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Late last year I wrote a blog post entitled “A new philosophy of total revolution: KALKINISM”. In that post I put forward an extremely broad and ‘poetic’ condemnation of contemporary society, and called for a movement to begin work on new modes of thought and behaviour which we would enact in the turbulent times ahead. By mentioning ‘turbulent times’ I don’t mean to imply that I can predict the future, but that even now a number of huge crises are coming to a head (economic, political, environmental, military, technological), and it seems highly unlikely that society will get through this Century in its current form, unscathed. I, for one, wouldn’t want it to. We can do better.
Since May 2011, members of the Zero State (ZS) movement have been working on projects and brainstorming ways in which we might foster the creation of alternative, futurist societies around the world, now. As I have explained before, the Zero State movement and Kalkinist philosophy are not the same thing, but they are designed to be perfectly compatible. Many Zero Staters’ ideas give us a sense of the ‘shape’ of our overall, implicit philosophy – of Kalkinism – but it is now time to make things more explicit.
In this post, I would like to be less poetic and much more concrete about what Kalkinism is, and what I hope to achieve. In that spirit, I must first strongly emphasise that Kalkinism is not in any sense a ‘religious’ idea and makes no spiritual or metaphysical claims whatsoever. In short, I define Kalkinism as my personal philosophy – nothing more or less. “Kalkin” is my assumed nom de plume (chosen for reasons already explained), and Kalkinism is therefore the name of my philosophy. If you choose to share my views, then I’m glad to hear it, but that’s your business – I will never try to tell anyone what to believe.
What is the Kalkinist philosophy?
As I have already stated, I believe that technology, a healthy environment, equality of opportunity and direct democracy are good things. I believe that these things have powerful enemies, and their ascendance is far from guaranteed.
I believe that there is trouble ahead, and that we need a revolution. Not a bloody, old-fashioned revolution, but a vast and subtle paradigm shift backed up by an engaged, energetic citizenry. A fivefold revolution in our societal structure, trade practices, military practices, thought processes, and culture of limitation. Total transition to a new mode of civilization, beyond the current crisis phase.
Technology alone is not enough. Pro-democracy, anti-war, and anti-greed demonstrations and activism alone are not enough. We need unity, and a plan. We need to be greater than the sum of our parts.
1. We are the Zero State
Zero State (ZS) may be thought of as a movement, a Principled Community, a Distributed Intentional Community, or as a Distributed Autonomous Zone defined by its Principles and projects. ZS projects include philosophical, political, technological and artistic initiatives.
2. The core philosophy behind the Zero State is Kalkinism.
Kalkinism is defined by celebration of – and work toward – Progress and Culture on the one hand, and Freedom on the other. These ideas are united in the concept of a Perennial, Joyous, and Liberating Renewal.
In other words, for a society to be truly cultured, progressive, and free, it must embrace recurrent moments of evaluation and rejection of authoritarian, regressive, and exploitative trends.
This commitment naturally gives impetus to the fight against oppressors and exploiters of various types:
3. We are opposed to Authoritarian, Monotheist Fundamentalism
Fundamentalist religious creeds are inherently authoritarian and regressive. We vow to work against them wherever possible, to limit their sphere of influence and degrade their ability to imprison ourselves or others.
4. We are opposed to Unrestrained, Exploitative Capitalism
Capitalism potentially has great value, but it must know its place in society in order for that value to be realised. Those who would use “free” markets to exploit others and give nothing of significance back to the community are opposed to our principles. Such exploitation is much more subtle than Fundamentalist aggression, but its essential nature is just as controlling and degrading. We must work to harness the positive, transformative potential of trade, while reining in destructive, speculative market activity.
Our ability to work toward these goals – our influence in the world – can be measured by the number of people who work with us. The more of us there are, the more likely we are to achieve results. This is true both in the sphere of mass activity (such as voting or protest), and in more subtle work where quality is more important than quantity, because access to a large number of people also means access to a proportionate number of talented individuals. In short, we must spread the word. As I have already stated, we need to touch the lives of one million people by the end of 2012.
6. Go Forth and Multiply!
First things first, I must emphasise that I envisage any mass movement as being structured along the lines of a rough “10% rule”. That is to say, for every person who can be considered “committed” in some way, there will be another 9 (give or take) who are casual members by the same measure.
So, if we’ve touched a million lives, then 900,000 of those could be expected to be engaged in the most casual way possible. To my mind, the most casual mode of engagement is to have simply heard of us. This may not sound very impressive, but once you think about things like word of mouth, and known psychological phenomena such as the ‘priming’ and ‘mere exposure’ effects, then 900,000 people who have heard of you becomes a very useful thing indeed.
Thinking along these lines, then if we had the influence (which includes money) to create a mildly popular one-off TV event then we could easily reach our goal overnight. This shows that the goal is far from impossible – we just need to think carefully about how to approach it.
If 900,000 people had simply heard of us by the end of this year, then I expect that there would be 90,000 who are marginally more engaged in some way. I imagine that these would be people who have made no financial, ideological or behavioural commitment, but who are open to further communication. People on mailing lists and social media sites, for example.
The remainder, 10,000 people strong, would ideally be those people who have official, paid membership of Zero State and its affiliate organizations. The idea of how paid membership will work has initiated within the political party which is currently in development. It is that membership is £15 per year (comparable to other small parties), but that membership in the party automatically entitles a person to the benefits of membership of all other ZS-affiliated orgs, should they want them. This works both ways, so members of other orgs who have paid £15 for the year are entitled to free party membership, should they want it. Of these 10,000 people, 9,000 would be expected to be committed to the extent of being voting party members or engaged at some similar level in their chosen org, but 1,000 would participate in ways that go still further.
900 people would be expected to engage in much the same way many of you do now, as active volunteers in the various Projects and Domains. These are people doing some practical work, of a wide variety of types. All volunteers would be expected to be paid members of a movement organization, such as Zero State itself or the political party.
Perhaps 90 people might be encouraged to support the movement in a substantial way, such as making assets or opportunities available which we would have found it difficult to otherwise access. If we imagine that these tiers should be contributing roughly equally in their own ways, then a purely financial commitment on this level should, at a minimum, be two orders of magnitude greater than standard party membership; i.e. a donation of £1,500 per year. I would like to emphasise here that this level of engagement needn’t be wholly or even partially financial – the member might have some other way of demonstrating a particularly strong level of commitment.
Following the logic to its conclusion leads us to speculate about a very small group of people who are in some way even more committed than all of those mentioned above. Who might these final 10 people be, and what form might their contribution take?
I believe that we already have the answer to that question. These people are, by definition, the most committed to the ideas expressed above. Such commitment cannot be left as a vague notion, but must be expressed through work toward our goal; The creation of a distributed, Principled community. At the moment, these people are the founders of the ZS idea, who work hard to make our vision a reality. You know who you are. I should make it clear that I do not see this group as an “elite” except in the most broad sense, and I certainly do not imagine its members having any special privileges. Quite the opposite is true, in fact; these are the people who willingly accept the heaviest responsibilities with no expectation of remuneration or privilege. Their existence is in many ways unofficial, and they only retain their membership in this select group as long as their deeds show them to be the most committed.
So, what can we do to start expanding ZS membership?
We start, as we did above, with establishing the most casual connections to our idea and community. We spread the word about what we stand for, what we’re opposed to, and the various projects our members are working on.
We can reach a million members this year if we have 1,000 active members by the end of February, and double that number every month for the rest of the year.
That’s a tall order, and would require a serious, creative, all-hands-on-deck effort. Several initiatives which could lead to increased membership are in progress already, but for our purposes here it would be best to ignore those and count any effects they may later have as an unexpected bonus.
A concept key to the success of this effort is that of paradigm shift. In short, whatever technique which increases membership from 1,000 to 2,000 is highly unlikely to work for a transition from 100,000 to 200,000. We will need to talk about a set of paradigm shift strategies – potentially as many as one for every month – bearing in mind the different levels of membership & engagement that we intend to foster. We’ll be using the ZS lists to encourage serious brainstorming on this front, very soon. Do feel free to show initiative by starting on that now, taking my comments here as a point of departure!
A second key concept is that of shared membership. This is the idea that people with views sympathetic to our own don’t exist in a cultural vacuum, waiting for us to come along and give their lives meaning! Most will almost certainly be involved with groups of different types already, hold views on some or all of our areas of concern, and so on. We can be most efficient by looking for people not only as individuals, but as members of networks that already exist, which we have some reason to believe may be at least partially compatible with our own. For example, many of us are members of other transhumanist organizations, political parties, social and educational groups – how can you encourage some of the people in those groups to drop by and see what we’re all about? Do you know anyone sufficiently engaged in an organization that they might want to check out ZS and can speak for their entire organization, or have a strong voice within their organization which will be heard if they choose to endorse us as “fellow travellers”?
A race to 1,000 members: READY… STEADY… GO!
Until the end of February 2012 (and no later) we will be making official ZS membership free; membership being defined by having your name and email address listed in a (strictly private and secure) ZS database. From March 1st 2012, membership will cost £15 per year. Those who join before the end of February will be accorded full membership status for free until March 1st, 2013.
There will be advantages to membership announced periodically, such as offers, special event invitations etc made only to official members. Each member will be assigned a membership number and sent a welcome/information message. We will aim to reach an official membership of 1,000 by the end of February, if not sooner.
Anyone can obtain their free membership by sending an email to membership@zerostate.net
Mails should include the applicant’s name, and the name of the person who referred them (if anyone). That email address is now active. You will receive a confirmation email with membership number within 24 hours. If you include any kind of personal message in the email, then we cannot guarantee a response, depending upon the volume of emails received.
To add a bit of fun to proceedings and speed things up, I would like to announce that the ZS member who refers the most new members before the end of February (i.e. whose name is mentioned to us in emails from unique applicants) will receive 10 years free ZS membership (worth £150). Two runners-up will each receive 5 years free ZS membership.
