Re: Wiki discussions...

[richard(at)cyberjournal.org]

Friends,

At last! Some folks commented on HarmonizationAndLocalism.

As an encouragement to others, permit me to post part of the dialog...

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> Richard, several comments:
> 1. Perhaps it might be appropriate to put here on this
> page a "blog" for discussion entries?
> 2. How does your "harmonization" differ from
> "deliberation"? Do you see any need for formal voting at
> all? Or just harmonization means talking until a solution
> supported/accepted by everybody will emerge?
> 4. Do you have a practical
> 4. I agree extensively with your "Localism"
> principle. I have myself arrived at something similar. I envisage a
> future better society as a pluralistic federation of various (local)
> communities. I am afraid that there may always (or still for a very
> long time) be people who, for various reason, would prefer that their
> decisions be made for them by their representatives or leader. So we
> may have side by side direct democratic (harmonization) communities
> and communities with other decision-making mechanisms. It would be
> important that people would not be forced to stay in the community of
> their birth, and would be allowed to move freely among various
> communities. Several such "communities" could even share the
> same geographical area. Various higher level (global) councils would
> then take care of the relation of the common interests and joint
> projects of, and relations between various communities in a given part
> of the world. Agin (as with your proposals) this would require more
> elaboration, explanation and discussion.
> Mirek
> -- MiKolar [Miroslav Kolar] (2005-05-22
> 17:06:28)

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Greetings Miroslav,

Thanks for joining in!

1. I don't understand blogs. How are they different from this comment facility?

2a. Harmonization is about people connecting at a human level, and then working together to deal with all their concerns. Deliberation typically happens more at the level of ideas and proposals. Deliberation becomes much more productive within a context of harmonization.

2b. re: voting: Perhaps there will be a role for voting, but I doubt it. If people need to vote, it means they haven't finished discussing the issues. This becomes clearer if we consider a business context, rather than a political context. In all my years in industry, never once did anyone suggest voting as a way to decide a project issue. It would have seemed silly.

4. re: localism. I think 'communities', in the political sense, need to be strictly place-based and non-overlapping. Some people may not choose to participate in community dialog, but that would be because they are satisfied with how things are being handled.

People 'moving freely' is a complex issue. In general I'm in favor of freedom of travel, but I think a community should have the right to decide whether or not it wants an influx of new inhabitants.

All of these ideas are elaborated more fully in my soon-to-be-published book on Global Transformation.

Thanks again for your comment!

-- RichardMoore (2005-05-23 04:25:10)