Solution #2 – participation

Representative democracy is adversarial and is not leading itself well to solutions in a crisis. Political parties in opposition often oppose by necessity and often underine the party in power by necessity in order to increase their own chances of gaining the reins.  If they succeed then roles of those in power and opposition are reversed.

The whip system means politicians on both sides have to vote in favour of things they are against and against things they are in favour of on a regular basis.

Democracy means the rule of the majority so where does that leave the minority – the poor, the weak, the disaffected, the opressed ?  Often without a voice.

Additionally when crises such as the current economic situation occur, lack of agreement on solutions through lack of co-operation can arise. The attacks from opposition can be crippling for the decision makers.  Moulding of the public anger and its manipulation takes place with some degree of success.  The blame game takes centre stage.

Participation by the public is one key to finding solutions. Presently once politicians are elected, with the exceptiuon of a relatively small number of people active in lobbying (some for self-interest and others for the common good), the public leaves them to get on with it.   However, the expertise to get out of the problems is often within the communities and not within government or its advisors. Therefore – participation from the public is going to need to increase (at the moment, the most prevalent public feeling is anger – by and large a destructive emotion which isn’t really going to get us anywhere fast).

More town hall meetings are required involving people getting together to pool their ideas on effective decision making. It means a re-examination of all levels of governance towards a more participatory system where greater consensus and non-adversarial methods are sought.

Solution #1 Helping each other

We posess more knowledge and better tools than ever before.  Solutions can be found more quickly if the will is there. The rich developed and underdeveloped worlds can benefit mutually with the right co-operation and somehow the vested interests on both sides need to be bypassed. Dr. Desmond Tutu spoke about this an award acceptance speech by the at National University of Galway in February 2009.   The vice grip that is debt needs to be removed. Is the global banking system extracting its many pounds if flesh on regions who have already paid far more than a fair price any good to the wider human family ?  Merit in continuing to extract this debit is very hard to find.

It stands to reason that we may access sustainably, some of the resources in the underveloped regions, but in return, the people from these regions get to access some of our resources and expertise. In contrast to this is the debt caused (on our side) and conflict driven / poor / corrupt governance induced poverty. This sounds idealistic but is actually the opposite – pragmatic in the context of the multiple global crises facing us this century. Ways need to be found to bypass the debt ball and chain and diplomatic persuassion is required to sidestep the regional factors such as the greed, corruption and power abuse of the few.

By the same token people should consider pooling local skills rather than protecting their ideas and innovation. Hoarding of ideas means slowing down solutions.  The recently unemployed need to be viewed as a vast resource of skills who can all contribute.  Opportunities involve local co-ops in the areas of energy, agriculture, forestry, science and innovation.

Funding could also be provided by local and community banks using the mature and well-off workforce who wish to give a future to their children, grandchildren and communities.