Good point Chris.
I was forgetting how thick skinned a politician needs to be to work their
way through the party system, the election and so forth.
I'm even a little embarrassed at my naivete now. ooops
It's all about doing what you can do, where you are and doing it now.
Shay
At 18:46 06/07/2004, you wrote:
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
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