Eventually "Extreme Governing" became a kind of ready. Yet it was still considerable time to go before I realized who had actually written it. I kept believing a programmer and a cyberneticist made that up among themselves. Yet the main author appears to have been the biologist. And since cruel fate could not let that particular peace of irony pass, it aught to have been him, too, that was deluded by that old pardoxon of the forest for the trees.
Because that's what "Extreme Governing" is: lots of trees. It is a collection of pretty palpable proposals on how to organize society differently. On the way "Extreme Governing" makes use of a wild assortment of ideas. Taken on their own, these ideas are mostly rather simple, at times just common sense. From these "Extreme Governing" weaves a a whole, a net of synergies. This approach is reminiscient of a certain methodology of computer program development: a method known as "Extreme Programming".
Since "Extreme Governing" is so packed with trees I cannot help pulling out the axe and chanting happily that all that can surely not work; and anyway, it's all just a collection of ideas that's inhtended to get other minds rolling. True enough. Yet there is something about the forest. Because taken as a whole, "Extreme Governing" is a third way in various dimensions.
Established ideas for organizing society can be systematically ordered in different dimensions (aspects). These dimensions are determined by the answers and importance that these ideas give for/to certain fundamental questions. Anarchists for example are strictly against any rules while fascists call for very strict laws. Anarchy and Fascism thus make up the poles - extremes - of one dimension, one aspect. Another aspect is personal property. Here the poles are communism and capitalism. Using these two dimensions some well known models of society can systematically be ordered like this:
- Marxism Anarcho-Communist pole
- Stalinism Fascisto-Communist pole
- Liberatism Anarcho-Capitalist pole
- Bushjuniorism Fascisto-Capitalist pole
There are other dimensions like the width of the basis of decision making (from despotism to democracy), individualism versus syndicalism/reliogion/family, conservatism versus liberalism and so on. And pretty much at the center of many of these dimensions you'll find many contemporary western societies.
"Extreme Governing" takes an exceptional position in many of these dimensions, presents an alternative. On the one hand "Extreme Governing" takes a definitive standpoint in many of these dimensions - and others. In all areas that concern society "Extreme Governing" postulates substantial need for regulation and proposes palpable rules. On the other hand - other than in most more popular proposals - these rules are not chosen in accordance with any classical jurisdictional tradition. "Extreme Governing" conceives rules to be nothing more - or less - than seed crystals for self organization. The proposed rules are chosen to propel desired phenominons through positive feedback and inhibit undesired phenominons through negative feedback. In doing so, citizens are granted as much freedom as possible by choosing few but sometimes apparently drastic rules. A real world test may show that many of these rules don't work; punk. But the forest, societal self organization, holds treasures that yet may save us.