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Direct engagement in building a better world
Posted by: WebMaster (IP Logged)
Date: October 24, 2006 10:36PM

WDDM member Richard Moore is facilitating a community dialogue about "Direct engagement in building a better world" in Nanaimo, B.C., Canada this week (October 27): [www.harbourliving.ca].


He is staying in British Columbia for a week. His first presentation was in Victoria (Oct. 26). This evening he is on Gabriola Island. He will be also speaking in Vancouver Oct. 39-31 (contact: peoplepower(at)shaw.ca or ghyle(at)telus.net, and in Vernon Nov. 1-2 (xpac(at)cablelan.net).

webmaster



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2006 05:17PM by WddmAdmin.


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Richard generated significant interest in Nanaimo
Posted by: WebMaster (IP Logged)
Date: October 28, 2006 05:59PM

During his presentations Richard was explaining the ideas described in detail in his book Escaping the Matrix. To me his "Harmonization and Localism" are more or less other terms for "Achieving Consensus" (or rather Consent - see Sociocratic Method) and for "Local Autonomy".
Localism envisions creating fully autonomous democratically governed communities generally not larger than about 3000 citizens.
Harmonization refers to how each community would govern itself democratically without the need for voting. Harmonization is to be achieved with the help of Wisdom Councils - an institution quite similar to the Planning Cells (Germany) or Citizen Juries (USA). Wisdom Council consists of about 12 randomly selected members of a community who would engage in a facilitated dialogue for a weekend or two, and present the consensus that they arrived at in a report to the whole community for further consideration/implementation. Each time different 12 members of the community would be selected.
All matters of mutual interest of/conflict between individual communities would also be solved by some sort of harmonization up to the level of the whole world.


General consensus among participants was that for this to work well to replace the current system of government, a profound transformation of the society is needed. However, Richard actually also offers a simple proposal how to start implementing such a system right now: Find a suitable community with enough activists willing to participate in organizing the Harmonization approach. Get a small grant, use this grant to get good Dynamic Facilitators. An organizing committee of activists would then select every two weeks twelve random and willing participants. They would engage in a dialogue for a few days with the help of facilitators, and present a report to the community. Do this for six months, if done properly, this is supposed to change the community's approach to public matters significantly for better. It this would be a success, the first trial community would pass their experience on to other communities to start the same thing.


They may even be enough activists in Nanaimo who are thinking about trying this in a suitable neighbourhood of the city!


Richard promised to write himself for the WDDM about his ideas and proposals in more details.

webmaster



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2006 06:39PM by WddmAdmin.


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Re: Direct engagement in building a better world
Posted by: Stephanie McDowall (IP Logged)
Date: October 29, 2006 07:26PM

I was at Janet's on the 27th and attended the evening session as well which was a repeat more or less of what Richard had to say during the afternoon.


Not a great turn out unfortunately. It was a different type of group as well. Far more questioning than we were.


How long would it take for Richard's idea to become common practise? A generation or two?
Stephanie.


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Re: Direct engagement in building a better world
Posted by: GlobalGeniusVoter (IP Logged)
Date: December 02, 2006 07:17PM

the urge for a new way of DIRECTion is NOW ...


so why wait?


we wait for the people to understand the urge?
simply, no ... Leadership means DIRECTing Navigation ...
navigation is a convenient theme ...


so direct engagement :: put it widely on the agenda ...


And... strategy forget to struggle for either RD or DD ...
go for the 3th way :: continious democracy


my analysis says: define the catalyzer that orders our language ...
from that mutual change in political conversations ...
define and build the Continious Way of being Demos


~~~
just ice in articulation an advise, a vise of catalysing


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