A plea for cohesivism - taking responsibility together

We grow up in a world with narratives. Some of those narratives become ideologies, and those ideologies inform political parties and the stories they tell to stick to power. We are told that capitalism means freedom because it is based on a free market system. We are told that society is made up of different groups. Black and white, rich and poor. And that these groups don’t mix.

We all KNOW that the world doesn’t really work this way. When we want to solve problems with our friends we don’t pick from a set of ideologies. We get together and we talk it out. That is the only proven way that works.

So why do we have a society that gets rid of the only proven way that works instead of using it to its full potential?

Why are we creating a world that increases distance by its designs? Why do we rely on systems that attribute responsibility to power?

A person called Apo for short had this same experience. He grew up as a Kurd in Turkey and turned to socialism to fight the injustice in the world. And he discovered it doesn’t work. Not because of a lack of good ideas. Many ideas of socialism are amazing and make even the most capitalist countries tick. No, it doesn’t work because of strive and opposition. Socialist movements are in constant opposition and are built on opposition. To the richer classes, to the oppressing class and to themselves. The plethora of opinions is good, amazing even. But it’s not good that we don’t have a stable community to draw on.

Apo didn’t stop there. He developed an alternative that is working right now in the region often called Rojava. Wikipedia calls it Apoism or “democratic confederalism”. That is quite a long name and doesn’t really cover a lot of elements at its core. For example the name doesn’t tell you that it’s basically an anarchist system with a fractalic structure, that it is built on top of the current law system of Syria but guarantees human rights, reproductive rights, religious freedom and much more essential elements of society. That Turkey tries to overthrow it, but can’t, because there is no one in charge to get rid of. It’s a society really run by the people.

My religion is the Bahá’í faith and it has a very similar approach for its administrative system. We get together regularly, have a yearly democratic vote without campaigning out of all people of voting age based on their capability to do their administrative tasks, and during the regular meetings we talk together about our needs and task the administrative system to do things if that turns out to be necessary. The local level also votes for delegates for a yearly meeting that votes for the national system, and the national level votes for the worldwide level based on the same principles.

I think we need to be able to provide an alternative for a political system that is literally not made to care about people. We need to focus on our local communities first, make them save and care about each other and about what is missing, and work towards a society that can take responsibility for the whole earth instead of only having the blame game as a real option to resort to.

I want a world that is capable of making its own choices. I want a world that is actually grown up instead of electing babies that treat us like babies.

That is what I propose under the name cohesivism. I know this is not much of a description, and it’s honestly not in the spirit of cohesivism to have a full description. Let’s develop together what it should be. But above all, let’s turn away from a world where we care more about fighting each other than caring and developing our world.