Issuepedia:Issuegroups

Overview

Wikicitizens is the working name for the next piece of the puzzle, where the overall goal is reclaiming government in the name of sanity.

Philosophy (by Woozle)

a little story

Some years ago (pre-web), I found myself thinking along the following lines:

Because our society often acts in ways that we find abhorrent, we often feel like a group of aliens (either the another-country type or the another-planet type) in our own country (or planet). Thinking of the various people I would consider to be friends (or at least potential friend-material), I find myself largely in agreement with most of those people on a large number of issues – and yet largely at odds with the prevailing views on quite a few of those issues.

"So", I then found myself thinking, "what if we (myself and an arbitrary group of friends) were to think of ourselves as really being like a bunch of transplants from some other culture? What if we thought of our own views as representing the values of our society, while still (of necessity) obeying the laws of the external society? What if, instead of legally working as individuals (or even with various special-interest groups) towards change in the external society, we worked together as a group with common values but no specific, pre-agreed positions, to effect those changes through whatever legal and ethical means are available?"

documenting the sanity of small groups

I've watched the ways in which small groups of sane, reasonable people discuss issues, work out which parts are important, and arrive at reasonable decisions... and it stands in stark contrast to the way our society works. It seems clear to me, at least, that smaller groups of people (in quantities somewhere between 2 and 10) do a much better job of working out sane positions than does the vast, unwieldy mechanism of our society.

In fact, probably most of the real opinion formed within our society comes from individuals talking with each other – no doubt based in large part on much of what is said in the various public disputation arenas, but not entirely trusting that more widespread discourse as authoritative. What we currently lack, however, is any significant documentation of what those opinions are and how they were reached – in other words, inter-group transparency.

Wiki technology is excellent for documenting complex interrelationships. Perhaps it will one day be superceded by something better, but it's what we have now.

inter-tribal negotiation

to be written

Effecting Change