary decided democratically, while what motivate us is by utilizing the positive energy found in the handicap principle.

    By the way, I plan my next essay to be about the thrush bird the Arabian Babbler, which Amoz Zahavi studied for about 40 years. I will write it for Kulturverk first, but hope to translate it into English.

    About Alexander you’ll hopefully understand how important our physical surroundings are for creating a sound democratic and cooperative spirit of people: http://www.biourbanism.org/sacred-profane-and-geometrical-symbolism-in-architecture/

    The built environment, with its geometrical symbolism, talks about the culture that has created it, and expresses the intimate values of a culture. So, if in the past the built environment was interconnected with their physical and spiritual surroundings, the contemporary has expressed the excessive power of a mechanical culture determining the loss of human identity in favor of “artificial identity”. This artificial structure has transferred its cultural reductionism also to urbanism and architecture and caused laceration of society and deformation of ethical and esthetical values. This new design represents and symbolizes new values like hedonism and a devoid sense of nothing, and is the sculptural expression of our society. – Biourbanism

  11. Øyvind HolmstadØyvind Holmstad

    I watched this splendid lecture by Nikos Salingaros today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=R2nXjOZqrVc

    From his lecture he presented three levels of human existence:

    1) The abstract human being.
    2) The biological human being.
    3) The transcendental human being.

    I do now really understand that why I feel so lost and misplaced in the Scandinavian welfare state is because I’m treated as an abstract human being.

    But how can a state provide welfare to its people under such conditions? How can you achieve welfare if you are been treated like and feel like an abstract human being? Isn’t the highest form of welfare to achieve the biological and the transcendental human being, and shouldn’t this be the first and top priority of the welfare state?

    Please watch the video, it also give an excellent introduction to Le Corbusier and his role in degrading people to machines. After all, the framework of the welfare state is modernism, and in the present world modernist architecture and planning and the welfare state are inseparable entities.

    I’ve also made several upgrades in my original article, by me called “The Modern World is Not a Place for Butterflies”: http://permaliv.blogspot.no/2012/01/modern-world-is-not-place-for.html

  12. Øyvind HolmstadØyvind Holmstad

    The last year I’ve learned that the welfare state is not a socialist invention, but a Lutheran one. For Luther there was only the Word that mattered, and hence to take care of the poor was not a task for the church, but a secular task for the state. So the welfare state of the North is not a result of socialism, but of Lutheranism.

  13. AvatarMichel Bauwens

    the welfare state was the result of an alliance of socialist and christian groups, lutherans in the scandinavian context, catholics in countries like Belgium (the christian-democratic workers’ movement was quite strong there)

  14. AvatarPatrick S

    Hi Oyvind and Michel – interesting points, I tend to agree the Welfare state was something that evolved in a complex way – and also varied a lot internationally. E.g. in the UK surely the key point you’d point to is the wartime Beveridge Report (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beveridge_report), and then Clement Attlee’s reforming labour government actually implementing many of these ideas post WW2. Here in Australia we had a pretty strong political labour movement fairly early in 20th C so Michel’s description probably applies here. And for the US version of the welfare state (quite a different beast from Europe) you’d have to point again to a complex interplay of state, Christian and various political groups across the spectrum – with the two Roosevelt presidents featuring prominently as far as I can tell.

    I have also heard that Bismark’s Chancellorship is where some of the nascent welfare state policies were first tried in modern politics (like old-age pensions) so perhaps your Lutheran research is very relevant there.

    Interesting we are still commenting on this post almost exactly 1.5 years after Oyvind’s first article. A testament P2P blog provoking ideas and avoiding spam 😉

    Relevant to Oyvind’s original theme – having done a few errands out on the roads today, I’m still struck by how car-dominated our societies are, and how this contributes to some of the isolation he mentions. Even in relatively inner-city Melbourne, where public transport is OK and by Australian standards many people live in apartments, our road system and most public spaces are almost totally car-dominated. The problem is, having gone down this path so far, and changed our built environment and got dependent on the cheap oil that underlies it all, the system ‘kinda works’ in relative comfort for suburbanites who can afford a car & commit to a steep mortgage while the oil still flows – and is pretty crap for everyone else.

    In fact, given the fracturing of more traditional networks for most people – you kinda have to ‘buy in to the system’ of car, suburban house with all mod cons, consumerist buying of labour-saving devices – if you want to have a reasonable chance to hold down a 9-5 job, raise children and or/ have a reasonable social life with other busy and geographically dispersed family and friend network, etc. It seems to me it takes either considerable wealth, persistent creativity, social networks of other rebels, or willingness to sacrifice status and live a more frugal and slow-paced life. Otherwise we are all kinda stuck in the ‘rat race’ as Oyvind puts it and it is hard not to dream for just a slightly better car, comfortable house, bit of garden etc and avoid thinking about the kind of collective problems in the post.

    Here in Australia we now have a much more brutally neoliberal govt. since late 2013, and are getting our first real taste of austerity – and it is provoking a pretty strong backlash by the public (though part of this is directed at not just the cuts but some small extra tax levies proposed in concert as a deficit control measure).

    Well this comment has got a bit long and maybe rant-ish – I apologise if the latter, maybe a side-effect of southern hemisphere winter beginning in earnest. No romantic (if impracticable) snow for us here, just chilly winds and rainy skies – no wonder we are obsessed with football as a distraction 😉

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