Glomo

= 'Global Modules for Joint Living' : bioregional governance model proposed by by Michael U. Baumgartner, & Mark D. Whitaker on the basis of the of ‘Global Modules’ (Glomos) introduced by Neustart Schweiz [1], a Swiss based not-for-profit organisation involved in sustainable neighbourhood and bottom-up community development

Glomo is also an argument and differentiation from the original text by Hans Widmer, 'A Proposal", which introduces Glomos. Widmer was also the author of Bolo Bolo, a fictionalized decentral model.

Glomos is also the subject of a book. Once the book is published, we will publish a separate entry.

Source

* Manuscript(draft): The Ecological Wealth of Nations, or, the Glomos: Five Nested Global Modules as a Framework for Creating Long-Term Sustainable Living: BOTTOM-UP FROM SMALL TO BIG. By by Mark D. Whitaker and Michael U. Baumgartner.

URL = Doc

"A Blueprint for More Sustainability, Representation, and Prosperity against Poverty and Inequality; How to Oppose Environmental Degradation, Rural Depopulation, Urban Slums, and a Global Technocracy in Order to Save the World"

Description

Mark Whitaker et al. :

"What is the Glomos?

It is a series of five geographic levels of coordinated sustainable and democratic living. With that in mind, instead of thinking we live and act at only one scale in either sustainability or democracy , or instead of thinking we can be sustainable without being representative and democratic, let us conceptualize the realistic multi-ple and nested scales of our lives, with their own representative and sustainable actions at different scales that should align together and happen simultaneously to design long-term sustainability.

This nested and aligned model of multiple scales of sustainable democratic life is loosely based on an earlier idea of ‘Global Modules’ (abbreviated, ‘Glomos’) introduced by Neustart Schweiz, a Swiss-based non-profit organisation. It is involved in designing sustainable neighbourhoods and bottom-up community development to help local communities become fit for the future, both democratically and sustainably (see https://newalliance.earth/).

However, for all our local communities to be fit for the future, together, we have to be protected as well from larger scales of bad material choices and bad organizations imposing on our local communities ‘from above’. However, instead of proposing a solution that categorically demotes any or all larger levels of power and coordination, we propose our local communities require a specific, aligned, and nested series of geographic and organizational coor-dination to make any local sustainable and representative power and influence more durable and even magnified, instead of temporary and weak. So, we ask: what would it our lives look like if specific larger geographic levels of democracy and sustainability partner with and protect local communities’ representative and sustainable decisions, instead of try to undermine them in both?"

(author draft)

Characteristics

5 universal functional territorial modules (glomos)

To face the present ecological, economic and psycho-social challenges, we propose to organize the 3,5 billion households of the planet by means of these five global modules (glomo):

1. 16 million neighborhoods (glomo 1)
2. 400 000 boroughs or small towns (glomo 2)
3. 4000 big cities and regions (glomo 3)
4. 800 territories (glomo 4)
5. 1 planet (glomo 5) Comparable forms and sizes of organization are essential for global equality and for fair exchange. The global household requires universal modules with clear boundaries and rules.

The modules are purely functional, no specific lifestyle or cultural identity is implied. They form spheres of subsidiarity, i.e. larger modules kick in, where smaller ones are in trouble. Any function should be performed on the lowest or closest possible level (relocalization). Autonomously run digital servers and networks can be helpful.

1. Ecologically and socially integrated neighborhoods (glomo1)

The following features are characteristic of them: life-style within the PBA (Planetary Boundaries Allowances, see above) 500 persons, approximate demographic mix democratically structured (cooperative, association) compact buildings in an urban context (short distances) link to a nearby agricultural basis of 60 to 80 ha internal household and care economy microcenter broad choice of housing: single rooms, family flats, co-housing; respect of privacy

The members of a neighborhood constitute a collective household complementing the private ones, securing most of the basic needs.

62 ha of agricultural land are sufficient for the basic supply of food under temperate climate conditions (Middle Europe, USA, China, Japan etc.). In most cases an agricultural base will not be farther away than 20 to 50 km from the neighborhood. A small truck (3 t) is sufficient to deliver the food to any neighborhood. Cooperation, sharing and exchange between adjacent neighborhoods are encouraged. Access to land and food is an essential element of the sovereignty of neighborhoods, but also of their quality of life (quality of food, holidays in the country, participation in farm work and food processing).

The microcenter is a mixed-use service area (preferably on the ground floor) that optimizes housework, shortens distances (80 m = 1 minute), allows for synergies and serves at the same time as a place for everyday communication, social gatherings and fun and games. Depending on local conditions and the predilections of the members it covers between 1200 and 2000 m2. It is run by the organization of the inhabitants (based on an operational concept).

In Switzerland 7,9 billion hours of paid work, and 9 billion hours of unpaid work, mainly household and care work, are performed per year. Calculated over an average lifetime (incl. sleep), paid work amounts to no more than 12%. Currently paid work amounts to 22 hours/person/week, unpaid work to 24 hours, altogether 46 hours (65, in households with children). Living in a glomo-neighborhood, paid work amounts to 14.5 hours, unpaid 24 (including agriculture), a total of 38.5 hours, 44.3 with children (estimates).

2. Boroughs & small towns as basic communes for public services (glomo2)

40 neighborhoods, or 20’000 persons, constitute an urban borough, or – in the country – a small municipal town, as a basic commune for a range of public services: primary and secondary schools state and security services: police, district court, social assistance, administration and political organs (town council) health center water energy public transport sewage, recycling, management of materials ABC civic center (hall, library, hotel, cinema, college etc.) a globex food depot for additional goods from all over the world (fair trade) a cooperative makersplace for small industries and workshops (textiles, wood, metal, machinery, electric, electronics, leather etc.) In big cities most of these services will be organized by city-wide agencies, whereas the role of boroughs is reduced to some specific and consultative functions. Around these public functions diverse private or cooperative enterprises of all sorts can flourish: cigar shops, hat-makers, small restaurants, jewelers, lawyers etc.

The borough or small town works best if the above services are clustered around a small, central square (40 by 40m): distances are cut short, synergies are enhanced and communication is made easier. Boroughs/small towns are everyday-life areas, where most vital functions can be reached on foot within 10 minutes.

3. Regions and big cities (glomo3)

Living and working together in big cities forms the core of a sustainable and enjoyable life style on this planet. Inhabitants of dense inner cities live longer, healthier and happier lives than inhabitants of suburbs. Big cities are ecologically efficient and offer access to the scientific and cultural resources of the planet. A typical big city has around 500,000 inhabitants, situated in a metropolitan area of another 1 million, and offers services and resources for a region (6000 to 10,000 km2) that correspond to the requirements and potentials of this area. With a density comparable to Paris, most places can be reached on foot in half an hour or by bus in 10 minutes.

Services with frequent provider-client contacts are clustered in the city center. Adjacent to this center other cooperative or private enterprises such as gourmet restaurants, cabarets, fashion stores, luxury shops, bars, cinemas, lawyers, cosmetic surgeons, and electronics shops can contribute to the quality of life. The region integrates town and country, connected by public means of transport. Most places are accessible within half an hour by bus, train and tram, or within an hour by bicycle. Regions manage their natural environment, such as rivers, lakes, coasts, forests and moors. In scarcely populated areas with no large cities, public service centers would evolve in an appropriate geographic location without dense urban settlements.

4. Territories (glomo4)

Territories correspond to an area of about 50‘000 km2 (which is a square of 225 km) inhabited by around 10 million persons. A territory comprises 5 to 10 regions. Territories are purely functional; meaning they’re non-ethnic, a-cultural, and non-linguistic. Whether historical borders are respected or not is a matter of topographic convenience (rivers, mountains etc.). A territorial module of this size and population is ideally suited for larger scale services and systems, such as: energy (grid and power stations, dams), train networks, advanced research and study facilities, justice/police, banks, security (army), construction, pharmaceutical and other vital industries. They are big enough to create resilience, to guarantee emergency interventions and to serve as pools of social solidarity for individuals, neighborhoods and the other modules. As autonomous macroeconomic units they manage their own currencies, central banks, borders (socio-osmotic membranes), and establish ecological and social regulations. Most places in a territory can be reached by train within two hours, which makes everyday synergies and communication efficient. Their size is suitable for transparent democratic processes and institutions. Being large enough for a certain material autonomy and smaller than the big old nations, they diffuse political power disparities and are the basis of globally balanced institutions of cooperation. Territories can ally themselves with other territories in bilateral or multilateral partnerships and federations (such as CERN, continental train networks, power grids, industrial components, medical products).

5. The planet (glomo5)

The planet’s 800 territories form a global alliance for joint cooperation in all concerns of planetary importance by setting up a range of agencies.

As the present global institutions are in a crisis of legitimacy, a new organization will have to be created. Transparency, democratic structures and equal power/size of members are essential. A legislative/representative assembly of 1600 delegates (two from each gender and territory) seems plausible, with an executive board of 25 members running the agencies. On the whole global activities will shrink in amount and importance, as small and local ones become more efficient thanks to digitization, automation and the sharing of knowledge and information via the globonet."

(https://newalliance.earth/a_proposal.pdf)

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. Introduction: Overview, Methods, Six Themes, and Six Sections

WHY THIS BOOK ?

"Both co-authors feel that ideas in this systematic and unified treatise should have a broader circulation in order to shape minds likely to be engaged in debates over topics ranging from sustainability strategies, to how to develop more fully representative political systems, to educational change, to economic change, to financial currency change, to ethical change, and to constitutional change. These are all at root being changed by two factors: our globally decentralized digital media and by our globally decentralized risk politics. Like Chladini disks under a certain vibration, we the salt of the Earth are being vibrated into novel patterns by our ongoing communications. This global decentralized media influences in us all to have a more cross-border and cosmopolitan accelerated commerce in ideas and materials. Simultaneously, this media experience influences our world’s many different and more regionalized and downtrodden environmental underclasses to have a voice like seldom before in world history, letting them organize in order to demote being dumped on by others in their regional risk politics for good. However, this salt of the Earth so far speaks only in a regionalized cacophony [xxxx] about demotion of their social and environmental risk in their lives, and thus when they talk about the fuller institutional participation, consultation, and deliberation that they want to remove these regional risks, they lack coordination. Therefore, many different regional voices are being organized, which is good, yet without being allied to each other in common despite common experiences as regionalized environmental underclasses and despite common experiences of a global decentralized media. Therefore, the Glomos plan is to develop more ecoregional boundaries of many institutions in a nested fashion, worldwide, to create a stronger common regional front, worldwide, which gives environmental underclasses more mutual allies of all kinds to help everyone deliberate and coordinate better remove risks created by the past’s systemic lack of fuller representation, which in turn, had caused systemic environmental degradation at root. So, enfranchising a fuller regionalized representation and deliberation solves environmental and social problems at once.

While discussing these many topics of institutional change toward more representation and sustainability in general, this book holds empirical groundwork for two different perspectives about our human and environmental future: optimism or pessimism. Whichever one of these two perspectives seems more likely to you of course depends on your point of view in accepting or discounting this evidence. Pessimists are looking for rationales to avoid action, so they rationalize that bad social and environmental conditions and unrepresentative and unequal power relations are fated and unchangeable, so why try to change anything? Thus, pessimists look to the past negatively as sole guidance for how the future will unfold, instead of acting to make a different future. Optimists may indeed see the same bad patterns of the past as the pessimists, yet equally have faith to act for change because they see grounds for differences in the present for how the future can unfold differently than the past, as described below. As Émile-Auguste Chartier said: “Pessimism is of mood; optimism is of will.”

First, this book aims to give evidence for why there were even strong surges of optimism in the past that have to be considered as part of the drive of world history—an issue ignored by the pessimists. Second, there are uniquely greater empirical grounds for optimism now in human and in environmental history at this point, as well. Because of these two points the book is designed to give data and arguments that should create thoughtful, reflective, and active optimists instead of desiring to appeal only to ingrained and blindly optimistic or blindly pessimistic proclivities of personal analysis for action or inaction, whichever they may be. At least after reading this book, hopefully you may revisit how or why you think certain things about human or environmental history.

On the one hand, pessimists surely will continue to discount unique differences in our present day compared to the past that are unique challenges (described below as the “four reckonings”) that require far more response than ever, mentioned in this chapter. Pessimists may even discount the argument about unique catalysts (around our global decentralized media, described below as the “triple solution”) helping us to act now in novel patterns compared to the past, as well. The three unique catalysts given to us by our globally decentralized media give us greater options than ever before to act to get things right in history now, i.e., meaning, to create durably and fully representative organizations with more power parities to implement more sustainable materials. Both these better choices in history, meaning better representative organizational or material choices, would end systemic environmental degradation forever.

On the other hand, we hope even pessimists may be surprised that they agree with this analysis. We hope pessimists may find themselves changing their minds to see grounds for being optimists by finding in this book activities to create a better world that even they would prefer to live within and would be proud to be a part of in the future. Even optimists may surprise themselves if they accept that there indeed are now unique empirical grounds for their optimism to act, instead of only trusting to their stalwart yet ever betraying blind hope.

In short, the real power of this book is to change your point of view and to give the world a common action plan. It respects our wide regional cultural and ethical diversity, and in fact, encourages it. However, it equally encourages coordination with others by the equal recognition that almost all others are seeking the same goals as you: the reduction of social and environmental risks in their lives, in order to have a better quality of life. Regardless of what your views are, the future always depends on your point of view about the future, and your actions or inactions are based on it. As well, the future now depends on your ability to recognize unique conditions of the present, described below, that makes a bad past only a pattern of interest to solve instead of a template of future destiny. Therefore, the Glomos plan and the unique conditions aiding it now will either be seen as an optimistic and inspiring future planning document, that we hope will change our developmental path forever, or, it will be seen still as a pessimistically long epitaph on a tombstone by those who keep focusing only on the past and the supremely stronger negatives of those past times—that have ceased to be."

ToC

Section 1: Introducing the World’s Current Three Interactive Problems, and Why the Glomos is the Solution

PROBLEMS WHERE WE ARE HEADING NOW: TECHNOCRACY AND WORLD GOVERNMENT—WITH WORSE, UNREP-RESENTATIVE, AND ENVIRONMENTALLY DEGRADATIVE CONSEQUENCES FROM ITS FALSE SOLUTIONS

Section 2: Details about how the Glomos is Your Region’s and our World’s Systemic Solution

SOLUTIONS WHERE WE WANT TO GO: A GOOD, REPRESENTATIVE, AND SUSTAINABLE WORLD; THIS IS A DETAILED DISCUSSION OF EACH AND ALL LEVELS OF THE GLOMOS AS A FULL SOCIAL/ECOLOGICAL NESTED STRUCTURE FOR DEMOCRACY AND SUSTAINABILITY, PREVIOUSLY EITHER TOTALLY MISSING OR ONLY PARTIAL AND TEMPORARY IN WORLD HISTORY IN THE PAST—YET ALWAYS EVEN THEN, TRYING TO BE BORN

Summary

Section 1 Summary

PROBLEMS: Introducing the World’s Current Three Interactive Problems, and Why the Glomos is the Solution

PROBLEMS WHERE WE ARE HEADING NOW: TECHNOCRACY, WORLD GOVERNMENT, AND ITS GENOCIDE PLAN—WITH WORSE, UNREPRESENTATIVE, AND ENVIRONMENTALLY DEGRADATIVE CONSEQUENCES FROM ITS FALSE SOLUTIONS

Three interactive problems combine to make one large bad trend:

(1) Expanding Environmental Degradation

(2) in Rural Depopulation and Urban Slum Contexts, and

(3) Subverted Declines in Liberal Democracy from False Global Technocracy Solutions—All Three Problems Are Reversed with the Glomos for Sustainability, Full Regional Representation, and Checks and Balances Against Global Technocracy

We are in a vicious cycle of these three interactive problems that keep getting worse to multi-civilizational collapse, unless we choose a different image of the future as the goal that breaks with these three bad choices, via establishing the Glomos for ourselves against these bad trends:

Section 1 is a short modern history of these three problems. It begins a short world history of these three problems, described more in

Section 2. It explains how we ended up here. Plus, it explains why we will end up even worse at global scales, if we do not change now. This is because we did badly in the past in dealing with past versions of the same three problems at smaller scales. We can compare past with present on these three interactive factors to show a repeating common historical bad trend that people have always tried to solve, though failed in the past. With the Glomos design, it fleshes out a better durable and flexible response than ever before to the same three issues that caused civilizational collapse in the past when left unaddressed.

Thus, the Glomos plan offers a systemic solution to these three interactive problems now. The Glomos is a triumphant break from current bad choices of leadership, materials, and organization, toward more representative and sustainable solutions to our worldwide common present problems.

The Glomos is equally a break from our past tragic world historical or civilizational problems unsolved at smaller scales in the past that have led us to face the same problems now as global scale problems. Let’s get it right this time around.

In the past, solutions like the Glomos did exist though they were only piecemeal. Therefore, we can learn from our ancestors’ triumphs of the past as much as learn from the tragedies of the past. However, in the past, their triumphs in retrospect became only short periods of triumphs because their solutions were partial, difficult to communicate, and difficult to organize. Thus, their triumphs of the past were easily demoted by more powerfully tyrannical and unrepresentative forces. The latter could be more totalizing due to its greater communication and organizational capacities. However, despite its powers, such tyrannical power was destined to end in failure themselves though by being unrepresentative and degradative and thus undermining itself toward civilizational collapse.

However, now, first, because of the global scale of these problems, the world is united against these three concerns for the first time across multiple regions, at the same time.

Section 2 Summary

The Glomos Address to the Nations

Second, we have distributed media power for the first time, to communicate (1) regionally and (2) globally simultaneously with each other about these concerns, at the same time. Thus, all peoples of the world now look to innovate and to communicate organized solutions to these three problems, at the same time, for the first time.

The Glomos is the solution for collapsing nations to renew themselves as well, collapsing because of ‘smart regions’ or more autonomous homogeneous cultural regions inside of them, and collapsing because of the triple ‘global digital storm’ that is eroding them from the outside: a global digital economy, a global digital culture, and a global decentralized media.

The Glomos is the solution because it combines regional solutions with more global solutions. In short, because of these two historically unique modern points, a full Glomos possible to communicate and to organize for the first time, in an ongoing way. Plus, these expanded capacities for the full Glomos makes it ever more difficult year by year now to demote, because degradative and unrepresentative forces are unable to recoup and reset their powers in this situation for the first time.

Nations have a choice of joining the Glomos and renewing themselves with more representation and sustainablity regionally within themselves, or joining a global technocracy and destroying themselves.

Section 3 Summary

SOLUTION: Details about how the Glomos is Your Region’s and our World’s Systemic Solution

SOLUTIONS WHERE WE WANT TO GO: A GOOD, REPRESENTATIVE, AND SUSTAINABLE WORLD; THIS SECTION IS AN INTRODUCTION OF THE GLOMOS AS SOCIAL/ECOLOGICAL NESTED STRUCTURE FOR DEMOCRACY AND SUSTAINABILITY, PREVIOUSLY IN WORLD HISTORY EITHER TOTALLY MISSING OR ONLY PARTIAL AND TEMPORARY IN THE PAST—YET ALWAYS EVEN THEN, TRYING TO BE BORN

The Glomos fixes those three main repeating problems of world history discussed in Section 1 with a nested arrangement of aligned biospheric action, instead of only masking symptoms by trying to fix these problems at only one level.

Terms are defined like the five levels of the Glomos, biosphere, nested biospheric action, watershed, terrestrial/marine ecoregions, alignment, and misalignment.

This section equally explains how all five levels of the Glomos are designed to aid different geographic scales of biospheric action for the long term.

Despite differences in geographic scales, each level is similar in goals and by being geographies that are nested and aligned. For the first time in world history, we aim for our human actions to be in global full alignment, in our multiple levels of daily living. The purpose of this full alignment is to stop a repeating and growing pattern of suffering in history from generally strong yet bad, unrepresentative, and unsustainable relationships that get imposed upon us by more unrepresentative and degradative forces that try to keep us in misalignment, divided, conquered, and thus weakened in our relative power against them.

Thus, besides defining terms of the Glomos, this section equally is a short world history of the past piecemeal and weak solutions of Glomos attempts informing the current full design of it now. The current full Glomos design was informed by learning about both the triumphs and tragedies of the past in our risk politics, in order to fix current problems. It means all past world history in any region and over any time is the same process of problems and solutions around risk politics, respectively, a dual interaction of the tragedies and triumphs of the past.

In the past, first, this dual process of tragic problems and triumphant solutions was once at smaller regional scales in the past. In the past, second, problems tended to be more organized and repressive, while any solutions created were mostly always piecemeal, and thus weak and mostly unorganized—unlike the full Glomos now.

Third, now both these tragic problems and the triumphant developing solutions are both at a global scale.

This section elaborates how one side of this dual process is the ongoing tragedies of repeated bad choices of misaligned bad materials and bad organizations that have repressed us by trapping us in a non-durable civilization and kept us away from durably organizing better representation and sustainability, past or present.

However, the other side of this dual process is the equal triumphant trends of greater ethics, representation, and sustainability in the past, i.e., choosing better materials and better representative organization, that creates a more ethical, representative, sustainable, and durable civilization. Proof that the Glomos has always tried to constitute itself comes from description of past triumphs and modern triumphs.

The modern triumphs show the Glomos is reconstituting even now, with fourteen examples, however much these modern examples are disconnected from each other so far—and piecemeal and weak because of it.

The Glomos has always tried to constitute itself better in world history in the past, yet was blocked to organize it fully by a lack of communicative capacities and by violent repression from others’ bad choices of materials, bad organization, and their own communicative power. However, the past problem of inequitable communication is over. This fresh condition of equitable communication makes it possible to popularize the full Glomos of better materials and the better aligned organization at all levels.

Thus, the Glomos asks, how to make the triumphs of the past trend more durably than the tragedies of the past? This is the origins of the development of the five levels of the aligned Glomos.

Instead of uncoordinated and piecemeal partial examples that are still misaligned, the full Glomos can be facilitated with an aligned geographic arrangement of five levels.

Any ongoing misalignment only encourages a future tragic situation: in which bad, unrepresentative, and degradative material choices and bad organizations become stronger once more unless the choice of a full aligned Glomos is built and ethically lived at five levels. Thus, the Glomos is a good organization of full representation and of full sustainability into the future, while the past’s more misaligned arrangements of weak and failed solutions have been due to powerful forces maintaining unrepresentative and degradative power only by that misalignment intentionally.

Section 4 Summary

Details about each of the Five Levels of Glomos

THIS SECTION IS A DETAILED DISCUSSION OF EACH AND ALL LEVELS OF THE GLOMOS, AS A FULL SOCIAL/ECOLOGICAL NESTED STRUCTURE FOR DEMOCRACY AND SUSTAINABILITY

First, common ethical goals are described for all five levels of the Glomos.

It builds a culture of common solutions for enhancing the representative and sustainable trend at all five levels simultaneously. This creates a representative nested process of all five levels of representative action and ecological action in alignment for the first time.

This helps to make our good choices of materials for sustainability more powerful and durable, and by that alignment, it helps to weaken the aggregated, bad, unrepresentative, and degradative forces that depend upon misalignment to survive. Second, different tactical means are described to achieve these common ethical goals, because there are five different geographic sizes in the levels of the Glomos. Therefore, different geographic boundaries house different tactics in each of the five levels of the Glomos, based on what kinds of enriching human life occurs in each of these five zones where all people have access to all five. However, since all five geographic sizes aim to nest and to align on common ethical goals, their different levels of tactics aim for a common nested alignment. As said above, these five levels are nested and aligned so we can magnify and defend our good material choices and good organization for the long term so we can have a representative and sustainable civilization that is durable. This description of the full nested and aligned Glomos levels start from bottom up, from small to big.

Section 5 Summary

Practical steps recommended in all local communities worldwide to start building the full Glomos:

Nine suggested steps to start the Glomos, so it can come into reality starting from the bottom up, from small to big. We have the power to make the sustainable and representative civilization that we deserve, regionally and globally.

Section 6 Summary

Summary of all the arguments about the Glomos.

Discussion

Excerpted from a draft paper by Michael U. Baumgartner & Mark D. Whitaker:

"We need to re-think our way of living. The model put forward herein is based on the model of ‘Global Modules’ (Glomos) introduced by Neustart Schweiz, a Swiss based not-for-profit organisation involved in sustainable neighbourhood and bottom-up community development, helping communities to be(come) fit for the future (see https://newalliance.earth/). The text is largely the one from the booklet ‘a proposal’ by Hans Widmer yet shortened, amended and supplemented with elements such as human needs, reason for community and bio-spheres.

The calculations put forward herein are those put forward in the booklet ‘a proposal’ by Neustart Schweiz (published in several books). They should be viewed as a reference, helping to create an understanding of proportions.

The underpinning understanding of the glomos introduced here is based on the concept of bio-spheres. A bio-sphere can best be summarized as a land and water territory whose limits are defined not by political boundaries, but by the geographical limits and ecological systems (eco-systems). This is crucial not to repeat the disastrous mistakes made in the past when nation states were established (largely on maps without taking the integrity of bio-spheres and cultural-habitat into account).With the outcome that the fragmented bio-spheres were knocked down and exploited by the ‘owning’ state without understanding its importance for neighbouring states and the planet at large.

One glomo can be part of different bio-spheres. This can best be illustrated by a river. As a spring it originates in one bio-region and then travels through many and, therefore, becomes part of different glomos even at different sizes (see bellow). This is why the decision to building dams should be taken on a territorial level to keep the integrity of the bio-sphere at large. Furthermore, bio-spheres and may be part of several regions. This is not bad, as it forces regions and even territories to collaborate for the conservation and sustainable use of the natural resources within such bio-spheres. However, fencing and building streets (as well as other artefacts) should not intervene with the natural habitat and, under no circumstances, limit their migration nor moving freely within their life-sphere.

Glomos are – where it makes sense – based on either bio-region or bio-territory (and titled as such). At all levels the glomos share a joint responsibility for the bio-sphere at large (glomo1: our earth). Bio-spheres not only set (natural) boundaries but provide for life and this is, why it must be given the up-most priority, an obligation all communities share together.

For glomos not to be just a new name with the same principles as the outdated national states, we have to re-think a ‘state’ – in our case the glomo – all-together. Whilst this is done in a separate paper, the following must be said here. Glomos do not ‘rule it all’. The arrange in the best possible way (see Governance bellow) what needs to be agreed on by the glomo at large. There are, however, elements where the actors residing in one glomo must be free to stretch their activities beyond the boundaries of the glomo. This is particularly true for the smaller the size of the glomo and does not mean that such activity are out-side mutually accepted agreements. Education must not be limited neither in content nor form by the glomo at large and must, in order, to be fruitful not be limited to physical boundaries either. Exchange possibilities for young learners must not be limited to students only but encouraged on all levels. This furthers not only cultural understanding (hence respect) and the deep understanding of the bio-sphere of planet earth but creates just as much mutual understanding as it creates friendships and bonds for life to connect glomos through individual contacts. Also economy must be able to form associations beyond glomo boundaries as different branches might acquire resources, not available in one glomo and are able to produce and provide for more than just one glomo. This is particularly important when it comes to ‘common goods’ such as infrastructure that is meant to connect glomos. The internal social structure is subject to a separate paper.

...

We can think of the concept of glomos best, if we look at it as an onion, with each glomo being being gently enclosed by the next bigger one; leading finally to the earth (the outermost layer) as the biggest glomo uniting us all.

Glomos form spheres of subsidiarity, i.e. larger modules kick in, where smaller ones are in trouble. Any function should be performed on the closest possible level (re-localization).

Of course, glomos differ to meet cultural needs – this model does not propagate uniformity but social and cultural diversity - yet are comparable in form and size, essential for global equality and for fair exchange. Having said this, glomo5 to glomo3 must share a cultural identity in as much for all inhabitants to consider the neighbourhood, borough/small town or bio-region/big city their home. The culture we suggest is one that is not be based on traditions or religions but on mutual agreements to further the well-being of the community and it’s inhabitants (including eco-systems and nature). These are the new cultures. In daily living this can have many forms and shapes and includes religious freedoms and different traditions as long as they do not negatively impact on the freedoms of others and the ecological environment.

Neighbourhoods, districts and bio-regions/big cities (glomo5 to glomo3) should be the places in which local residents have the primary right to determine their own development, meeting their social needs as well as that of privacy. This means that the livelihoods, claims, and interests of local communities should be both the starting point and the criteria for regional development and conservation.

Glomo1 and glomo2 are mainly functional, accommodating and balancing the needs of the smaller modules Their main aim is that to preserve and wisely use nature and natural habitat (bio-territories, bio-regions, eco-systems) so it can be enjoyed by future generations. No specific lifestyle or cultural identity is implied. We start bottom-up by bringing to life neighbourhoods "

What are Glomos a response to ?

Mark Whitaker et al. :

"Three interactive problems combine to make one large bad trend:

(1) Expanding Environmental Degradation

(2) in Rural Depopulation and Urban Slum Contexts, and

(3) Subverted Declines in Liberal Democracy from False Global Technocracy Solutions

— All Three Problems Are Reversed with the Glomos for Sustainability, Full Regional Representation, and Checks and Balances Against Global Technocracy

We are in a vicious cycle of these three interactive problems that keep getting worse to multi-civilizational collapse, unless we choose a different image of the future as the goal that breaks with these three bad choices, via establishing the Glomos for ourselves against these bad trends:

Section 1 is a short modern history of these three problems. It begins a short world history of these three problems, described more in

Section 2. It explains how we ended up here. Plus, it explains why we will end up even worse at global scales, if we do not change now. This is because we did badly in the past in dealing with past versions of the same three problems at smaller scales. We can compare past with present on these three interactive factors to show a repeating common historical bad trend that people have always tried to solve, though failed in the past. With the Glomos design, it fleshes out a better durable and flexible response than ever before to the same three issues that caused civilizational collapse in the past when left unaddressed.

Thus, the Glomos plan offers a systemic solution to these three interactive problems now. The Glomos is a triumphant break from current bad choices of leadership, materials, and organization, toward more representative and sustainable solutions to our worldwide common present problems.

The Glomos is equally a break from our past tragic world historical or civilizational problems unsolved at smaller scales in the past that have led us to face the same problems now as global scale problems. Let’s get it right this time around.

In the past, solutions like the Glomos did exist though they were only piecemeal. Therefore, we can learn from our ancestors’ triumphs of the past as much as learn from the tragedies of the past. However, in the past, their triumphs in retrospect became only short periods of triumphs because their solutions were partial, difficult to communicate, and difficult to organize. Thus, their triumphs of the past were easily demoted by more powerfully tyrannical and unrepresentative forces. The latter could be more totalizing due to its greater communication and organizational capacities. However, despite its powers, such tyrannical power was destined to end in failure themselves though by being unrepresentative and degradative and thus undermining itself toward civilizational collapse.

However, now, first, because of the global scale of these problems, the world is united against these three concerns for the first time across multiple regions, at the same time."

([2])

Source: Manuscript: The Ecological Wealth of Nations, or, the Glomos: Five Nested Global Modules as a Framework for Creating Long-Term Sustainable Living, BOTTOM-UP FROM SMALL TO BIG. A Blueprint for More Sustainability, Representation, and Prosperity against Poverty and Inequality; How to Oppose Environmental Degradation, Rural Depopulation, Urban Slums, and a Global Technocracy in Order to Save the World. by Mark D. Whitaker and Michael U. Baumgartner.

Reconstituting the Glomos, Our Protection Network

"The Goal: Reconstituting the Glomos, Our Protection Network for Ourselves and the Ecological Sustainability of the Planet so Both Thrive Together instead of One against the Other

Now that the historical and political problems of past material choices and social organization has been discussed, and now that the reconstitution of the glomos has been shown to be underway as yet without coordination, what can be done? It is time to plan that re-coordination of the glomos. It is time for a higher level of our humanity to conceive of solutions and positive images of the future instead of only to recount problems and complain. This is where the glomos comes in.

The glomos is a plan to encourage and to build a series of five nested long-term stable jurisdictions for human representation and for ecological sustainability.

They are meant as stable because they provide ecological checks and balances on any other level getting out of hand. When in place, they will reorient our world toward sustainability and durable civil rights. The lack of them, it is argued, means we may only have a tragic repetition in history of environmental degradation and loss of civil rights interacting until wider social collapse. Under that collapse, a more disorganized and uncoordinated and even mutually oppositional glomos appears in what has been called the ‘pulse of the commons’ (Bauwens, xxxx). This has been called a more destructive “ecological revolution” instead of a creative ecological revolution like the glomos (Whitaker, 2009).

To create the glomos means we could choose to launch a deep long-term golden age of sustainability, economic durability, and protections of human/civil rights instead of only seeing slight, random, and uncoordinated ‘glomos-golden periods’ come and go irregularly as in the past (Sing Chew, xxxx)—which in the past has regularly took around 500 years to achieve ecological recovery after various states/empire’s collapsed in ecological devastation. That is nothing to look forward to, therefore, before such collapses happen in an uncoordinated fashion for the third time, we have to consciously plan for a different civilizational transition. In the past, such irregularity in ecological living during such ‘ecological dark ages’ and their lack of coordination and lack of alliances has been argued to only set up wider ecological devastation later because the lack of coordination of such sustainable living contributes to being easily conquered later. (Whitaker, 2009). Therefore, an uncoordinated glomos is itself a danger to ourselves and ecological sustainability as it is “too easy” for unrepresentative degradative forces to regroup and to dominate. Thus, a coordinated glomos is a protection for both ourselves and the ecological life of the planet so such repetitious tragedies of the past fail to happen and so any triumphant periods of history, instead of only being temporary, may be consciously expanded and solidified into a different sustainable global civilization."

A Note on Revolutionary Subjects and Contexts

Glomos or Global Technocracy: The Triple Existential Reckoning Created by the Global Technocracy

Mark Whitaker:

Only ecoregional devolution helps us in the long term to develop our capacities for a higher objective and subjective quality of life. In turn, only our expanded regional capacities merged with our higher ethical universal capacities can check and balance (or guillotine) in the long term against our current global nemesis: a global transhumanist technocracy and their desires to create a permanent yet unelected leadership and oligarchy over the whole planet, over all ecologies, and even over the genetic engineering of the human species to their own private management goals. The Glomos would be a united regional and worldwide front against all three. All three of these existential reckonings are described below in the stark choice we have of “Glomos or Global Technocracy.”

Before discussing these three existential reckonings we face in our choices of futures, a preface is important about who is a revolutionary subject whether now or in history. Who is facing this choice of action and responsi-bility about these three existential reckonings? On the one hand, everyone is a revolutionary subject, i.e.., someone who can make a difference and a change. So, everyone is a revolutionary subject, just some more than others. This means both personally and in social contexts. Sometimes, someone’s personality makes them a revolutionary subject though their social context works against that. Sometimes someone’s personality works against them being a revolutionary subject, even though they live within multiple revolutionary contexts. So, sometimes people are more aligned in this way or misaligned. In other words, the issue is more than just who is the revolutionary subject that moves the lever of history, since everyone does. The other issue is what are the revolutionary contexts, an itemization of what are the added multiple fulcrums of power that make it easier for some to move the world more than others. So, revolutionary subjects and revolutionary contexts are both interactive.

This means two extreme kinds of revolutionary contexts. On one extreme, there is one kind of revolutionary context for more consolidated revolutionary pressure from above: monopolies, divide and conquer politics, and inequality, i.e,. lack of parity in many issues of environmental conditions, education, religion, media, and finance, and political alliances that have the power to destroy everything in its path because the other side is opposite in all. This greater inequality in all systemic power is a revolutionary context from above being used currently by the global technocrats, though has been used by the revolutionary Marxists before them, from the start of their theorizing how they wanted people to accept how 'parts of the wealthy ruling class' would step out of the shadows and lead their so-called fake proletarian revolution to destroy all states, religions, and family relations. [manifesto, xxxx; sutton, bolshevik revolution, .xxxx] This is why so much about the global technocrats now looks just like old revolutionary Marxism from above. This kind of durable inequality in a revolution from above anticipates or even requires multiple ongoing inbred nepotistic families to run it behind the scenes.

However, there is the other revolutionary context from below, that tends to end that other top down gatekept revolutionary context and project. This can and has ended their rule more durably for hundreds of years. This is the revolutionary context of (1) 'environmental proxy’ relations of environmental underclasses of various kinds [xxxx]. These are people living in bad environmental and social conditions created by and perpetuated by the inequalities and monopolies and environmental externalities of others, dumped upon them and pushing them into marginalized ecological zones and social contexts. Depending on the risk at hand, these environmental underclasses can be very regionalized, though they can be more widespread across geographies as well. Thus, they can remain quite separate or they can join up, in the latter, depending on the risk at hand being more widespread. (2) Another revolutionary context from below is greater parity in many systemic power issues of education, religion, media, finance, economics, and political alliances. These are capacities of the grassroots. (3) A third revolutionary context for those below are contexts of elite pact breakdown, when elites above them are unable to decide how to come together to work in unison against them. When all three revolutionary contexts from below start to happen, we in general can change the world instead of only elites changing the world. It is argued throughout this book that by now in the early 21st century, we are increasingly in that triple revolutionary context from below that aids our opposition to this equally revolutionary global technocracy from above that wants to push its existential reckonings, rewrites, and resets upon us all, for its own private advantage.

Three other corollary observations come from this. First, some factors of revolutionary subjects and revolutionary contexts are micro level, i.e., in individual allegiances. Other factors are meso level, like monopolies and consolidation on one side and parity of capacities on the other. Other factors are macro level, like political alliances between global technocrats working together on the same plan, or like elite pact breakdowns where divisions in such elites contribute to a benefit for those from below, or like divisions of different regional groups that are unable to come together and thus are taken advantage of by those above. When all three move together in alignment, the world moves to a novel path. When all three are divided, there is more path dependence to stop such movement to a novel path.

Second, there is kind of a revolutionary zero sum game, where the capacities of one undermine the capacities of the other, where the consolidations and inequalities of one undermine the parities of the other, and where the political divisions of one become the facilitators of the other. However, there is a context where the consolidations and inequalities of one contribute to the parities of the other, particularly when it comes to parities of environmental risk being more shared regionally and worldwide in those below against any consolidating global technocracy, and where developments of some global technocratic monopolies like in digital mobile media technologies contribute to parities of communication in the other from which many other parities can follow in education, economics, finance, and political alliances.

Third, there is a double meaning of the term ‘revolution,’ which can mean an abrupt linear change or a circular return to the beginning. Both are equally strong meanings in the following historiographical perspective of a durable problem of an unrepresentative organizational process of environmental degradation in world history past or present, in all regions of the world, and in the Glomos plan aiming to solve it so we can live in a durable civilization that is more representative and sustainable, instead of living in a repetitively chosen process of unrepresentative self-destruction like the past.

So, after this full discussion of our globally common goals (sustainability, greater personal and regional capacities, and a higher quality of life) and of our globally common enemies in our modern world (global tyranny, global transhumanism, and global technocracy creating only more environmental degradation), we can be more fully aware of three existential reckonings now caused by these enemies against us all. What is at stake in the early 21st century is world historical because there may cease to be natural ecology, natural biological humans, or representative government after this period. Thus, humanity is either living through or currently dying within a triple existential reckoning created by this revolutionary global technocracy from above. We can live through it better if we adopt the Glomos."

Motivation

An alternative to the plans of a global technocratic elite

Mark Whitaker et al.:

"What is being planned by global technocrats is a very bad, unrepresentative, and even degradative way to manage economies, cities, rural zones, socialization, or individual health from a global center alone. Global technocrats want to destroy human individual freedoms and social freedoms that regularly exist only in liberal democracies, only in anonymous big cities, and only in far-flung and isolated rural areas. Respectively, global technocrats want to end all such democracies of stated civil rights in order to monitor all urban behavior digitally while ending capacities of living ‘off grid’ in rural areas—as they attempt to push the latter populations into more surveilled cities.

In short, a global technocratic elite is trying to enforce a globally common, urban-based, or nationally-based, digitally-managed social credit system, genocide, and a rural depopulation. They are trying to force artificial food scarcities as well. International supply chain breakdowns are used, as they say, ‘to heal the planet.’ Expensive food is equally their false alibi for getting people desperate enough to corral themselves by poverty or starvation into more easily surveilled cities. This is used to depopulate rural landscapes, to buy up land at artificially low prices in forced sales, and while other policies try to end private rights to grow food or to store rainwater. This destabilizes autonomous farming systems for more totalitarian control.

However, this attempt at their global technocracy (via choices of bad materials and bad organization) seem only to catalyze even worse revolutionary upheaval conditions as they wreck ecological and democratic conditions by larger consolidated economic pressures or by warfare. By Spring 2024, all European countries are in near revolutionary upheaval from dispossessed and angry national farmers in solidarity with each other against globalist technocrats in their nations that are coordinating across their countries in an attempt to shut down and bankrupt the existing food system by dumping cheaper unregulated Ukrainian grain into a very regulated European market, to intentionally bankrupt European farmers. This is toward greater technocratic control of food, by bankruptcies or by laws to force cheap farming land sales. Both policies try to put rural land ownership and food production into more consolidated technocratic hands.

Obviously, it is best to avoid putting our humanity under global centralized totalitarian control and tyrannical constraint from what are merely artificial humanly-created price scarcities placed on people, mystified as ‘ecological.’ Global technocrats are simply renegade elites, a wholly parasitical group making sadistic political decisions and seek-ing global levels of power by cross-national disruptive shock from many factors combined: forced bankruptcies, un-representative control, violent force, and weaponized refugee populations. Their global social control was meant to be quickly installed, in common global platforms of digital surveillance and required global digital IDs, by 2021 at the latest. Their goal was (and remains) to erect a single global digital totalitarianism of management over all nations before billions of people become aware of the massive faked pandemic fraud over the past few years that had only one purpose: to try to install a global technocratic regime that ends all liberal democracy. It was meant to be installed quickly during the fear, distraction, and destabilization of many national economies and cultures all at once under the false alibis of a fake pandemic, a fake test, and a fake cure.

However, humanity should never live within a series of centrally managed constraints like some ever-smaller Matryoshka dolls or ever-smaller Iron Maidens, enforced by ever larger corrupt and brutal ones with spikes. In justifiable self-defense, humanity should revolt and already has been revolting against this attempt by global and/or corrupted national elites to enforce toxic medications, artificial scarcity of starvation, digital social credit systems, and eco-nomic bankruptcy upon them.

In short, we have to declare independence — politically, economically, and culturally. It becomes necessary to dis-solve the bands which connect all our nations to this informal global empire, to reassume a basis of equality and trust only upon which a better democracy and sustainability can be achieved. However we suppose many prefer to live, mentally, in a world where such pre-coordinated evil, corruption, and massive global scales of crimes against humanity is impossible. However, delusion about your current global technocratic leaders is why their evil keeps occurring and will keep occurring. Remove your delusion. Read the fifteen points above and what has followed from it. Re-read it until you understand. This is a genocide operation and forced population centralization operation by global technocrats to destroy all liberal democracies.

However, revolutionary murder is not the response or the policy of the Glomos: instead, self-reliance and aligned organization is the goal. Even if a “Nuremberg II” is announced, and even if it hangs or jails for life all the globally evil individuals profiting from and perpetuating such vaccine-based crimes against humanity, as it should, that will hardly be enough to stop it happening once more.

Regarding genocide, people habitually say “never again,” though between 2020 to 2023 (and onward now), genocide happened again. Genocide is happening now at a larger scale than during in World War II despite slogans against it and despite presumed “Nuremberg Rules” against injurious human medical experimentation. Our nations have been compromised, taken over in a political coup by global technocrats ‘harmonizing’ all national politics toward genocide, removing democratic elections, removing media freedoms, and removing anonymous cash for a common digital ID and a social credit system of punishment.

So, what can we do durably to keep all of this from happening once more? It is the mutual self-reliance of the Glo-mos. First, self-reliance makes powerless any psychopathic national or global actors who require demoralized, dis-organized, impoverished, powerless, and starving victims and refugees without options to support them. Second, the ideal of the Glomos is the opposite of one level of ‘supreme social control,’ since multiple Glomos are aligned and magnify their smaller democratic and sustainable actions of feedback against the more corruptible larger levels that increasingly represent only themselves privately.

To elaborate these two points, first, larger levels are more corruptible historically because human actors on the larger levels, on their psychological level, are people more prone to be corrupt and to exhibit psychopathic and megalomaniacal actions in trying to enforce their human and ecological tyranny. Second, combined with that, larger levels are more corruptible because the larger levels lack geographic input, meaning, they are so delocalized in their power that they can pick and choose whom or what they want to represent or support, while on the other hand, aggregate opposition to any such unrepresentative or unecological policies from these larger levels is hard to organize over wide spaces. By these two factors, this innately makes the larger levels of human politics reflect only a myriad of similarly-organized large-scale private tyrannical interests of power over time. In short, these two combined factors of elite psychopathy without geographic feedback on their actions are an evil and combustible combination that can wreck whole civilizations and ecologies. In our current world, such global technocrats technocrats can only do this tyranny when they are without the checks and balances of the Glomos. These checks and balances of the Glomos come from its self-reliance and from its better aligned sustainable organizational pres-sure from smaller levels that can check and balance against their larger-level, centralized, tyrannical, and degradative pressures.

In short, a final battle for the future direction of the planet and even the future of biological humanity is underway. On one side, it is a growing elite-started civil war and genocidal war, between globalist elites coordinated across all countries as a technocratic-transhumanist occupation force. On the other side are free nations and biological humanity itself. While we the people rarely meet up to coordinate against the technocrats, the technocratic groups are keen to meet annually and covertly. They are under military guard at Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum (WEF), or at various other secretive meetings like Bilderberg that change annually in location and refuse or violently accost journalists, or at many other meetings more covert and less known like the annual global Big Tech conference in Sun Valley or at the Aspen Institute. Thus the Glomos is a means whereby we can coordinate better against this rogue larger level of attempted global control. In fixing these two factors, mentioned above, the Glomos solves a major historical problem of the bad organization of all past states, mentioned above, that encourages unrepresentative centralized tyranny and environmental degradation over time.

Without the Glomos, our enemies will keep sponsoring political candidates to rule us that are trained, watched, and vetted by them at such meetings. Only if such candidates agree with the technocratic agenda, they are allowed to run for major public national positions or allowed to appear in the major media in a positive light. The main neo-feudal billionaire globalist directors prefer to leave no shadows and prefer to remain unknown. However, once globalist technocrat groups now gain that greater global real control, they are forced to come out in the open. In this way, technocratic globalists are increasingly visible and vocal about their totalitarian and transhumanist dreams [Stop World Control, prod., 2024] and how much they hate our civil and religious freedoms worldwide regardless of our nation, region, city, or rural location. In a sense, we are together in our plight against them, and yet we are di-vided so far. They want to keep us divided. However, the nested Glomos is a way we can have something in common against them, to align and to magnify our power, while we agree to maintain our autonomy at the same time."

(author draft, June 2024)

More information

This text is based on the following literature:

1. Widmer, Hans, ‘A proposal’ booklet by Neustart Schweiz (large part of the text copied from)
2. Steiner, Rudolf, ‘Rethink Economy’ Steinerbooks, 2013
3. Whitaker, Mark D., ‘Towards a Bioregional State, iUniversity inc., 2005
4. Bouricius Terrill G., ‘Democracy Through Multi-Body Sortition: Athenian Lessons for the Modern Day’, in Journal of Public Deliberation, Vol. 9/Issue 1/Art. 11, 2013

further recommended readings:

1. Dolan, Paul, ‘Happiness by Design’, 2017
2. Jackson, Tim, ‘Prosperity Without Growth’, 2009/2017
3. Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011
4. Layard, Richard, Happiness: Lessons From A New Science, Penguin, 2011
5. P.M. “The Power of Neighborhood” and the Commons, Autonomedia, 2014
6. David Van Reybrouck, Against Elections, The Bodley Head London, 2016
7. Neustart Schweiz, Nach Hause kommen, 2016
8. Raworth, Kate, Doughnut Economics, Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, 2017
9. Rosling, Hans, et.al. Factfulness, 2017
10. Streeck, Wolfgang, How Will Capitalism End? Verso, 2016
11. Wilkinson, Richard G. and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, 2009
12. Widmer, Hans (Ed.), Die Andere Stadt, Paranoia City, 2017

See Also

• Mark Whitaker on Global Modules as Nested Biospheres