2534. Meet basic needs first.

Gardenworld Politics is a strategic guiding vision for integrated responses to issues of turbulence -- global warming, inequality, and governance, to make for an attractive society. Remember that we are, at the core, primates seeking survival strategies. But there is a new opening here. Recent studies of early human evolution  replaces an old story that was filled with constraints with a new story about human creativity that was largely choked off as elites got control of resources and then acted to protect that control. 

Politics is in the title because we must move beyond policy to action. Policy such as “We will cut greenhouse gas by 50% by 2035” is silent about how to start that process.  Cop 26, instead of being about what to do, was a feeding frenzy over financialization (How to make a profit in a world where wealth is already concentrated). Big struggles ahead. We need to learn how to bring balance between rights and responsibilities. The wealth regime we have has been absent on responsibilities to the whole that supports it. 

Politics, comes from the Greek for town, polis,  and means all the dynamics of power and status found there. Unlike mere policy, politics deals with the whole system with its real conflicts. Getting to the future will  have lots of struggle as some will lose out and will not take it lightly. There are two powerful scenarios for the future. Big tech for global management and local living. We can expect lots of effort at both.  Gardenworld is a guide to transition toward renewing civilization with the best blend. We know circumstances will be difficult. Institutions and people’s character will be stressed. Gardenworld is necessary and attractive. We want a freer, more creative, more loving and appreciative world and that means culture with those qualities.

So much writing now is critical of the economy and government. These institutions are not delivering. Economy should be arranging mankind’s interaction with the world to produce a decent life for everyone and governments should be acting to cope with the major emerging problems of our time - but they are not. A void really. Instead of something to criticize,  economy and government need to be reinvented. We need to understand how we got here and why it is broken, and what we at best can do now. 

 The world is broken. We need a vision

We are searching for some kind of harmony between two intangibles: a form which we have not yet designed and a context which we cannot properly describe. - Christopher Alexander