If anything the ability for people to get more points of view is now greater than ever before. Yesterday the BBC did a special on the Amazon rain forest. One reporter went to the end of nowhere where he interviewed a native rubber tapper living in a hut surrounded by jungle. In one corner of his home he had his TV and stereo, in another his traditional cultural items. Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
This diversity of diversion may be fun and informative, but it fails to fulfill the essential need of a democracy for accurate, timely social and political information on which to base a vote. I think very few here would make the case that the MSM- that central source for voter information- is really doing a good or honest job- a job structured to enable issues-based democracy to live.
And a lot of it IS new- for millenia, most people had nothing else than religion or tribalism. Today, the central limits on voter information are described here. "There is mysterious music in democracy, when people decide to believe in themselves." ---Bill Greider, The Nation.
people have been kept distracted for millennia using religion and nationalism (or tribalism)
People have not lived for millennia under the democracy myth, is the point. When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
People's 'faith' in the Anglo Orthodox ch*rch of Democracy is misplaced. In the version that is purveyed to us, top down hierarchy still reigns (and reins). IMO we haven't yet seen what real democracy is like. Various ancient cultures developed rather sophisticated systems of consensus that were obliterated by the spread of organized religions. Those ancient cultures were also tribal, but only to the extent that they lived in stable environment, unthreatened by other 'tribes', and thus their 'world' was self-contained. Since then, not very much.
But I believe this idea of our whole world being seen as self-contained will be a powerful motivation for the emergence of a new type of democracy. As the concept of living on a planet with limited resouces slowly and deeply permeates the entire human population of the world, our chances of bringing about change to a new hybrid of bottom up and top down, increase. You can't be me, I'm taken
One of my more controversial notions is that, if you have enough money-a continent to plunder helps- you could probably govern by reading chicken guts in a pot. Once the money runs thin, the tolerance for incompetence, corruption, stupid mistakes-- dumb notions such as "growth brings prosperity" or "Markets will allocate everything the best" gets much less. Even George might have been able to cope a century ago. That's why the discussion of "quality of life" becomes all-important: without a community definition of that, we cannot ask the real questions, like: --Is this a viable goal? --What's the best plan/path/model to get there? --what resources do we have to bring to bear on the problem? --How will we know when we're making progress? -- What's the end point? --Who among us will take responsibility for moving the ball?
Thanks, Saul Alinsky. "There is mysterious music in democracy, when people decide to believe in themselves." ---Bill Greider, The Nation.
What I find interesting is how you create the conditions for group responsibility, community responsibility, national responsibility and world responsibility - without pre-selecting any of the answers. The discussion should be quite open, but the decision ultimately has to be global. Does that make any sense? You can't be me, I'm taken
If we continue to be unwilling to do the full court press for this, the world's most difficult negotiation, several global processes will slide further from the negative feedback phase into the unstable zone, and thence to Jim Hansen's greatest fear- positive feedback. Then the solution will be imposed by massive species extinction- a process already underway. There are, I'm sure, many examples of incredibly difficult negotiated agreements. I'm not enough of a historian to list them--who among us might be? Real question. If we were to look at these, there might be the start of a model of a method of negotiation. As for the actual plan of action--Let's play with Alinsky's model--the one he used in Chicago on the A&P grocery chain with such success. I briefly skimmed it above. There's another issue: We need a man of undeniable stature, of deep charisma to run point.
I tend to think of JFK's marvellous ramrodding us to the moon. The Apollo project. An act of incredible risk and adventure, a technical triumph a half-century ahead of it's time. A great story: The three-body gravitational problem was the key to space navigation, and had no solution that could be applied to the first apollo flight to orbit and return from the moon. Nor did we have algorithms, experience or computing power to simulate it. Another mad Finlander, Sundman, had the best handle on it, but he had only an idea, and no data. They went, ---with a bare approximation, no real idea whether they would get to the moon,-- or die lost in space. I do not overdramatize. Radar data derived from tracking an onboard transponder was used to provide the data, and the calculation was made while they were in flight, using Sundman's ideas, and the mid-course burn data was, with fear and trembling, loaded. It was a do or die deal, literally. They did the engine burn, and when they analyzed the results, they were so good they decided to blow off the second burn. When they arrived, they were six miles high- a bullseye in the center of the bullseye. The geez wanders. But--if we can do this- the incredible adventure of the whole Apollo project- I have hope. "There is mysterious music in democracy, when people decide to believe in themselves." ---Bill Greider, The Nation.
