Bernard> Fascinating, intriguing ....... and very predictable.
What is it in human nature that makes people in groups do,
and use, the 'tools' that they are against when used by the
ones that they are fighting i.e. the Representative
Democracy 'tools'.
I too found the move toward hierarchy quite predictable. Bernard asks
why we use these tools which in principle we are against. His
question is particularly poignant in the context of WDDM, presumably
a home of those who understand the value and practice of dialog and
deliberation.
In the case of WDDM, which is Internet based, I think the answer is
straightforward: the net is simply not an appropriate medium to
support a democratic process, not unless there is a strong
pre-existing shared understanding, shared goals, and a shared sense
of urgency, among the participants. Lacking these, there is always a
futile struggle to achieve a consensus out of chaos, by means of
sporadic email exchanges and website visits. I've seen the same
dynamics in countless net-based initiatives, many involving very
well-meaning and knowledgeable people.
The tools of dialog and deliberation are indeed the tools needed to
support a democratic process, but they don't work well on the net;
they work in face-to-face gatherings. Hence it is not surprising that
WDDM fares no better than other groups on the net, despite its area
of expertise, and despite its valiant attempts to create rules of
online dialog that mirror proven face-to-face rules.
Bernard:> Democracy is supposed to be THE alternative to
representative democracy, yet:
a) no one knows how to make it work,
b) the first resort is to set up rules that may exclude the one with
guts enough to challenge the hypocrisy of the current system.
I think Bernard's observations are more interesting in the case of
the 'real world' - society - than they are in the context of
net-based groups. Indeed, I have been largely uninterested in WDDM
postings because they don't deal with the question that is in my view
most appropriate to this group, namely: How can the tools of dialog
and deliberation be used to support the emergence of a democratic
society? This is a question that needs to be answered, a question
that the people in this group are well-suited to address, and a
question that might be effectively pursued by net dialog.
It is also a question that I have been seeking answers to for the
past five or six years. The results I've come up with are promising,
and they indicate that appropriate application of dialog processes
has the potential not only to support the operation of a democratic
society, but to bring about the transformation of society from its
currently sad configuration. I've written a complete report on this
investigation in the form of a book, "Escaping the Matrix: how We the
People can change the world" - http://EscapingTheMatrix.org.
As regards the proposal before the group, I abstain from voting.
Voting is an inappropriate mechanism for almost anything,
particularly a democratic process.