Universal models as issues for practice development

[conseo]

Hi Mike,

Michael Allan wrote:
> I've been surveying the Internet lately looking for a place to plant
> our practices and start developing them.  Once again I came to realize
> that it's a wasteland out there; we'll have to scatter our efforts
> widely to give them a chance.  This got me looking for big issues that
> are easy to scatter.  I was looking at the European constitution when
> I got the idea of a model constitution that could be applied anywhere
> in the world.  First I'll explain the idea in constitutional terms,
> then I'll expand it to cover other types of issue.  There are two
> working parts to the idea:
> 
>   1. A normative poll for a model constitution that could be applied
>      anywhere in the world.  (Not a constitution for the whole world,
>      of course, because there is no world state.)

Right, and there would be a history driving totality needed to form a world 
state. Something many socialists pictured early in the 20th century, but which 
has not materialised. Even the EU is driven by free-market reform, not by 
creating a new strong form of social institution. Something Habermas 
definitely overrates when looking at democratic process in EU politics. 

All in all, model or concrete constitution, we are here already at the stake 
of humanism (global constitution) and finding a total democratic form. Denying 
the concrete state-aspect won't help that. Form twists with content and is 
needed to make it evolve (as physics is for maths and then vice versa). 
Quality can become quantity and vice-versa to put it in Hegelian terms. 

We cannot first find the right form, it has to match the historic situation 
and solve the problems of current humanity, or theoretically speaken broaden 
our view on it, as our practices attempt to. But the applications should be 
dirtily concrete and specific imo (the practices have to be strong enough for 
these issues and many (recent) protests/movements/revolutions have been 
sparked by single seemingly superficial issues). It also shortens our 
feedback-loop tremendously, we can fail faster with the failure of the issues.

In the future the pracitices might very well prove wrong or dangerously 
mispercepted, we cannot side step failure by cleaning the form beforehand and 
chosing "neutral" issues. We have to try them out on lively, political and 
contradictionary issues. Different political groups or processes very well 
might still have different (total) democracies in their mind. 
(In fact it is pretty obvious imo that they do.) We have to decide whom we 
want to help even and especially if our practices are intended to transcend 
that. 

Just my 2 pence.

> 
>   2. A ratings poll to identify those places in the world that best
>      uphold the model constitution in practice, and those places that
>      most offend against it.  The results of the ratings poll are:
> 
>      * A ranked list of the upholders specifying for each upholder the
>        particular parts of the constitution it best upholds.
> 
>      * A ranked list of the offenders specifying for each offender the
>        particular parts of the constitution it most offends against.
> 
> The second part is calculated to produce an immediate expectation of
> change.  Each shift in the rankings is a potential news story.  While
> it takes decades to change constitutions, it takes less time to change
> people's expectations.
> 
> Now we don't just do this for constitutions, but for all laws, plans
> and designs that are portable from place to place or application to
> application.  We raise ideal models for universal consensus and use
> these as "master keys" to enter all forums.  There we keep throwing
> the practices at the forums until they stick.
> 
> Does this make sense?  I was feeling stuck for a few days, but now I'm
> hopeful this is the way forward.  I'll do some light research on the
> idea tomorrow (model law etc.) and see what I can learn.

How can I explain this issue to a person in 5 minutes without unwinding all of 
Votorola's theory of communicative assent? And even after that, what is really 
in for them realistically? Maybe you have a concrete issue people find 
compelling in mind and I just don't see it?
I find Stephen's co-op interesting, because it already has a lively democratic 
process at its core and an (also business-related) interest to expand it. We 
offer them software to do so, which also makes us potentially more viable.

conseo