"Is the blockchain the new Global City?" - Part I Introduction

This post is a sequence of a list of articles that you can find at the end to explain the theory of realizable Utopias and help to integrate this part of the work of Utopia and the blockchain.
Like I said in my last post here, this article will deal with the problem of the construction of the post-Scarcity, post-Truth and post-Destruction Era to integrate a model of a myriad of small equalitarian communities or "critical-groups" of blockchained citizens, that want to exercise their Influence and "Importance" in a direct democracy.
My next post is called "Is the blockchain the engine room of Starship Earth" and will examine the possibilities for reconstructing direct democracy of the "primitive cities" in the blockchain, to help people to think more about what should be different in decentralized autonomous systems, to revolutionize, to corrupt, to make Power obsolete, and fight the increasing dictatorship of actual society against the flux of autonomy and freedom.

1 - Importance and Social Situation

The Role of a person in society can be be seen by and an outside observer using Yonas's "objective language" to make same conclusions:

a) - Society is influence propagation.
b) - Social situation is similar to "Importance" and is result of a sum of influences received and given in a society.
c)- The result is the "role" of a person in any society.

For each person the "role" is seen by the inside, within self-attributed arbitrariness of "Importance", based in his own criteria and reason intuitively chosen.
"Social situation" is importance, when observed by an observer outside the system.
For the person himself "Importance" depends on personal inside self-attributed values, that can't be observed or measured.
As Yona Friedman say "Importance" is the importance an individual values on the importance of the others.
The "Importance" of an influence is not observable or quantifiable, because it is not-communicable.
"Importance" is only valued by any member of society for his personal use.
A society can be equalitarian in the balance of influences is equal to all , but it will never be felt as equalitarian in the personal balance each one makes of it.
So we can have an equalitarian society besides the inequality every individual will always feel on the self-percepted "Importance".

"A theory must be general and valid for anybody". -Yona Friedman

2 - The Utopia of Immobilism of our generation

I will call the Utopia of Immobilism the worst utopia of our times.
In an article about memes I read surely more then ten years ago, about the influence a the new-age vaccine against other kind of memes more related with the structures of reality:

"new age: accept all aesthetically-appealing memes, new and old, regardless of empirical [or even internal] consistency; reject others. [note that this one doesn't provide much protection.]" (1) Glenn Grant - Memetic Lexicon.

The actual conservative tendency is based in the fear of change, but it is blind-folded by the belief that the possible consequences of our choices are not so scary and won't have much consequences.
We are now reaching the abyss where the Environment have one of the most emergent cataclysms of planet Earth, that began with the first consequences of man change to a "crop" society and the agricultural revolution affecting ecology - kill the forest, kill species, kill the air, kill the oceans., kill water sources, pesticides, genetic crops and so on - so that our species became urban, gregarian and sedentary.

"We are in danger of destroying ourselves, by greed and stupidity" - Stephen Hawking

The ecological traces of destruction with urban and industrial pollution, that are not immediately killing all the species, but opens the possibility and create conditions for the possible emergence of a new human species, the ones that will survive the post-Destruction era.
And most of the people do not care because they are living in the worst utopias of all times: the Utopia of Immobilism.
Immobilism is the dream of any Government, Power , Rulers, Technology or Science the dream of perpetuity and immobility.

"The failure of social scientists to seriously question their own ideological and methodological assumptions contributes to the complex interrelationship between global ecological and individual psychological problems. Much of the literature on the tragedy of the commons focuses on saving the global commons through increased centralization and regulation, at the expense of the individual's autonomy and psychological sense of community. "Utopian" speculation in general and anarchist political analysis in particular are necessary correctives to misplaced attempts to merely rearrange the elements of the status quo rather than to radically alter it in a direction more in keeping with both survival and human dignity." (2) - Dennis R. Fox (1985) American Psychologist - "Psychology, Ideology, Utopia, and the Commons"

"If this keeps on with rise of authoritarianism, humans won't need to have sex anymore, because the Government is f'ck'ng us all more and more everyday"charlie777pt
Well for Yona Immobilism is not an Utopia, but a consequence of an Utopia because like he asks:
"But....what is the social organization that is not or was the result of an Utopia that preceded it.?"

YONA FRIEDMAN INFORMATION from BALKIS PRODUCTIONS on Vimeo.

Iceland seems to be the only country that fights the Immobilism Utopia quoted by their own President:
"The Government bailed out the people and imprisoned the banksters, the opposite what America and the rest of Europe did."

3- Why do some realizable Utopias fail?

There is no miracle recipe for avoiding Utopias to fail, and instead of blaming "human nature" for it, we are going to make some conclusions that can help in the diagnosis for failures, in the case same of the mechanisms of realizable Utopias are absent.

a) - For a Utopia to rise we need a generalized dissatisfaction, one technique and collective consent.
b) - Utopias can be paternalistic (proposed by the outside) or non-paternalistic (shared by the ones that assume the risks of the consequences of the collective choices).
c) - Utopias can be expressed in an objective language by any external observer.
d) - Society and Environment are synonyms.
e) - The Utopias we should be aiming are the equalitarian society(man2man) and its evolution to a "non-competitive society" (man-objects2objects-man).
f)- This utopias can only exist if we don't exceed some numbers inherent to human bio-genetic-psychological limitations on the number of a group of people can have to keep it equalitarian.

This only works if there is constant feedback in a language everybody understands, because Continuous Feedback is the self-preservation, a self-regulating mechanism to preserve the Utopias.

YONA FRIEDMAN UTOPIA STATION from BALKIS PRODUCTIONS on Vimeo.

4 - The City and the Blockchain

Yona Friedamn (1975) says that the city is "one territory inhabited by a set of organized human beings", and is definition of territory is not necessarily physical has we will see.

a) - Realizable Utopias are projects to enhance collective satisfaction in a group.
b) - The same project in endorsed and consented by the group.
c) - Happen inside an organized group in a territory.

As Yona says "the city" was maybe one of the realized utopias of human history.
The objective of most Utopias is centered in "organizing" the city and "is much more an organization of an occupied territory."
Yona expresses clearly in his theory that it must not necessarily be a physical territory because the city is an organization if the members are disperse.
So the blockchain could be from now on the territory where people inside multiple communities(human organization) will thrive and balance prosperity in the world.
Now let's see the City as two aspects - human organization and territory.

5 - Agricultural revolution, the Primitive City, and the birth of Direct Democracy

Actual society was born by agriculture, after the society of hunters, followed by the pastor society and then the sedentary villages of farmers, the city of "crops".
Agriculture created the conditions for the emergence of the concept of industry and the division of work.
So the old city was born and turns into the marketplace of industry specialists and artisans making the primitive city "a set of equal individuals, where everyone is indispensable".

This primitive urban utopia brought "equality of each individual by his indispensable character".

From the agricultural conglomerates of farmers, where the traditional Clan or Family had an organization, and the technical knowledge was equal and permutable, while in the "primitive city" every individual have an unique knowledge and the tasks are not permutable.
In the farmer cities the Family and Clans had an hierarchy of power, the "Pater" owner of the family estate (pater familias in ancient Rome), the boss, the Chief, that decodes everything and have all the powers to take decisions.
In this new "primitive cities decisions" are made by equals in a general council, creating the first born and realized Utopia of Direct Democracy .

Direct Democracy based in equality in the uniqueness of every member, governed by collective decision made with the participation of every individual.
So the "primitive city" made possible direct democracy and became a Realized Utopia.

The growth of this primitive urban cities soon would show that the numbers of members of a "critical-group" to keep it equalitarian had his consequences.
This numbers that are limits to the human capability in the dimensions of a community to preserve direct democracy.
As this small cities started to attract more and more peoplY, broke the limits of numbers of the equalitarian structure by excess of numbers and became Hierarchic and destroyed the roots of direct democracy and gave birth to today's "democracy".

This primitive growing city exceeded the limits of equalitarian members or "critical-group" and the Chief appears and this groups, the worst plague democracy brought, the politicians.

"The Politicians were born and they where empowered for something they couldn't do, decide for the other individuals". charlie777pt

Hierarchy eliminate consensus and blocks Utopia's realization.
End of Part I

In part II of this posts we will discuss the consequences of this concepts on the construction and evolution on the Blockchain.
Part II
6 - Can the blockchain bring back Direct Democracy and Consensus?
7 - Can Steemit and the blockchain be a total equalitarian Society?
8 - The counter-development of the big city : "Private city" and "urban village"
9 - The non-geographical critical-group
10 - The society of "weak communication" and the new singularity of the Blockchain
11 - Self-regulation and autoplanification in the "Engine Room"

Footnote:

(*) I choose the term Equalitarian for a vision that accepts or promotes the view of equalitarianism , instead of Egalitarian a vision who accepts or promotes social equality and equal rights for all people because that is not yet possible in the material hierarchic structure of our world of objects and assets.

My other posts on Steemit about the blockchain and Realizable Utopias

The Rise of a Non-Competitive Society and the Importance of "Importance"
Can Steemit attention-economy be a "non-competitive" society?
Can Steemit be a Gandhi Phenomena?
Do Blockchain communities have a "Critical-Group" ?
Is the blockchain a "Hierarchical" or an "Equalitarian" Community?
Is the blockchain a Realizable Social Utopia?
An Ode to the blockchain - the Dialectic of Liberation
Steemit Value : Intangible Asset vs Tangible Asset Analysis
Steemit: Altruism and Financial Scarcity and the rise of Advertising
Steemit : The Shrinking of the Money Pie and the Rise of Human Pie

My Other posts on Steemit that discuss the problem of Power

Autonomy, Responsibility and Freedom - Interview Part 1 Autonomy, Responsibility and Freedom - Interview Part 2

B/W Pictures Source:

All black and white hand writing pictures included in the slides, are originally copied from the book - "Utopias Realizáveis" - (Realizable Utopias )by Yona Friedman , Sociocultur, Lisbon, 1977 (in Portuguese)

References:

Yona Friedman - wikipedia : Architect, urban planner, designer but also a sociology student, physics and science communications, Yona Friedman (Budapest, 1923) is back at the center of international architectural culture after having long been dismissed as Utopian. Member of the Hungarian anti-Nazi resistance, Friedman spent a few years in Haifa, Israel, where he sketched the first of his many theories, namely the Mobile Manifesto architecture in which special construction systems allow the inhabitant to determine for itself the shape, style etc. his apartment and to change it when they want it. website: Yona Friedman
Interview with Yona Friedman: "Imagine, Having Improvised Volumes "Floating" In Space, Like Balloons"
Yona Friedman 1000+ photos - Pinterest
One Video among hundreds : Yona Friedman: You are obliged to stay Mainstream
Attention economy - Wikipedia

Books of Yona Friedman

Yona Friedman - Utopies réalisables (1975)
"Utopias Realizáveis" - (Realizable Utopias )by Yona Friedman , Sociocultur, Lisbon, 1977 (in Portuguese)
Yona Friedman - About critical-group size (1980)
Yona Friedman - Comment vivre entre les autres sans être esclave et sans être chef, J.J. Pauvert, Paris, 1974
Other Books and Weblinks

Dennis R. Fox (1985) American Psychologist - Psychology, Ideology, Utopia, and the Commons The Politics of Utopia: A Study in Theory and Practice By Barbara Goodwin, Keith Taylor
(1) Memetic Lexicon. Glenn Grant
(2)"Psychology, Ideology, Utopia, and the Commons" - Dennis R. Fox (1985) American Psychologist