In our efforts to organize community responses to Y2K, we may
be tempted to try to form centralized coordination or service
centers to meet diverse needs and get things rolling in a coherent
direction.
Ultimately, I don't think we're going to be able to deal with
this centrally -- at least if we want to do it sanely. Y2K ultimately
touches everyone and every organization. Most
issues of that sort are dealt with by governments. Governments
have trouble handling all their citizens -- just look
at the crazy bureaucracies around taxes. They haven't got it right
after centuries of trying. If Y2K becomes a major crisis that
the government has to handle, it will almost certainly resort
to force (military), simply because it can't cope with major complexity
and chaos without suppressing it.
Grassroots efforts will do no better at centralization. For a
grassroots response to succeed, we can't think in terms of establishing
central locations that answer people's questions or get all the
innumerable actions done. Any such efforts will get overwhelmed
and fail. What we need are many centers of responsibility
and activity. Self-proclaimed centers can create resources
-- information, stories, networking facilities, sample scripts/models/plans,
compiled know-how, dialogue spaces, etc. -- which people can use
to self-organize individually and in manageably-sized groups.
There aren't clear blueprints of how to do this. There are many
scattered examples of movements and self-organization. But nothing
tells us how to self-organize a national/global movement of this
scope, capable of accelerating from zero to sixty in the tiny
amount of time we have available. The challenge is unprecedented,
so we are still evolving our ability to bootstrap our collective
self-reliance.
Below are a few examples of what we are already doing, or are
on the verge of doing. Together, they suggest we are well on our
way. At the very least, they clearly point the direction we need
to go.
1) Larry Victor, Paul Glover, myself and others have created broad
visions which can inspire people with a larger story of what they're
doing. People can pick and choose elements of these visions to
include in their own personal and collective visions. Over time,
new visions will show up and interact with existing ones, giving
birth to yet more visions, many of which will be more compelling
and do-able than the original ones.
2) Ian Wells, Larry Victor, the Cassandra Project, myself and
others have created lists of things people can do to make a difference
in their lives, communities and larger societies regarding Y2K.
People can pick and choose elements of these to include in their
personal and collective to-do lists and projects. Over time, new
lists get made (and made available) which are more concise and/or
useful, made of items more fully tested in the real world. Over
time, as everyone's understanding increases, the lists people
choose and make will become increasingly appropriate to their
diverse circumstances.
3) The Cassandra Project, Bill Dale, Cynthia Beal, and others
have created listservs and Q&A forums in which people can
share problems, know-how and perspectives on Y2K. These accelerate
the evolution of our collective understanding. As the speed and
volume of it all picks up, we'll grow increasingly frustrated
with the limitations of these media, and will probably see a rapid
evolution in our ability to generate and share practical wisdom
on a broad scale.
4) The Cassandra Project, I and many other web sites have compiled
vast amounts of information and links/references to other information
sources. People can choose the sources of information that they
trust to deliver the particular relevance they're looking for.
As this collective information base grows, new people will show
up to index or summarize it more effectively, or to select and
order new arrays of information to accommodate new needs. We might
say our collective memory will grow ever-more sophisticated.
5) Napa Valley (CA) created a Y2K web site to meet its own needs.
Then along came Newport (OR), wanting to create its own Y2K web
site. They expropriated the Napa Valley site to satisfy Newport's
Y2K-introduction needs (by explicitly linking to it at the very
beginning of the Newport site) and then went on to fill the rest
of the Newport site with local news and activities. This now stands
as a model for how a local group can whip together a sophisticated
site overnight -- not having to re-invent the wheel, but being
able to choose from a selection of ready-made wheels. (And I am
spreading this model around by mentioning it here, encouraging
others to use its self-organizing potential.)
6) Newport went on to list all the towns in their county, creating
a page where Y2K groups in each town can identify themselves and
link to other town residents through a county-wide page brought
to them by the Newport Y2K group.
7) Montgomery County (TX) had a similar, but different idea. In
addition to its local preparedness site, it provided a page listing
all the counties in Texas. Now it highlights (provides web/email
links for) any counties that have a local Y2K group, and encourages
any site visitor to start such a group in their county if it isn't
highlighted, referring them to materials they can use to get started.
So suddenly we find ourselves in possession of a model for how
a single group can stimulate the formation of groups all over
its state. Montgomery's and Newport's innovations hint at a vision
of how entire states could self-organize from the grassroots up.
(Does anyone want to take on the job of finding people in each
state to start this dynamic rolling? How would one go about doing
that?)
8) I and others provide Y2K activists with political
analysis and political campaign instructions to help them
engage their leaders in creating the conditions necessary for
community survival and resilience through the Y2K era into the
next century. We encourage them to encourage others to participate
in these campaigns.
9) I have provided a writeup
of how people can think about (and use) their personal connections
in ways that greatly magnify their ability to influence the unfolding
of the Y2K crisis. Since no central agency can possibly contact
all the groups, organizations, leaders and bureaucrats needed
to deal with this crisis, we can give The People what they need
to do all the contacting. Suddenly, instead of us early-birds
trying and failing to make all the necessary contacts, we have
thousands of people working on the project!
10) There is more we could do to help people self-organize. Locally,
I think we could offer open space conferences, future search conferences
and other gatherings in which people could together work out the
understandings and plans appropriate to the complex realities
in which they live. On a broader scale, I think we could organize
"proxy dialogues" -- expertly facilitated conversations
among articulate representatives of diverse perspectives (who
are proxies for broader populations who share their perspectives).
In well-facilitated proxy dialogues, the proxies often stumble
into consensus or shared insight, much to the surprise of everyone
involved (except the facilitators). If videos or reports of these
dialogues are distributed widely, they can stimulate rapid learning
by members of the public who share those diverse perspectives,
thus raising the level of dialogue throughout the society. (This
sort of thing is dealt with more fully on the Co-Intelligence
Institute web site.)
If we succeed at this -- if we can facilitate a self-organized,
community-oriented, grassroots movement toward resilience, a movement
that leads its leaders ("If the people lead, the leaders
will follow") -- we will have achieved not only our collective
survival and resilience, but a further evolution of our democracy
into a form that will not erode so readily. We will have generated
a higher level of collective intelligence.
So when you try to organize locally, imagine in your mind's eye
all the people of your area doing whatever is needed because they
have been helped to do those things. And then imagine other people
helping them do those things. Try to think of what you can do
that will generate the most self-organized activity and the most
results with the least effort on your part. Not because you're
lazy, but because you want to nurture the self-reliance of your
community. The less energy leaders have to put in -- and the more
wisdom they use (in place of effort) -- the more the people will
end up doing (and say they did) it themselves, day after day,
year after year, into their shared, co-created, sustainable future.
That would certainly be a different world to live in!
See also: Thoughts about Community
Preparedness Plans, Requirements, and Self-organization by
Doug Carmichael, Harlan Smith, Ian Wells and Tom Atlee