voting

via :

Voting is a method for a group such as a meeting or an electorate to make a decision or express an opinion—often following discussions, debates, or election campaigns. Democracies elect holders of high office by voting.

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this finite set of choices mentality is killing us

public consensus always oppresses someone – red flags

what we need (what the soul craves) is curiosity over decision making

david on consensus

moxie on democracy – yay

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quotes below are from Eric Liu’s:

Critics such as Brand may be astute in their diagnosis, but they’re deluded in their prescription. There is no such thing as not voting. In a democracy, not voting is voting — for all that you detest and oppose.

perhaps prior to now. perhaps.

but certainly not now. we can now do much better than that.

what if office means less and less…

because voting becomes more of a daily, 24/7 conversation.

millions of 24/7 conversations.. because we can now ground the chaos of 7 billion people finding the bravery to change their mind. every day.

we’re no longer bound to the linear structure of meetings/campaigns/electoral years/terms/etc. we now have the capability for amazingly rich chaordic/decentralized/rhizomatic communities/conversations/gatherings/decisions.

which is great news for humanity.. because then the idea of voting become more about betterness and fittingness..

While abstaining from the ballot can be dressed up as an act of passive resistance, it is in fact an active delivery of power and voice to those who’d like to take advantage of you. Far from weakening an unjust system, not voting only amplifies the system’s pain-inflicting power.

unless it doesn’t.

Politics may indeed be sordid, but it changes only to the extent we aggregate votes.

yeah. perhaps we don’t really even understand/grok the potential of an intense/manifold/minuscule/self-perpetuating/emergent aggregation – of votes.

for humanity..

To be sure, today’s political debate is too narrow, disallowing ideas such as a guaranteed minimum income or single-payer health care. But it also, at least for now, disallows a dismantling of Social Security or repeal of civil rights laws. The question is this: Which set of disallowed ideas would you hate to see become law? And what’s more likely to usher in what you fear — voting or not voting?

sounds just like the ed reformers and innovators..

spinach or rock ness

Brand and his fans speak vaguely of the need for a “revolution” to upend everyday democracy. It turns out everyday democracy already provides for revolution. In the 2012 election, youth voters, low-income voters, Latino voters and Asian voters all turned out at less than 50%. Mobilize 100% of them and our nation’s political priorities become completely different and our government radically more responsive to all the people.

not when the options are set. when the options are set, ie: here’s your list to vote from, we may end up with an incredible event/moment in history, et al, but it won’t truly be a revolution.. not a sustainable/thrivable/ongoing revolution.

there are other ways to – vote – than voting as we know it. assuming that there aren’t.. doesn’t make it true, it just keeps us from truth/potential.

no?

what if we let it be more about a decision, for a gathering/community.. in the context of life.. rather than an event all its own.. that perhaps is currently taking up too much of our time/money/energy .. and then too .. perhaps … is – after all the fanfare/tradition/time lapse of voting ness – no longer the most effective/relevant/humane means of communication/collaboration/co-creation.

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from ch 3 of Kevin Carson‘s desktop regulated state:

Bucky’s distributed infrastructure that’s embedded mainly at end points. in recent times – in which the endpoints themselves are routers… wireless meshwork

from digitally enable social change, by Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport:

we expect that the ease of participation, then, could produce quick rushes of participation when a call for participation is made. further, these rushes of participation don’t require high relative participation rates.. given that this is true, it is possible to have both flash style activism and varying levels of activity by any given potential participation. if potential participants have time on day and not the next, mobilizations can go forward as long a some people have some time each day..

future govt.. ie: how we vote. 24/7 in the moment.. cost free. then per Bucky‘s interview 1978 – we are paying attention and if we don’t like how it turns out.. we change our minds/direction instantly.

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http://guerrillatranslation.com/2013/07/01/unity-sans-convergence/

An additional, and major, problem is that convergence strategies aren’t effective at adapting to new situations that require unexpectedly different behaviours (that is to say, they’re not good at improvisation).

On the contrary, the brain lacks any sort of static, centralised structure. “Unity of mind” is constituted through instances of grand-scale synchronization, whereupon different neuronal areas act transiently in coordination. These instances of synchronization have a limited lifespan so the brain doesn’t get stuck in a specific sync-mode.

[..]

We believe it’s only a matter time until society organizes to dismantle the electoral space. There are, in fact, various initiatives underway with this purpose in mind.  We predict that only those who have understood the logic of distributed, networked processes of self-organisation and participation will succeed.

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John Oliver on state legislatures and alec – nov 2014:

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5.85 mill can’t vote – by Marlon:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marlon-peterson/disenfranchising-the-form_b_6121474.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

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from Chomsky‘s profit of people:

“wilsonian idealism” … Wilson’s own view was that an elite of gentlemen with “elevated ideals: is needed to preserve “stability and righteousness.” it is the intelligent minority of “responsible men” who must control decision making, another veteran of Wilson’s propaganda committee, Walter Lippmann, explained in his influential essays on democracy. Lippmann was also the most respected figure in us journalism and a noted commentator on public affairs for half a century.

intro’d to Lippmann via Eli Pariser.. revisit

the intelligent minority are a “specialized class” who are responsible for setting policy and for “the formation of a sound public opinion,” Lippmann elaborated. they must be free from interference by the general public who are “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders.” the public must “be put in its place,” Lippmann continued: their “function” is to be “spectators of action,” not participants, apart from periodic electoral exercises when they choose among the specialized class. leaders must be free to operate in “technocratic insulation,” to borrow current world bank terminology.

 pluralistic ignorance ..

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from David Graeber‘s revolution in reverse:

All these entities are the product of institutions and institutional practices that, in turn, define certain horizons of possibility. Hence when voting in parliamentary elections one might feel obliged to make a “realistic” choice; in an insurrectionary situation, on the other hand, suddenly anything seems possible.

on voting.. and spinach or rock ness.

Voting booths, television screens, office cubicles, hospitals, the ritual that surrounds them — one might say these are the very machinery of alienation. They are the instruments through which the human imagination is smashed and shattered.

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2012 – on not voting – via Quinn Norton

http://www.quinnnorton.com/said/?p=638

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what if our thinking about consensus is what’s getting in the way. i’m seeing Louis‘s magnets pulling the puck. ie: why is there a puck. we have the means now – so why don’t we use tech to coordinate/regroup/re self organize us.. rather than keep on forcing us to consensus.. perhaps we redefine decision making

sans finite set of choices

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mar 2016 – pie image where voting stands

http://www.sethmad.com/2016/03/a-useful-reminder-of-where-the-election-really-stands/

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@Snowden

6/23/16 8:17 AM

No matter the outcome, #Brexit polls demonstrate how quickly half of any population can be convinced to vote against itself. Quite a lesson.