5/1/18

A Tale Of Two Species: Incremental Mutualism Ch. 2

A Tale of Two Species

Installment 2 of “Incremental Mutualism”

By Joe Petrulionis

To make any progress at all, we’ll have to answer questions like “what is a human right?,” “what are property rights?,” “how do we determine what is fair?,” and other such vexing questions. At one end of the possible spectrum are people who might insist that these things do not exist at all. Arch- materialists would say that there is no such thing as a human right; they are only imaginary traditions that might be changed at any moment. Likewise, property is just a way of describing possession, --another example of “the haves” keeping resources out of the hands of the “have nots”, fairness being just a rationalization by weaklings who want a share of what’s in the feed trough but who do not wish to fight their way to the front of the line. What I call “my possession” is only mine because I can acquire it and I can defend it from the encroachments by others. What is real for an arch-materialist is what is material. And for these folk, anything that is real exists at a particular place and time. You can point to it, take measurements and samples, and we are sure it is there because we can either sense it or we can sense evidence of its existence. Everything else is just imaginary and we should disregard the imaginary and get on with our project of accumulation. In a world of limited resources (food, water, air, living space) the most aggressive, lucky, innovative, powerful, and bold will get to the feed trough. Everyone else will starve or share what is left over after the feeding frenzy. You may have heard someone say something like, “Sharks and guppies. Those are your choices. Eat lunch or be lunch.”

Some arch-materialists think we are in an all out war. It is everyone against everyone and we are being sorted by a giant sorting hat called natural selection. The victors will prevail, the strong will survive, and the winners will accumulate more stuff. Anyone else having trouble supporting themselves will either fall into line in some appropriate status of servitude to the benefit of the winners, for examples, they can become slaves, employees, labor force, adjunct faculty, convicts, etc., or they will go off someplace and politely just die.

For some arch-materialists selfishness is even a good thing, good for society, good for the individual, and good for human history. Because the winners, by definition, are better adapted to the real world, they will be the ones who find nourishment and breeding partners, they will own property, and pass on their high quality genetics (also their innovations, viewpoints, and methodologies) to another generation. In this way the human population will get stronger and better adapted to the world as it really exists. And since the world’s resources will be overseen by better managers, the aggregate wealth of the world will increase. After all, isn’t that what we want? A stronger and better adapted species, living in a world with more resources?

Careful here, not all arch-materialists are selfish and greedy. Remember, arch-materialism is simply the idea that the material world is everything that is real, so we should not let imaginary things like the idea of fairness or politeness, or property rights get in the way of how we order our lives. Some arch-materialists, in fact, think that since only the material world is real, we should not permit any individual to lay claim to more of it than they actually need. Since we are all in this together, they say, and there is not enough to go around, at least we should make sure that we all get an equal portion. Most people who call themselves communist believe in this communal ownership of property enforced by strong governmental regulations intended to ensure that no individual gets more than their share. Since a share of a pie is simple arithmetic, there is no need for any imaginary nonsense like property rights, inheritance conventions, or even fairness to get in the way. Much like dividing up a pizza, if there are twelve people present, then each person gets a twelfth of the available pizza.

Would all of the arch-materialists out there, for examples, you communists, objectivists, anarchists, libertarians, and positivists, would you please wait at the back of the room for a few minutes while we sort out the rest of us? I realize that most of you back there had no idea that you had something so important as arch-materialism in common.

But for the rest of us, let’s take the example of the earthworm, simple little Lumbricidae, which populate most of our backyards in North America, Europe, and much of Asia. Please remember, the earthworm has been under the influences of evolution for just as long as have been those many species that developed into human beings. So we can’t use the terms, “more evolved,” or “less evolved,” can we? We can only say that these two animals, earthworms and humans, are adapted in different ways to the same environment, i.e. Earth’s temperate terrestrial zones. I wonder if we can even say “better or more” adapted? That all depends on what lies ahead of us in some future we can not imagine yet, does it not? If we head into a deep ice age and all earthworms perish, then humans will prove to have been the better adapted ones, presuming some of us survive. But if we head into a phase of global warming, ice melt, and moisture increase, then perhaps it will have been better to be an earthworm. Only time will tell. We can only, selfishly, hope that someone will still be around to tell time, because, [hint], time is only important to humans.

Once we list those things which are important to an earthworm we find that they share almost all of these things with human beings. Remember, for this exercise it isn’t important if any individual earthworm realizes that something is important to its life. We are interested in those things that are important, even if the worms don’t know it. For most of the past, for example, the existence of oxygen was unknown to humans. During all of those years, however, oxygen would have always been high on our list of things important to earthworms and humans, even if there were no beneficiaries who even suspected oxygen even existed.

Now I want you to make a similar list for Human beings. Go ahead, list away. What you will discover is that almost all of the things listed for the earthworm are also important for humans.




Let’s not be ridiculous. I realize that few human beings would find well rotted rabbit droppings to be a delightful addition to their dinner menu. And an earthworm would certainly not consider a plate of barbecue spareribs to be dinner. But adequate nutrition is certainly important to an earthworm, as are warmth, moisture, a place to hide from the elements and nasty robins. In similar ways, human life depends on warmth, moisture, shelter and protection from predation. The two species seem to have lots in common.

But if you expand your lists; let us imagine that you could list every single thing that was important to each species, you will see some interesting patterns. In this list of things that are only important for humans you will find most of these things are constructs, things we made up.





These things that the arch-materialists do not believe exist, things like, love, truth, beauty, good, just, law, math, politeness, your own name, your family roles, the list can go on and on. These constructs are things we just made up!

Note that you have already admitted their importance to human life by including them in this list. Yet they have almost no importance to the life of an earthworm. So it should be clear by now that many of the things that are important to human life are things we make up. They were imagined, constructed, negotiated. Some of them, like human rights, we made up in order to create a better world to live in, to raise our families in. We will evaluate what exactly a right is, how they come about, and what keeps them in existence. But for now, let’s just admit that many of the things, including rights, law, justice, fairness, may be constructs. But the fact that we just made them up does not mean that they are unimportant. They exist. Human life as we know it and want it to be depends on these very same things that we make up.

So other than the arch-materialists still at the back of the room, the rest of us are a thing called constructivists. We believe in things like rights, law, justice, politeness, truth, beauty, property, not because they somehow pre-existed humans, but because we made them, we need them, and because they help. We understand that no two people may share the same views on these constructs, these things that hopefully make human life meaningful. See, even meaning is a construct. We can not live human life without them.

Soon, we will look closer at how these concepts like rights develop. Incremental mutualists think that many of these socially constructed ideas come about because we want their benefits for ourselves so we grant them to others. We will evaluate this mutuality in my next chapter.

In the meantime, please remember how important these things are to human life. The life of an earthworm does not provide us with a viable alternative, does it?

4/27/18

Incremental Mutualism: What is it? Ch. 1



What is Incremental Mutualism?
By Joe Petrulionis


Incremental Mutualism is a mosaic of ideas that strive to preserve several important human rights: the rights of individuals to select the patterns of their own lives, and the rights of people to live in orderly, creative, fair, and healthy communities. These goals of self determination and communitarian concern are often seen as divergent impulses. But a study of human history should have convinced us by now that nurturing both the freedom of individual choice and the maintenance of community bindings are not alternatives but are necessary simultaneous considerations in any attempt to sustain viable human cultures.


Incremental Mutualism is not a set of blueprints for some kind of utopia, nor is it to be considered any form of binding doctrine. These are two of the major aspects of the notion. Everyone should decide for themselves how their lives are to be structured, within some broad boundaries that are intended to protect the choices and opportunities that may be made by others. Over time, individuals will learn to work together with like minded people, aiming their efforts toward goals that they share. Through such voluntary and mutually coordinated projects, the ambitious and creative will find that they can amplify accomplishments and benefit from the rewards of their efforts.


These ideas will not germinate if Incremental Mutualism becomes some kind of doctrine to be immediately passed into law and enforced by the state. The respect for individual determination and choice has been rarely, if ever, bolstered through state endorsement. Likewise, state mandated altruism has been a self opposed construct, historically resented by all participants and rarely sustained by democratic processes. Incremental mutualism will come into existence as we seek alternatives to the tandem nightmares: being pushed around by ideologically motivated governments on the one hand and being subjected to dangerous eras of lawlessness and poverty, on the other. There are more choices. Incremental Mutualism is a rejection of the binary and an effort to select what works and then to replicate it, while avoiding sweeping changes and phases of violent coercion that have dogged human civilizations since at least as long as records have been kept.


The means of this revolution, this incremental move toward a civilization that respects individual choice, community sustainability and human rights, this revolution will not be in the streets, nor will it entirely be conducted at the ballot boxes. Incremental Mutualism is a revolution that will happen in the classrooms of the world, the now limitless, student-centered, participatory, critical classrooms that have come into being on the back of new technologies and protocols of the internet. Will so called “educators” be able to control such a classroom? Absolutely not! That is one of the underpinning features of this approach to education. In order to be taken seriously participants in these seminars will have to argue rationally, persuade their cohorts, and thereby ally themselves with other participants with similar goals. That is how we bring it about, through the disciplines inherent in the subject, Incremental Mutualism. The challenges we face, as I will have to demonstrate in future posts, are problems of education and not availability of fire power, not an intellectually inferior population, and certainly not the challenges posed by “the other,” both domestic and foreign. Any answers we settle on are likewise to be considered incremental developments, tentative, voluntary experiments in human habitation, keeping what works and setting aside for now those features that will need tweaking and perhaps more education. These ideas are both incremental and mutual.


No “vanguard” will assemble to determine the platform of Incremental Mutualism, no secret society or majority caucus will certify these ideas. Nor should any excessive structure be imposed on the individuals discussing and implementing their innovations. It is important to the achievements intended that there be diversity of opinion and real opportunity for the platform to develop and to be amended as needed. Broad discussions will result from the situation wherein individuals make most of their own decisions and coordinate most of their efforts with the like minded. We will learn once again, that any progress toward the joint goals of individual liberty within a sustainable community will be achieved by voluntary efforts of individuals who can coordinate with others to create flexible structures and systems of their own making.


A parable of Incremental Mutualism - “Sharebook”


Before we get too much farther into term definition, allow me to provide one fictional example of how Incremental Mutualism might peacefully overthrow a Goliath institution, should that become the voluntary goal of some like minded individuals for whom this is an important issue. Let’s say there is a giant social networking company call it for these purposes, BlueBook.$ worth say, a hundred and four billion dollars in market capitalization. Despite the fact that this giant would like for you to believe that it gives away its products and services they somehow report annual revenues approaching., say forty-one billion dollars. That would be a formidable institution. And some objective observers might argue that the company came about through a form of Incremental Mutualism, five students born on the cusp of the Millennial Generation working together in a Cambridge dormitory seeking a better way to get more interesting dates.


But let’s say the company has done what most companies do. They sell out. (Retailers do it, Universities do it, Hospitals do it. Selling out is what profit making businesses do.) It becomes public that BlueBook.$ helps “The Government” snoop on its own citizens. Worse, it tricks people into disclosing preferences, which information gets collected, preserved, and analyzed. Then advertisers can purchase this information so that they can tweak their ads for the real individuals who consume their products and services, known only by the data vaults containing the deep secrets of the “I like It” button indications. The advertisers are paying big bucks (forty-one billion of them per year and growing) for these “I Like It” button indicators. So there is certainly a valuable commodity being sold here, namely the private thoughts of the users.


And let’s furthermore say that some Generation Z geniuses get together and decide, “enough is enough.” They create a blog, after they generate some donations they even buy their own server, and set up a social network called, Sharebook.:) Instead of just posturing that they will be leaving BlueBook.$ by clicking an “I Like It” button on the “Delete BlueBook” page, these five people decide to make Sharebook very visible. Open source architecture makes the system a little less hack resistant, but the hackers of the world are still, it seems, going after BlueBook.$, leaving Sharebook.) alone. Imagine that! When there is a problem, some fifteen year old in another time zone works on the code for a while, passing her findings over to someone in another time zone when it becomes time for the first one to go to bed. But by morning, the whole thing is up and running. And the amazing thing, Sharebook.:) seems to function in all respects as well as BigBlue.$. And they decide to make it transparent. The real costs, in audited and comprehensive form, of administering Sharebook.:) are posted on the “about us” page, where you can see a photograph of the founders who are saving money to purchase their first automobiles or to save money for college. The founders of Sharebook decide to run the business on a donation only (again, voluntary) basis.


Insurance Companies, Banks, Schools, Medical Care, Farms, Manufacturing, Shipping Firms, and Trade Unions can also reshape their various markets using Incremental Mutualism. Entire nations can incrementally muster these processes toward making a better political system for themselves, although if they succeed in doing this, their kids may decide to do things differently once the kids get in the driver seats. That’s just the way it all works.


So here is what Peter Kropotkin, Henry Thoreau, William Morris, J.P. Proudhon, Jane Addams, Tolstoy, Gandhi, M.L.King, or even me, this is what we mean by mutualism and how it can work to overthrow systems, dynasties, oppressive regimes, and outdated apps.


In short, since what the future will be is all still up in the air. We will decide these things mutually as we go.


“How is that different from Libertarianism or even Anarchism?” Is a question I hope I am asked.


The answer will be about property. What it is, what it isn’t. Why we need to protect the right of property, and why if we do that, i.e. protect the right of property, why our communal property is a part of that protection. Communal property includes such things as clean air, clean water, wild spaces for recreation and natural preservation, historical treasures in museums, a social safety net for those among us who do not participate in market valued production, etc. etc. Most modern Libertarians think that the government’s job is to protect only private property. But the public and common property is also my property; I have a share in it, right? So common and public property is deserving of governmental protection as well.   This may be in a future installment. Stay tuned!