1.3 Expectations - The Awakening

As mentioned, this Manifesto is meant to be a complementary tool to be used for subversion by ‘transition initiatives’ that promote a critical course of action or emancipatory ideas. The Manifesto invites those initiators to consider the importance of :

being inclusive of involved parties, as described by John Dewey¹, and to avoid scattered, isolated, or siloed actions ;
acting with an emphasis on convergence and synergy of proposals, initiatives, or struggles that define the boundaries of an emancipatory horizon and a new civilizational order ;
considering the deeply complex nature of the problems faced by humanity and the environment, a complexity requiring holistic and ecosystem-based solutions.

There is good reason to take this complexity into account when considering the new civilizational horizon. Edgar Morin², with his reflections on ‘complex thought’, proposes a method that invites us to use three guiding principles when navigating something with this complexity :

the dialogical principle, i.e. the interdependency of opposites [wealth/poverty];
the hologrammatic principle, which states that the part is present in the whole, and the whole is present in the part [the tree is in its leaves]; and,
the principle of recursion, where effects themselves cause what produce them in the first place [our actions caused climate change, which in turn has an effect on our actions³.

In the aim of defining the parameters of a shared future and in order to properly mark and establish the boundaries of new cultural tendencies, we are outlining two paradigms that describe the basis of our proposed approach.

‘Collective’ proposes an idea for imagining the ‘juridicity’ or legal framework needed for our desired transition. Our current system of judicial hegemony⁴ has been founded on anthropocentric laws, which turn the foundation of our modern social order into private property and corporate entities.

We must revisit our relationship with the legal system to emphasize biocentrism (‘biocentric jurisprudence’) in order to create institutional and organizational systems that stand on associative democracy, alterity, ecosystemic relationships, debate, social and material technologies with non-alienating temporal structures,^[5]⁵ respect for ecology and slow growth.^[6]⁶

‘Buen vivir’ epistemology and its values, where “To live well, is to live in community, in fellowship and, above all, with complementarity. A communal, harmonious and self-sufficient life. To live well means to complement each other and to share without competition, to live in harmony with people and with nature. It’s the basis for nature conservation, for life itself and for all of humanity⁷.

Notes

1
John Dewey, “The Public and its Problems” (1927), reprinted in John Dewey. The Later Works, vol. 2, edited by Jo Ann Boydston and associated, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press (1st ed., 1977), paperbound, 1983. Excerpt : https://www.cairn.info/revue-hermes-la-revue-2001 – 3‑page-77.htm?try_download=1.
2
Morin, E. (1995). “La stratégie de reliance pour l’intelligence de la complexité,” in Revue internationale de systémique, vol. 9, n° 2.
3
These three principles are presented in La Lettre d’ADELI, n. 87, https://espaces-numeriques.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/l87p37.pdf. : The dialogical principle “brings together two antagonistic notions, which, on the face of things should repel one another, but are in fact indissociable and essential for understanding a single reality.” Analysis and synthesis are necessary for understanding. The hologrammatic principle shows how “the part is present in the whole and the whole is present in the part,” like how the totality of the genetic heritage is present in each individual cell. The principle of organizational recursion explains the “generating loop in which products and effects themselves produce and cause what produces them.” (Martine Otter (2012). “Edgar Morin, penseur de la complexité.
4
The notion of hegemony refers to three specific cultural dimensions put forward by the work of Antonio Gramsci : « 1) the idea that hegemony is partial, or in other words, that it is never total ; 2) the idea that many people who do not benefit from a certain ideology or value set can still share this ideology or value system, even when it only benefits those in power ; and 3) the idea that change from within is possible ». (Dominiquez, V.R. (2021). “Hégémonie, ANTHROPEN,” https://revues.ulaval.ca/ojs/index.php/anthropen/article/view/51291/323. More specifically, hegemony refers to an “order of signs and practices, relations and distinctions, images and epistemologies – drawn from a historically situated cultural field – that come to be taken for granted as the natural and received shape of the world and everything that inhabits it.” (Comaroff, J. and J. Comaroff (2008), Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1, Switzerland, University of Chicago Press, p. 23).
5
On this subject, see the work of Hartmut Rosa, summarized in the book : Accélération, une critique sociale du temps, Paris, La Découverte, 2010 [2005].
6
By slow growth, we mean : The slow-growth movement advocates for a cultural change toward slowing down our lifestyle, not by abandoning our responsibilities, but by finding a less agitated, more thought-out way of doing things. It challenges the principles of globalization, which prioritize quantity, speed, consumerism and the need for immediate results. It’s a question of slowing down, because we are losing ourselves, our own values and meaning. There is now a slow version of anything you can imagine : slow money, slow parenting, slow school (slow education), slow reading, slow architecture, slow medicine, etc. While the ways in which slowness has been adopted by worldwide popular movements varies greatly, without a doubt, commonality is found in the need to take lots of time to meet the basic needs of daily life. These movements are seeking a deeper relationship with the world’s complex nature. (https://simplifier-la-vie.com/slow-movement-bonheur-dans-lenteur/).
7
Huanacuni Mamani Fernando, Buen Vivir/Vivir Bien : filosofía, políticas, estrategias y experiencias regionales andinas, Lima, Coordinadora Andina de Organizaciones Indígenas, 2010, p. 21.”