Our global human-dominated ecosystem is managed byourapex-predators upon us, who used to be apex-predators when we were hunter-gatherers, but became grazing-animals when we tookup agriculture.
"We" need to make their extermination-services unnecessary and their genetic-suite of talents, "sociopathy", "the lines of kings and nobles", might no longer be carefully selected for in their "exclusive club".
They perform an ecosystem-service. That's why they persist.
You've heard the parable about people living by a river who see drowning children float by. While many focus on pulling children out of the water, some people go up the river to find out how they fall into the river in the first place .
Perhaps we should look upstream to see what's causing so many anti-life policies that operate in our modern world.
The majority of Americans' top priorities for government (Peace, Justice, Fair Taxes, Wise Spending of tax dollars, Sensible Regulations for Toxins) are ignored, while the 1% almost always get what they want (wars, poisons in ag and food, tax breaks for the rich, junk food in school cafeterias, EMFs everywhere, bans on and barriers to holistic therapies).
Trend is not destiny! Change is possible. Ways to accomplish reform that Americans have never heard about are clearly described in: THE MECHANICS OF CHANGING THE WORLD — POLITICAL ARCHITECTURE TO ROLL BACK STATE AND CORPORATE POWER.
This book explains that regaining our republic would be “easier than we assume, it’s been done many times, here are step-by-step directions.”
It took 8 years for an Aussie named John Macgregor to write it. He distilled more than 1300 sources into 400 pages and starts the story all the way back in prehistoric times with hunter gatherers’ egalitarian self-governance. Then we read about the first documented democracy – the 65 years of Athens’ Golden Age. After a mere 2400-year interlude of empires, we witness the second flowering of democracy in Philadelphia, at a closed-door meeting during May and June of 1787, which produced a constitution that was adopted a year later, and, keeping a promise to the states, the Bill of Rights was written during the first session of Congress and ratified by in 1791.
Despite the flaws in that constitution, we ended slavery, reduced oppression of first nations, and extricated ourselves from wars that the majority didn’t want. Women got the vote, Jim Crow was made illegal, hungry children were fed. Yes, looking back in time, we might be surprised at how long these corrections all took to finally occur, but they did occur.
It was impossible, as Macgregor explains, for the Founding Parents to foresee the 4 modern obstacles to a well-functioning constitutional republic:
• Corporate money runs DC and state capitals
• Centralized media doesn’t tolerate dissent
• Americans have no clue about the transformative effect of Citizens Assemblies (which already work well for many nations, such as the Swiss), and we never learned why the parliamentary system is more balanced than our current presidential system
• Voters in democracies around the world are discouraged because our attempts to influence our electeds (demonstrations, letters to the editor, and voting) hardly change anything
Here are 2 ways to see how some nations have solved these problems that stump us Americans:
1. Mike Muntisov provides an excellent overview of CHANGING THE WORLD here:
Like so many of us, John Macgregor isn't in this for the money; he set the price of the book (available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon) as low as possible, thus earning the magnificent return of 28¢ per hard copy that's sold (probably about the same for the digital version).
To sum up, we CAN regain our constitutional democracy, with ripple effects for the other nations on this small, blue marble called Earth.
Thanks, Lauren - you're a deep thinker, and I appreciate the opportunity to engage with all these ideas. To MacGregor, I'd make two points.
1) There are more than 4 ways that our democracy has been subverted. There is direct manipulation of the vote by controlling the (secret) computer code inside our voting machines. There is bribery of elected officials and "agency capture" of our regulatory bodies, both with corporate money. In addition to the legacy media's concentration in a few hands, there is even worse concentration of social media by Google, Facebook, X, and Apple. Together, these four companies determine what narratives and what facts we can find when browsing the web.
112 years ago, Louis Brandeis wrote, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Today, the disparity in individual wealth is just about as severe as it was in Brandeis's Guilded Age. But the concentration of corporate wealth is much, much more severe than it was in 1914.
2) I'm just a scientist, naive about all things political. If MacGregor sees a path from where we are now to the more just system that he describes, I'll eagerly follow along. But the transition is beyond my present power to imagine. We could have a violent revolution, but a lot of people would get hurt, and we might end up with a more dictatorial government than we have now. We could have Constitutional amendments, but the procedural barriers to adoption are steep at a time when the people controlling the levers of power currently are happy with the system that we have now. We could have a general strike, or a peaceful "occupy Washington" movement with a million people out on the Mall every day until things change, accompanied by overwhelming support from the other 300 million of us. (What would the demands be for ending the general strike or the occupation?) A new Constitutional Convention? Who would the delegates be? And why would we think that money would find a way to subvert the checks and balances of the new Constitution, just as it did with the present Constitution?
To me, the easiest thing to imagine -- still a long shot in my mind -- would be a new Constitution Party, organized to advocate strict enforcement of the Constitution we have. I like to think that just enforcing the existing Constitution would be a sufficient revolution. For example, full freedom of speech implies that corporations can't do the government's dirty business of censorship. For example, only Congress has the power to declare war, and the President can't go around bombing countries without a war declaration. For example, the secret government of DARPA and the CIA and covert operations around the world and a Department of War that has never been audited -- all these are unConstitutional. And the government described in our Constitution is both far more limited than is the Federal Government today, and also far more balanced, without the concentration of power in the White House which has gradually accrued over 200 years.
I certainly agree with your list of what's unconstitutional, and appreciate the concept of being guided by our Constitutional.
However, the Powers That Be don't agree, and both parties have found "reasonable" ways to "update" the Constitution to suit their goals. That's what got us into our current trouble. So what's the chance of millions of Americans hearing about a new Constitution Party?
Whatever remedy makes sense to enough people, it must start at a local level to build strength, because there is no national organization or famous face that can get it going. which is a main premise of The Mechanics of Changing the World.
And considering that violent revolutions accomplish much less lasting change than non-violent campaigns, it's obvious that even with our surfeit of guns in the good ole USA, that won't turn the tide.
At my age (78), I probably won't see the recovery of our democratic republic. But I fondly hope that, in the few years left before Ai takes over the planet, we in the 99% can wrest government back to We the People and put technology back in category of a tool (rather than letting it get to the stage where it is The Boss of Us All).
You have a lot of interesting content, it will take a while to read it all. It's not easy to find a sensible path in our misguided, polluted world. And I don't have the will power to fast a lot. Even so, my habits are good enough to have me pain free, independent, and content.
Our global human-dominated ecosystem is managed byourapex-predators upon us, who used to be apex-predators when we were hunter-gatherers, but became grazing-animals when we tookup agriculture.
"We" need to make their extermination-services unnecessary and their genetic-suite of talents, "sociopathy", "the lines of kings and nobles", might no longer be carefully selected for in their "exclusive club".
They perform an ecosystem-service. That's why they persist.
;-(
You've heard the parable about people living by a river who see drowning children float by. While many focus on pulling children out of the water, some people go up the river to find out how they fall into the river in the first place .
Perhaps we should look upstream to see what's causing so many anti-life policies that operate in our modern world.
The majority of Americans' top priorities for government (Peace, Justice, Fair Taxes, Wise Spending of tax dollars, Sensible Regulations for Toxins) are ignored, while the 1% almost always get what they want (wars, poisons in ag and food, tax breaks for the rich, junk food in school cafeterias, EMFs everywhere, bans on and barriers to holistic therapies).
Trend is not destiny! Change is possible. Ways to accomplish reform that Americans have never heard about are clearly described in: THE MECHANICS OF CHANGING THE WORLD — POLITICAL ARCHITECTURE TO ROLL BACK STATE AND CORPORATE POWER.
This book explains that regaining our republic would be “easier than we assume, it’s been done many times, here are step-by-step directions.”
It took 8 years for an Aussie named John Macgregor to write it. He distilled more than 1300 sources into 400 pages and starts the story all the way back in prehistoric times with hunter gatherers’ egalitarian self-governance. Then we read about the first documented democracy – the 65 years of Athens’ Golden Age. After a mere 2400-year interlude of empires, we witness the second flowering of democracy in Philadelphia, at a closed-door meeting during May and June of 1787, which produced a constitution that was adopted a year later, and, keeping a promise to the states, the Bill of Rights was written during the first session of Congress and ratified by in 1791.
Despite the flaws in that constitution, we ended slavery, reduced oppression of first nations, and extricated ourselves from wars that the majority didn’t want. Women got the vote, Jim Crow was made illegal, hungry children were fed. Yes, looking back in time, we might be surprised at how long these corrections all took to finally occur, but they did occur.
It was impossible, as Macgregor explains, for the Founding Parents to foresee the 4 modern obstacles to a well-functioning constitutional republic:
• Corporate money runs DC and state capitals
• Centralized media doesn’t tolerate dissent
• Americans have no clue about the transformative effect of Citizens Assemblies (which already work well for many nations, such as the Swiss), and we never learned why the parliamentary system is more balanced than our current presidential system
• Voters in democracies around the world are discouraged because our attempts to influence our electeds (demonstrations, letters to the editor, and voting) hardly change anything
Here are 2 ways to see how some nations have solved these problems that stump us Americans:
1. Mike Muntisov provides an excellent overview of CHANGING THE WORLD here:
https://courtofthegrandchildren.com/democracy-3-0/
2. Or read Macgregor’s more detailed Introduction – and subscribe to his Substack – here:
https://johnmacgregor.substack.com/p/introduction-to-the-mechanics-of
Like so many of us, John Macgregor isn't in this for the money; he set the price of the book (available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon) as low as possible, thus earning the magnificent return of 28¢ per hard copy that's sold (probably about the same for the digital version).
To sum up, we CAN regain our constitutional democracy, with ripple effects for the other nations on this small, blue marble called Earth.
Thanks, Lauren - you're a deep thinker, and I appreciate the opportunity to engage with all these ideas. To MacGregor, I'd make two points.
1) There are more than 4 ways that our democracy has been subverted. There is direct manipulation of the vote by controlling the (secret) computer code inside our voting machines. There is bribery of elected officials and "agency capture" of our regulatory bodies, both with corporate money. In addition to the legacy media's concentration in a few hands, there is even worse concentration of social media by Google, Facebook, X, and Apple. Together, these four companies determine what narratives and what facts we can find when browsing the web.
112 years ago, Louis Brandeis wrote, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Today, the disparity in individual wealth is just about as severe as it was in Brandeis's Guilded Age. But the concentration of corporate wealth is much, much more severe than it was in 1914.
2) I'm just a scientist, naive about all things political. If MacGregor sees a path from where we are now to the more just system that he describes, I'll eagerly follow along. But the transition is beyond my present power to imagine. We could have a violent revolution, but a lot of people would get hurt, and we might end up with a more dictatorial government than we have now. We could have Constitutional amendments, but the procedural barriers to adoption are steep at a time when the people controlling the levers of power currently are happy with the system that we have now. We could have a general strike, or a peaceful "occupy Washington" movement with a million people out on the Mall every day until things change, accompanied by overwhelming support from the other 300 million of us. (What would the demands be for ending the general strike or the occupation?) A new Constitutional Convention? Who would the delegates be? And why would we think that money would find a way to subvert the checks and balances of the new Constitution, just as it did with the present Constitution?
To me, the easiest thing to imagine -- still a long shot in my mind -- would be a new Constitution Party, organized to advocate strict enforcement of the Constitution we have. I like to think that just enforcing the existing Constitution would be a sufficient revolution. For example, full freedom of speech implies that corporations can't do the government's dirty business of censorship. For example, only Congress has the power to declare war, and the President can't go around bombing countries without a war declaration. For example, the secret government of DARPA and the CIA and covert operations around the world and a Department of War that has never been audited -- all these are unConstitutional. And the government described in our Constitution is both far more limited than is the Federal Government today, and also far more balanced, without the concentration of power in the White House which has gradually accrued over 200 years.
I certainly agree with your list of what's unconstitutional, and appreciate the concept of being guided by our Constitutional.
However, the Powers That Be don't agree, and both parties have found "reasonable" ways to "update" the Constitution to suit their goals. That's what got us into our current trouble. So what's the chance of millions of Americans hearing about a new Constitution Party?
Whatever remedy makes sense to enough people, it must start at a local level to build strength, because there is no national organization or famous face that can get it going. which is a main premise of The Mechanics of Changing the World.
And considering that violent revolutions accomplish much less lasting change than non-violent campaigns, it's obvious that even with our surfeit of guns in the good ole USA, that won't turn the tide.
At my age (78), I probably won't see the recovery of our democratic republic. But I fondly hope that, in the few years left before Ai takes over the planet, we in the 99% can wrest government back to We the People and put technology back in category of a tool (rather than letting it get to the stage where it is The Boss of Us All).
Hey, Lauren - Hang in there, cuz we need your voice going forward. I just turned 77. Do you know that in my "other life" I do longevity science?
http://agingAdvice.org
You have a lot of interesting content, it will take a while to read it all. It's not easy to find a sensible path in our misguided, polluted world. And I don't have the will power to fast a lot. Even so, my habits are good enough to have me pain free, independent, and content.
👍