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!