[P2P-F] Fwd: A society governed by the people's wisdom...

Wed Jan 30 15:20:59 CET 2013

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tom Atlee <cii at igc.org>
Date: Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 1:12 AM
Subject: A society governed by the people's wisdom...
To: undisclosed list <cii at igc.org>

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Dec 2012-Jan 2013  Co-Intelligence Institute fundraiser  progress report:

Funds raised so far:  $3884  //  Our target:  $20,000
Percentage of needed funds raised so far: 19.4%
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Thank you to the 43 people who have responded so far!

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If you value our work, please participate with a donation.
See the end of this mailing for how to contribute.
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http://tom-atlee.posterous.com/a-society-governed-by-the-peoples-wisdom
short url:  http://post.ly/A9eh0

Dear friends,

Last weekend I joined a small group exploring the idea that society could
have the capacity to generate "public wisdom" and that we could empower
that wisdom to support wiser public policy and popular behavior.

Because many people don't know what we mean by "public wisdom", we
clarified that, for the purposes of this inquiry,
 the word "public" means that
    - the wisdom is generated by ordinary people
    - in groups who embody the diversity of their communities
    - for the guidance of officials and the citizenry (the whole public)
    - regarding public affairs and the concerns of the citizenry
    - in forms that are known about and readily accessible to everyone.
 and the word "wisdom" means, simply,
    - taking into account what needs to be taken into account
    - for long term broad benefit.

Evidence suggests that under the right conditions, ordinary people can
produce that kind of wisdom on behalf of their community or country.  (I
explore those "right conditions" in my 2012 book EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM
http://empoweringpublicwisdom.us/.)

In our gathering last weekend, my colleague Carolyn Shaffer invited me to
answer the following question:

   "How is life in the public realm better after empowered public wisdom
takes hold?"

Her question invited me to assume that a culture of empowered public wisdom
had already come about.  It was an interesting exercise.  I want to share
with you my answers.  Perhaps they will help you see why some of us are so
attracted to this approach to social change.

When I imagine myself in a culture that enables and empowers public wisdom,
I imagine a society in which the following are true:

*  In general, among all of us, there is a very strong sense of - and
identity as - "We the People".  We see ourselves, together, as the
powerful, wise, self-governing force of our shared world.  We are our own
wise sovereign, a sensible collective guide arising from our informed,
shared common sense.

*  We feel the government is US, not THEM.  We feel that WE, ourselves,
collectively, are running things, making our communities and countries work
well.  We are competently creating better prospects for our children - and
we are proud of that.

*  Most issues are getting resolved in ways that the vast majority of us -
usually well over 80% - think are sensible.  We treasure and protect the
systems we have instituted to achieve those results.

*  There is less protest and money in politics than in "the old days" - and
far more productive conversation.  There is still attempts at political
manipulation and polarization, but they are minor footnotes to the overall
functioning of our politics and government.  We recall with some horror the
old days when "politics" meant all-out polarized battle, often with little
real discussion or insight about what was really going on and what was
really important.  (Young people today can't even grasp how insane it all
was!)

*  We often watch a randomly selected group of our fellow citizens working
through a difficult issue or creating a budget using our citizen
deliberative council approach.  Many of us participate in forums, chats and
call-ins before, during, and after such formal deliberations.  Viewing and
participating in citizen deliberations is a major national pastime.  After
all, hot debates often surface and dramatic stories get told.  Since the
results affect us all, we're intensely curious each time to see how it will
turn out.  We have to admit, however, that as popular as these
deliberations are, they only occasionally get better ratings than major
sports events.  (Some things never change!)

*  More and more people see political parties as anachronisms.  Their
remnants today are fringe, sort of quaint, like Civil War re-enactments.
 They've been largely replaced by self-organized political discussion
forums and advocacy alliances that cross over and mix up what people used
to see (in the old days) as Left and Right, liberal and conservative.  Most
of us are now fully aware that such partisan over-simplicity doesn't come
close to reflecting our tremendous diversity and creativity, to say nothing
of our potential common ground on 90% of the issues we face.

*  Seeking that common ground, people listen well to each other in
political conversations and know how to use their differences creatively.
 Many methods for doing that are well known and widely used.  For many
years we always depended on professional facilitators, moderators and
mediators to help us do this, but we are rapidly a broad cultural
competence at doing it ourselves.

*  When there is political battle - which still happens occasionally - it
is usually (not always) respectful and provides us observers with useful
information about the issues.  We tend to recognize and dismiss partisans
who use attack ads and undue emotional manipulation in their propaganda.
Most of us know we have far better ways to learn about and decide about the
big issues in our society.

*  Engaged citizens frequently turn to the crowd-sourced Deliberapedia -
first described in the book Empowering Public Wisdom by Tom Atlee - to get
a clear sense of the arguments that support various approaches to each
issue.  Many of us - especially us activist types - add our two cents or
rewrite sections to make it more complete or useful.  Deliberapedia
increasingly covers fringe approaches and emerging issues, which is good
because some of the lesser-known issues and approaches are where the most
important wisdom shows up first or is needed most.

*  Although so much of our political and government activity is handled by
citizen deliberations in policy juries and by citizen-reviewed ballot
initiatives, we still have a representative system of government.  However,
unlike in "the old days", we feel like our reps work for us, rather than
over us or behind our backs.  The reps mission is to help craft our
expressed collective policy preferences into a consistent body of laws that
all stakeholders can live with and support, and to make sure their
constituents are engaged and cared for in the process.  We're very proud of
how we've woven representative democracy, direct democracy, and citizen
deliberative democracy into a potent and satisfying whole.

*  We push our diplomats to use wisdom-generating conversations rather than
violence, threat, and manipulation in international relations.  This shift
mimics what most of us are doing more and more in our homes and
communities.  The biggest result of all this is that families, communities,
countries and the world are much more peaceful.

*  In general, per survey data, we feel far less fear and far more
collective determination, creative engagement, and willingness to explore
transformative approaches when addressing crisis-level issues like climate
change, economic disruption, nuclear issues, emerging technologies, and the
remnants of terrorism (there's less of it but it's often more dangerous).
 We've come to understand that such crises can help us focus on the need
for fundamentally new approaches.

*  A sustainable economy is evolving based on enhancing and sustaining our
quality of life together right where we are, more than on consuming and
having our own stuff made in big factories and plantations far away.
 Resource constraints and new technologies are combining to channel more
economic activities into local interactions, enhanced by lots of sharing
and gifting and mutual aid.  Much has been written about how our systems
for eliciting public wisdom have contributed to our turning away en masse
from mass consumerism to this far more satisfying way of life that happens
to also be more sustainable.

*  Thanks to our spreading sense of ownership and participation in
governance, governments no longer complain about scarcity of resources for
programs and services.  For one thing, there's less need for government as
we return to doing more things for ourselves and each other and building
mutually supportive communities.  For similar reasons, many remaining
government programs don't cost as much as they once did because so many
people are involved in creating and implementing them, so they are far less
bureaucratic than in the old days.  Finally, we have wisely revised our tax
systems, replacing taxes on income from productive work with taxes on
activities that threaten or damage our "general welfare" (that great phrase
from the US Constitution has become quite popular in recent decades).  We
see taxes as a way to support our society's health and to practice
responsible citizenship, not as an oppressive burden.

*  We keep close watch over our public-wisdom generating processes to
protect them from being corrupted.  Luckily, we have the means to do that:
periodic review by both randomly selected citizen panels AND ongoing
oversight by American Citizens Engaged - our independent association of
past members of citizen deliberative councils.  Backing them up are very
tough laws against efforts to corrupt the process or the citizens who are
selected to participate in it.  Finally we can and do sometimes hold
referendums (at every level including the national) to head off sneaky
efforts to degrade our wisdom-generating systems and their safeguards.

By using random selection for our temporary citizen councils, we greatly
reduce the problem of corruption.  We take seriously abolitionist Wendell
Phillips' 1852 warning that "Eternal vigilance is the price of
liberty—power is ever stealing from the many to the few…. The hand
entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people."  Random
selection, as our ancient Athenian democracy-ancestors knew, is a potent
antidote to the corruptions of power and the manipulations of elites.
 Unlike the ancient Athenians, we include every adult in our random
selections and we use it to maintain the integrity of our representative
system - our republic - as well, so that we can have the best of both
worlds.  Our citizen councils enhance the "balance of power" America's
founders innovated when they equally empowered all three branches of
government - legislative, executive, and judicial.  We also use the eternal
vigilance of the People's collective wisdom to oversee the behavior of our
media and those corporations upon which we still depend.

Our biggest innovation is that we use not just vigilance but wisdom - our
collective wisdom.  In 1958 theologian Henry Nelson Wieman warned, "The
predicament of Western man …is a failure to develop wisdom proportionate to
power …Wisdom must be in proportion to power if power is to be used wisely.
All the evidence seems to indicate that the wisdom of the majority of
people in Western culture has not been increasing as rapidly as the
gigantic increase in power which they have acquired …Wisdom in this context
is the understanding of other minds and of one’s own mind in such a way
that one knows what are his basic needs, the needs of others, and the most
important needs of human kind."

This we have done by catalyzing a leap in the wisdom that we - we ordinary
people together - can co-create and apply to the conditions of our lives,
the life of our communities, and the world that our children's great
grandchildren will thrive in.  Knowing the risks of "gigantic power", we
have given our collective wisdom the power to monitor the other forms of
power we have collectively created - social, political, economic, and
technological powers - powers whose tremendous gifts come with great
shadows that can only be effectively illuminated and dissipated with the
revealing light of the collective wisdom we generate together.

So we do that.

---

I invite you to add your own thoughts and visions regarding "public wisdom"
by submitting a comment on this blog post. (You can also reply to me, but
that would deprive others of your insights.)

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TO SUPPORT THE CO-INTELLIGENCE INSTITUTE & TOM ATLEE'S WORK...

Please send a tax deductible donation of any amount --
   $10, $25, $50, $100, $500 or more -- to

The Co-Intelligence Institute
PO Box 493
Eugene, OR 97440

or use your Visa or MasterCard - or Paypal - to make an online donation at
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or tell some friends you know about our work, and invite them to support it.

Do let me know when you've mailed a donation, so I can add it to our tally
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away.  Including your email address on your check will help me keep track of
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You can also use the link above to arrange a monthly donation.

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                For a contribution of $100 or more
  we will send a signed copy of "Empowering Public Wisdom".

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________________________________

Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, POB 493, Eugene, OR 97440
http://www.co-intelligence.org  /  http://tom-atlee.posterous.com
Read THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY -  http://www.taoofdemocracy.com
EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM - http://empoweringpublicwisdom.us
REFLECTIONS ON EVOLUTIONARY ACTIVISM - http://evolutionaryactivism.com
________________________________

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