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a set of policy demands

Meanwhile the occupation grows day by day.

camp in Manhattan makes the doyens of the status quo feel nervous

‘Occupy’ camps in 70 cities across the nation last weekend.

Political leaders must be wondering what is going on. (‘Who are these kids? Would they vote for me?’)

the protesters

have no single message or identity

the movement

seems to follow the pattern set in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world earlier this year

Last week, the movement crossed a threshold. A localized set of swarm events evolved into a distributed swarm network.

OccupyWallStreet is a new kind of political movement.

The fact that the protesters have not leveled any political demands is significant.

creating a clamor of grievances that works surprisingly well to consolidate actions.

protesters are refusing to engage in traditional political action per se.

the movement is political, but this is a different kind of politics, which seeks to circumnavigate the tactics and fora of established political action.

To understand the true potential of the Occupy movement, we need to reflect on how the collective voice of the protesters is giving shape to a new vision of political culture, reigniting the hopes and dreams of those who are paying attention to it, in the US and elsewhere.

OccupyWallStreet is not a political movement in the traditional sense. It is a countercultural swarm. We need to see it as a swarm to understand why people are drawn to it, and what makes it the most important political force on the planet today.

The most powerful movements of the 20th century were identity-based movements,

‘We, the oppressed X, gather together to challenge the forces amassed against us’.

these movements have political limits, set by the system that they chose to work within. We see the limits of these movements when we compare and contrast the way that they shape the identities of their members with swarm movements.

we can say that traditional movements shape and transform their member’s identities in the following way: first, by orienting thought in relation to a

‘cognitive map’ of how things work

second, corralling identity in terms of a unitary social class or group

and finally, by activating the movement by steering its energies towards contesting established political and legal structures.

Swarm movements shape identity in a completely different way.

First off, they are are issue- or cause-based, rather than identity-based, movements.

affirm the diversity of participants as their fundamental strength

Instead of seeking to reduce the movement

diversity

is powerful when focused on a common cause.

A second point of difference between traditional and swarm movements concerns what these movements seek to achieve. 

Traditional movements focus on challenging and changing institutions. The goals of these movements are thus extrinsic to the movements themselves: they are achieved as a result of movement activity. Swarms can (and usually do) set extrinsic goals. Their primary goal, however, is to sustain the critical mass that holds the network together. As a result, movement activity is focused more on the intrinsic goal of empowering the swarm than any extrinsic goal the movement might hope to achieve. This can make swarms look unfocused from an external point of view. But within the movement, conditions tend to be highly conducive for participation. Swarm movements are intrinsically empowering and thus intrinsically rewarding for participants. Ultimately, participants do not need to look beyond the act of participation for a reason to join the swarm. Swarming is its own reward; the payoff is the empowerment that comes from swarming.

the more we look for extrinsic goals, the further get from understanding what really inspires swarm activity. Swarms are based in a common sense of potential. What catalyzes a swarm movement is the sense that here, today, a new way of working and living together is possible.

Swarms are transformative movements. Insofar as members acknowledge a common sense of  identity, it is a transformative identity, a sense of being part of a movement that is changing the world.

First, a mass of people acquire a new cognitive map, representing an original conception of what they can achieve together as a network. The cognitive maps that inspire OccupyWallStreet and Occupy Together resonate with innovations in the online world. OccupyWallStreet is an ‘open space’ movement. The camp structure is an open API that anyone is free to hack into and explore using MeetUp as a Directory. The second step in the process comes when the mass of people who apply these cognitive maps start reflecting on how working together expands their common potential. This insight gives rise to the swarm. A swarm movement comes into being as a swarm when a mass collective grasps what it is capable of achieving en masse.

No government or political institution can hold its ground when confronted with a new collective sense of what human beings are capable of doing and achieving en masse.

Swarm movements do not expend their energies by contesting the status quo. They reinvent it. Norms slide in all directions and political institutions are forced to keep up.

The protesters in Liberty Square and across the US are engaged in a more serious business than contesting dominant institutions.

The human microphone system is a physical expression of the appreciative process that happens on the internet all the time.

OccupyWallStreet applies the same modus operandi to transformative political action. I see it as a living expression of the intuition behind ‘Coalition of the Willing’: