Preface
In his 1978 Call for a Draft Program for Rational Wide World Changing, Harvey Jackins wrote:
“Basic reality is very encouraging . . . Two factors seem to be largely responsible for the appearance of passivity and submission to oppression and to downward trends in world affairs and for the apparent lack of initiative in upward directions. The first of these factors is a dense accumulation of distress patterns placed on people in early childhood, conditioning them to submit to and perpetuate oppression, internalized oppression, and powerlessness.
The second factor is the absence of a rational enough alternative program to that offered by the oppressive society, the absence as yet of a complete enough and workable enough program which offers intelligent and realistic proposals for recovery of the people’s power, for emerging from distressed conditions, for ending oppression, for achieving unity of all people, for replacing the collapsing society with an intelligent one, for ending the threat of war and nuclear destruction, and for restoring and enhancing the earth and the lives of its inhabitants.”*
This document, A Draft Program for the Transformation of Society, is a long-overdue response to Harvey Jackins’ call.
How This Draft Program Got Started
In 2017, Diane Shisk initiated an effort to respond to this call and asked Julian Weissglass to work on the project with her. Teams of Co-Counselors volunteered to write drafts of chapters on a variety of topics. After starting the work with Julian, Diane decided to devote more of her resources to the Sustaining All Life project. John Braxton joined Julian in coordinating the effort to produce this Draft Program for the Transformation of Society. John and Julian, with the help of other Co-Counselors, revised the chapters and sent them back to the teams for their suggestions. All The International Liberation Reference Persons (ILRPs) and International Commonality Reference Persons (ICRPs), and other Co-Counselors were given the opportunity to review the chapters, and they were all reviewed by Tim Jackins and Diane Shisk. Joan Ostrove, Katie Kauffman, and Susan Whitlock made an outstanding contribution to this program by doing the final editing.
We thank all of the Co-Counselors who contributed to this document.
The intended audience for this Draft Program is the RC Community, not the wider world. We assume that readers are familiar with basic RC theory. As a result, we have used RC terminology throughout.
The Draft Program has two parts. Part I has two chapters: Moving Toward a Non-Oppressive Society by Tim Jackins and The Favorable Aspects of the Current Situation. Part II consists of 21 chapters. Chapter 1 is titled Guiding the Transformation of Society. Chapter 2 discusses Capitalism. The next two chapters in Part II, Care of the Environment and Nuclear Weapons, focus on the existential threats to our civilization and to the vast number of species on this planet. Chapter 5 focuses on Leadership. Subsequent chapters are in alphabetical order. The Draft Program ends with Some Thoughts from Harvey Jackins on Human Liberation.
We have included a short list of references to resources (from both RC and wide world publications) in each chapter.
The document is now available in published printed form and online at Draft Program for the Transformation of Society.
What This Draft Program Is and Is Not
This document represents the thinking of a significant number of Co-Counselors. It is a program, not a policy statement. It includes chapters on various topics that we believe are important for Co-Counselors who want to improve the world to think and discharge about.
It is far-reaching, but it is not a comprehensive treatment of any of the issues we have addressed. It is not a complete list of all the topics that.. deserve to be covered. It is meant to stimulate your thinking and your leadership.
We recognize that we do not have any chapters specifically on the many oppressions that affect the work of transforming the society. This is because there are other RC publications that cover these topics more thoroughly than we could in this document. Our purpose in producing this Draft Program is to encourage you to discharge about and discuss the issues covered in the Program with others; to develop new ideas, tactics, and strategies; and to think for yourself. We can do this in workshops, webinars, classes, support groups, sessions, and think-and-listens.
We did not want the length of the entire document to discourage people from reading it, so we limited the length of each chapter. You do not have to read the whole Program in order to understand a particular chapter. If reading this Program from start to finish seems overwhelming, we encourage you to read Part I and the first chapter in Part II. After that, you can read the chapters that interest you the most.
We tried hard to make this Program international in scope. It does not address issues specific to any one country. In particular, we attempted to avoid being U.S.-centric. Each chapter either had non-USers on the writing team or was reviewed by one or more Co-Counselors from outside the United States. We apologize for any U.S.-centrism that remains.
We hope that groups of Co-Counselors from different countries will discuss and discharge about the topics covered in this program from their perspectives. It will be helpful to prepare supplements to this document with additional country-relevant goals and strategies.
We hope the entire document or selected chapters will be translated into many languages. If you produce a translation or a supplement, please send it to ircc@rc.org with copies to julian@weissglass.net and jwbraxton@gmail.com. We will put links to these documents on the website version of this Draft Program and announce their availability on The Transformation of Society e-mail list.
We believe that:
- transforming society into one that provides all people a good life, free from oppression and exploitation, is crucial for everyone’s individual re-emergence; and
- caring relationships between people are the foundation for all progress.
We hope that this document will be supportive of your work, and we welcome your comments.
Julian Weissglass and John Braxton
julian@weissglass.net
Moving Toward a Non-Oppressive Society
We in RC have worked together for over seven decades, clearing the confusions laid in by undischarged distresses. A great deal of this distress has come from the oppressive and coercive nature of the societies that have existed until this point. Our work has consistently pointed to the possibility of forming societies that are neither oppressive nor coercive, societies that could function for the benefit of everyone in them.
As each of us has discharged where we have been hurt, we have come to a fuller and clearer understanding that we want everything to be good for everyone and that we can find solutions that benefit everyone. We think that humans can and will create such societies.
As we discharge the distresses that interfere with our thinking, we also need a clear picture of the present reality of our current societies. This helps guide our discharging, our understanding of reality, and our planning together for the future.
Societies have ensured the survival of our species. They have generated enough resources for human survival. They have provided opportunities to learn about and understand the universe more and more fully. At the same time societies have always been coercive and oppressive, and the benefits of society have been unfairly distributed.
Many RCers have discharged, thought, discussed, and worked to build a non-oppressive society, a society that will offer every person a good life. Several people worked together to create this document. Many important issues are looked at in the chapters that follow. Each chapter examines and describes our current circumstances and offers a perspective for moving forward.
As always, we know that we will have fuller, clearer, and better ideas as we continue our work. Our documents and programs are always drafts. They will be developed as we continue to make progress. Not everyone must agree with our programs and policies. They are simply the best thinking so far of a group of RCers who worked together to illuminate a particular area.
The aim of this document is to help you move your thinking forward.
Draft Program for the Transformation of Society
Contents and Selected Key Points:
IntroductionThis Draft Program for the Transformation of Society, is a long-overdue response to Harvey Jackins’ 1978 Call for a Draft Program for Rational Wide World Changing. The following gives a few brief points from each chapter. The chapters in the full Draft Program describe the current situation on that topic, followed by goals, strategies, and resources for further reading.
It is a program, not a policy statement.
It is far-reaching, but it is not a comprehensive treatment of any of the issues we have addressed. It is meant to stimulate your thinking and your leadership.
Part I
Moving Toward a Non-Oppressive Society: We in RC have worked together for over seven decades, clearing the confusions laid in by undischarged distresses. A great deal of this distress has come from the oppressive and coercive nature of the societies that have existed until this point.
The Favorable Aspects of the Current Situation: Technological and scientific advances and international cooperation have increasingly given us tools to solve problems that were previously unsolvable.
Part II
Chapter 1: Guiding the Transformation of Society: Achieving the desired transformation of society will require uniting very large numbers of people behind a program.
Chapter 2: Capitalism: Capitalism is becoming increasingly unworkable. And it is unlikely that the climate and environmental crisis can be fully solved within capitalism. We have an alternative.
Chapter 3: Care of the Environment: Our survival depends on the healthy functioning of our planet’s ecosystems and its millions of species. This ecological balance is being undermined by current social and economic systems that prioritize making profits and accumulating wealth over the wellbeing of humans and other species.
Chapter 4: Nuclear Weapons: These weapons are a threat to the existence of humanity and to all complex life on this planet. Eliminating nuclear weapons is clearly in the interest of everyone on the planet, and we are capable of doing this.
Chapter 5: Leadership and Building Movements: We are living in a time with both great threats to humanity as well as great potential to create a more just world. Society could move toward environmental destruction, greater poverty, and increased oppression, or toward sustainability, greater equality, and social justice. The direction of change will depend on whether humanity can build powerful social movements that organize millions of people to demand and create a just world. Such movements start with leaders who have made a commitment to bringing people together to make the world around them better.
Chapter 6: Art and Creativity: The power of art to organize, connect, and educate has always put artists at the forefront of revolutions and social movements. Artists are playing key roles in calling attention to and organizing in support of a variety of liberation movements. One goal is to end the oppression of artists.
Chapter 7: Birth: For the well-being of all humanity, it is important that each person’s birth and early life be as free from distress as possible. Undischarged early hurts affect us throughout our lives. The birth process goes best when mothers are in charge, in good health, and assisted by skilled attendants (such as midwives).
Chapter 8: Colonialism and Imperialism: One goal is to replace all political and economic structures resulting from colonialism and imperialism with structures that share the world’s resources equitably and preserve as much of the Earth’s ecosystems as possible.
Chapter 9: Education and Learning: Schools can be a force for liberation in many people’s lives. But they also transmit oppressive distress patterns that exist in society. Our goals include: provide free high-quality public education from preschool through four years of college for all;. create schools that are a force for liberation from all oppressive practices in society.
Chapter 10: Food and Agriculture: One of the great contradictions in our society today is that the world currently produces enough food to feed everyone on the planet. The major problem is that our systems fail to distribute that food equitably. Regenerative agriculture can be good for the environment. A food system based on corporate profit, that exploits farmers and destroys ecosystems, cannot support future generations.
Chapter 11: Genocide: Genocide installs deep distress recordings on all human beings. If these recordings are not discharged, they are often passed on to future generations. One goal is to end all genocides and practices that target any group of people for destruction.
Chapter 12: Governments: Governments in many parts of the world incorporate the oppressions in society. Often, they are not meeting the needs of large numbers of people. One goal is to ensure that governments work for the benefit of all people and the preservation of ecosystems.
Chapter 13: Healthcare: We currently have the knowledge and resources to address more of the health challenges we face than ever before. Despite this potential, many healthcare institutions are influenced by capitalism, which prioritizes profit over people’s health. One goal is to ensure that every person has access to respectful, high-quality healthcare that is not dominated by profit-seeking.
Chapter 14: Legal Systems: Legal systems and practices have sometimes supported human liberation and well-being. Most current legal systems, however, work to maintain oppressive societies. Our goals include a: transform the criminal legal system so that it treats everyone humanely and kindly. b: end all the ways that capitalism, racism, classism, sexism, and other oppressions affect the legal system: and c:. Ensure that everyone has access to free high-quality legal assistance.
Chapter 15: Modern Slavery :Modern slavery is one of the major crimes against humanity in the world today. Although slavery is now technically illegal in every country, the practice continues in many locations around the world. In nearly half of the world’s nations, prosecution or punishment for enslaving another human being is rare or non-existent. The United Nations . . . estimates that over 40 million people are in some form of slavery today. Our goal is to end all forms of modern slavery.
Chapter 16: Nationalism: Nationalism causes people to believe that their nation’s interests matter more than the rights and interests of individual citizens or other nations, or of the planet’s well-being. These patterns have had, and continue to have, disastrous effects. They are a major cause or justification of war, genocide, colonialism, imperialism, mistreatment of immigrants, and the perpetuation of class oppression.
Chapter 17: Refugees and Immigrants: Today’s massive migration crises are mostly due to people from poorer nations moving to richer nations. Migration is mainly caused by war, imperialism, genocide, violence, poverty, hunger, and climate change. In 2020, there were about 281 million international immigrants. These numbers are likely to increase until we are able to reduce violence, war, climate change, and the transfer of wealth from poorer to richer countries.
Chapter 18: Science: Science can help us understand ourselves and the world around us. Powerful political, economic, religious, or cultural interests often attack science when it threatens their power or profits. Billions of people’s lives have improved because of knowledge gained from scientific research. Goal: Ensure that science is consistent with building just, equitable, diverse societies without oppression or war, where all life can flourish.
Chapter 19: The Labor Movement: In almost all societies today, the working class is exploited in order to increase the wealth of the owning class. Workers can, however, can resist the power of the owning class by directly negotiating with their employers, and by pressuring governments to pass laws that protect workers from exploitation. They can use their collective power to promote justice and democracy and to help achieve a more rational society. Two of our goals are to build strong labor movements everywhere and to work within the labor movement to establish policies that support the well-being of all people.
Chapter 20: War: War is among the most irrational of all societal activities. The actual causes of war are rooted in distresses of fear and greed. Many wars in modern times have been caused by advanced capitalist nations attempting to secure access to natural resources (such as oil and minerals), low-cost labor, markets, or the strategic control of key regions. To eliminate war, it will be necessary for peoples’ movements to dismantle the oppressive systems that support wars. Since war is caused by distress, we can eliminate war.
Chapter 21: Worldviews and Religions have sometimes made significant contributions to a better world, such as offering liberation themes and giving oppressed peoples hope and courage to fight their oppression. Oppressive societies and human distress patterns have often misused worldviews and religions to motivate people to kill or die for their country or religion, or to justify and enforce domination, oppression, genocide, slavery, colonialism, and imperialism. There is no inherent conflict between people who have different worldviews. People with different worldviews can use the discharge process to help resolve disagreements.
Some Thoughts from Harvey Jackins on Human Liberation: “The re-emergence from distress patterns which we Co-Counsel to achieve is the dependably long-range channel for achieving the liberation of humans from all oppression. I do not think that it is the only channel, however, or that it can work alone. . . A two-pronged attack—direct, intelligent struggle for social change on the one hand and persistent, effective Co-Counseling on the other—will make the total struggle effective and our own freedom a continuing attainment, not postponed to some distant realization of social liberation.”
The above parts of the Draft Program for the Transformation of Society were selected by John Braxton and Julian Weissglass. We hope that this gives RCers an idea of what is in the Draft Program and encourages people to read the full document.
The Draft Program for the Transformation of Society is on the RC website and is also available from Rational Island Publishers for $___.