AT
SIMPOL YOU CAN LEARN HOW TO MAKE SIMPLE, AMAZING & NUTRITIOUS DISHES from the award-winning Filipino-Fusion master chef Tatou Sarthou.
If only transformational planetary politics were that easy!
Of course there is another
Simpol. This other one invites you to become part of an international movement to pressure and persuade legislators into enacting
simultaneous policies.
This is essential in a world of multipolar traps where large international corporations can play countries off against each other.
Want better environmental standards, cleaner technologies or a fair, free and well-informed citizenry? Okay. We'll just take our hundreds of billions of dollars to the next country. And they're probably worse than you.
It is a damnable situation to feel that you have to say YES or someone else will, but let's face it -- the majority of the issues feeding the Metacrisis simply cannot be resolved at the local or national level. Yet that's where we keep trying to have the battle.
Developmentally-speaking, most people are ethnocentric or nation-centric in their visceral assumptions about where the great practical and ethical struggles need to occur. Of course we
want problems solved at the lowest, most local scale that is possible but if the main drivers of the accumulating Metacrisis are INTER-national then fighting the good fight nationally might be... part of the problem?
According to his bio (at
GreatTransition), John Bunzl
is a global political activist, businessman & author who founded the Simultaneous Policy (Simpol) campaign in 2000 CE.
And it is seemingly getting things done. Bunzl has achieved a notable degree of international prominence and official buy-in from legislators and political reformers in over 100 countries.
His interesting article on
Promoting Interstate Cooperation highlights the idea that, although we have to play this game at the planetary scale, nonetheless we want to avoid any centralized, homogenous schemes for global governance. His principles are:
Simultaneity, Give-and-take, Policies-not-targets, No one-size-fits-all approaches & Democracy-where-possible. John is relentlessly pragmatic and plausible. These principles are oriented toward working with the world that actually exists. We cannot damn or exclude the big players who need to agree to the improvement of the world. Yet we should also be skeptical.
How much suffering is permitted by
democracy... where possible? Who determines the limits of possibility? Can a well-being oriented global system exist without centralized administrative enforcement? Don't we need definite targets in order to address definite crises? Etc.
Many of us should be pondering into this planetary political and economic space but, even if we had a rough consensus about how to change things, could it be implemented?
What makes sane, planetary cooperation such a difficult dish to prepare? One concern is that it may already be too late to use representational pressure to mobilize legislatures.
The American government has, for decades, consistently NOT implemented measures that are supported by the major of citizens and instead consistently implemented legislation favored by the wealthiest families. Russia ignores popular sentiment. France's Macron is making notorious changes against the will of his people and their parliament. China evades bottom-up pressure. And in every nation, enormous mass protests go ignored.
So where does Bunzl think
the People can actually apply leverage?
Yet as dark at that sounds, Bunzl &co. are at least thinking at the scale of the problem. Most of us aren't even doing that. Regardless of how likely you think it is (or isn't) that SIMPOL can be implemented, it might be a gamble worth supporting.
*
BONUS *
Do you love Escabecheng Galunggong? Of course you do! Check out Chef Tatung's secret recipe:
