Bernard Spong, on Facebook: Denis, your faith in D2 is inspiring and your passion unwavering. Let me go to the site and see if there is anything there to help this doubter find any pointers towards how D2 can begin to operate - there goes the activist in me again. The idea is great - how do you live it out, do something about it, with big brother government calling the shots?
Denis replies:
I love your Doubt, Honest Doubter. As a rule I'm with you and with Voltaire – "doubt is not an ideal condition but certainty is an absurd one". I'm uncertain about the rights and wrongs of wealth and reward and freedom and sharing and opportunity and restitution and more, but I am sure that these things are better dealt with when people are thinking for themselves than when they are massed blocs behind rival leaders. I think, Doubter Bernard, that you'd embrace that much certainty. I think Voltaire would.
Here's an approximate outline.
- For a while yet, anyone punting D2 meets a lot of brick wall, being told that it's risky, it's reckless, it'll cost a fortune, it's irresponsible, it's utopian (big bad word, meaning dreamland), it's kook, it's not the way the world works. Rich people say "the poor will steal us blind"; spokespersons for the poor say "this can only work for the rich". Smartasses of every stripe hear you out for even all the way up to 30 seconds before dismissing you as recycling one or another disproven -ism. This brick wall is natural and inevitable; it's what original democracy also met, most classically in Britain in the 1820s.
- Over years -- 3?, 5? 10? -- the brick wall acquires some cracks. Some tropical-country elections go awry, a la Ivory Coast or Kenya. Some Arab countries tire of groping for a way to replace ex-dictators. Some premier league countries get bored with impertinent persons asking if this is as good as it gets. Views of D2 move forward, to "yes, it's true that the world has never done this, isn't that the point?" and "of course there has to be a fatal flaw, but, um, where is it?" and "maybe more reliance on the people does mean more stability, and more justice?"
- People get the 4x4 revelation. When on your first steep terrifying 4x4 course the instructor says "to brake, use your accelerator" you think he's a suicidal murdering lunatic. But the moment you get the hang of braking on the accelerator, it becomes instinctive. In today's society it's axiomatic that order depends on the leashing of rival politicians. When we get the hang of unleashing the voting power of unpolitical people, it'll become instinctive. Opposition will be modest, as (i) no segment of society see itself as loser (though some individuals may) and (ii) no politicians can for long reject what gives more power to their followers.
- Once the basis for a D2 society is laid (by constitutional amendment letting communities make their own rules), the system can take time settling in. Existing or default forms of order remain in place while D2 forms of order rise at the pace set by the will of the people in response to the tensions applying to them.
Bernard, the most basic reason that big brother government calls all the shots is its fear that if it stops calling the shots someone else will call the shots over it. When D2 lodges, politics will become quite unthreatening. Thanks again to you, for echo and for your interest.
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