The problem we face isn’t simply that the system is broken, it’s that we’re still trying to fix it using the thinking that built it. This path of only describing how bad things are, identifying the bad actors and demanding that those in power do better have failed to produce the necessary change. We already know the problems. We have mountains of research, reports, campaigns and expert recommendations. Yet the machinery keeps rolling. Why?

We should understand by now that the problem is deeper than bad decisions or a lack of information, it’s embedded in the social processes through which we create what we accept as rational, reasonable and possible. the work of composting this mess has important connections with what we’ve been trying to work through in the #OMN. The is a trap we need to shovel is the #mainstreaming idea of rationality.

We have inherited a political culture that assumes if we provide enough evidence, make a convincing argument and present a reasonable solution, people and institutions will eventually do the sensible thing. But this isn’t how power works – institutions develop their own interests, habits and survival mechanisms. Media, government, professional organizations and political movements reinforce one another. They create a shared version of reality that becomes detached from the conditions outside of this narrow view.

This is the current problem with #mainstreaming – the constant reproduction of accepted thinking, even when that thinking is clearly failing. The problem isn’t that rational thought has no value, it’s that treating rational argument as the only legitimate way of understanding and changing the world leaves out the emotional, cultural and social processes that actually shape human behaviour. We end up arguing only inside the very framework we need to be challenging.

Over the last 50 years we have made a compleat artificial mess of our society, economics and political systems and this fog of complexity (re)creates the current political paralysis. Responsibility gets distributed across supply chains, institutions, technologies and distant relationships. Harm becomes normalized because nobody sees the whole process or feels directly responsible for its outcomes – createing a dangerous form of desensitization.

We are continually presented with crises, disasters and warnings, each is supposedly unprecedented, yet the next arrives before we’ve processed the last, eventually, even enormous problems become background noise. The #deathcult survives partly through this exhaustion, we become accustomed to systemic failure and lose the ability to imagine anything different.

More information alone won’t fix this, we need different social processes for making sense of complexity and acting collectively. We need circuit breakers, not more common sense hierarchy. One core path to this is projects like the #OGB, with the use of randomly selected body members (voices) to create federated’ assemblies, useing three essential elements:

Sortition: bringing people into the process from outside established political and institutional networks.

Free deliberation: giving them space (working groups) to think and work through problems without simply following existing political loyalties.

Real authority: ensuring their conclusions have meaningful social power.

The metaphor that might have power on this needed path is the #circuitbreaker. Instead of allowing the same institutional networks to reproduce the same decisions, introduce a process that interrupts established power and creates space for different outcomes. This for the #OMN is the #OGB: grassroots governance with mechanisms that distribute power, allow participation, enable recall and prevent permanent leadership positions from becoming personal fiefdoms. Its #KISS, we need to build these processes into the technology itself, not bolt them on afterwards.

This possible opening takes us into working alongside the current blinded rationality to try to rebuild human connection. People aren’t rational processing units, social movements aren’t management systems. Trust, shared experience, imagination, solidarity and collective practice are essential parts of how people make change. This is one of the biggest problems with the #geekproblem, the assumption that if we build the correct technical system, the social problems will somehow resolve themselves. They won’t.

Transgression means building outside the existing paths and frameworks, not simply better campaigning, better messaging or more efficient versions of existing institutions. We need to challenge the assumptions that make the current system appear inevitable. For the #OMN, this means moving beyond the familiar cycle of identifying problems, writing reports, applying for funding and waiting for institutional approval. It means rebuilding grassroots media, shared infrastructure, collective governance and human relationships. It means creating practical alternatives that people can participate in.

The #openweb is part of this, not as another technology market, but as a different way of organizing information, ownership and social power.

• #4opens gives us a practical starting point: open data, open source, open standards and open process.

• #OGB explores how we can build horizontal governance into the foundations rather than relying on whoever happens to hold the keys.

• #indymediaback is about recovering the grassroots media practices that once made independent networks possible.

These aren’t separate technical projects, they are parts of wider attempts to rebuild the social conditions for collective action. But to make this path work we need to compost the biggest danger, that we fall into the same mess, as the existing system becomes more unstable, we double down on its assumptions. More hierarchy, more professional management, more institutional control, more technology promising to optimize the same broken processes.

This is the familiar #mainstreaming response of absorbing the criticism to turn it into another professional programme and carry on as before. We need to resist that pull, we need to keep to the path as the answer isn’t to find better princes and kings, or to build more sophisticated digital castles. It’s to create systems where power is shared, decisions remain accountable and people can participate without needing permission from above.

We need to compost assumptions, recover the grassroots knowledge buried underneath and grow something different to take the path of less management of the existing mess, more practical experiments in building what comes next. The future won’t arrive as a finished blueprint, we have to grow it together.