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Constitutional changes are necessary for a maturing society to evolve

Ultimately, to legally change our Canadian system of governance, first we need to change the monarchic constitution, where the power comes down from the sovereign Queen to her subjects instead of from the sovereign people for the people.

In order to become sovereign, we need to replace the representative-party-legislators with independent politicians who are willing to enable and implement a system of referendum where people can participate in the making of their own constitution.

However, there are some logistic difficulties which need to be recognized, challenged, and overcome.

First, electing an independent candidate, without a party organization, can be very difficult; however, we must remember that when people are ready, monumental changes, which seemed impossible at one time, have been surprisingly possible at other times, as we have seen in history; for example, the end of slavery, women’s voting rights, the fall of empires, etc.

Second, a lone elected DD politician in the BC Legislature would be outnumbered and ignored by the 86 BC MLAs who are proficiently working for their party’s agenda.

However, electing one independent DD politician anywhere would symbolize the beginning of a change to the representative system. Voters from other ridings would realize that under DD their input is registered, discussed, and counted.

When people realize that potentially they can influence the outcome of our collective political decisions, their interest in political participation will be awakened.

7.1 Where there are difficulties,
there are also alternatives.

“The only way in which radical change can be conceived today is not as the taking of power but as the dissolution of [centralized] power.”
John Holloway

If no independent candidates come forward, or even if they run in elections but do not get elected within the established system, we can be creative and consider playing a cyber political game which might catch the interest of futurists, idealists, and optimists.

When a significant number of us adopt a cyber game of DD as a viable political alternative, we may decide to create a phantom government, parallel and supplementary to the existing one.

The Albert Einstein Institution promotes Dr. Gene Sharp’s Methods of Nonviolent Political Action; one of which is: “Dual sovereignty and parallel government.” (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973)

It must be noted that Dr. Sharp’s Method can be used as a peaceful measuring tool to show public support for change, or it can be used, misused and abused to incite a violent overthrow of a legitimate government. People need to discern how to use any political tool.

If and when people decide to participate in a parallel system of government, considering the new computer technology, Canadians no longer need to elect political leaders, City Councillors, MLAs or MPs.

When every citizens is a legislator, we only need to elect executive administrators for each city department; Executive-Provincial-Ministers; and Executive-Federal-Ministers.

These executive ministers, or Co-Ministers if more than one is needed for a committee, would be perpetually accountable and subordinated to the voter’s right to recall them anytime.

7.2 – We Need to Create Laws with Empathic Intentionality.

Enlightened visionaries like Buddha, Jesus, Tolstoi, Gandhi and others preached a peaceful social revolution based not on violent revolutionary fights, but on the observation and acceptance of fundamental human values.

Understandably, empathy can not be legislated; however, laws and empathy can be viewed as complementary. Law without empathy is like the left side of the reasoning brain without conscience and emotions from the right side of the brain. It is a law without spirit.

Empathy, as the spirit of the law. It is a fundamental element in human relations for survival. A new political system, to exist in just-peace, must be based on a philosophical, humane, ethical, and egalitarian intention.

Michel Nagler in his book, “In search for a Nonviolent Future” says that we need to change ourselves, our thoughts, our words, and our deeds in order to change the world.

Empathic intentionality can not be created and dictated by well meaning leaders or benevolent governments. Laws with empathic intentionality must be individually initiated and collectively consented by the majority of citizens citizens.

Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Josip Broz Tito, Saddam Hussein, Muammar al-Gaddafi, and many other dictators may have had a good paternalistic intention to help their people, and they may have been temporarily successful in implementing a good standard of living for their countries, but because the good intended laws were ruthlessly dictated and enforced from the top of centralized pyramids of power, the masses at the base of the pyramid suffered human rights abuses inherent in all undemocratic, hierarchical systems of governance.

So, the systemic environment of governance must be generated from people’s initiatives and acceptance, not just from idolized politicians and technocrats.

“A world worthy of humanity cannot be created through the state.” John Holloway.

7.3 – A Sense of Equality

Adopting racial, cultural, and economic equal rights will free us from hierarchy, exploitation, and oppression.

A basic requirement to this political transformation is the citizens’ realization of equality and sovereignty, independent from hierarchical political structures.

We need to recognize the innate equality in all human beings by realizing and dispelling the mythological belief in the superiority/inferiority complex which is deeply entrenched in our culture.

Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson, in his book “The Spirit Level”, shows how detrimental inequality is to all of us, and why equality is better for everyone.

This delusion is apparent in our admiration for monarchs, arts and sports celebrities, religious and political leaders. This emotional propensity to idolize individuals, generates tribal affiliations and loyalties to crowds of followers rather than fosters independent rational thinking.

Christian Andersen illustrated this cultural idolatry of hierarchy and inequality in his 1837 Fairy Tale, “The Emperor Has No Clothes.”

When we rely on benevolent dictators or philanthropic saviours to provide for better social services, without questioning the source of their power or wealth, we underestimate and undermine our own abilities.

In fact, leaders are not any wiser in making political decisions for the collective good. We have seen throughout history highly educated and intelligent individuals execute horrendous crimes to humanity by enabling wars and civil coercion. Yet, people continue to admire, trust, and empower leaders as if they were super humans or deities.

We must prevent our rational thinking from getting overwhelmed by our emotional admiration of charismatic personalities. We need to challenge and overcome this cultural mythology. We need to rethink and rebuild our sense of equality.

7.4 – Justice and Security

According to Professor Wilkinson, the more egalitarian a social system is, the less crime it breathes. So, security is directly proportional to economic justice for all.

There are several aspects of justice and security:

a.- Security and Justice for one is the security and justice for all. Security is having mutual fairness in human relations, rather than relying on the culture of fear, punishment, and retaliation.

b.- Buddhist teachings and aboriginal societies tell us that if we see ourselves as separate from the environment and disconnected with each other, we will eventually destroy the ecosystem and ourselves with it.

c.- Wars violently impose temporary social order, but do not bring durable social justice and peace.

A few countries, have established a Ministry of Peace, with the purpose of developing methods and training student-brigades for nonviolent management of conflicts.

We need to learn to solve our conflicts within ourselves and with other nation in a nonviolent way. We need to reform the military interventions misnomered “tours” or “Humanitarian missions”. We need to transform our current Ministry of Defense into a Ministry of conflict management for world peace.

Mahatma Gandhi said: “ I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent.”

7.5 – The Enemy Syndrome and Human Rights

As the Pogo Papers described it in 1953:
“We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.”

Human rights can not be established by the tyranny of the majority nor by the tyranny of a minority. The will of a majority or the will of a minority must respect and accommodate the human rights of all.

We need to overcome the enemy syndrome. That is the perception of a separation between them and us. Whether that means other nations or our own government.

We must stop blaming our elected rulers for our own political acquiescence or apathy. We the people elect the very politician whom we later blame. It is our responsibility to stop following and acquiescing, because we are the makers and consumers of superfluous and toxic goods and services.

Instead of merely protesting the current hierarchical system and their business’s agenda, we must build our own legislative system.

“We participate in the breaking of our own doing, the construction of our own subordination.” John Holloway.

7.6 – Keep The Good and Toss The Bad.

Current laws and government regulations which generate a good standard of living, must be conserved and if needed enhanced. However, laws which prioritize profits for a few businesses, by giving them personhood status, at the detriment of exploited citizens, must be changed.

We must also give credit and remember with empathy that our influential predecessors created the various political systems and laws with the intention of organizing our social system. This was created according to the culture and political understanding of their time.

Times and technology have evolved, so we need to graciously upgrade the traditional, hierarchical political ideology of representative democracy into the new system of DD.

7.7 – Consider Competitiveness and Cooperation.

We need to reconsider the lure to for-profit-market-economy based on competitiveness, as if consumerism and economic competitiveness were the driving forces of human activities.

When we reconsider the competitive agenda, and it’s propagandized culture, we will realize that a fair distribution of human resources through cooperation can become the most civilized motivating force for human activities.

Imagine a futuristic moneyless society, as proposed by the Zeitgeist Movement. It may look like a utopia, but a forward step of gradually depending less on the fee-per-service culture, and more on service according to need and contribution according to abilities ideology, would create the “Common Good” as Karl Marx proposed.

For example, money-less social services as fare-free public-transit; a comprehensive, universal, free of charge health care system, etc.

7. 8 – Overcoming Economic Mythologies

We often hear from politicians and the media that the government can not afford to maintain the social services we need. Their reasons for austerity are usually an economic-crisis, an economic-recession, or just scarcity of money.

Two facts about money of which we must be clear:

First – The economy is not the wealthy provider of social services; the economy is nothing more than an accounting system of transactions. The rules of this accounting system are regulated by tax laws.

Politicians, in principle, have the responsibility to legislate the collection of as much financial resources as required by the government in order to provide the best possible social services. Therefore, if fair and sufficient taxes were collected, no government deficits should ever exist.

However, in practice politicians serving the business agenda, instead of collecting enough taxes to pay for the needed social services, they legislate laws to reduce or exempt taxes from wealthy individuals and from businesses.

When the revenue shortfall occurs, creating budget deficits and consequently requiring the reduction of some services, governments then borrow, at interest, from financial institutions owned by the wealthy elite.

Second – Most politicians agree in principle that we need more social services, “If only we could afford them”.

At the same time however, a few business- consultants and a few politicians often prioritize expensive mega projects, which are profitable to businesses, instead of financing the most needed social services.

Once we realize that poor social services in our society are a matter of poor government’s priorities, not a lack of money, we, the majority of citizens, not a few politicians, need to decide the amount of taxes we pay and the allocation of those tax revenues.

7.9 – Once we realize the imminent need for social change, what can we do?

After a conscious realization of our sovereignty from hierarchical politics, the most fundamental step is to clearly define the people’s agenda and write it down into a citizens constitution.

Now is the time because we still have the ability to find a relatively painless change to avoid the predicted economic and ecological catastrophe because that is where our current political system is headed.