Key info
Note that only one academic preprint (and one working paper overview in German) so this is something of a promotional pre release.
Riko was my student last year.
when, and where on earth, will a government do the sensible thing and instead of tax cuts and bailouts for the rich, maintain the economy through some version of UBI? Calling some brave politicians to show the way here. Of course if they don’t, we’ll need to create our own workarounds.
For now, that’s the best approach. The other thing - tax cuts for billionaires - is Turchin’s wealth pump in its late stages prior to breakdown. After the rich milk everything they can from those lower, they have to start cannibalizing each other. At some point, the power pyramid becomes too narrow to sustain and the whole business comes tumbling down.
My 2R vision is to seed the next system while the current system plays out its end game. Build the future now, locally, and get the bugs out. When things go sour for the current macrosystem, we can have new models and techniques ready to roll out.
Imagine if they made it tiered. For those who fulfill certain basic civic duties - voting, shared community tasks, perhaps a day a week on a chosen voluntary placement at a non-profit - would get the higher tier.
The more you look at the system we have, from outside, the more you realise how truly backward and outright perverse it is.
The challenge, of course, is to actually step outside it…
I’ve spent quite a bit of time online and a fair bit physically in the company of Lene Rachel Andersen, who has schooled me in some depth in all things Nordic. Anyway, there are many examples at hand in the Nordics and in a selection of other places around the world about far better arrangements than are currently available in the US. (I’ll let non-US people here speak for their own local experiences.)
That said, for me to try to copy/paste “Nordic Bildung” into a US context directly would be a fool’s errand at best. The way I connected with my current BaháʼĂ-centered community was when I realized that “bildung” or “metamodern” or “integral” or “liminal” conceptual frameworks would never be found anywhere on the ground in my local community. What was needed instead was the functional equivalent (or at least an approximation), but likely using different nomenclature. One thing led to another, and I joined the group “Meaningful Conversations” (note the Habermasian resonance), which turned out to be a Baháʼà intitative, but open to the general public (again, very Habermasian). That’s what “bildung” looks like in my local practice, despite being surrounded by all the problematic elements of current US culture.
The next level challenge it so see how much a spiritual discussion group can seed structural social action. There are some promising green shoots in the group already. But it probably takes a cross-disciplinary system builder to really unlock the potential, so challenge accepted!
