We can work it out
Think of what you're saying
You can get it wrong and still you think that it's alright
Think of what I'm saying
We can work it out and get it straight, or say good night
-The Beatles
There are many possible strategies for establishing more optimal forms of social organization. The 99 campaign is experimenting with using the existing electoral system to transcend itself.
Much of recorded history is not very pretty. Our representative democracy processes emerged amidst a milieu replete with strife, cruelty, fanaticism, etc. Looking back at the horrors of history, we can appreciate the representative system as a relative improvement. But the historical importance of a practice doesn't necessarily correlate to the wisdom of carrying it on into the future. Our nature is to grow and learn and change, as individuals within a lifetime, and as a people across lifetimes.
Some have taken the position that we're capable of dealing voluntarily with each other, peer-to-peer, with no one higher or lower than anyone else, and that we'd better move toward such a paradigm to replace our current systems, including our systems of representative (hierarchical) democracy. Voting systems themselves do seem to limit cooperation in significant ways. When one group feels one way, and another group feels another way that conflicts with what the first group feels, we can take this as a cue to devote effort to opening up lines of communication and resolving any serious differences. With a voting system, we instead encourage people to take sides, and then count the people in each group to declare a winner and a loser. We neglect to work through the disagreements, leaving problems and resentments to fester.
So the voting process inherently entails divisiveness and partisanship. And it has been used to justify and legitimize domination, exploitation, and callousness. It's the least dysfunctional political system currently operating on large scales, and as such, it seems to make a significant amount of sense to participate in it, while advocating and planning for more advanced systems. The 99 campaign offers the prospect of a redemptive finale to the sordid spectacle of electoral politics.
In a system characterized by mutual aid and horizontal organization, we can expect far fewer instances of people being at odds over issues like who's going to get to do a job. If this does happen, we'll focus more on healing the interpersonal relationships involved and on examining and possibly changing how the work is structured, rather than taking sides in the argument. The fact that there's an argument at all should probably be a higher priority to address than the priority of performing the job in question, whatever it happens to be. Work can be shared; people can take turns, sign up for shifts, etc. If we collaborate to find ways for everyone to be involved in a healthy variety of meaningful, satisfying activities, then we can expect to resolve these types of problems relatively quickly.
Think of what you're saying
You can get it wrong and still you think that it's alright
Think of what I'm saying
We can work it out and get it straight, or say good night
-The Beatles
There are many possible strategies for establishing more optimal forms of social organization. The 99 campaign is experimenting with using the existing electoral system to transcend itself.
Much of recorded history is not very pretty. Our representative democracy processes emerged amidst a milieu replete with strife, cruelty, fanaticism, etc. Looking back at the horrors of history, we can appreciate the representative system as a relative improvement. But the historical importance of a practice doesn't necessarily correlate to the wisdom of carrying it on into the future. Our nature is to grow and learn and change, as individuals within a lifetime, and as a people across lifetimes.
Some have taken the position that we're capable of dealing voluntarily with each other, peer-to-peer, with no one higher or lower than anyone else, and that we'd better move toward such a paradigm to replace our current systems, including our systems of representative (hierarchical) democracy. Voting systems themselves do seem to limit cooperation in significant ways. When one group feels one way, and another group feels another way that conflicts with what the first group feels, we can take this as a cue to devote effort to opening up lines of communication and resolving any serious differences. With a voting system, we instead encourage people to take sides, and then count the people in each group to declare a winner and a loser. We neglect to work through the disagreements, leaving problems and resentments to fester.
So the voting process inherently entails divisiveness and partisanship. And it has been used to justify and legitimize domination, exploitation, and callousness. It's the least dysfunctional political system currently operating on large scales, and as such, it seems to make a significant amount of sense to participate in it, while advocating and planning for more advanced systems. The 99 campaign offers the prospect of a redemptive finale to the sordid spectacle of electoral politics.
In a system characterized by mutual aid and horizontal organization, we can expect far fewer instances of people being at odds over issues like who's going to get to do a job. If this does happen, we'll focus more on healing the interpersonal relationships involved and on examining and possibly changing how the work is structured, rather than taking sides in the argument. The fact that there's an argument at all should probably be a higher priority to address than the priority of performing the job in question, whatever it happens to be. Work can be shared; people can take turns, sign up for shifts, etc. If we collaborate to find ways for everyone to be involved in a healthy variety of meaningful, satisfying activities, then we can expect to resolve these types of problems relatively quickly.