A heavy dose of....propaganda?

How to Save the World

Derrick Jensen suggests (in A Language Older Than Words) that we listen to the land, and in time it will tell us just what we need to do.

I am trying to believe this, but I'm not sure I do. As Quinn says, you need to be ready to listen, to reconnect. Although I don't much like the analogy, it's a lot like being ready for a religious conversion. I understand that most people are indoctrinated into their religious beliefs from a very early age, but many still need some event to trigger a true realization of that belief. And others who come to religion later in their lives do so because they're ready -- some combination of events and support from other believers is sufficient to take them past a tipping point, and bring about a major worldview change. A heavy dose of propaganda needs to be applied at just the right time, by more than one person, in the context of the convert's own community and situation. This is not easy stuff.

Organized religions do this very effectively. They provide the tools for evangelism, and the infrastructure to keep the flock in the fold. Whereas some of them are con-men and criminals, others are generous and sincere. Gladwell has described the "cellular" organization that enables many evangelical churches to convert and retain members, using a bottom-up outreach and support process coordinated by a top-down hierarchy that supplies the tools of conversion and retention.

Perhaps the Transition movement and the Permaculture movement, both community-based networks, are the analogue of the local cells of religious groups. Perhaps these are the networks that we can use, instead of debates, conferences and books, to do the same thing to organize those who are, as Quinn and Jensen say, ready to listen, to reconnect, and to start to do the much more radical work that will be needed to:

* learn a better way to live and make a living,
* disrupt and bring down our industrial growth economy and the civilization that depends on it, and
* create new models to replace them that are healthy and sustainable.

Yet I'm troubled by this. If we create cellular networks to organize the work of reconnection, learning, action and creation needed to enable a better world, could these not easily become, as so many religious networks are, vehicles for indoctrination and exploitation? Will we end up with sects who think that better world can and should be built now, in the shadow of our teetering civilization, and others who think we should focus on undermining existing civilization and that nothing very useful can be accomplished until that work is done? I can see myself agreeing with both viewpoints.