Approaches to reducing suffering from conflict and structural violence have traditionally been political or communitarian in nature, and it is still true that any serious solution must take political and social factors into account. Something has been changing in recent decades, however, in that technological development has been accelerating and making new approaches to old problems possible. A veritable explosion in the power of computing and communications technologies has driven deep changes in other technical areas (e.g. biotechnology, manufacturing), while simultaneously altering the ways in which people relate to each other. Given the scale of these changes, it seems reasonable to seek direct technological solutions to problems such as world peace, which could not traditionally be approached in such a way.
Approaches to reducing suffering from conflict and structural violence have traditionally been political or Technological Decentralisation
So what can we affect with technology that would have some bearing on the likelihood or severity of suffering around the world? We find a clue in past approaches to this problem, which have often involved grass-roots community organisation. That organisation was sometimes employed in an attempt to exert political influence (e.g. in anti-war protests), and to develop “direct action” community-based responses to local shortages and problems (e.g. soup kitchens for the homeless). The interesting thing to note here is that traditional, centralised institutions such as governments have frequently contributed to suffering by triggering wars and failing to recognise local resource needs… and at the same time that these very institutions are being undermined by recent technological developments.
We have already seen an explosion of services through which emergent networks can solve problems in rapid, flexible ways which centralised organisations are simply not capable of matching. Such networks appear naturally adept at solving structural violence problems. Once we have made that observation, it is only a small step to suggest that if the balance of power in our society were to shift from centralised to decentralised (i.e. distributed) institutions then we would not only have an increased ability to reduce the suffering associated with structural violence, but we would also have reduced the ability of centralised institutions to wage war. It is something of a tangent that we do not have time for here, but we should note that this need not imply a reduction in defensive capability, but merely a limit on central government’s ability to command an entire society’s resources in order to engage in spurious military adventures overseas.
It should be clear that if such a trend were to take hold across at least a significant proportion of developed nations, then the resultant reduction of conflict and suffering would benefit many millions of people.
The Illusion of Inevitability, and the Need for Innovation
The Illusion of Inevitability, and the Need for InnovationSo, if currently observed technological trends already point toward an ability to decentralise our societies and reduce conflict, does that mean we can just sit back and wait for this ugly phase of human history to end? No, unfortunately, far from it. Such thinking would be an example of “Inevitablism”, which is to say a belief that the course of history is predetermined and no personal effort is required to change the world for good. Inevitablism is not only false, but in many cases positively dangerous (e.g. when it leads to deliberate ignorance of problems and risks, or of potential solutions to such problems).
The fact of the matter is that technology is morally neutral, and can be applied in any way that the laws of physics allow. Centralised institutions have certain values and thus their advocates, not to mention a certain historical momentum which means that they will not just fade away without a fight. We are already seeing increasing numbers of situations in which the decentralising tendency of emerging technologies is resisted by governments, large companies, religious authorities and other traditional centralised institutions. Where new technologies are not considered unthreatening to such powers and cannot be adapted to conform with their needs, then those technologies are banned. The right to recapitulate the functions of traditional institutions through emergent networks is one that has to be asserted vigorously, always challenging attempts to preserve central authority without some sufficiently powerful justification.
This is a kind of zero-sum game, in that any successful push to assert the freedom to self-organise and directly solve problems via technological means must necessarily reduce centralised authorities scope of recognised jurisdiction. In other words, when we insist on the right to use new technologies to manage our own resources and solve local problems directly, we are also limiting the ability of powerful institutions to use those same resources (including our implied consent, and our very bodies) to wage war.
We must ask ourselves how to push for decentralisation in this way. Thankfully, the answer is simple: We need to innovate. We need to build better and more useful tools, in as open a manner as possible, as fast as possible. People can only be persuaded to do things to a certain extent, but they will use a tool if it improves their life in some direct manner. By creating useful decentralised tools, we not only help people directly, but we also effectively build a mass movement for spontaneous societal self-organisation and the reduction of traditional bureaucratic war machinery.
The beauty of this solution is that it is in accord with currently observed trends, it doesn’t require anyone to do anything they didn’t want to do already, it has the potential to reduce suffering caused both by conflict and structural violence, and it harnesses the natural joy that humans take in innovation and community. Of course we have noted that happy outcomes are never inevitable, and our primary obstacles to success are not technological but sociological and political.
Social and Political Factors
Social and Political FactorsThere is a valid and important role for law and centralised institutions in our societies. Without certain common understandings of acceptable behaviour and the ability to enforce them, our technologies could easily destroy civilization (and cause vast suffering en route to that destination). Any emergent movement for technological decentralisation must acknowledge that simple fact if it is to avoid being unrealistic and destructive. Therefore, some kind of natural balance will need to be struck with centralised authority, and we need to bear that in mind when the advocates of that authority inevitably resist technological change. At the very least, there would be something wrong with any movement for world peace which was focussed on confrontation. Rather than seeking such confrontation with centralised institutions, we must simply build tools that people will find useful in collectively solving problems, and find enjoyable to use.
Happily, by taking this approach we find ourselves on the right side of an observation from psychology. This is that there is a distinction to be made between what people say and what they do, often without them so much as noticing any difference. People will tell you that they want or like things one way, but then their choices and actions can often tell a rather different story. Someone may say they prefer to only eat the best organic food, but in reality often they buy something else as a simple matter of convenience, and see no incongruence in that. The implication here is that we can (and should) side-step explicit political and social opposition as much as possible, and just offer people helpful decentralising tools. People may say they oppose the movement toward decentralisation, but as long as they use the tools then that is of no consequence. The same logic is frequently used by governments and companies, when people say they distrust those institutions, but they use the tools offered by them for the sake of simple convenience. An additional implication of this idea is that there is little or no point in explicitly trying to convince someone of any philosophical or ideological position, when they are effectively adopting it when they use any tool which operates according to the logic of that philosophy.
A Specific Proposal
A Specific ProposalI have explained that centralised institutions are a major contributing factor in the suffering caused by war and structural violence, that observed technological trends point toward decentralisation, that innovation in developing decentralising tools promotes that trend, and that socio-political opposition can be circumvented as long as people use such tools. The remainder of this article is devoted to describing a plan for encouraging and promoting that trend which is already in progress.
I work with the WAVE research institute (http://wavism.net) in order to advocate and work toward positive social change through technology. World peace certainly qualifies as “positive social change”; in fact, it is arguably the single necessary condition underpinning all other positive social change. Given the nature of our advancing technologies, if we do not achieve world peace then there will not be any society left to positively change. My personal background involves a combination of studying the cognitive science of decision making (including people’s reliance on advice and decision tools) and event promotion in the arts. WAVE is dedicated to building cooperative networks which harness the skills and passions of their members (both individuals and organisations) in order to achieve positive social change through technology, and my own background suggests a project in support of world peace in line with the ideas discussed above.
The open source movement and many related initiatives stress the power of transparent cooperation in the development of new tools. Events and organisations which emphasise such cooperation have the power to catalyse a decentralising movement toward world peace. WAVE will be coordinating a series of events from 2015-2016 called EMERGENCE, in which as wide a group of organisations and people as possible will be encouraged to share their ideas and plans. The emphasis will be on participation and practical activity, helping to foster tools and platforms which offer interesting new forms of cooperation. The events in the series will explore a range of themes and disciplines, from science and technology, to the arts, business, social justice activism, ecology, spirituality, and more. The common factor across all events will be support for emerging tools and platforms which are as decentralising as they are fun and useful, and which therefore implicitly work toward the further development of a technologically-empowered mass movement for world peace. I have experience in organising events along these lines (both in academia and the arts), and critically the various initiatives at the heart of these events will be drawn from a decentralised network of valued partners. This movement already exists; it is just a matter of developing and promoting it.
Technological decentralisation will not eradicate conflict or suffering, but it could potentially alleviate it to a degree that humanity could scarcely hope for when striving for world peace by traditional means. Trends we already see in the world make it clear that such a shift is now possible, if only we have the imagination and will to seize the moment. Success is not inevitable, and this movement toward world peace will be opposed, but by embracing the most creative, hopeful, and joyous aspects of humanity we now have the opportunity to change the world for good.
This article is Dr. M. Amon Twyman's entry to the London Futurists / Singularity University Peace Grand Challenge competition, reprinted with permission.