Seamus McInerney wrote:
Following on from the half way technology discussion, I am tempted to wonder what could be done to ask a million people "Given the situation X, what are the next steps to take?". Can we imagine a technology that would be used to really get the views of 100 million people, that would be self-organising and that would deliver to the so called representative's desk on Monday morning a complete report of the views of the people and an indication of the most popular courses of action. Could the 300 or so subscribers to oslist do an on line OS on the global questions or on a particular current crisis? The population is certainly diverse enough. Maybe we could develop something that would force our representatives to represent the collective wisdom and be the forerunner of an on line system of collective governance. You might find the politicians lurking about on the list looking for all the really clever ideas that would emerge.
Shay: I've been thinking a lot about the nature of democracy lately, and especially thinking about human societies as complex adaptive systems. All this has led me to a focus on action, especially what Vaclav Havel calls "living in truth." In other words, democracy seems to be not about voting or sharing views, but rather about looking at what needs to be done around you and actually doing it. What is important is the action, and that's one of the reasons I love Open Space. In OST meetings we get a great deep dialogue experience, but even more important than that is the nature of the action that follows, as passion and responsibility translate back into the "real" world. So I have my doubts about collecting a bunch of information and providing to politicians as if they are at the top of a pyramid. Ultimately, it is the people's action that moves things, not the chosen paths of the politicians. The mayor of my island (who is a fan of OST...lucky me eh?) has a bumper sticker on her car that says: "There they go! I must follow them for I am their leader!" That seems to me to be a significant shift, for it puts politicians in the position of offering support to groups of people that are doing things. Then their decision becomes one of stewardship: how can we best use the collective resources of this town/province/country to support action we believe makes a difference? Complex adaptive systems work because agents undertake actions on the local level. Politicians, like the rest of us, can only act on these levels too. The difference is that they have much different resources available to them. Chris -- CHRIS CORRIGAN Bowen Island, BC, Canada (604) 947-9236 Consultation - Facilitation Open Space Technology Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot Homepage: http://www.chriscorrigan.com ch...@chriscorrigan.com * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
