Excellent, well-informed and thought-provoking piece, Charles! I do think a lot of our problems with our own system stern from the basic lack of integrity of our own politicians, who we too often see pandering to international bodies and conventions rather than serving the expressed needs and desires of their own electorate. This indicates, to me, a moral failing, amongst the elites, not to mention a lack of trust in democracy itself. Something which is clearly common across many Western nations now.
Direct democratic methods may indeed be one solution to this, although I suppose I worry that life may then become even more politicised than at present, with constant navel-gazing and the assumption being that all issues are to be resolved politically. Still, there is something there to be considered, especially if it helps people to look at things in a less polarised, and more essentially pragmatic, fashion.
What we could also do with, in my view, is less centralised control of our lives, and more issues being devolved to (more) local authorities, as is typical in most countries. We have hardly reckoned, in my view, with how the two world wars vastly increased the influence of central government in our lives; causing us to be always in touching distance of communist levels of control. Some would say that we are already there now, and I would tend not to disagree. But that, I reckon, is a whole other conversation!
You raise some important points Tom, and I think at least some of them can be answered by a more politically informed citizenry and a semi direct democracy system.
Questions on morality and spirituality may also be illuminated and placed in the nations consciousness via a direct democracy system, even if they are breaching around the perimeter, it gives them an opportunity or at the very least some purchase that threatens to pierce the immorality of the current system of representative democracy.
Cheers Charles. Whether it's the system or the mindset of the people inside it is the thing that interests me. Of course, it may be both. I'm certainly conscious that a lot of self-interest has been baked in.
Excellent, well-informed and thought-provoking piece, Charles! I do think a lot of our problems with our own system stern from the basic lack of integrity of our own politicians, who we too often see pandering to international bodies and conventions rather than serving the expressed needs and desires of their own electorate. This indicates, to me, a moral failing, amongst the elites, not to mention a lack of trust in democracy itself. Something which is clearly common across many Western nations now.
Direct democratic methods may indeed be one solution to this, although I suppose I worry that life may then become even more politicised than at present, with constant navel-gazing and the assumption being that all issues are to be resolved politically. Still, there is something there to be considered, especially if it helps people to look at things in a less polarised, and more essentially pragmatic, fashion.
What we could also do with, in my view, is less centralised control of our lives, and more issues being devolved to (more) local authorities, as is typical in most countries. We have hardly reckoned, in my view, with how the two world wars vastly increased the influence of central government in our lives; causing us to be always in touching distance of communist levels of control. Some would say that we are already there now, and I would tend not to disagree. But that, I reckon, is a whole other conversation!
You raise some important points Tom, and I think at least some of them can be answered by a more politically informed citizenry and a semi direct democracy system.
Questions on morality and spirituality may also be illuminated and placed in the nations consciousness via a direct democracy system, even if they are breaching around the perimeter, it gives them an opportunity or at the very least some purchase that threatens to pierce the immorality of the current system of representative democracy.
Cheers Charles. Whether it's the system or the mindset of the people inside it is the thing that interests me. Of course, it may be both. I'm certainly conscious that a lot of self-interest has been baked in.