A Call for the Re-Discovery of Leadership

Rodney Land

[This is being written a day after "A Moment of Truth" with the dramatic monologue by "Bill" about the ideas of "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere". It is a crystallisation of my thesis and thinking into a plan of action for politicising them. Saturday 13th January 2007]



Be very sure and be prepared to re-assure people that they can be sure too that there is a correct -- i.e., best and workable -- answer to the socio-economic predicament that humanity has got itself into. There is a correct explanation, a correct theory, correct ethics, correct legislation and a correct and tested practice to tackle and deal successfully with the environmental crisis and the culture that is causing it. It just needs to be "put out there", promulgated, and like Christianity and Communism it will spread because it is an idea whose time has come (or is about to come) in the service of humanity's survival and development. And, like Christianity and Communism it will not be a final solution to the human condition, based as this is on our inheritance of a conical or pyramidal social concept from our tree-dwelling ancestors. This constitutes a serious mal-adaptation of our species to the environments we have migrated into and regularly destroy before moving on to find the next one. This is the consequence of our continuing to behave like monkeys who regularly trash their trees before moving on to the next patch. Now that our species has reached global scale, there is nowhere else to go and no other environments that we can destroy. So it is that our mal-adaptation that we have lived with as "The Fall of Man" and that has produced the concept of "Original Sin" in Christianity, is now lethal for the survival of our species.

It is fashionable in all liberal humane and democratic circles today, be they the World Social Forum or the Sea of Faith, that there is no one correct or best or workable theory or set of policies "out there", but that the only way forward is by discussion and consensus. I agree strongly with the concept of creating spaces for open and free expressions of opinion to canvass the true range of ideas that exists in the world. I also agree that this is a prerequisite for finding out what is "out there", to guide and inform policy making and action in a democracy. But I know that it is crucial not to confuse this process with the urgent need to form new political parties to take action to seek solutions to our problems. They are separate, interacting and complementary activities.

However, for anything to start moving in the right direction it requires the re-discovery of leadership - that is, real democratic leadership and not the corporate and neo-conservative version of leadership that, like most things in authoritarian, top-down systems run on elite deceit, turns out to be its opposite, namely, followership.[1] Real democratic leadership finds out what the majority of a group wants (lacks, needs, desires) and then helps them to achieve it. Once the ideas have been clarified by discussion and debate and the policies formulated by voting, the task of the elected leader is to be "primus inter pares" in a leadership team whose role it is to promulgate them by all means possible. Confident - strong and charismatic - leadership is needed to keep the leadership team together, on course and on target. Success in this is essential until the ideas start "catching on" and entering the general consciousness. This has got to be a case of "the hundredth monkey syndrome" with an idea and a practice growing until it reaches "critical mass" to trigger a "chain reaction" to carry all before it.

My thesis[2] and its constituent ideas need to be presented whole, as a complete and coherent philosophy that is fully integrated. This is the best way that it can act as a catalyst for the "metaphysical mutation" that is needed to transform the global World Social Forum based culture to make a reality of its slogan, "Another World is Possible"[3] . Its presentation needs to span all classes of society and all aspects of our culture. It must be able to appeal to the philosophical (intellectual, logical, academic), political, economic (industrial and commercial business) social (scientific and religious), cultural (arts and sports) and common sense and pragmatic facets of the various sub-cultures.

The validity and efficacy of the thesis as the most workable and therefore the best solution to our global political and environmental crisis needs to be thoroughly understood by its proponents, explained and then staunchly stood by and supported. This is not to be dogmatic but to demonstrate the necessary confidence in its validity as a complete and coherent political philosophy. This is in order to stop it from being taken for just another of the good ideas that discussion groups are currently exploring. The leadership team needs to be carefully self-monitored so that it will not be infiltrated and the thesis watered down or otherwise undermined by plausible, even sincere, criticism by people with other agendas. By far the most powerful and dangerous of these is urbane and bland but duplicitous corporate "elite deceit" and consumerist "libertarian" ideology. This is constantly being used in the commercial media and is endemic to advertising to persuade people to consume while corporates continue to use diversity and brand loyalties as a means to divide, sedate and rule the masses. This enables the tiny corporate minority elites to remain in power, as in the primitive primate dominance hierarchy power pyramid (The Fall of Man/Original Sin) and thus to continue to control the culture for their own benefit at the expense of the majority.

Real democratic leadership then is quite distinct from the corporate version of leadership. But it is the polar opposite of the Stalinist or authoritarian version of leadership. This turned out to be the calculated and determined control of party members and the people by the "Byzantine Authoritarian Bureaucratic Method". This was the technique that Stalin learnt from the priests in the Orthodox seminary where he received his schooling. It involves the keeping of secret files on people to be used to blackmail, intimidate and coerce them into mouthing the doctrines of the Church, or Chairman under Communism. (v & cf the Alpha Male or "Top Monkey" in our evolutionary ethology). This totalitarian (and fascist) version of leadership we now know to our everlasting cost does not work well for most of the people for most of the time. It only works well for a few of the people - the "top monkeys" or elites - for a short time. And this is why democracy is the "least-worst system" and necessary for social justice, self-regulation and sustainability.

A newly formed party has to be able to tell people why all other systems have failed and where they have gone wrong. (One thinks here of the old adage: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"). It is the whole point of this ethological thesis and the political philosophy, principles and policies that derive from it, that it is new and it is different and that it is the sound and correct basis for successful change. It provides the means for being able to break out of the vicious cycle of the rise and fall of civilisations that have all degraded or destroyed their environments in the process. We are now rapidly destroying the global environment and threatening all animal life, including our own species, with extinction.

(Oh boy, oh boy. Anyone wanna job? I'm getting too old for this stuff. I want to read and play string quartets.)

Is this, or is there a final solution? No, absolutely not. Only crazy, frightened and desperate hard-wired dominants and short-term thinkers and genocidal dictators like Hitler and Stalin and Mao (or the "Crazies" with Bush!) thought - or hoped - there was a final solution, an "end to history", only to be bitterly disappointed and disillusioned every time. (I was with Uncle Joe when he died and he said it all sucked and would collapse soon because of people like Beria. At least he showed some insight on his death bed.) As long as we fail to recognise and deal with the "Primitive Primate Dominance Hierarchy Power Pyramid Problem" (PPDHPPP) we will be dogged by "The Fall of Man" ("Original Sin") and our civilisations will continue to rise and fall, grow and collapse until there is nowhere left to live. Conceiving of our social structure as a cone or pyramid with upper, middle and lower classes or castes is a serious maladaptation of our species to the terrestrial environments we now inhabit. Reality requires us to see our society as differently as we are different from monkeys. We need to conceive of it as a single, unitary "normal distribution" or "bell" curve encompassing different roles for people according to their aptitudes and abilities. The secret is to be able to ensure social cohesion and communal solidarity by a political and economic system that delivers social justice through ending wage slavery and guaranteeing everybody a share in natural resources. This can only happen in a society where freedom (from and for) is constitutionally protected and in which equality of opportunity is a reality[4] and parity of esteem[5] a norm.

As long therefore as our human nature continues to operate as a product of our descent from tree-dwelling forebears, we are going to need specific measures to protect ourselves from the consequences of our maladaptation to our terrestrial environment. These measures have to include the traditional areas of philosophy, politics, economics and social ethics and customs, but they can only be successful in practice if we develop our understanding of the power and efficacy of education in a new paradigm and with new techniques of teaching and learning. At present we do not have an education system in any meaningful sense of the word. What we have is only a social control and selection system that, by being controlled by our academic, social and political elites to ensure an orderly replacement of their roles in society, is part of the problem of our culture's mind-set and therefore no part of any possible useful solution. We desperately need an education system that is capable of developing talents, releasing energies and learning the skills, knowledge and thinking ability that will promote and allow rapid change. For if we are going to be able to save our environment and our species along with it we have to be able to change our culture and our behaviour faster than ever before in history and evolution. This is the testing time for our flexibility and adaptability as a species. Is our culture and behaviour able to change fast enough by education to adapt and survive? We have reached global scale as the biological dominant and are causing rapid environmental degradation and destruction. Obviously genetic change is far too slow to achieve it, given the rates of change we have caused. So our only hope is to be able to change our behaviour through education rapidly enough to be able to survive. Are we going to be able to create and control a culture that is capable of this? Is it in fact possible?

My contention is that it is possible, but it cannot happen without great upheaval and at great cost in every area of our civilisation owing to the deeply entrenched mind-set caused by our inheritance of dominance hierarchy from our tree-dwelling forebears. I think we can change our culture in time because I seem to be one of the few people to have survived in our education system for long enough to be able to critique it fully. It is pretty clear that there are not many people who can see fully where it has gone wrong and what has to be done to turn it back into an education system. And only a proper and dynamic education system is capable of ensuring that enough students learn enough of the right things to produce fast enough change to save us. This requires teaching what we currently believe to be facts and teaching students how to challenge and to test them, to question and to think so that they are able to turn information into useful knowledge. That it is possible for the great majority of students to learn and understand these things is what I have ascertained beyond reasonable doubt in over fifty years of teaching. The teachers and students of my school days didn't know or believe this to be the case, which is why it has not become part of our educational thinking and practice. What is needed is very different from our present so-called education system that is indoctrinating students in politically and ideologically correct theory and conformist behaviour. The purpose is to enable them to jump through a series of hoops in order to condition them to be able to work and to promote in a corporatist society. Education has been reduced to "teaching for the test".

A radically new and different political paradigm and party could promote rapid change. But there must be no more revolutions. Revolutions are useless and counter-productive. They do what their name says they do: go round in a full circle. After a lot of killing and destruction (and pause to consider a future revolution involving "local theatre" nuclear warheads) they end up where they started. The faces are new, the names of positions and institutions may be new, but the same primitive primate dominance hierarchy power pyramid has been reinstated as the essential structure of society. What we need is no more revolutions but a "rapid evolution" that will achieve a linear quantum leap from an old and lethal social structure to a new and biophilic and benign one. There is possibly just enough time for a new politics and culture to create the conditions for rapid change that could save us from decay or political revolution and social and economic collapse.

We at least have a chance if we can educate enough people in the grass roots of society -who are the vast majority of any society (see the PPDHPP) - to be able to create rapid change and renewal. Even though our democracy is badly damaged by corporatism it is still functioning just well enough electorally for it to be possible to elect a party to govern us that can legislate for the things that will transform our culture and save our society.

Chief among the things that can save our society is to legislate for the introduction of Resource Rentals for Revenue. We need this radical reform not only for economic reasons to cure the disease of land monopoly and speculation that is the basis of all poverty, unemployment and social problems. But we need it above all for social reasons to be able to afford the education system that would allow us to regain full and proper democracy and to preserve the environment. A proper education system would enable us to save some of our present huge expenditure on health, legal, penal and welfare costs. It would also enable us to afford the management all the other social changes that would follow from the introduction of Resource Rentals for Revenue. Once the effects of this fundamental and radical reform had started to be felt across the whole of society it would not be long before a permanent majority of the electorate, including many affluent people, would be keen to vote to keep it. The huge surge of hope and the release of energy that would result from this single economic reform would create such prosperity, social justice and improvement of human behaviour and reduction in crime and self-harm that its efficacy would be beyond question. Even our current corporate and commercial elites who do not like the sound of it and would oppose it initially, would soon come to realise its benefits and be willing to accept it. It would not take long for the great majority of people to realise that this is a social system worth living in and working for. They would only have to experience the quality of life in a society with no wage slavery and a guaranteed standard of living for all of its members to want to care for - conserve, restore and improve - the environment to ensure sustainability and stability.

To all those people who have become cynical and despairing as a result of continually struggling with the intractable problems of our current socio-economic system that only works well for about a third of the population, this will sound hopelessly too idealistic and impossible of attainment. But this is only because we have been brainwashed by our elites, the winners in the scramble for wealth and power under liberal economics, to believe that we already have and are living in the best economic and political system and that it doesn't get any better than this. This is the illusion caused by the "elite deceit" that is endemic to the corporatist societies that have developed in the liberal democracies. Our current socio-economic system is arguably and demonstrably insane and unsustainable with its belief that only continued economic growth (on a finite planet mind you) can solve our problems. Because this system is still working well for the affluent, they are unwilling and unable to conceive of, let alone create, the correct principles, policies and practices that would produce a system that would work well for everybody and be sustainable. Most affluent people just don't believe that it is possible and always revert to saying, "You can't change human nature".

It needs pointing out to all those people who can see future problems arising even under a fair and effective economic system that there has never been a good reason for failing to do today what clearly needs to be done today because one can see that it is not a final solution. But the more correct what we do today, the fewer the problems that will have to be solved tomorrow. This is an axiom of all constructive philosophy. History confirms it.

The fundamental and original problem is undoubtedly Human Nature, alias The Fall of Man/Original Sin. I call it the "Primitive Primate Dominance Hierarchy Power Pyramid Problem because this is what the science of Ethology, (the study of animal behaviour) would have called it by now had it yet addressed the phenomenon. (My thesis also deals with and explains why it has not been studied and researched yet.) Nobody can deny that "human nature" somehow is a serious maladaptation of our species to our terrestrial environment. And many people know or suspect that it is a result of our genetic inheritance of a vertical sense of dominance hierarchy from our tree-dwelling ancestors, the monkeys. Nearly everyone realises that there is something deeply flawed in human nature and society. But most people are sick and tired of hearing about it. They have had enough of preachers attributing our destructive behaviour to The Fall of Man and its resultant Original Sin. And of conservative elites confidently asserting that "You can't change human nature" (while conveniently failing to mention in the same breath "But you can change human behaviour" - with the right thinking and social environment). The standard response today by most people is, "Get over it. Get a life and get on with it".

However, we cannot afford to ignore it or leave it unchallenged and unattended to or un-catered for any longer in spite of the relative success of liberal economics and the culture of consumerism. It is only temporary and cannot be sustained. Our survival as a species is now at stake. Is there anything in our past history that we could revisit or build on to enable us work out a solution to our predicament? Yes, luckily there is. The best and potentially most powerful and successful proposed solution in the history of civilisation was the institution of the "Year of the Jubilee" under the Covenant of the Mosaic Law in Judaism (c. 1400 BCE), the earliest of the three monotheistic "Abrahamic Religions": Judaism, Christianity and Islam. But it was steadily subverted by greed, cunning, elite deceit - all the consequences of dominance hierarchy in human nature - until by the time of Christ it had effectively been abandoned. As a result, poverty was prevalent and persistent in the midst of wealth and prosperity and the power and privileges of the Pharisees and Priests. So when Jesus preached the restoration of the Jubilee or "The Acceptable Year of the Lord" as a means of restoring the Mosaic law (the Torah) in order to help and save the poor, he was accused of sedition by the priests, who tried to have him killed. However, when he was later arrested and charged, he was found faultless by Pilate, the governor of the Roman province of Palestine, who was not concerned about local squabbles about the Law and land or points of doctrine and blasphemy. Actually, it is made pretty clear that Pilate thought Jesus was a good person and not guilty of any crime and he couldn't see what all the fuss was about. However, he delivered Jesus up to the High Priests for crucifixion for a "quiet life" It was a diplomatic move to satisfy the Priests and a practical strategy for sedating the mob, the "rent-a-crowd" organised to clamour for Jesus' crucifixion. It was undoubtedly one of the basest acts of cowardice and betrayals of justice by a person in a position of power and responsibility in history and it has been characterised as such in the bible.

That Jesus' main mission was to help the poor by re-instating the Jubilee of the Mosaic Law (Leviticus 25:23) by which the use of the land would be restored to all the Twelve Tribes of Israel every fifty years is now beyond doubt or reasonable argument. Yet it was played down by the early Christian church and later completely lost since the church was a human institution and subject to the influence and effects of human nature. The operation of the primitive primate dominance hierarchy power pyramid ensured that the basis of human equality and social justice would be covered up by elite deceit and not included in the official doctrines of the church. These have always concentrated on the spiritual side of Jesus' mission and teaching and used by the church and elites as a means of consoling and controlling the people. His political mission has been hushed up and neglected by the people in power for the same reasons that the High Priests had Jesus crucified. And this has been repeated with the economics of Henry George, only this time by the American "robber barons", Rockefeller et al. - and for exactly the same reasons. Clearly it is time to tackle properly and successfully the cause of this repeated traducing of economic and social justice by human nature, alias original sin, alias the primitive primate dominance hierarchy power pyramid. With the invention of democracy we have created the necessary political system and institutions to make it possible. Now we need the correct ethical and economic system and institutions to make it a reality.

It is easy to see and to explain how the recurring tragedy of the human condition has happened throughout history. But unless we can understand its cause clearly and come up with correct and effective solutions to the problem, we are no further advanced towards its solution but remain trapped in the cage we are confined to by our evolution and human nature. The history of civilisation - defined by literacy with industrial, administrative and monumental urban centers supported by agriculture and mining - is the result of human societies responding to the challenges created by opportunities to exploit environments to create wealth. Since Sumeria and Egypt there have been spectacular developments based on agriculture and industry that have enabled humans to use their expanding knowledge base and creative ingenuity to develop the technology that has taken us from the stone age to the information age based on the silicon chip. At each stage development and growth has favoured the retention of the primitive primate dominance hierarchy power pyramid as the best or most successful form of social organisation for progress. However, the result has always been environmental degradation owing to over exploitation, social decadence and increasing injustice and economic decline until collapse and regression have supervened. The marvelous inventions and achievements of the "upper echelons" and elites that history records and admires, have always been based on and made possible by the labour of the peasants and artisans and slaves, the huge majority of any society. Owing to the power structure built into the primitive primate social hierarchy pyramid, the "lower orders", the numerous food-producing peasants and peons and later industrial proletarian classes have always been regarded as expendable. But with our technology and productivity and basic education in literacy today this simply is not acceptable and will not work any longer. This is primarily because we have developed an understanding of social justice as the basis for social sanity, stability and sustainability.

The latest phase in the cycle of civilisations started with the post-feudal 18th Century invention of liberal economics - "free" enterprise, "free" markets and "free" trade. The emphasis on the freedom component of the French Revolution triune slogan of "Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood (Solidarity)" liberated human energies after the bonded and confining strictures of the "Feudal Pyramid". (In its earlier stages feudalism was one of the better examples in history of the primitive primate dominance hierarchy power pyramid being made to work well for most in a population for a while). After feudalism the authoritarian hierarchy ossified in the despotic monarchies of the 16th and 17th Centuries with the terrifying and destructive religious wars over trade and territory from the Crusades to the Hundred Years War in Western Europe. This liberation of human energies produced the inventiveness and entrepreneurial culture that caused the Industrial Revolution and its subsequent global development in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

But now we have been judged in the global court of the environment. The jury is in and we have been found guilty as charged for global environmental degradation and destruction. All that remains to be done now is for the judge to hand down the sentence. How good are we at interpreting the law and reading the mind of the judge? Is it going to be thirty years - one generation - of hard labour to save the environment? Or is it going to be something more modern, more creative, more positive? This would have to be a sentence for humanity to have to achieve a massive metaphysical mutation and cultural change in record time. It would require substituting a concern for the conservation, restoration and future amelioration of the global environment for the present private and corporate profit motive in liberal economics as the chief criterion for all actions and economic activity.

This is where we have to consider and take on board two truisms. The first is "If you don't change direction you will end up where you are headed". The second is that well known old definition of insanity as "Going on doing the same thing that you have been doing while hoping for a different result". As Einstein pointed out, "No problem can be solved with the same mind-set that created it". Unless we finally tackle the problem of human nature head on politically by an extension and development of democracy, we are doomed to decadence and collapse. We have to stop trying to exculpate our deplorable behaviour with the conservative mantra "You can't change human nature" by reminding them and ourselves that we can change human behaviour by education in new concepts and principles and policies and practices.

The most fundamental aspect of any successful change has got to be the recognition that we are descended from monkeys who trash their trees and move on. And this is why it is in our "human nature" to go on trashing our environments and moving on, always looking for new environments we can move into and exploit until they are exhausted. One has only to look at our fascination with space travel and the money that we spend on it that should be spent on education and the environment to save our terrestrial situation to realise the truth of this observation. We have the knowledge and the essential facts about the state of the global environment in spite of the on-going attempts by short-term selfish vested interests to deny them or to fudge the real issues, to be able to act to save it and our home, Planetship Earth. We have no further environments to destroy without global human disaster and nowhere to go in the foreseeable future.

So we are forced to a conclusion: to stop what we are doing. We have to use our brains and common sense and science and technological skills activated by a panic change of heart and course in order to reconstruct our cultures and environments. And we should remember what incredible feats of reconstruction humans are capable of through co-operation in national emergencies and after natural disasters. We have to conserve everything where we haven't destroyed yet. We have to restore where we have already degraded or destroyed. And we have to improve where our environments were not so good and robust when we arrived in them. This has to be a national emergency program in a new cultural paradigm to secure a future rather than to rush on like lemmings to a known precipice and destruction. (Talk about the Gadarene swine! Why can't the bible belt Christians in America that have been backing Bush and the Republican neo-conservatives see that the parable of the Gadarene swine applies perfectly to them? America is being driven to the precipice by the spirit of monopoly capitalism, namely corporatism and consumerism - the PPDHPP, no less. It is the inevitable and sad consequence of a culture based on belief and superstition and not on rational thinking and common sense, alas.) Our main cultural value and goal needs now to be to use all our skills and energies to create a beautiful, bosky, ecologically balanced and stable and sustainable environment in which the whole population can live active and purposeful lives. It must be a far more attractive alternative than insecurely and anxiously going on with our present decadent selfish, self-indulgent and short sighted consumerist culture.

So how can this be done?

By getting it right this time under the challenge and discipline created by the imminent threat to our survival not only as a nation or culture or civilisation but also as a species. The best approaches and actions are already known. They have been worked out in philosophies, religions, politics, economics, and now recently in our understanding of the origins of humans and our behaviour (ethology). Many people know what has to be done to change course, but owing to poor public education we have not been able to mobilise the political will in a democracy to achieve it. This is where it has to start. And if the task seems too vast and too hard to achieve, we need to remember and be inspired by Margaret Mead's great insight and dictum: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it's the only thing that ever has."

Liberal economics - capitalism and the classical economic writings of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Proudhon and Lascelle and the greatest of them all, Henry George - liberated creativity and energy but did nothing about human nature as it is. They just accepted it as they saw it and knew it, and worked with it. This is why liberal economies have been so much more successful than their polar opposite, socialist command economies that came into being in opposition to the excesses of early capitalism. Socialism required a change in human behaviour, but, by creating centralised bureaucracies with totalitarian power over the lives of the people, it failed to achieve its declared goal of equality and brotherhood (comradeship and solidarity in communism). It fell straight into the trap of human nature - the primitive primate dominance hierarchy power pyramid. Both Capitalist and Communist ideologies equally rejected and were subsequently not interested in the religious doctrines of the churches about the Fall of Man and Original Sin. Capitalism with democracy achieved the separation of Church and State while Communism simply rejected all religions while trying to become a religion - a set of beliefs and values and rituals - in its own right. Neither system had any clear concept of our inheritance of an inappropriate societal self-concept from our monkey ancestors. They were pragmatists who simply worked with human nature as they knew it. We have now had time to see and learn that, as in all earlier civilisations, human nature works brilliantly for some of the population. It even works for a while in some cases for many of the population. But it has never worked well for all or even for a majority for very long before the corrupting effect of power in the dominance hierarchy takes over again as land monopoly, competition and limited resources produces poverty in the midst of progress and prosperity for some. This has always led in time to economic collapse or revolution or both, in either order.

Henry George in "Progress and Poverty" (1879) saw the flaw in classical economics and worked out and proposed the correct solution. But it came just too late to stop Rockefeller and Morgan and the other "robber barons" of the late 19th Century from opposing, and finally defeating and burying George's solution. They did it by the process of sponsoring a new study of economics called "neo-classical" economics that was to be taught in all the universities that in America were endowed by the very wealthy. Pressure was brought to bear on Georgist economics by refusing to endow any economics department that taught it and, in some cases threatening to withdraw support from the whole university until Georgist economics and the "Single Tax" (Land Value Tax) was no longer taught. (See Mason Gaffney and Fred Harrison, "The Corruption of Economics", 2003.) They understood very well that geonomics and Land Value Tax would cost them money and reduce their power. So they organised and "beat Henry George to the draw" in true Wild West style using their greater resources and forces, being "mean, lean, keen and tough killers" hard-wired for short term results and success at any cost. Thus they created the "stop at nothing" culture of the US Industrial Military Complex that has killed anybody and destroyed anything that has stood in its way, from Hiroshima to JFK to MLK to 9/11.

The neo-classical economics that was contrived by obliging and sycophantic academics with such faceless names as Ely and Smith, was the flawed nonsense that we have been suffering from and under for the past century. It makes the fatal mistake of conflating land and capital - two of the three basic elements of classical economics - and calling it property. In the United States under ideological capitalism that has now morphed into corporatism, this always means "private property", notwithstanding that the state owns huge tracts of America still that it allows corporations to exploit for peppercorn rentals. This leaves land and capital - capitalist land monopoly - standing together in opposition to labour that is the prime productive force in economics. This has created the polarisation of "capital" (right wing capitalists) and "labour" (left wing socialists) that constituted the main - and misconceived (owing to neo-classical economics) and unnecessary - opposing forces of the 20th Century that consumed countless millions of lives in the conflict. Only now are we slowly and belatedly realising that the real opposition and conflict has always in fact been between authoritarianism (power top-down) versus democracy (power bottom-up) as political principles and practices for governance. The problem is now global with the oldest modern democracy, the United States, having recently, and we trust and pray only temporarily, deserted the democratic block to become a fully fascist military imperial power. But it is also clearly to be seen in the global opposition between two other interest groupings. These are the transnational corporations (represented by the World Economic Forum that meets annually in Davos in Switzerland) and the peoples and cultures of the world (represented by the World Social Forum that started in Porto Alegre in Brazil in 2001). These can be roughly equated with the "upper" and "lower" parts of the primitive primate power pyramid and the bi-partite division of humanity into the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the poor. And we all know that the gap is constantly widening under our current arguably crass and demonstrably crazy "Western" capitalist, corporatist, consumerist, commercial culture.

So it is stark clear to any perceptive and thoughtful citizen concerned for the common good and the survival of civilisation that we have to learn how to slow down. We have to be able to legislate not just for freedom (from tyranny and oppression and for creativity and a full life) that is fundamental for human happiness and sanity, but also for equality. This requires equality of basic social provision and opportunity. In other words no more wage slavery but a guaranteed level of income to support a decent standard of living for all. Make no mistake and don't believe anybody who tries to tell you that this is not possible. But for the effects of the maladaptation caused by the primitive primate dominance hierarchy power pyramid ("original sin") in civilisation, this has always been possible, and for our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors it was the norm. We have also to set as our goal and to legislate in ways that are conducive to it, communal co-operation, cohesion and solidarity ("brotherhood"). These social desiderata and goals have to replace our current dog-eat-dog capitalist/corporatist competitive culture that is taking us to the brink. There is a proper and limited place for competition in a healthy liberal economic system.

We have to be able to form a party that can achieve government in its own right and that will legislate for what works for equality and communal solidarity for everybody in a society and not just for the successful people in our current corporatist society. Social justice is now being seen and felt as the most fundamental factor of all in creating a stable and sustainable society. Without it no society can call itself civilised. We already possess the technology, the productive and distributive capabilities to make it a reality. We lack only the political and economic principles and resultant policies and practices to achieve it because of the hegemony of the mind-set of corporatism. But this is a strictly temporary phenomenon and is already unraveling under the weight of its own success that has been so environmentally destructive and existentially absurd, because self-defeating.

Therefore - if the Greens will not espouse Resource Rentals for Revenue and produce a different and credible education policy, it will be necessary to form a new political party. I propose calling it The Democratic Environmental Party, otherwise the DEP, popularly The Demens. It will have principles and policies to span the whole range of government responsibilities in a constitutional democracy. Its fundamental raison d'etre is enshrined in its name: to preserve and develop democracy itself and to save and improve the environment to give New Zealand the future that it is currently clearly failing to secure. Its radical platform is the introduction of Resource Rentals for Revenue to solve our present social and economic problems and stagnation. From this fundamental reform will flow the revenues required to deal effectively with all the social and environmental problems that are threatening our future. Chief among these is the problem of freehold land monopoly that is distorting our whole economy and causing endless problems for infrastructure development, urban renewal and community services. With a reversion to Crown leasehold for all land titles and resource licences a socially just and efficient means of raising revenues for public works will be possible. It will also make it possible for the first time in history to fund education properly. This is a prime necessity for being able to completely re-structure the education system to make it what its name indicates, instead of going on with the antiquated and hopelessly ineffective social control and selection system that passes for an education system currently. Once education has been reformed and given its proper place in the culture, all other systems and services such as health, legal, penal and welfare agencies will be very much smaller and require much less funding. This obvious fact is, and always has been, a matter of values and priorities in any culture and civilisation. With fully funded public education it will become possible for our society to choose to survive and prosper rather than to go on being driven by human nature and primitive instincts.

For a Democratic Environmental Party to grow rapidly and be able to form a government as soon as possible it must start in the grass roots of society and be able to appeal to the electoral majority. Only an intensively organised campaign of meetings to promulgate and publicise its principles and policies will work well today since the corporately-owned media have an absolute monopoly and control of news, information, advertising and propaganda that supports corporatism. If a few dissidents could subvert Stalinism, surely a committed core of democratic environmentalists could transform corporatist consumerism into a viable and sustainable culture without revolution or collapse. The greatest strength of the proposal to legislate for Resource Rentals for Revenue is its ability to be introduced progressively without dangerous disruption to the productive and distributive functions of society. DEP members would have to start educating, really educating, people to think about these problems - their origins and solutions - and to vote for a party that will legislate for Resource Rentals for Revenue to produce beneficial change for the whole of society, not just for the fortunate few. Initially, a small, well-informed, committed and determined group of members has to take the lead to set up other groups that will create the grass-roots knowledge and activity that can spread these ideas rapidly in the community. It is very much a "hundredth monkey syndrome" phenomenon. Once the ideas start to catch on they will spread in proportion to their relevance and appeal to a majority of the electorate. In a democracy, this is all that is needed to overcome even the most powerful, entrenched and determined elite minority. But people have to have this salient fact of democracy pointed out to them since its truth and reality has been lost in the two party systems where electoral victory has depended on only a small percentage of swinging voters. In a multi-party democracy a new party can make electoral progress much more quickly. This is why a new party like the DEP has to be very well educated in democracy and very determined to see that there is no ballot corruption or malpractice of the sort that has undermined democracy in the United States.

There are three areas of knowledge that are essential for the creation and preservation of a viable public education curriculum. None of them exists in current curriculum 'designs' such as the Victorian State Education Curriculum, the "Curriculum and Standards Framework" or CSF. (I used to call it the CFS, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome because it is full of corporate-style jaw-breaking jargon, the specialist dialect of a profession that uses language to impress outsiders with its special knowledge while hiding its real meaning from them). They are (1) The History, Principles and Practices of Democracy. (This is not to be confused with "Civics and Citizenship", the compromised corporatist version of democracy that turns out not to be real democracy at all but only legalistic populism that formalises "elite deceit". This is either taught badly or not at all in Australian schools). (2) Environmental Studies. (These have to tell the scientific truth about the nature and fragility of the global environment and not just be a series of "feel good" precepts about pollution and the need to combat it). (3) The Origins of Human Behaviour. (This has to be taught as Evolution and Ethology in Science. All myths and legends, including biblical versions of the creation or "intelligent design" are to be taught in Literature or Religious Studies).

Only an education that includes these things can deal with the problems posed by our inheritance of dominance hierarchy from our tree-dwelling ancestors. We have to be able to use and develop democracy and an appreciation of the implications of majority rule for a well-educated population to oppose, out-vote and peacefully displace the current elites. These people have "got to the top" because they are "hard-wired" for short-term thinking and "success" at any cost. As a result, they are leading humanity to destruction since environmentally responsible and conserving behaviour requires long-term thinking and getting in step with natural processes and renewal times, not simply mining the environment for what will make a buck today.

Thus we are being forced to consider, for the first time in modern history, what the ancients called The Fall of Man. Modern science, had it yet addressed the problem, would call it "the serious maladaptation of the human species to the environments it has migrated into with consistently disastrous and now increasingly lethal results.

We have to be able to develop viable and evolving political solutions to cater for and deal with the problem of human nature and behaviour deriving from dominance hierarchy. A good starting place would be to write a new constitution for each democracy. This would require the creation of a new democratic institution to re-enforce and safeguard the "separation of powers" since this has proved unequal to the task of combating the concentration of power in the Executive with the inevitable corruption of democracy that has resulted. I am suggesting that it may be called the "National Ombudsman". It would have about 100 members elected for one year only and paid the average salary for the country. Its sole role would be to monitor the constitution and to act as a watch dog against the traditional and compulsive creation of cliques and cabals and special interest groups that have always successfully lobbied or taken over the government to make it more responsive to their needs and goals.

The National Ombudsman makes no pretence at being a final solution. Its creation is only a step in the right direction to strengthen democracy against the corrupting influence of power groups (human nature). The nearest thing to a "final solution" that we should ever aspire to would be the development of a culture that has finally come to terms with the needs of the environment to be conserved and improved to achieve sustainability. Until we have achieved this we are only very temporary inhabitants on this planet and especially on these South Pacific islands of Aotearoa New Zealand. Everything we are doing and living for will come to nothing. We will have lived and laboured in vain because nothing we have done and achieved will have led to a future for our descendants.

I dream of a future for humanity where we have faced our descent from our arboreal ancestors, the origins and causes of our aggressive and irrational behaviour and have developed a culture that can deal with them so as to make us better adapted to the realities of the environment. This is the only way that we can survive to create a worthwhile future for humanity.

Nothing is final. All is evolving. The only constant is change. Democracy is a work in progress. We need to give evolution a chance. Philosophy or spiritual quietism will not save our species. Only clear thinking and determined political and practical action will save the environment and give humanity a future.