There were two major reasons that I finally decided to publish Word of an Other Nature.
The first was that I am saddened by the lack of effect produced by traditional campaigning and mass protest. I refer to this type of strategy as a Second Fix. If existing power structures want to react to something, they do it. War happens instantly – they want the oil, or they’re fighting for democracy, depending on your point of view. But women’s equality inches along over decades because it has no intrinsic value in entrenching existing power.
Let’s take another example. In Walkable City, Jeff Speck argues that creating pedestrianised space can save cities. Thanks Jeff, they’re doing that anyway because it makes people buy more stuff. Another example is universal basic income. A great idea but again, it will only happen if it becomes advantageous to the needs of power. At which point it will be delivered in such a form that it benefits power to a far greater degree than people, i.e. if it’s cheaper than keeping vast swathes of discontented unemployed people down by violence or other insidious forms of disenfranchisement.
Before we can achieve all of our worthy Second Fixes, we need a First Fix. That’s where we address the central issue of how we ourselves become the powerful.
Which brings me to the second reason that I wrote Word of an Other Nature.
There are way too many books that promise in the blurb that this is a book about how we take control. It’s a great selling point because it’s clearly what people want. We see other words like freedom used and abused a lot.
But the promise of telling us how we actually take control is not fulfilled. They don’t know. But hey, they got us to buy the book with just another hollow sales pitch. And instead what they offer is yet another rousing call to action, another call to lobby Government and start another protest movement.
If we are to take control and reclaim our share of power then we need a process, a mechanism.
I set this out in Word of an Other Nature. We secure power through numbers, with a coherent structure that is massive. But unlike current forms of social organisation, it is permanent. This is Social Evolution.
Their power is permanent. Ours should be too.
It’s not a quick fix but it won’t take long. It’s not easy but it’s not rocket science. A problem this big does not have a quick answer. I can’t promise you that. But I can promise an answer.