Bruce Bisset: Change comes with common unity

Seems  to me if we are to find a replacement for the ailing capitalist system we should start with what is - or should be - the background to all human interaction: community.
One of the ways we need to reform society is through recognising that we have become far too self-absorbed. The stresses of the modern rat race combined with the virtual worlds of online technology are producing people who are inherently asocial.
Not introverted or anti-social; simply cocooned - by preference.
People talk less - or should I say, converse less, especially face to face - and are retreating into the reclusive shells of suburban coffins at increasingly younger ages.
In consequence, we have lost the easy fellow feeling of belonging to a true community because most simply do not know or even recognise one. Our close relationships are very private, and our public ones very guarded.
This fosters a growing civil agoraphobia, which affects directly how the world functions. Because everything of consequence is "out there", and out there is dangerous, the problems of the world seem distant and insurmountable.
Divorced from the reality of global problems, we cannot begin to take action to solve them. And most people are so divorced: they ignore or at best mutter a forlorn "how sad" when confronted by these issues because they feel isolated from them - even though they are contributing to them.
In turn, that allows the land-rapists and the sea-scalpers to continue their despoliation of the Earth unchecked - and they excuse themselves on the basis that if people really cared they'd rise up against it.
Yet it's not that people don't care, it's that they do not care enough. And they do not care enough because they are losing the value of community - so there is no collective will and collective responsibility underpinning their lives. Self is all and self can do nothing. So they think.
Community is common unity, as Tariana Turia reminded us in the excellent documentary on local hero Henare O'Keefe which screened on Saturday. Henare embraces that spirit body and soul, and is living proof that anyone can transcend their background if only they dare to put others before themselves.
It's a Christian thing to do and a communist thing to do. Which is no contradiction, because it is simply a human thing to do.
The re-establishment of what some might see as base tribal values is what we must bring about if we are to find ways to build more sustainable and all-encompassing models of society, commerce and industry.
Models that include, not exclude; that empower, not impoverish; that nurture, not destroy.
One such model - which I do not embrace entirely but which is certainly a step in the right direction - is network marketing or relationship marketing as some call it.
It gets labelled pyramid selling but there's no rip-off involved; it rewards directly on individual effort, yet in a mutually supportive and community-oriented way, with profits shared with your co-workers.
Besides, is not a classic corporate structure a pyramid? Yet in network marketing anyone can earn as much or more than the chief executive simply by dint of hard work.
Called the business model for the 21st century, even Fortune 500 companies are now changing their way of selling to embrace the network concept. It's a step towards a more holistic approach to business, one that recognises and rewards individual effort proportionately, no matter where on the "ladder" you are.
And which recognises and rewards community effort equally. Simply, it builds human relationships - because that's what it relies on.
See, all of the old "isms" now carry far too much baggage with them to be valid - even if, in pure theoretical form, they are marvellous concepts. So we need to discover and embrace new models that "cross the tracks" of the old to deliver what we need most - common unity.
At the same time, we need to not just view the "four well-beings" of governance - economic, social, cultural and environmental - as being equally valid but to raise up the environment as most in need of primacy, replacing economics as the first qualifier for change.
Finding and refining a model that achieves both main purposes is the way forward. For business, for society and for the planet.
That's the right of it.
Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.