Wow. Kirkpatrick Sale has been seeking justice and humane policies for us all for many decades. What a pleasure to talk with him about some o f his extraordinary ideas

::::::::

Kirkpatrick Sale

Kirkpatrick Sale is the author of a dozen books, including After Eden: The evolution of Human Domination, 

  Human Scale and Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution , and is the Director of the Middlebury Institute for the study of separation, secession, and self-determination.

An Overview of Decentralism by Kirkpatratrick Sale International Decentralist Conference, organized by the E. F. Schumacher Society  June 28-30, 1996

Interview notes-- mostly my questions. 

Rob: You disagree with me on bottom-up. Why?

Rob: You talk, in your article, about how the US is too big and that it should be smaller, that you have some ideas about how big the ideal nation should be. Can you talk about it?

We had a meeting in Montpelier VT, discussing problems with politics, about reform, about revolution, like quebec (adjacent to Vermont). Then we talked about secession, how a great part of the world had been formed by secession or separatism. There were 54 nations in the UN at time of it's formation, now there are over 200. 

one of SDS's great slogans. 

What are the criteria that you base success on in assessing the ideal size for a successful nation?

Number of people in a nation.

GDP, most democratic, freedom list published by Freedom House

Rob: Are there current examples of nations that have seceded recently that are currently thriving?

states from former Soviet Union

Scotland has a movement to secede

Strong movement in Catalonia

New strength for Quebecois 

All the states of former Yugoslavia

Rob: What have we learned from the European Union, where independent nations have come together?

Makes banks and corporations happy. It hasn't proven to be such a great success, getting bigger. 

Rob: Obama won using bottom-up over Hillary

Wait a minute. Let's not forget Wall Street and Hollywood.

Kirkpatrick: So, how are you going to get rid of billionaires? 

Rob: it's very difficult, maybe impossible today, but you have to put the ideas out there or nothing will happen. 

Rob: Can you talk about your ideas about the evolution of human domination?

70,000 years ago humans developed spear points. That led to taking animal lives and hunting-- the beginning of separating ourselves from nature. Next, were animal extinctions occurring about 20,000 years ago  at depth of the ice age, happened on all continents. For example, in North America humans drove all the mega-fauna to extinction.  Next was farming-- prisonizing or domestication of plants and animals. 

Wrote a chapter on how the world was before hunting, how we lived for a million years, as a part of nature. 

Rob: Does religion play a role in the scenario that you're describing?

Evidence of religion doesn't appear until about 26,000 years ago-- people where buried with great riches, presumably because there was an afterlife. Once you have an afterlife, there's a religion. 

Rob: have you looked at domination in terms of humans dominating other humans?

starts with beginnings of agriculture--  which led to empires. 

In tribal times there seems to be very few 

I am reminded here of a story that Leopold Kohr, the great decentralist economist, used to tell, about going to Lichtenstein and wanting to visit the Prime Minister of the country. He went to the castle, rang the bell, and the man who answered the door and ushered him in, whom he assumed to be a servant, turned out to be the Prime Minister himself. And when they were seated in his office, chatting, the phone rang and the minister answered, saying, "Government." You see? with a tiny country like that government is always there, always responsive, always able to answer the phone and take care of your problem.

Rob: Tell me about decentralism

Decentralists try to devolve power or eliminate power. They have the idea that power and authority are to be avoided. 

Rob: How's that work? Have there been centralized places or countries have been decentralized.

Rob: Can we get back to talking about domination of humans over humans?

26,000 years ago-- burials of a few "upper class" people in Russia.  Indicates hierarchy and power. 

Rob: so do you think that attachment to land is a key factor in humans dominating other humans?

Rob: It's only the past few hundred years, since industrialization, or maybe since columbus, that most people have become a part of civilization. 

that's the great problem, civilization

Rob: Talk about that

book, rebels against the future-- about the Luddites

The last of the Luddite uprising was, in England, in 1814, 200 years ago. 

What do you think progress is?

If there's anything that offers any portion of a chance that we will survive-- it's the end of civilization. 

There are many signs" 

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.

His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

Join the conversation:

On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution

and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation