www.world-wide-democracy.net

THOUGHTS (continued)

IT'S TIME FOR ACTION

I envision a World Institute of Direct Democracy, an organization with a fourfold mission:

  1. One: to function as an implementing organization that aids social units—large and small—requesting guidance in their attempts to initiate a DD form of government.

  2. Two: to train and provide the personnel who will actually teach and assist these social units to conduct Planning Cells/Citizen Juries, which I prefer to call Citizen Advisory Committees as I believe it is more descriptive of the groups' function.

  3. Three: to promote an awareness within all spheres of society that DD is the only true democracy, and that many social illnesses can be eliminated only within the environment of a true democracy.

  4. Four: to make the organization financially self-sufficient.

A few truths about human frailties must first be acknowledged:

  • Generally, the masses are timid and too fearful of change to be of much help in transforming their political systems into DD systems.

  • Generally, middle-class, middle-aged citizens are too politically indifferent, too economically dependent upon corporations and social institutions to voluntarily threaten their economic lifelines, no matter how inadequate.

  • Generally, it's doubtful if upper middle-class workers of a society would risk their comparatively luxurious lifestyles to join a movement that might change their economic status, any more than elite citizens of the society would join and jeopardize theirs.

  • Specifically, the more aggressive, superpatriotic groups with their weapons and brute force preferences are the wrong ones to grant leadership of a society. Brute force hasn't solved human problems in the past and won't solve them now

  • Logically, there are two groups that should lead any movement for DD: the academic and the scientific communities. It's the students, teachers, scientists, and philosophers—the active seekers of truth and knowledge—who will be a stabilizing element in any attempt to initiate true democracy, and they should assume their advisory role at the very beginning.


Why preference for the academic and scientific communities above all other segments of society? For four reasons.
First: As opposed to the economic and political segments, which thrive in environments of greed, deception, and hypocrisy, the inhabitants of both the academic and scientific communities are thoroughly immersed in environments that value truth and knowledge, making them the most logical ones to transmit these values to all of us.
Second: These people already possess networks of communications. Through seminars, special classes, sports competitions, and many other ways, teachers, students, and working scientists freely communicate with their counterparts around the world.
Third: Many in both communities possess a long-held distrust and dislike of the political and economic elite gained from personal experiences.
Fourth: Like the population-at-large, student populations are transitory: here today and gone tomorrow. But unlike the lack of cohesion within the general population, there is often a unique continuity and camaraderie within student populations after graduation. And, of course, there will always be new generations of students.
These are the reasons I recommend the academic and scientific communities as the movement's core. They are the only segments of our population that will, most likely, guarantee the new organization the intellectual integrity and stability necessary in the transitional period during which we morph into true democracies.
In all probability, however, neither adult teachers, scientists, nor philosophers will volunteer to lead the movement, for as a whole, they are passive/submissive people, prone to discussion rather than action. In addition, most are fixed in habit, dependent upon Establishment dominated institutions or corporations for economic survival, and fearful of Establishment reprisal. Sadly to say, such fears in the United States are well founded.
It means unless the young students of the world—who are still idealistic, optimistic, and unbowed by the pressures of our low, animal-level, hostile societies—initiate this effort for a better future and give it an immediate universal cohesiveness that only they can, I don't believe true democracy on planet Earth will ever happen.

I believe we must engage the young of the world in this project, for it is their future with which we are concerned, therefore, I believe they should have a substantial voice in what that future will be. We should instill them with the skills necessary to promote and successfully conduct Citizen Advisory Committees when and where requested, and educate them with the knowledge necessary to operate the organization. I believe their energies should be harnessed in ways to assure them a safe, peaceful future. I also believe that once they understand the proposed organization is the vehicle that would make it possible for them to be the very first generation to enter a future of their own creation, they will finance the project and make it economically independent.

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