Art of Climbing Trees

Decision Making / Governance

A new transparent and decentralised/distributed form of Local to Global governance is formed with the following structure and communication processes:

Distributed polycentric⁵⁷ citizens’ assemblies (CA) These are overlapping tiers of circles, or ‘CA Stages’ at micro (testing stage), community/localised, regional, national and global scales. Each stage stewards greater authority to legislate. Global CA cover concerns of the broadest significance: rights/the UE constitution, planetary level budgets/projects/crises/peace-keeping/standards, etc., while always beholden to ‘lower’ stages. All assemblies are sortition-selected (global CAs from the whole world; local CAs from relevant locality, etc.,) to tackle and vote on single or multiple related issues, after which the assembly is disbanded. Multiple citizens’ assemblies are supported simultaneously, each dealing with different issues *.

Any citizen can propose an issue for debate at the CA 1st (testing) Stage (similar to Open Space¹⁵² and becomes an Issue Host). The Issue Host categorises the idea, making it available for all to see on the UE blockchain (see below), inviting a micro-assembly of sortition-selected citizens to test the idea. It can move to the next CA Stage for discussion if there’s enough interest.

Laws/ideas for best practice resolved by assemblies at smaller scales are shared as recommendations for other localities/regions (and if relevant for review by subsequent stages for national, or global adoption.)

The assemblies use Open Space¹⁵² (where relevant), Parallel Thinking¹⁹⁵, Consensus Democracy²¹⁸, and something akin to vTaiwan’s processes²¹⁸. (Liquid representative democracy²¹⁸ could run parallel as a supportive framework/facilitation for the citizens’ assembly system).

The United Nations (or the Really United Nations¹⁹⁹)is renamed the United Earth, or United Earthlings (UE), where everyone has an equal stake and power, i.e., no veto and UN Security Council responsibilities are shared. The individuals of nature are given personhood within a multi-species democracy **. The tone for our project is set: consciously transitioning from isolated individuals and nations and an isolated species to re-aligning ourselves as light-footed members of the biosphere. We become an assembly of humans representing all life in a dynamic forum for dialogue. We acknowledge our power as a hyper-keystone species and accept our responsibilities.

The Declaration of Human Rights and the Rights of the Biosphere/Ecocide law are placed front and centre. In other words, every decision is filtered through these primary world constitutional documents.

‘We don’t believe people ought to make decisions;
we believe people ought to arrive at decisions.’
Jacque Fresco, What the future holds beyond 2000, Nichols College

Please try using the (efficient) ‘Six Thinking Hats’ method of parallel thinking for sharing your ideas.
It helps us to organise our thoughts and feelings. Wear the Black Hat for critisism/doubts; the Green hat for creative suggestions; the Yellow for positive responses, Red for gut feelings; White for information. I am wearing the Blue Hat now, when I say we are here to design Eutopia.

Simply write ‘Black’, ‘Yellow’, ‘Green’, etc, before your given response. Then, start a new paragraph for ideas of a different coloured hat.