On a typical Nexian thread that forked and sped down tangential alleyways, we began discussing ideal government structures, entheogenic community organization and such heady things.

I put forth my long thought on model for a Meritocratic, non-representational system. But it was obvious that we had derailed that thread so far from the OP that it warranted its own thread.

So, I invite all and sundry to come here and propose, debate and discuss your favorite fantasy systems of governance. It is rather apropos at this time, considering that many of us Americans here have no government right now... due entirely to our truly unbelievably asinine representatives reaching a new low, even for them. And this is a group that has had public support ratings of 10% or under for many, many years now.

I will quickly outline what I mean by a meritocracy.

It was obvious to me decades ago that Democracy is insufficient. It means well, in the ideal... but I don't think that everyone should have equal say on every subject. (see the old thread for discussion on the elitism subject)

Basically put, as worthy as a mentally handicapped child may be, his opinion on fiscal policy is not equal to that of a Nobel Prize winning economist... no liberal guilt and hand-wringing can alter this. We should embrace this fact and not pretend that all opinions are equal.

I think an ideal utopian meritocracy (with or without entheogens) should be structured in such a way that everyone gets a vote proportional to their knowledge on the topic being voted upon. We can argue about how merit should be accrued or recognized, but this seems like the most intelligent way to go forward.

No representative government. The public votes on everything they feel like voting about, have interest in... and their knowledge and eminence on the subject is factored in. Personally, I wouldn't mind if the highest experts got 100x the vote of normal folks. In fact... I think you should have to take a short test on the subject in order to have any vote at all. If you can't pass the most cursory of tests on what the bill proposes... then your vote is worthless anyway.

(note: I borrowed some from my post in the previous thread to save time)

Alright my esteemed colleagues... have at it. Let's see if we can't devise something workable. I have already got my concept fairly well hammered out, but it would be rather presumptuous to think that it is ready for prime time. After all, there have been no truly new political systems put forward in over 100 years.

I like the idea, but who decides what subjects to vote on? Or do we all vote on what subjects to vote on? We would have to have lists of subjects of votes and we would all have to vote on the various lists to put forward. The voting could go on forever and we would all end up in some kind of voting fractal.

There must be some sort of government to organise it all. Unless the clever people with 100 times the votes get to decide. Which worries me a little as the more educated (and usually well off) will once again have the head start and the uneducated underclasses will be saddled with no say and no desire to be involved in another system that excludes them.

Poor people having how they live being decided for them by rich educated people....Sounds like business as usual. The idea of what is utopian is very subjective.

Great question hug.

In my vision, any new bill would have to go through a committee process of volunteers interested in the subject. It would have to be hashed out and hammered down by the people who demonstrate their interest by participating in the construction of the bill.

All bills would have to be yes or no questions... kind of like the kind we pose to Kikker.

"Should we take X action, with A, B & C goals... paid for via Y... and implemented through Z."

Every bill should have mechanisms for monitoring that the goals are being fulfilled and methods for modifying the implementation in the face of new realities.

There would be no 2000 page bills. No riders and special interest. No lobbies. Every bill that reaches the popular voting stage would have to have achieved a super-majority of the people who crafted the bill.

I don't think my vision is perfect here. I freely admit that.

I think it would work best in a small community of like-minded and intelligent people. A city-state of techies for instance.

The world would need to become a much more educated and egalitarian place to work this system. But, seeing as that is the global trend, it might actually work in the macroverse in 100 years or whatever.

Who knows?

I should add that the government would still have paid employees and such... just not in any leadership positions. They would all be servants of the public will. Far less potential for corruption this way.

One thing we often lack is the presence of real elders. Elders play a crucial role in many indigenous cultures. I don't wish to confuse old people with elders in this context either..there are many old people in this world..yet how few of them actually can be called "Elder" in the same context as they would be called in a tribal culture, and fulfill that role? To me that requires a certain level of wisdom to offer, and sad as it is I don't feel most elderly today take on the role of "Elder". It requires enormous responsibility and a proper marriage between that of the intellect and the intuition.

Elders have a role to play, in making decisions that take into account many future generations..

If people were better educated on a topic before voting, as well as understood what they are voting for(as opposed to multiple issue bills of today that often use one issue to mask the others) we could be closer to having a population of people who are qualified to even have a say. Many people are not informed today, which is just a sad but true aspect of our "democratic" situation.

Obviously there are people more qualified than others to make certain decisions..often it seems that those people are intentionally left out of the political arena.

You are saying that these bills will be decided and majority voted on before being put into the public arena by interested volunteering participants? Usually when someone has an interest in a bill they have something to gain or lose from it.

I think these volunteers should be vetted by the public and paid a flat rate for their services. Also, while in the employment of the meri-galitarien state, they should be monitored by a secret police force, like the stasi in East Germany. If they exploit the system, they and their familys, and their family"s familys get tortured relentlessly live on television. It will be a good emotional outlet for a utopian population to witness the tough justice.

I agree about the world needing to be more egalitarian and educated place for this to work and, even though i maybe being picky HF, i agree that it is nigh on impossible to find a truly utopian system of politics. So i have ticked the not sure box for the moment.

I also agree with Jamie about elders. I know you are not talking about old people necessarily, but i think older people are less full of piss and vinegar when it comes to ambition. A reluctant leader is far more appealing to me than someone that feels that they are fit for the job.

I would also base my voting system on age...teenagers get 1 point, 20somethings 2 points and so on. If an octanagerian was diagnosed with an age related mental disorder they would lose there voting points on a sliding scale, dependant on how fast they could recite the alphabet backwards.

The mentally handicapped wouldn"t have a vote but if they took an aptitude test maybe they could regain their right to vote. They would have to resit the test every 5 years after being force fed a month long course of entheogenic cocktails to help make them more intelligent.

Another aspect of the downfall of our people has been the death of the bardic culture..which is entirely relevant here IMO but in ways too complex to really go into here.

All cultures reside within a sort of story time, which to me is actually a type of dreamtime..some call it the ethnosphere. The stories inform us, nourish us, initiate us and allow us to grow as we continue weaving those stories and new ones into being. Only in our modern time has that aspect been stamped out and replaced with tabloids, Hollywood, public education etc..

Without that the integrity of our culture crumbles. It needs a new name. Ever seen the never ending story? It's like that. I guess not all of holywood is bad..some of the old ways creep in here and there.

I don"t think they have been stamped out by Hollywood and the tabloids. Here is a list of 20 of the basic plots in literature listed by Ronald Tobias----


Quest
Adventure
Pursuit
Rescue
Escape
Revenge
The Riddle
Rivalry
Underdog
Temptation
Metamorphosis
Transformation
Maturation
Love
Forbidden Love
Sacrifice
Discovery
Wretched Excess
Ascension
Descension.

I think all of those are covered by the tabloids and Hollywood. They all seem to be integral to our journey as a species. I don"t know about Bardic culture but i would bet that most of those plots have been around for a long time.

"Poll Question : Do you think that you could improve upon existing political models?"


The list of things I could improve about the current political models is a very long list (maybe they aren't philisophies).

I consider myself an Independent Progressive.

A short version of the list is:

1. Full legalization of all drugs not shown to be more harmful than alcohol/tobacco.

2. Eliminate the "Right to Work" policies of all states that have that <-- Right to Work for less pay.

3. Have a maximum wealth level - no immediate family gets above 2 billion USD; those who flee will have their wealth disappropriated by any means necessary [ Disappropriate = To release from individual ownership or possession.]

4. Double the minimum wage nationwide.

5. Create a New- New Deal inspired jobs program- but fitted for today and tomorrow.

6. Increase the estate tax significantly. (who better to tax than deceased couples who had over 3 million USD?)

7. End subsidies to the largest Oil Companies as an incentive for companies to shift to electric (subsidizing the consumer if necessary).

8. Rename the Department of Defense: The Department of Destruction, and Sometimes Offense.

9. Free college education to all citizens interested in going, who can maintain gpa above 3.5

10. Multiply subsidies of high performing renewable energy companies by a factor of thousands.

11. Make it a crime, punishable by death in public, if a lawmaker receives money that looks like lobbying to an outside observer while still a lawmaker; if not still a lawmaker- punishable up to 10,000 years in jail.

12. Subsidize the news; no commercials/ no slant towards the millionaires & billionaires.

13. Change the current policy to where it would not be sensible in a cost-benefit analysis for a pharmaceutical company to knowingly sell drugs that are much more dangerous than they seem.

Ja! One of the advantages of the plants is surely their capacity to help people symbolise their individual and collective situation - and not in a pat or shallow way, but in a way which digs down deep in the ecological unconscious. Into the mythic, if you want. Though the mythic has to keep making itself available for rational elucidation.

As I see it... and yeah, I had a pinch of guidance when I 'saw' this ... humans are improvisors at all levels, especially in their political institutions. Meanwhile collective institutions are the main realm for the realisation of the virtues, that is, for the realisation of the human good. If the good can't be realised in our collective ways of being, it becomes largely impotent, a subjective longing, a wistful dream. In which case we as individual humans are frustrated, and not as fully realised as we could be, and, correlatively, we are menaced by institutions bereft of moral integrity.

So I don't regard government simply as a site for solving problems and reducing them to yes/no propositions, as in HyperspaceFool's proposal. The good has to be constantly improvised. In fact one of its components is to elicit thoughtful participation from all, so that they can engage ever more competently in the exercise of public reasoning, both over the problems of the day, and over the authentic meaning of the good. This is something that is never finally settled. In a sense it is alive.

As I see it, HF's model wouldn't meet my emporer's new clothe's criteria. That is, any system which has learned from the long history of exploitative class societies will want to nurture a sense that even the lowest and least educated should be able to call the king's bluff. Every system of power tends to generate its own blindnesses and its own lackeys. And if the boy who accuses the king turns out to be a fool, at least he is a courageous fool and will make, perhaps, a fine philosopher-legislator one day.

i am waiting for artificial intelligence to take over the planet and give us a new way of life and create the perfect utopian system for existence

If you think this will work then take a peek at Tierra and then also this interesting link:


After reading this, would you still let a competing AI loose for totalitarian government?


Kind regards,

The Traveler

This.

For me, politics isn't a system to find optimally correct answers to problems. Instead, it's a system for reaching a compromise solution between diametrically opposed view points. Seen this way, democracy works pretty well. Paraphrasing Churchill, it's the worst system we've got - except for all the others.

And historically, the quickest way to get a dystopia is by founding a utopia.

interesting link Traveler , i did not know this has already started , i guess it would be ruthless considering the fact that the system rewards smaller creatures and those requiring less resources , yet is'nt it quite the same with our planetry evolution considering the dinosaurs are long gone and its predicted cockroaches will outlive our species if the planet survives anyways

i understand as far as tierra is concerned its unlike natural evolution and reaches a point of stagnancy as far as generating novelty , yet isn't this the only drawback

also considering how the universe functions quite like a machine , if we don't consider its spiritual aspects , the planets revolving around the sun is as mechanical as a watch , if the universe is one giant machine why would'nt we feel comfortable to let such a system into our lives

as far as natural evolution is concerned it has been as ruthless as tierra when it comes to rewarding efficient creatures ,

"The competition rewarded creatures of smaller size since they needed less cycles, and in Darwinian ruthlessness, terminated the greedy consumers, the infirm, and the old. Creature 79 (one byte smaller than 80) was lucky. It worked productively and soon outpaced the 80s"

- i ask isn't this already happening in our society where the old and infirm are dying , isn't the universe as ruthless , except the part about greedy consumers who i guess are being rewarded .........i don't know just some thoughts on the subject

edit : and also are'nt humans perhaps more ruthless than an AI as humans even terminate healthy people , all over the world many fit people are killing each other in the wars they fight for nothing , and as far as humans treating plants and animals ....well ....... atleast the AI is only terminating the infirm , dying or greedy ones

"Ray also found something very strange: a viable creature with only 45 very efficient bytes which overran all other creatures. "I was amazed how fast this system would optimize," Ray recalls. "I could graph its pace as the system would generate organisms surviving on shorter and shorter genomes."

On close examination of 45's code, Ray was amazed to discover that it was a parasite. It contained only a part of the code it needed to survive. In order to reproduce, it "borrowed" the reproductive section from the code of an 80 and copied itself. As long as there were enough 80 hosts around, the 45s thrived. But if there were too many 45s in the limited world, there wouldn't be enough 80s to supply copy resources. As the 80s waned, so did the 45s."

i have to agree a little with agent smith on this one as on this planet aren't humans like the 45's parasite over-running all the other creatures , and are'nt the 80's like plants and animals which we use to survive , just like a 45 would do , if plants and animals are gone would'nt we die without resources just as a 45 , i am not really sure whether as humans we contain only a part of the code yet we are pretty dependent on other species for our survival just like a 45 , the only difference is we don't need to copy the reproductive code we can just eat animals and plants directly

in any case what i want to ask is , where are we heading as a species ........aren't we already into the AI research , and aren't we trying to create the AI specifically so it could perhaps take care of us .........i mean when the carpenter goes to create a chair i assume he wants to sit on it or perhaps sell it so someone else can sit on it , eitherways when a tool is created it done so with a very specific intention , if we look at AI a tool we might have in the future then i ask "to what purpose ?"

perhaps i am just wrong , yet from the looks of it the way our world is integrating technology into our lives , where are we really heading ............?

i would'nt want AI to be running the planet since considering its ruthless aspect , yet do we really have a say in the matter the day AI is born

sounds like technological Marxism..an atificial techno ecotopia..Id rather not.

A lot of interesting stuff here.

I am a bit concerned that the idea of public executions has come up more than once... heheheh, but I am going to assume you guys were being hyperbolic. I hate corruption as much as the next guy... more even, but I don't think the penalties need to be all that harsh to weed it out. In general, if getting caught doing something costs you significantly more than you stand to gain (factoring in the number of times you are likely to get away with it) then people abandon the practice by and large.

For me, the idea is to get away from a huge and unwieldy penal system and the gestapo type occupying army needed to enforce unpopular laws. To this end, nothing that doesn't directly harm other people should be illegal. In fact, the number of illegal things should be limited. A citizen should be able to clearly see and read all the laws of his land in a pamphlet in 15 or 20 minutes max.

I propose that once society has reached the max number of laws that we should be forced to take one off the books for every new one we add.

Raising the number of laws should take a ridiculous majority vote of like 80% or more.

As for the vested interest dominating the committees comment, I think that a simple rule that no one be allowed to serve who stands to gain financially in any way would work. There is a lot of legal precedent for "conflict of interest" laws. I believe that people should be required to recuse themselves in a timely manner from the moment that any potential conflict arises. Also... lobbying firms and lobbyists would all be illegal.

I think we might have to overhaul capitalism though to make any real progress on this. As it stands, corporations are voracious entities with only a single Machiavellian motive... to make wealth for their shareholders. As Trav's post showed, systems with simple and Darwinian motivations and rewards tend to devolve into dog eat dog rather quickly.

Humanity is better than this.

I hope so anyway...

HF

As a writer, I was drilled with various "basic plots" models. Everyone seems to have a different list, but I believe most modern ones harken back to Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations... and Tobias was certainly just streamlining them in his book.

I agree with jamie about the need for a return to some of that Bardic culture he spoke of, but like you I find that there is no lack of good storytelling, myth and legend in our time. We have more than enough music and cinema... and a lot of it is rather good IMHO. Look at how society went through the Breaking Bad ending. Heisenberg was every bit as good as any Greek tragic hero I read in school.

I don't know what government's responsibility in the arts should be though... perhaps other than promoting them with scholarships and creating jobs for young artists and performers. One of the forgotten things about The New Deal was how it paid for the training and employing of actors, musicians, comedians, artists and the like. The modern NEA is an incestuous joke by comparison.

“If humans are shaped by their environment, then this environment has to be made human.” — Marx and Engels,

The problem with any political ideology,utopian or not, is that it will, by nature create oppositional conflict. We're only familiar with experiencing vertical and centralized power structures but the buzzword that emerges a lot in these kind of discourses is that of horizontal-ism or horizontality. A de-centralized system.

The trouble i have with utopian ideologies is they have a vision of how such a society should live, but often don't put forward the rational way in which a transition to that society would happen. It's one thing to imagine an ideal world and something else all together to actually tune in to the currant's of what's emerging to actually be an affective catalyst in the 'right' direction.

I used to think a technocracy would be quite ideal but only as long as it had a 'clear' secular ethic behind it. There are too many ideologies and their advocates creating conflict and i hope that common ground can be found within logic and reason (if empathy is too much of a push!) Nature favours life and the the sustainability of life and although the current state of the world is an extension of nature, it's clear that we have confined ourselves too rigidly in a paradigm that has been refused any breathing space and room for open ended development.

An ideal utopia would essentially be a direction and not necessarily a destination.

If there isn't space to transcend and adapt to what has been made then disorder and collapse will be inevitable. Which is essentially what we're seeing.

Here's to the edge of chaos and our inevitable recurring joruney across it despite our greatest reluctance or uncertainty


"The balance point — often called the edge of chaos — is where the components of a system never quite lock into place, and yet never quite dissolve into turbulence either…The edge of chaos is where life has enough stability to sustain itself and enough creativity to deserve the name of life. The edge of chaos is where new idea and innovative genotypes are forever nibbling away at the edges of the status quo, and where even the most entrenched old guard will eventually be overthrown.

The edge of chaos is where centuries of slavery and segregation suddenly give way to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s; where seventy years of Soviet communism suddenly give way to political turmoil and ferment; where eons of evolutionary stability suddenly give way to wholesale species transformation. The edge is the constantly shifting battle between stagnation and anarchy, the one place where a complex system can be spontaneous, adaptive and alive." ~ Mitchell Waldrop

Maybe you just answered your own question about 'transition'. As I see it, we are headed right through the creative 'edge of chaos' and will overshoot into civilisational collapse. A period of authoritarian reactions and revolutions. Revolutions which won't solve much, because the ecological contradictions are HEAVY, and politically and psychologically humanity is still very immature.

For this reason, I don't take the existing nation states as the tacit unit of any feasible utopia. Whatever is good and creative in humanity will seek smaller and more local forms, in situations of great adversity. Trying to work out how people could deal with that adversity in all its aspects - military, nutrition, health, psychology, etc - while still retaining and deepening their 'humanity', seems like the primary utility in thinking about utopias now.

I guess psychologically the function discussions of utopias can serve us now is also to open up a crack of light within the spectre of Extinction which forms the dark centre of the coming Collapse.

Yeah it seems i did answer my own question. I think i meant to direct it at the tendecny people have to offer ideal solutions without taking into consideration to visualize what kinds of steps would have to occur for that solution to be realized.

I also agree with you that on surface value, the authoritarian response and revolutions won't solve much, but i still see them as a necessary function In the same way that a pandemic disease or disorder leads to a cure or antidote.

I find that a very effective way of not getting massively dissapointed or disenherated at the state of the world and it's current trajectory is by trying to visualize the Arial view, that encompasses human behaviour from the context of moving dynamic over vast ages of time. If we could watch a time-lapse of the earth spanning X amount of millenia , we'd notice the rises,falls, emergence of order and the temporal descents into chaos that breed new order.

The more inter-connected the world's problems become, the more inter-connected the participatory solutions will have to be.

Vertical hierarchies of power have failed to provide equality and have only extended the divide between the richest and poorest. If the internet is demonstrating to us anything, it is that the flows of information and value aren't fixed in the path that they have to take. What we do with all of the information, data, academic theory and real life experience's is down to us.

Will we wait for a new model to be imposed externally, or will we continue to run test simulations in smaller pockets of society until we collectively realize what is of value and how best to sustain it.

It's all well and good theorizing about it all like you said Chadaev, as it's extending the reach of our individual pyshce into that of a global psyche. The real responsibility i feel we have in front of us, is realizing the effect that our individual actions have on the collective level.

We're all grass-roots and the state of the playing field relys on us. Interesting time to exist

"If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem. " -krishnamurti

I like where you are going with this d-T-r.

I agree wholeheartedly with your observation that the transition needs to be the focus... what we do now, over some ideal place we may reach. That was always my problem with the Venus Project (and esp. its Zeitgeist spin-off).

I especially resonate with your idea about "test simulations." I think that is key.

It was always my thought that the meritocratic system I was pitching would be tested in a small community. Perhaps a virtual nation... maybe one that goes on to acquire some land and becomes a city-state.

It would make things infinitely easier if everyone who was a citizen wanted to be one... and the test group would naturally be weighted with intelligent and progressive people. In this situation, it could work... and work well. It would not be scaleable to society at large, but could serve as a model. Society could adopt the better ideas that were grown in this hothouse. It would be a bit like a think-tank and virtual nation in one.

Anyway. Enjoyed your posts.

HF