In Canada, we have three major institutions:
Our society is built on extracting resources on behalf of the Crown, the corporation, and the church from people who we are supposed to consider as others in a competition for scarce resources, whether it is land, oil, money, or access to a fictionalized afterlife.
We don’t have permission from our institutions to use our time to enjoy human community for the sake of its own pleasure of sharing a table, sharing a meal, and sharing conversation.
By creating the conditions to render difference as suspect and as a form of sedition against the state and a form of apostasy against the orthodoxy of the market economy, the activities that would normally be considered as the means of building authentic relationships, supportive networks, and interdependent social organizations is discouraged and often criminalized as a threat to the social order.
What if people were given permission to be curious? What if people had permission to explore different ways of being in community.
First, question the power of those in authority. Then, discover that change never comes from the top down. Hierarchies are built for self-preservation and maintenance of the status quo.
Change always happens from the ground up. Find ways to build a network of people who can innovate and transform the world, not by fighting the existing system, but by creating new models to replace the obsolete systems.