New Title followed by "...The End!"
In the previous blogs, Expectation Setting: The Key To Winning The Referendum we've looked at a critical measure of Brexit arguments right from their genesis and where they fall on the "Uncertainty Spectrum" regarding their possibility for implementation. This applies to both sides of the argument as per Our Once And Future Sovereignty. It should be noted that arguments now are shaped by probability later and where this is taken advantage of is by our ruling class of politicians on both sides of the argument: Große Lüge - The Big Lie of Magic Money.
The Key Criteria to Positive Expectation Setting and Good Communication
This sets our expectations, The Leave Alliance: A Choice With A Plan, the journey our nation agrees to travel along and the destination set. And this depends on everyone having a clear idea of what the rules are, Our Once And Future Sovereignty, and hence what agreements are possible and what the consequences will be and by whom, Our Once And Future Sovereignty, and where those agreements either way will lead to; again this applies as much to Remain as Leave as per EU: From Common Market To EU Constitution. Which if we accept the rules of our present relationship with the EU, as commandeered by our politicians, which is evident in analysing their type of communication with us, Decrypting: What is Babel-17? and which also allows us to probe for what they don't want to communicate to us as per The Columbo Method: Norway; remember Nip a hidden act that damages the community. Then we have to decide: Why? Living Someone Else's Dream or do the hard work and choose our own.
Watching the amusing Little Britain clip above reminds me of the last few decades of the Leave Campaigns dominated by the "eurosceptic aristocracy": Too self-important, too comfortable, too lazy, too well-off to really care about more than the appearance of wanting to forge a future vision, The Leave Alliance: Our Vision: I've had the opportunity to consider the arguments and done the necessary "home-work". With that there's a temptation to become arrogant when you look at just how low in quality the prevailing substitution arguments are; the more prestigious such as John Major or David Cameron, the more the emotion of "disgust" bubbles up. For the general public, struggling to navigate and help themselves understand the arguments, it looks like as previously: Argumentum Ad Infinitum:-
Ant Mills: Infinite loop: Going nowhere
Capturing some of these arguments and this behaviour can be done using online commenting systems such as Reddit uses, which is much more useful than most commentating systems to visibly follow a trail of arguments. Given the latest fashion on Canada FTA as per The Lady In Mouve! from Vote Leave and Boris Johnson, here's a Argument Ant Mill in Action:-
Promisingly Vote Leave's Canada FTA is being seen for what it is: A title and an ending and nothing in between. Amazingly when described as such so simply that so many in the media and politics take it so serious: "The Lady In Mouve! ... The End!" is about as substantial as it gets. But then the people who talk about it such as Boris Johnson get a free pass in the media according to their Prestige:-
Power is being able to talk and be listened to
What is damaging however is where this provides opportunity for smothering productive communication:-
Which Criteria is most effective for people to use to aid their decision-making?
It comes back to the basic proposition, that if the UK were not a member, how many would actually vote to join it? See Norway. Coming to Iceland:-
Britain warned it wields no power in German-dominated EU
Franco-German Political Core of the EU: Verdun.
Let's look at Iceland, Norway and Switzerland a little more closely, what can we learn from them?
ICELAND
Björn BjarnasonDisputed parentage
Sir: In his Notes on 5 March, Charles Moore tells the story of a visit by Sir Winston Churchill to the Icelandic Parliament, Althingi. Mr Moore says:
Churchill famously irritated its members by the first half of his sentence and gratified them with the second half: ‘I come from the mother of parliaments [pause] to the grandmother of parliaments.'
A good line, but one that was delivered not by Churchill but by Lord Newton, who was sent to help the Althingi celebrate its 1,000-year anniversary in 1930.
Incidentally, our first laws were spoken rather than written, so the presiding officer had to recite them when parliament met. This is the origin of the phrase ‘Mr Speaker'.
Björn Bjarnason
Kvoslaekur, Iceland
The Althingi is one of the oldest extant parliamentary institutions in the world. Its establishment, as an outdoor assembly or thing held on the plains of Þingvellir ("Thing Fields") from about the year 930 AD, laid the foundation for an independent national existence in Iceland. To begin with, the Althing was a general assembly of the Icelandic Commonwealth, where the country’s most powerful Leaders (goðar) met to decide on legislation and dispense justice. Then, all free men could attend the assemblies, which were usually the main social event of the year and drew large crowds of farmers and their families, parties involved in legal disputes, traders, craftsmen, storytellers and travellers. Those attending the assembly dwelt in temporary camps (búðir) during the session. The centre of the gathering was the Lögberg, or Law Rock, a rocky outcrop on which the Lawspeaker (lögsögumaður) took his seat as the presiding official of the assembly. His responsibilities included reciting aloud the laws in effect at the time. It was his duty to proclaim the procedural law of Althing to those attending the assembly each year.
Norway
Nei til EU (No to the EU)
The people’s movement
The basis of the Norwegian society is democracy. Norway has come to learn how self-governance is the wise foundation of our decentralized, elongated and scarcely populated country. As a sovereign nation, Norway can cooperate and trade with other nations.The Norwegian population has twice voted no to membership of The European Union. Referendums where held both in 1972 and in 1994 . No to the EU strives to ensure a truly influential democracy, where important decisions are made with an effective democratic control.
No to the EU aims at being a widespread and diverse people’s movement. No to the EU has its own youth organization ( Ungdom mot EU ) and student organization (Studenter mot EU) .
Policy of the Nei til EU :
- No to the EU wants to ensure democracy and Norwegian sovereignty.
- No to the EU wants to ensure a continued Norwegian independence in international politics.
- No to the EU strives for fairness and equality in international trade and cooperationllaboration, and urges Norway to play an active role on the global arena in obtaining and ensuring such qualities.
- No to the EU strives for Norwegian natural resources to be administrated by Norwegian authorities and institutions.
- No to the EU promotes a broad international cooperationllaboration, not restricted by the boarders of Europe.
- No to the EU is engaged in women politics and information tasks promoting gender equality.
"The Storting (Norwegian: Stortinget [ˈstuːʈɪŋə], "the great thing" or "the great council") is the supreme legislature of Norway, established in 1814 by the Constitution of Norway. It is located in Oslo. The unicameral parliament has 169 members, and is elected every four years based on party-list proportional representation in nineteen plural member constituencies.
The parliament in its present form was first constituted at Eidsvoll in 1814, although its origins can be traced back as early as the 9th century to the allting, a type of thing, or common assembly of free men in Germanic societies that would gather at a place called a thingstead and were presided by lawspeakers. The alltings were where legal and political matters were discussed.
Switzerland
Direct (Real) Democracy in Switzerland
In Switzerland, Direct Democracy has a long tradition:
The origins of Direct Democracy can be traced back to the late
the middle ages: archaic forms (assemblies of the electorate discussing
and deciding major political issues) have been practised
in part of the country since the founding of the
Old Swiss Confederacy
in 1291.
The origins of Switzerland's modern system of Direct Democracy with formalized opinion polls and frequent referendums lie in the experimental phase of democracy in the 19th century when Switzerland was surrounded by monarchies on the European continent that showed little to none enthusiasm for democracy.
If we look at Stage Six: Flexcit: The Harrogate Agenda:
"The premise on which our movement is based is that democracy means "people power". The word democracy stems from the Greek word, dēmokratía, comprising two parts: dêmos "people" and kratos "power". Without a demos, there is no democracy. But people without power is not democracy either.
Our current system of government is known as "representative democracy". That phrase is a misuse of the word democracy. People do not hold power: that system cannot by definition be a democracy. We seek to return power to the people. We are concerned with power – who holds it and under what circumstances and controls, and how to get more of it. Above all else, we hold to the core principle that in a true democracy the people must hold the power.
Our objective is to recover power. Our focus is on the acquisition of power. And once we ourselves, the people, hold the power, we can then attend to the many problems and injustices that plague modern society. But without power, there is only protest – and we achieve nothing of any lasting value. To help us acquire power, we are adopting the original strategy of the Chartists. Like them, we felt it was vital to frame a very limited number of achievable demands – six in number. These are listed below"
Politicians use maechavellian phrases: "Save The Children!" and then over-spend on other areas and not Education Policy... This is the legacy of their communication to people
We do have the BBC: Reality Check: The EU referendum and they're evidently trying to provide lots of information. But it's unstructured, lists that quickly fatigue the brain even if via high-sharing it's connecting "consumers" at high volume: It's still "low-sense-making". A more productive way to make sense and communicate knowledge more effectively:-
BBC: High-Sharing, Low Sense-Making
Looking at the above Nations: Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, it's interesting to consider their own political histories and modes of communication to effect a community and hence to derive decisions and learn from the consequences of those decisions:-
A Knowledge Catalyst? "The Blogger's Army"
knowledge catalysts
Most people have heard Clay Shirky’s quote that, “It’s not information overload, it’s filter failure.” The professor and author has coined terms such as ‘cognitive surplus’ to explain that we have the mental capacity to do a lot more with our collective intelligence, but too often, societal barriers inhibit us. We are too busy with the day-to-day commute, usually in a deluge of noise from radios, billboards, and news sources, to reflect and consider bigger issues. Getting paid every two weeks focuses employee attention on the short term, as do quarterly reports for executives.
Filter failure is only part of our challenge to make sense of our world. Even with good information filters in place, we remain passive consumers of information. We can share our filtered information, which many do on social media or over a coffee, but what value are we adding to it? It takes more time and effort to take our filtered information and make sense of it. Shirky, once again, says that “Curation solves the problem of filter failure”. I would say that curation adds a layer of value, but is still not enough.
