I know – this is a slightly different post from my usual, but it’s been a while since I’ve posted… and this is one of the things I’ve been diverting my mind with. Then there was the puzzle of what picture I could use to illustrate it. I’ve chosen native bush emerging from the huge stump of an old macrocarpa at Totaranui. You’ll get the significance as you read on. (More about the trees at Totaranui at the end.)
Macrocarpa stump hosting new indigenous life
This is a post I’m keen to get your comments on, if it stirs thoughts in you. It’s coming out in hard copy in Future Times – the magazine of the NZ Futures Trust. You will gather that I don’t think the current conversations on the New Zealand constitution are nearly radical enough! So read on….
On Democracy
I’ve been musing on democracy, and what “the next great thing” might be. My most recent prompt was listening to Dr Jim Dator, Professor and Director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii at Manoa. He was Skyping to our “Thinking Futures” workshop, and defined “The Unholy Trinity plus One” of factors which are now the “new normal” – that is, a given common factor in futures scenarios. (“Trinity” because they can be described separately but are inseparable.)
1 Energy: we will run out of cheap available oil before there is an equally cheap available alternative
2 Environment: human-influenced environmental change will affect where and how we live
3 Economy: neo-liberal economics will continue to fail and we have not created an alternative
And 4 – Governance. Democratic government has proved itself unable to address the Unholy Trinity.
So – if our good democracies are functioning as well as they can – and they demonstrably can’t deal with what’s facing us globally, what can? Leaving aside the immediate attractions of Me as Benign Dictator, here’s today’s possible design. All alternatives and improvements welcome!
The Three Ring Circus. (Yes, the title is intentional, because one great failing of governance is to take itself deadly seriously.)
How it works
We the people elect a Selection Committee. The Selection Committee choose the brightest and best people available for three Groups. The Chair of the Selection Committee could function as “head of state” for international affairs.
Group 1 – The Thinkers. They consider present and future opportunities and problems, and come up with possible solutions.
Group 2 – The Ethicists. They discuss the values we hold, and want to hold as a society, and examine the possible solutions in light of those.
Group 3 – The Excellent Executives. They look at the implementation of possible solutions, what it would take to make them work, the resources needed, and the things that might emerge along the way. They could take advice from Government Departments.
Then thinking together, the three Groups agree what should be done and craft it into a clear proposal.
We, the people, then vote on that well-formed proposal.
Of course, sometimes action is necessary without full public participation. Even in that model of direct democracy, Switzerland, the government sometimes acts alone if prior warning would lead to market speculation. And – sometimes something matters too much to wait for the majority. That’s why Swiss women didn’t get the vote till 1971. Popular movements didn’t abolish slavery, or do many things we now know mattered. So under my system, there would be a “three strikes” limit. Any 3-Ring Circus could make three “undemocratic” decisions, and then would have to stand down.
So – there’s an opening bid for a discussion on Design for a new form of Democracy.
Comments please!
And for those of you who prefer nature rambles to political ones… more on Totaranui.
Back in 1865, when the Gibbs family were settling this remote beautiful bay at the head of what is now the Able Tasman walkway, they planted an avenue of London plane trees, interspersed with macrocarpas.
The avenue of London Planes stretching down to the beach at Totaranui. The balls of foliage are native mistletoe.
According to the Notable Trees Register website, the plane trees are parents to Nelson city’s pollarded planes – and one may have the largest girth of all trees in NZ. They are magnificent – trees on a monumental scale, not native, yet fitting naturally into the landscape, perhaps by virtue of having been a part of it for nearly 140 years.
And – at least half as old, and in their own way magnificent huge specimens – the eels of Totaranui. They lounge around in the shade of the stream bank, and come daily to the sound of slapping on the water, to be fed. These are not “public entertainment eels” – there are others you can visit in Golden Bay – but we were lucky that brother Mark and sister-in-law Vicky were on eel-feeding duty when we visited them at their life-style-job looking after the Totaranui DoC Camp this summer. Others of us would have to win a ballot for a camping spot there over summer, but Mark and Vicky got paid for the privilege. Smart folk!
Mark on eel-feeding duty
Carolyn Lane 
What a subject to tackle Carolyn. .From your references to Switzerland I would like to know more of what looks like some tweeking of a democratic political system which might make Democracy work better there than it does in many other countries.
A problem I have with the faulty Democratic systems that Western countries operate today is the flawed Capitalist system which is the economic base of most Democracies. Related to that and part of it our exploitation of Energy sources.
Governance is flawed because the party systems that are part of our Democracies become hidebound/ unchanging family generational membership which override what individual members think of Party policies. This especially true in the USA..
From these remarks you gather that I find it hard to move away from Politics at the heart of any discussion of Democracy.
I’ve just read an article in the New Yorker which I receive weekly (A strongly US. Democratic Party supporter). Called Paint Bombs, the article by Kelefa Sanneh deals with David Graebers” The Democracy Project. A history; A Crisis; A Movement”. It takes up issues arising from the OCCUPY Movement I suppose one calls it, which, starting in Wall St. spread world wide. We know why… He relates that to the TEA Party Movement in the USA. I think it could be related also to such huge Movements such as the Russian Community’s rising up and ditching Communism as a System of Government and ofcourse economic development.
I’m not sure where this takes us except to a main point which comes out of it for me, in relation to Democracy:
I don’t think Democracy is going to be made to work better by Brainy Egg-heads and Selected experts: they are and will be needed to implement changes but the actual demand for change has to come from the Community at large. It is, I think, remarkable that it can and does (Arab Spring – well sort of).
Sorry that has all become so long. Carolyn.
I promise to work harder at making it shorter next time!
Bas
Thanks Bas – absolutely never too long when also thought-provoking! Absolutely agree that the impetus for change must come from popular demand: there are far too many interests vested in the status quo (and as you say, particularly the capitalist/democracy nexus) for change to occur without that. So… how do “we” lift the level of debate to create a desire for change without a cataclysmic crisis a la the Arab Spring, and with all the inherent uncontrollability of that?
Today the story about the Kapiti region’s “slow earthquake’ is big news. If we were having a R7.9 “shake” event – that would create major change. But when it’s imperceptible, we adjust without knowing it – and nothing on the surface changes. So – does the Occupy movement on one hand – and the change in the Russian system on the other – and what may or may not be happening in Chinese society – signal a shift in global sensibility? And how could the creative options arising from that be consolidated into something substantial enough to shift the entrenched power of neo-liberal economics plus political ‘dynasties”? More thinking required!
……… interesting thinking….. utilising knowledge, and experience and intellectual capacity is surely the only way of moving in a direction that may reduce the slaughter and suffering of mankind…. and if left alone, the ecosystem will recover in its own way…. but the motives and impetus that will repel any such notion are what has got us into this disaster in the first place. … and they will resist it, even if it kills them… it is in their nature. still I like to see some exploration of the ideas…. R
Ruth Ordish
I wonder… thinking about our world as an entire eco-system – what would the recovery process look like? We see how regeneration of forests can work – and with them the diversity of associated life. I’m about to post some fabulous pictures of the rata flowering in the Otira Gorge this summer. But the recent dramatic regeneration there has involved quite a bit of intervention – with 1080 – and not everyone agrees with that! Now that would be interesting mind-experiment for my “3-ringed circus”!
Well you have certainly stirred the hornet’s nest this time.
Really like the idea that we have specialist groups to tackle all aspects of future issues, but like all great ideas, my concern is the the implementation of such a system. It could well make or break positive future outcomes.
For instance; I can see things like the obvious style- differences between the groups making agreements a very prolonged process (if at all).
The process also assumes that we (‘the public’) are sufficiently up to speed with what is important, when electing the Selection Committee, and can we assume they won’t just ‘shoulder tap’ their mates for the group roles!
Although I like the idea of ensuring our ‘Kiwi values’ are taken into account, with such increasing ethnic diversity, I am no longer sure what those future values might be.
As a ‘Thruster Organiser’, I just loved the idea of a committee to implement the ideas. How will we get the message across to ensure our public is informed – and if they (the public) couldn’t agree, what process might we have to avoid issues just going round and round with no defined outcome.
Hopefully we will have time to discuss the Swiss system when we meet in Europe – I’d be most interested.
Absolutely love your ability to make others think – just excuse my ability to assume issues – Overall, I still like the idea.
Yes – really look forward to discussing more! Watching the various “constitutional debates” I have such a sense of lost opportunity. Everyone seems to be starting from a improve-the-system mindset instead of asking the fundamental questions – like yours on “what kind of a value-system could we articulate for New Zealanders?” The increasing ethnic diversity is an opportunity in itself: what if we asked new immigrants about what values they were looking for/hoping for when they were making their decision to come here? And what have they observed in reality? If our “real” values are those exhibited in our behaviours (rather than our possibly self-deceiving platitudes) that could give us interesting insights about the current reality, and prompt a community conversation about what of those observed values we want to “own/disown” and what we want to move more towards our espoused values.