Fitting ROO's In

The ROO II

How the ROO fits into Hillside Construction

By John Taylor; 2010 May 20, Azamat 03, 167 BE

The ROO and Hillside Construction

The ROO or Room of One's Own is a living, working and playing unit for individuals that fits into niches within household compounds. Let us first take a close look at the design of a ROO living module, and then at how ROO's would fit into the wider locality.

As we have seen, the ROO truly is a room of one's own, a permanent personal space where individuals organize their life from cradle to grave. It is a compact, standard living unit that in essentials varies as little as possible from one person to the next, be they rich or poor. Like some recreational vehicles, a ROO can stretch out, accordion-like while at rest or fold up for travel. It is divided into several sub-sections, each of which is highly standardized. The variations most in evidence in the ROO are to be found in the trade section, which is determined by one's particular trade or profession. Even these variants tend to be standard within one' own area of expertise. That is, a carpenter may adapt his workshop but within limits established by his or her trades union.

The ROO is designed to be containerized. On the move, it fits into standard receptacles in the freight tubes of tube transit links. When it reaches its destination it goes into a special receptacle built into the household in a larger hillside structure. As mentioned, its particular location in the building is determined democratically within the larger entity of the household -- a small household consists of one family, a larger one may join several families or unrelated persons in a single group.

The ROO living unit is the size of an air or sea freight container. It can be held together or split into at least four sections. The first section we just mentioned; it is a small office or workshop supporting one's trade. It can be located at home or at the workplace. The second section is a combined bedroom and living or reception area. This living ROO sub-unit acts as full accommodation for the poor, disabled or students. For the wealthy it acts as a mobile cabin, RV or hotel room used for vacations and travel. The third sub-unit is used for recreational or educational purposes, and varies with a person's avocation, interests, clubs or research activities.

A fourth utility section of the ROO is a set of standard facilities, including a shower, toilet and washing facilities. These are improved and updated according to a strict maintenance schedule, assuring that the basic needs of each world citizen are being met. This section of the ROO varies less than any other. The very wealthy may not require it, even when travelling, and may dispense with it. But the fact that at least one ROO utility sub-unit is manufactured for everybody increases production runs and thus lowers costs and improves the minimum standard for all.

One of the best features of the ROO is what it does not have. It contains no food storage or cooking facilities. These functions are offloaded to the household or neighbourhood levels, for reasons that we will discuss at length in future essays.

Hillside Construction Projects

We have already described the public facade of the hillside development in earlier chapters. This is a walk or laneway lined with pillars called a stoa, or porch, which acts as an interface between the private and public spheres. Stoa run down the shaded side of the street, while on the exposed, sunward side, the block row of a hillside building is dedicated to agriculture and solar panels. Inside, a hillside building holds many shifting households and ROO living units.

Throughout the rest of People Without Borders I will call this system of building that holds and services ROO's and households "hillside development." Its invisible political moves and operations I will call consultative housing. As we shall see, hillside development projects are the arena for several new levels of government. These long city blocks are always built in a high-density, urban-style format -- even in the countryside they remain high density, accommodating many people on little land, and concentrate along roads, which are already written off by nature.

The Mobile Household

As mentioned, ROO modules within households are fully mobile, and the household compounds in which ROO's are housed can move about too. Physically, each household is a compound, accommodating several ROO modules of residents within its bosom. A household negotiates its niche within its neighbourhood according to the collective attainments of its members, as well as a range of other criteria.

Just as a modern stock exchange would slam to a halt as soon as its computers shut down, movement within and between these meta-apartment buildings requires a highly sophisticated system of interactions, calculations and mediations. These take place not only automatically using formulas, computers and networks but also through negotiation and democratic decision-making. Thus the particular internal map of a hillside development changes constantly, as the product of elaborate feedback and control mechanisms and applying many formulas and decisions among many groups and individuals.

Block and Neighbourhood Government

The block is the planning body that mediates the shifts and motions of households along a hillside construction street. Several blocks make up a neighbourhood government. Each block contains in a central location an operations planning room similar to the "war room" used by central command in the Second World War, or perhaps Buckminster Fuller's Geoscope, a live data feed displaying the data and factors going into the planning of his "world game." In this room, visitors and residents can view the current state of the block, picture various aspects of it in past, present and future, perform "what if?" simulations, as well as perform basic citizenship functions like payment of taxes, deliberation and voting. Once all inputs have been fully digested, a block government moves the household compounds and their ROO's to their current optimal location. This room holds the heart and brain of consultative housing.

Overseen by the impartial judge of a block government, households have a fair chance to progress and prosper, relative to their neighbours and peers. While many moves are automated, it is in the interest of good leadership for a well run block government to see to it that the changes and advance of a household come as the result of its own virtues, merit and initiative. A good block government, or any leadership at all, knows how to reward deft leadership and encourage the human touch among its members. This I should expand upon a little.

The Role of Competition in Good Governance

We live in a world where most governments oppress their citizens and a surprising percentage of bosses shamelessly bully their inferiors. Such cruel tyranny can proliferate if and only if leaders are impervious, when they do not depend upon followers and underlings for labour or taxes, or rely upon their approval in the form of votes. Higher authorities must be heavily dependent upon those under them for advancement and prestige, if not survival.

At every level, from the global right down to that of the family, we should therefore engineer the situation so that bosses and leaders need their underlings for funding and that they measure their competence by full use of the talent at their command. Every institution must wholly depend in both the short and long term upon the labour, loyalty, support, expertise and zeal of those entrusted to them.

Part of this good government is when a leader or manager encourages healthy, moderate competition. They need to be impartial mediators strong enough to level the playing field and enforce rules, while at the same time encouraging all parties below them to play the game, whatever it is, to the best of their ability. A good follower should be eager to compete but not so rabidly single minded as to undermine the greater good.

Let us look at how these principles of leadership apply on the local level with hillside housing and with its components, the ROO, households and blocks.

Local Competition

Within a household, individuals will seek to better themselves. It is expected that each resident will work and learn a trade or profession. Good governance is ultimately unattainable without this, for work fulfills not only our material needs but also important spiritual and intellectual needs. So all must serve the body politic as a whole in some capacity, if only by votes and taxes.

Human nature is such that we tend to compete with our peers, and seek distinction in our chosen field of endeavour, be it agriculture, manual trades, shop keeping, the learned professions, teaching, or whatever. The family is exempt from such pressures and should be reserved as an island of peace, love and benevolence. As the only human institution that reproduces itself, the overarching concern of marriage is growth and fostering the good of children.

The household, however, is not exempt from "market forces."

The household is a larger institution than the family, often made up of several nuclear families or sometimes a single extended family, a small business, a family business or a minority cultural group. This institution engages in friendly competition with other households.

As participation in the work force becomes universal, households will naturally start to vie with one another to host residents who prove themselves moderate, wise and pious, who are good citizens, skilled tradespersons, homemakers or active leaders. Households will prize all their members and seek to accommodate their ROO modules in good surroundings. However, it will be in their interest to actively recruit new residents, as professional sports teams do star players or elite colleges seek out brilliant students. The kind of citizen that a household needs will be determined by their circumstances, location and the special activities they are involved in. A household residing in a trade or commercial area of the block will seek different trades than a household on the agricultural side, or one near a school or hospital, or in a recreational area.

On the same model, block governments will compete among themselves to attract the most able and compatible households, as dictated by their particular values and goals. Like an efficient, successful company doing business in a free and fair market, if a block shows itself unified, active and vibrant it will progress and receive grants and incentives. As it grows it is endowed with more space and a privileged position relative to other blocks in the neighbourhood under which it serves.

On a broader level, the neighbourhood government will compete with other neighbourhoods -- ones next to them or comparable neighbourhood anywhere in the world -- to recruit active, well-run block governments. An entire neighbourhood is too large to be transported physically to another quarter of the city in the way its own subsidiaries are, but borders and jurisdiction can be moved around. Funding can shift. Statues, works of art, recreation facilities and tourist attractions can be used as incentives.

Again, it is in all of our interest that every level of government be empowered with appropriate sanctions and rewards so as to encourage competence and good management in those under its sway. At every level, be it household, block or neighbourhood government, an exemplary institution must be seen as a valuable commodity that those on senior levels want to foster and attract into their purview. This is not to say that all local leaders would have exactly the same criteria of attractiveness. These criteria will vary greatly according to the needs to preserve the best of the past, to present conditions and future plans.

Next time we will discuss ROO's, households, neighbourhoods and hillside developments in terms of political theory, specifically how their constitutions would mediate their goals and ideals, and how they will strike a balance between conservation and change, and between equality and freedom.

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The Room of One's Own

ROO

Introducing the ROO

By John Taylor; 2010 May 18, Azamat 01, 167 BE

Here is draft four of the next chapter in the infrastructure section of "People Without Borders."

The present world economy is highly weaponized. Nations spend over a trillion dollars a year just to keep their armies equipped with the latest killing machines. The formation of a world senate and democratic parliament of humanity would eliminate any real need for national governments to defend themselves from one another and from terrorists within. Large standing armies could be demobilized, disbanded and the military industrial complex's huge labour pool could be put to productive use for the benefit of all. Just as important as re-deploying soldiers, the media, knowledge industry and educational system that now prop up war and division could be de-militarized and converted to peaceful ends.

This change of direction would create a huge unused labour pool while freeing up vast funds for reconstruction. A world senate would be wise, therefore, to take advantage of this brief window of opportunity by immediately investing this human and monetary capital in mega-projects such as the World Belt just discussed. As experience accumulates, the next step would be the colonization of deserts and mountainous regions.

We have already outlined some of the many physical and structural projects that could be undertaken at this time on the macro-economic level. These include hidden high-speed transportation links using evacuated and pneumatic tube transit. These transport arteries would be part of the world belt, a globe-encircling belt of power lines and hillside housing developments.

Most notably, the world belt's superconducting HVDC power lines would for the first time combine electrical generation, storage and transmission in a single system. Buckminster Fuller calculated that as soon as the Asian and American grids are connected across the Bering Strait, suddenly the day and night sides of the globe would connect, allowing all-but-unlimited, inexpensive electric power, even at peak load.

On the local level, we have outlined ideas like worker's palaces built on domed street corners, stoa streets and hillside construction. In future sections of People without Borders we will consider the many intellectual, ethical and political changes that will also have to take place at this crucial juncture of history. We will need to reform scientific funding, set up a universal curriculum, reform property law, introduce co-operative ownership and democracy to industry, as well as many other reforms to politics, religion and finance.

However, we have neglected one foundational element of this global infrastructure. This is only visible locally but it depends wholly on the macroeconomic infrastructure that we just mentioned. This is an elaborate system of containerized, mobile housing units that I call the ROO, or room of one's own. Like most of these infrastructural innovations, the idea has been floated many times. It was popularized by science fiction writers like Jules Verne and partially worked out by engineering visionaries like Buckminster Fuller, who wrote,

"And so, if we solve the energy and food problems, how do we provide good, inexpensive housing for everyone? Simple. Shelter people in mass-produced, self-contained, surplus-energy-producing, geodesic dome homes which would be helicopter-delivered to anywhere for a tenth the cost of conventional houses." (http://www.buckminster.info/Strategy/GrandStrategy.htm)

Unlike Fuller's proposal, however, the ROO would not be designed primarily as a free standing structure. It is a unit that fits into a larger structure, and is intentionally designed to depend upon larger, local facilities, since this is the most ecologically and socially friendly form of construction.

With our present fractured habits of thinking, we think of large megaprojects and local grassroots initiatives as mutually exclusive, as alternative ways of dealing with reality. Quite to the contrary, they are complementary and dependent upon one another. Comenius showed that he understood this when he proposed that a world senate not only found continental and world governments, but also this central focus be balanced by the simultaneous inauguration of strengthened household and neighbourhood governments.

A ROO construction system would be unimaginable without the above standards and projects already well on the way to full implementation. Its full promise will come to flower only as global infrastructure mega-projects germinate in local empowerment and grassroots initiatives.

A Description of the ROO

The Room of One's Own, or ROO, allocates to every world citizen a standard enclosure the size of a standard air freight shipping container. Just as matter is comprised of atoms and organisms are collections of cells, so the cosmopolitan condition is the product of many ROO's; ROO's are the physical expression of a Comenian world order. This minimum, standard living unit fits into standard slots in all hillside buildings. The ROO is designed to be easily carried from any point to any other by the transport facilities of hillside developments. Each unit is a standard size, fully modular, so that it can be rapidly shipped to any point on the world belt and its subsidiary branches. In areas that are not directly connected to the World Belt, helicopters and blimps can carry them by air to any building with a ROO standard receptacle. The ROO can also be moved around within or between household compounds or apartment complexes, as required.

Each resident retains this minimum private space, the ROO, as a fundamental human right, from cradle to grave. It is integrated with a virtual analogue in software, which also changes and adapts in standardized ways to the needs of early childhood, adulthood and old age. Typically, the ROO will serve as the nucleus of all major activities, residential, educational, recreational and professional. It can be kept together or split into sub-units located in one's residence, at school, in the workplace or a recreational facility.

The ROO is the visible outcome of a standard building code for the entire globe, mediated by the democratic world government and adapted by household and neighbourhood authorities to local needs and conditions. The ROO will be the cornerstone of a new kind of architecture that I call Consultative Construction, for "consultation" is the best word to describe what determines what the ROO contains, and where it is fit into larger unities. Let us delve more into what Consultative Construction is next time.

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Gap Behind Gulf

Gulf Gap

Gap and Path

By John Taylor; 2010 May 17, Jamal 19, 167 BE

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The Gap Behind the Gulf

Annotated Passage from Fuller's Critical Path

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The Gap Behind the Gulf

I am burdened by what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. How did it happen? Back in '05 there was another instance of criminal neglect by the same oil company. It caused an explosion in Texas and the deaths of almost two hundred workers. In a just world, the board, CEO and all corporate executives responsible would have been dragged off to gaol within hours of the explosion. Instead, they were fined the equivalent of a few hours of operating profit and left to keep drilling, permit free, in ecologically sensitive waters. Their PR department did notice that the publicity from these pesky deaths and lawsuits was having a negative impact on their image. So, for a couple of years they did what remains unheard of in the oil industry, they spent seven percent of their yearly profits on renewable energy. They even changed their name from British Petroleum to "Beyond Petroleum." As soon as the green-washing had its desired effect, it was business as usual again, a mad rush to drill Mother Nature in her most sensitive areas.

Industry experts are warning that there will be major fallout from this disaster in the Gulf, and not what one might expect. By that I mean, investing in green technologies. No, that is not on the horizon, for reasons that I will discuss soon. The real reason to worry is that the Gulf fiasco may persuade the oil companies (seven of out of the ten richest corporations in the world are in oil) to reach a little deeper into their pockets and really game the system. Even in the world of the super-rich, these companies have massive, deep, deep pockets. It seems that you can corrupt Washington for mere millions. These companies have billions in unused cash reserves. They would like to use it to drill for oil, but they do not have to. They could use it to swing an election or two. In fact, they could buy an American election campaign every week, if they wanted to.

So the question that should be running through all our minds is: how did they get so all-fired rich? Why are they flush when even the most powerful governments are in hock up to their eyeballs? For an answer to that you need go no further than the hero of my youth, R. Buckminster Fuller. Fuller advocated a monetary system based on energy, since energy is, literally, what makes the world go around. He pointed out that the elites learned long ago how to be certain that a flood of money will permanently flow into their pockets. Simply separate energy from the purview of our accounting system. That is, put energy reserves into private hands, and let government handle the expenses and risks of exploiting those reserves. Here, in his typically poetic way, is how Fuller explained their plot in one of his last books, Critical Path,

"With legal planning of their lawyer-advised banking leaders, the "haves" have now succeeded in cornering all the world's monetary gold as well as the preponderance of the world's petroleum resources - along with their refineries and world-around petro-delivery systems together also with acquisitions of all the atomic power-generating plants, originally paid for by the US taxpayers - and thereafter in severing the monetary system from the wealth system while marking up the negotiable equity value of gold and petroleum tenfold." (from R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path. New York: St. Martin's Press, New York, 1981, 34-35, cited at: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5113)

To put Fuller's point a bit more plainly, government spends millions researching nuclear energy and when it finally comes time to reap a profit from the research, they give it all away; they privatize the knowledge, techniques and facilities for creating the energy. Same thing with oil exploration, government subsidizes risky exploration and private companies step in as soon as comes time to make some money. The slogan is better known now than when Fuller worked it out: "public risk for private profit." Once the money for the private energy infrastructure starts coming in, it never stops. The only way to stop paying them is to stop moving.

Richey Rich loves to hide behind his neo-liberal, capitalist ideology and his obscure accounting tricks like derivatives. He hides in plain sight. However, Fuller's point becomes clear as soon as you put your finger on the energy cycle and trace its flow from source to use, from payout to payback and blowback. This is the secret as to why oil companies would rather die than invest in green energy. Their whole business model is based on disrupting the flow of energy so that all money for all motion flows directly into their pockets. If a solar panel or wind turbine is set up on my roof or in my neighbourhood, the first thing people will want to do is to run their homes and cars directly on that. That would permanently end our addiction to Big Oil. If we get our energy straight from the sun we do not need middlemen; the cycle of energy is complete. Sun to user, from user to the good of all. After a brief payback period for the equipment energy becomes free. Unlike the moneyed elites, the sun radiates its energy forever, free for the taking.

A complete cycle where energy user and energy provider are the same thing would end one of the most important divisions upon which the divide and conquer magnate depends. There is no way that selling solar panels or wind turbines could ever compare to a money printing machine like a total energy monopoly. Green work is just that, work. It is actually earning one's money. Where is the mega-profit in that?

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An Annotated Passage from Critical Path

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Let Fuller have the last word on this. Because his prose is thick and thorny, I have added subtitles and annotations.

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We have more than enough wealth to go around, especially as knowledge grows. Technology is magical because it allows us to get more out of less material and energy. Sadly, though, we cannot get out of the rut of thinking in terms of scarcity and division.

"The plotted curve of the rate of gain for increasing proportions of all humanity being thus swiftly advantaged by the doing more for more people with less and less matter and energy per function - all accomplished with computers, satellites, alloys, etc. - indicates that 100 percent of all humanity will be thus advantaged before 2000 A.D."

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Narrow mindedness becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy that fills important pockets at the expense of all. Instead, we should look forward to a bright future unbound by restraints of prejudice.

"... all humanity is scheduled by evolution (not by any world planning body) to become physically more successful and, metaphysically more interestingly occupied than have any humans ever been in all known history -- provided that humanity does not commit ignorance-, fear-, and -panic-induced total-species suicide.

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Free flow of trade and recycling of materials are blocked by borders; this acts as a stroke to the world body politic.

"If people in many of the 150 nations succeeded in re-establishing their sovereignties and all the customs-barrier, balance-of-trade shacklings, it would soon be discovered that the 150 nations represent 150 "blood clots" imperilling the free interflowing of the evolution-producing metals and products recirculation as well as of the popular technical know-how disseminating."

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The poverty and desperation of the "tea party" demonstrators Fuller predicted thirty years ago.

"There are millions in the U.S.A., for instance, who on discovery that their government was about to become bankrupt and defunct would become activist "patriots," and might get out their guns and start a Nazi movement, seeking dictatorially to reinstate the `good old days.'

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The nation state is obsolete, causing accelerating inequality and a stasis of crisis.

"Reason number two for fear-wrought panic is because all of the 150 nations of our planet are about to be desovereignized by evolution; that is, they are about to become operatively obsolete -about to be given up altogether."

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There can be no order or leadership of humanity until we choose a single government for that purpose.

"We have today, in fact, 150 supreme admirals and only one ship - Spaceship Earth. We have the 150 admirals in their 150 staterooms each trying to run their respective stateroom as if it were a separate ship. We have the starboard side admirals' league trying to sink the port side admirals' league. If either is successful in careening the ship to drown the "enemy" side, the whole ship will be lost."

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Nations are products of an ancient, devious divide-and-conquer strategy.

"The historical consequence of this aeons-ago-commenced employment of this grand strategy of 'divide to conquer and keep divided to keep conquered" accounts for the "natural" acceptance today by world peoples of the seemingly "God-given" existence of 150 sovereign nations of the world and their respective geographical division of all the world's dry land. ..."

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In such a system, economic hegemony trumps democracy, by definition.

"That division of world political power into 150 sovereign nations is a consequence of thousands of years of successive and individually independent contriving of history's most powerful leaders. The number-one strategy of the successful leaders of history's successively established supreme socioeconomic control systems has always been to induce the spontaneous self-divisioning of those designed to be conquered and to keep them spontaneously self-dividing and their divisions lethally interarrayed against one another in order to keep them conquered."

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Divide-and-conquer leaders benefit from a climate of hysteria caused by their own willful ignorance

"Why might they panic? All the present bureaucracies of political governments, great religious organizations, and all big businesses find that physical success for all humanity would be devastating to the perpetuation of their ongoing activities. This is because all of them are founded on the premise of ameliorating individual cases while generally exploiting on behalf of their respective political, religious, or business organizations the condition of nowhere- nearly- enough-life-support-for-all and its resultant great human suffering and discontent."

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Nations predominate because it is always easier to imitate the status quo than to establish justice from the ground up.

"The longer the self-divisionings can be self-perpetuating, the more spontaneously are the divisions accepted institutionally by the successive generations as being "natural" divisions ..."

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Multiple languages, races and cultures are all part of the same divide and conquer ploy.

"The prime vulnerabilities of humanity, which make it subject to spontaneous self-dividing, are those of different speech patterns, skin color, religions, social customs, class or caste systems, political preferences and all varieties of individually unique `troubles,' suffering and discontent."

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World Belt

A world-building megabelt

This is the third draft of a proposal for an intercontinental mega-Project, part of the section on infrastructure in People Without Borders.

The World Belt

By John Taylor; 2010 May 16, Jamal 18, 167 BE

Precis: My proposal for the World Belt, a world encircling belt of buildings, transport and power lines joining the continents. This combined power line, hillside building project and rapid tube transit artery would pay for itself by energy collection. It would promote travel and mitigate the suffering of climate disruption.

Ambitious railway construction projects formed the modern nation as we know it. Historical accounts are both thrilling and popular, such as Stephen Ambrose's "Nothing Like it in the World," which tells the story of the first transcontinental railroad across North America in the 1860's. Similarly, Pierre Burton's "The Last Spike" describes the great railway whose construction in the 1880's both built and defined the new Canadian nation. Today China is engaging in perhaps the most prodigious infrastructural project in history. This expertise and experience it is presently exporting throughout Africa.

We can expect that the formation of a world government will permit even more audacious initiatives. Projects of greater magnitude are possible that would connect not just national borders but entire continents and the globe itself. Buckminster Fuller was one of the very few designers and engineers to give this eventuality much thought. In the late 1960's he worked on several proposals (which are discussed throughout this book), including the idea of a global energy grid. This idea is still being actively promoted by the Global Energy Network Initiative at, www.geni.org. I have collected some of the YouTube videos describing this project that are to be found on this site on my blog, at: badiblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/peter-meisen-and-geni.html.

As these sources explain, a global energy grid would eliminate the need for fossil fuels by sending solar generated electricity from equatorial regions towards the poles, and from the illumined day side of earth to its dark, night side. This has become an even more attractive alternative since cryogenic high voltage direct current (HVDC) power transmission technology was developed. This allows for much more economical long distance power transmission. Combined with superconducting lines, long distance power lines can be used as virtual batteries, storing as well as carrying electrical energy. At the same time, if a string of wind turbines were built along the length of the grid, the grid would generate its own power and decrease the wait period that it takes to pay for itself.

This mega-project, like most of Fuller's proposals, was suggested long before its time. By now, the technical difficulties of building such a globe encircling power grid are trivial compared with the moral, religious and political obstacles. Until a world government is formed, they are likely to remain as stubborn and immovable as ever. Or, to put the same point positively, we can look forward to tremendous leaps forward when we finally bow to the inevitable and form a democratic world government.

I would like to see this construction effort made even more monumental by combining Fuller's power grid with an evacuated tube transport artery and a long "stoa hillside" building project. This combined grid, transport and housing project I will call here the "World Belt." The combined effect of power, transport and buildings together would create what Fuller would call a synergistic effect.

Parts of the world belt would be buried underground while other sections would be held aloft. Parts of the belt would keep all three together, power lines, buildings and transport tubes, while other sections might separate them by a short distance. The link would extend across both coasts of the American continent, connect the tip of South America through Central America, the continental United States, Canada, Alaska and over (or under) the Bering Strait to Asia, China, Australia, India, Europe and Africa.

Citizens would travel around the world at speeds of tens of thousands of kilometres an hour -- without the pollution and delays of air travel -- in evacuated tubes. When they arrive at their destination travellers would have right at hand cheap power to energize their activities, and no matter where they go there would be ample shelter and living space. This sheltered space along the world belt would also be available for emergency evacuation of cities in case of disaster. Unfortunately, we have delayed building the power grid so long that climate is running out of control and the seas are threatening to rise quickly. As a result we can justify the expense of building a strip of urban construction running through each continent as a way to accommodate the estimated two billion refugees flooded out of coastal regions by rising seas. The world belt permit them to move from flooded regions with relatively little suffering or job dislocation.

The world belt would in this way play the same historic role for world governance that the railway did for nations.

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Peter Meisen and GENI

An explanation of GENI, the global energy grid advocacy,

Wiseland

Sageocracy

Visa to the Land of the Wise

By John Taylor; 2010 May 15, Jamal 17, 167 BE

Cosmopolitan reform by a democratic world government would allow us to rebuild and recombine our infrastructure from the ground up, including quicker, more efficient travel, the elimination of combustion through electrification using renewable power sources, and new ways of building. Combining several such fundamental infrastructural improvements would not only avoid pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and other negative impact on the environment but it would also maximize health, freedom, welfare and security for residents. However, none of this, beginning with the world government, would be possible unless we all get a much better grasp on wisdom. That is, we must contemplate long and hard about what it would be like to live in the land of the wise, and what sageocracy is.

Sageocracy, Or the Land of the Wise

I am writing People without Borders because I want to live in a land of the wise. I do not care if the place does not exist, I want to be there, if only in spirit. I do not care if it seems hopelessly pie-in-the-sky to some; it only matters that such a place is possible. If enough people see it in imagination they will want to go there. Thus far-off ideals become reality.

What would a sageocracy, a wise society, look like?

I believe that the land of the wise would be the most beautiful place imaginable. After all, the reverse is already the case; our world of folly is about as ugly as it is possible to be. Here is a definition of beauty: beauty is what wisdom sees when she looks back at herself in the mirror. A land of the wise would be practical, prudent and sustainable, but above all, she would prize beauty.

I therefore imagine my land of the wise as a physically imposing place. It would have domes covering over street corners, which would be used as open, public meeting places. Automobiles and other conveyances would be silent, removed from sight. There would be classic, columned stoa several stories high, running down the shady side of every street. The Parthenon would be ubiquitous. On the opposite, sunny side of the street there would be trees, gardens and greenhouses sloping gently up the sunny sides of single block buildings. The right side is conservative, egalitarian and classical, the left side liberal, free ranging and enterprising.

This design would follow God's first commandment, Fiat Lux. Let there be light. Physical light without and spiritual enlightenment within would come before all else. The sunward side of buildings would be black and green, colours that absorb light and put its energy to use. The white marble of the shady side would reflect light as much as possible. Such efficient use of solar energy would be a good start to the Fiat Lux that leads to wisdom. Best of all, Sophia, wisdom, would have ample illumination to see herself in her mirror.

However, even if the design of such a city were perfectly beautiful, it would be inadequate if the dwellers within fell short of beauty or perfection. If its people were foolish or unjust, it would hardly be worthy of the name "land of the wise." Nor, as was pointed out to me, if they were bored or shiftless.

Still, one can imagine a land of the wise that does shelter fools and blunderers. After all, what society in the real world has ever been devoid of such shortcomings? Who, even the wisest, has not been foolish in one situation or another? Indeed, did not philosophy, the love of wisdom, begin when Socrates pointed out that nobody can make a permanent claim to wisdom? In the Phaedrus of Plato, Socrates refuses to call any man wise, "for that is a great name which belongs to God alone." For men, "lovers of wisdom or philosophers is the modest and befitting title." In his Apology, Socrates declares,

"My hearers always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in others; but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name by way of illustration, as if he said, `He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.'"

What I think really would make this place worthy of the name "land of the wise" is that wisdom would prevail in it, not that everybody could be wise all the time. Such a thing would be inconceivable. It is enough that wisdom should prevail in the land of the wise. A majority must love and strive for wisdom, and recognize her when they see her, and resolve to submit to her decisions, or at least to resolution that lead to wisdom. All this makes for a sageocracy.

Let the wise, when they are wise, have the upper hand.

The historical record is not devoid of precedents for such a state of affairs. The Persian Empire of Cyrus and Darius was the first multi-ethnic empire built largely on tolerance and local autonomy. The Roman Republic (not to be confused with the Roman Empire) in some ways and for a time approached the ideal of a land of the wise.

SPQR and Sovereignty's Two Polarities

The device "SPQR" was the motto of the Roman Republic. It stood for Senatus Populusque Romanus ("The Senate and People of Rome"). More broadly, it symbolized a union between the common people, or plebeians, and the nobility, or patricians. The marriage between plebs and pats was not made in heaven. It was tense and contentious at times, but as Machiavelli pointed out, it held fast for centuries and channelled tremendous energy to greater civic ends. The marriage was not just theoretical; it was instantiated in an institution the Romans called the senate ("senate" meant "old"). The senate was a body of prominent, older patricians whose accomplishments had distinguished them from others. Like most traditional societies, the gray hairs of the Roman senate were thought to make them wise leaders. Nonetheless, they depended on the plebeians; the sovereignty of the state did not come into existence until both senate and the people agreed. Hence, SPQR.

The banner SPQR was held aloft by Roman armies, and the letters were placed on official documents. Under this flag a city steadily grew into an empire spread across the Mediterranean world. This republic endured some five hundred years, before corruption set in. Conquest created a huge influx of slaves, who came to outnumber both plebeians and patricians by a ratio as large as seven to one. The gaps between slave, freedman and citizen came to mean far more than that between plebeian and patrician citizens. Finally, the Republic was terminated by the coup of Julius Caesar in 27 BCE. However imperfect, the Roman Republic was stable enough to endure twice as long the present American republic.

As mentioned, it was SPQR, a marriage of wisdom, the senate with the power of the people, that gave the Roman Republic its remarkable vigour and longevity. By placing the wisest (the senate) in an alliance with everybody (the people), sovereignty was invested in a just government for all. This high ideal encouraged Roman citizens to take their civic duties seriously. Citizens subordinated private benefit during the Republic to the virtues of an upstanding citizen. Many early Roman officials attained a probity that contemporaneous Greek and Alexandrian philosophers could only theorize about.

It would seem then, that choosing a truly wise senate of the world would be the first, best step to the kind of governance that would lead to the land of the wise whose physical outlines we are now sketching. We will discuss how such a universal senate might be organized in the next section, on democratic reform. In the meantime, our outline of cosmopolitan infrastructure is still incomplete.

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