[MG] Tunisia and activism in general

[Ed Pastore]

This thread is turning into somewhat of a wall of text. I have to  
admit, some parts I only skimmed. But I think I can make two general  
comments...

I am pretty leery of even thinking about implementing any of our  
solutions in a place like Tunisia. They are in turmoil, and they need  
help bad. I think they are in desperate need of freedom from the  
tyranny of leaders, but I don't think there exists any tool that can  
give them governance good enough to work today. If we managed to get  
something in place there, I fear it would end up being a catastrophe  
and turn people off to us for a very, very long time.

When I'm arguing for collaborative governance, the only scenario that  
consistently works is one where it grows naturally from small  
communities up to larger and larger scales. If a nation tried to  
implement it without any surrounding context, they would likely be  
devoured by their neighbors and enemies, and/or descend into a  
terrible kind of anarchy. Just my opinion.

If we are looking for groups to implement anything of ours now, I  
think the best candidates are start-up groups, especially non-profits.  
Even with them, we face the same hurdle that Metagovernment itself has  
been unable to address: is there a way to gain recognition as a formal  
organization without having designated, empowered leaders? Until we  
can figure that one out, then good targets might be unconferences and  
informal interest groups.

Concerning messaging, that is the general point behind the homepage  
redesign:
http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Main_Page/2010-redesign

I haven't been promoting it recently because I don't want to detract  
from all the other active threads, but this is a great start in the  
right direction of making our message more readily approachable. I'm  
still leaning toward #8, but I think all of them could use the help of  
some graphics to make them both more appealing and to have a better  
immediate impact.



Originally posted to the mailing list of the Metagovernment Project:
http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org