Our Once And Future Sovereignty

People Are "Doomed" To Forget Original Meaning

"The demarcation between a positive or negative desire or action is not whether it gives you an immediate feeling of satisfaction but whether it ultimately results in positive or negative consequences... in the case of everyday experiences, if there are certain types of events that you do not desire, then the best method of ensuring that that event does not take place is to make sure that the causal conditions that normally give rise to that event no longer arise. Similarly if you want a particular event or experience to occur, then the logical thing to do is to seek and accumulate the causes and conditions that give rise to it." ~ Dalai Lama; The Art of Happiness

Parliament: Popular for tourist photos; meanwhile down the road...

I took the above picture yesterday after attending EU Referendum: The Leave Alliance launch. I have a very wide range of personal reactions to the event which I've not fully been able to apprehend or understand entirely. That is not to say there were not some extraordinary positive outcomes: To attend an event of very high quality which will aid in the continuous learning process personally; and the political process eventually; if that finally starts on June 24th or 10 years later...

 Dreamlike: I could not help feel as if the enormous Houses of Parliament were a political dessert and the small group meeting down the road, a tiny, unseen and unsung source; full of vitality and a well-spring to learning: Where did real power flow from?

Lost Leonardo provides a summary of the schedule of the meeting, The Leave Alliance Launch – Part I including the speakers and their contribution or representation of what they were able to offer from their own area of understanding and interest. Here is another extreme of the reaction I had to the event, not with the speakers, but with the failure of some of the listeners present. It's highly noticeable that certain modes of thinking repeat themselves via many different people; invariably each person unaware of this. There's a couple of examples that I can recall to provide a mere few of the numerous forms it takes, a couple of faces with which we can use for the purpose of making an abstract into a temporarily useful example:-

• To use moderate language to persuade "more people" to vote "our way" (leave); particularly in the media and Parliament then we will "break-through".
• How can we overcome the problem of marketing FLEXCIT to more people... to again persuade "more people" to vote "our way"?

I want to be sure, these examples are temporary variations of the central mode of thinking; which itself repeats in numerous derived forms over and over and over again. I noticed that Dr. RAE North is mistakenly the object of such subject's and the effective "verb" "To Convert".

Let's be clear, the true irony of Dominic Cummings' accusation that "followers of FLEXCIT" are a cult. And we can kill several birds with one stone here: I don't believe for a second that the group that gathered yesterday is in the business of "converting":-

1. In my previous blog The Leave Alliance: Synthesis of Arguments I asserted this group's organizational principle has a foundation in "knowledge-driven" argument" (To grasp this meaning in a simple form refer to the Dalai Lama's quote above).
2. The people involved in these groups are very ordinary, dare to go further, "normal" people. see: We are go for launch!. Compare this to the politicians EU Referendum: the race to the bottom who's behaviour is so often so extraordinarily perverse. You could invite some of your friends to form their judgement of people discussing here and they'd say it sounds just like any old pub chat about politics except if you are well-informed on the given subject you'll realize there's some really knowledgeable people present.
3. Despite so many repeated calls and attempts by so many different people to distort the strategy EU Referendum: countdown to launch and the values of these groups "to gain more followers" or even to adopt and become proponents of propaganda, they are always always rejected.
4. It has to be said, that many of the people who make this type of argument are themselves so used to the present form of politics that they take this deception as "that's how things work". This is indeed how Parliament works, Pete North: Time for yellow belly Tories to wake up: Anyone who gets in either gets converted, their ideals corrupted supposedly under the pragmatic process of "compromise" or else they are not selected or elevated via the system.
5. Finally, for such people they are in need of "remedial learning" of the above and considering the possibility of an "alternative way of organizing" political power. I hope if anyone feels as if they've made this mistake (I did when I first started reading EUReferendum.com - yes) then to consider not from their own subjective filters but to consider from the point of view of Dr. RAE North and how his limited time would be more productively and POSITIVELY spent on more people if allowed to be given the benefit of the doubt and trusted more in knowing what he is doing!
6. If on the other hand you feel you know more, then please write up your Brexit Plan and submit to the public forum of real democracy to be considered by anyone of any position in life:-

 Trust: "It does what it says on the tin!"

Point Six was made at the meeting with respect to the neglect of FLEXCIT: The Market Solution by the media and my Parliament at the same time as their neglect to call out the LIES of our Prime Minister in Office: David Cameron. How to convey this comparison effectively?

Nīþ:- 

 Functional Scolding/Insulting: Secret misdeeds and deception: The Breaking of Trust and hence The Oaths of Office

The Decay in Politics and Language; something George Orwell noted as especially dangerous:-

Look at the size of that thing! The British Prime Ministers and hence The Houses of Parliament: Guilty of the Greatest oath-breaking of the nation by order of magnitude of their respective office of state. And hence warranting the most sever of insults against their lies.

An oath of office is an oath or affirmation a person takes before undertaking the duties of an office, usually a position in government or within a religious body, although such oaths are sometimes required of officers of other organizations. Such oaths are often required by the laws of the state, religious body, or other organization before the person may actually exercise the powers of the office or any religious body. It may be administered at an inauguration, coronation, enthronement, or other ceremony connected with the taking up of office itself, or it may be administered privately. In some cases it may be administered privately and then repeated during a public ceremony.

I tried to establish that the quality of arguments is very important for the dynamic of knowledge systems which in turn is reliant on TRUST. Those arguments forming two sides from which a third choice is finally made by people in a Popular Referendum requires knowledge of both sides of the argument Leave Alliance: Synthesis of Arguments to be available in a form that allows people to interpret in a combination from their values as a people, their self-interests as individuals and their inherited learning from people who are experts in various areas from which they can believe to be true and representative of other people's perspectives to add their own (collective and individual).

Cascade Method by The Leave Alliance: Distribution of Knowledge is inverse to Argument Construction but still relies on consistency of true inheritance from their source of origin

There is only one fair way of doing this. And that is if people agree to the SAME RULES for following such a process. In a team sport, the two "teams" must agree to abide by the same rules and often the players either don't know the rules very well or else their own self-motivation or adrenaline effectively disrepairs their regard for consistently upholding the rules and the temptation to cheat enters in occassionally, and more so if they assume they can "get away with it". The same applies to who governs us. However in this Referendum, We The People are the referee: Do we agree with David Cameron's New Deal and his promises of new knowledge: Do we trust him? Or do we find out for ourselves, hold our own future ("Destiny") in our own hands?

 There were some very funny moments and comments at The Leave Alliance launch; notably Anthony Scolefield's comparison of the NATO treaty size (a couple of sides of paper) to the EU's (see Lisbon Treaty above).

 Accessible to anyone.

Legitimacy & Listening

1984: 2 + 2 = 4 == Political Freedom

In George Orwell's 1984, the character Winston Smith comes to the conclusion that in his totalitarian society, the freedom to say the above mathematical truth without negative political repercussion is the genesis for all subsequent political change. It's a statement that is independent of personal subjectivity; an objective truth of the world around us and indeed the exercise of realizing this allows us to realize that we exist in a world separate than ourselves and this is also true for other people. The other type of relationships which also form another equally important environment as well as this physical "reality" is our Social environment or relationships with each other.

Objective Reality: Pythagoras' Theorem: The Square of the Hypoteneuse

Various "Group Cohesion" rituals (submission to the dominance of the group) are based on suppressing the tendency in individuals to promote the ego's agenda, our survival instinct as per our "will to survive" and our desire to benefit ourselves and also our kin. A major feature of this system is Social Status in dictating the TYPE of interaction between individuals which is conducive to avoiding the clash of individuals' egos leading to physical violence with one another. Such interactions invariably can be boiled down to Dominance-Submission in Social Status Interactions and attempts at interchanges between these social roles.

 Ricky Gervais: The Office - A comedy of social status & real world role-playing of dominance interchanges

Perhaps Ricky Gervais' The Office is an instrumental example of the comedy involved in this pervasive form of human interaction? I often found the office environment especially dull in the type of predictable communication that takes place between different people role-playing and attempting to continually out-rank each other. Looking at this from a research point of view Uniforms: A Certificate of Legitimacy, we can see that people "comply" very strongly to the symbols of authority:-

University of Warwick Study: Compliance to Roles of Authority

Reading recently King Arthur: The True Story, it reminded me of J.R.R Tolkien's theory about some stories that act like an allegorical "Soup" from Leaf And Tree. There is a basic stock to the story from which different people at different times throughout history add their ingredients or "lumps" into the soup that becomes the story we know of today. Such narratives for example ancestor worship which beget some of the "stock foundations of modern religions" which invariably across the world all add this to other parts of the "stock" such as Creation Myth Stories. For example the stories of Abraham are full of geneological tracings back to "direct relationships" with God ("Good").

In the story of King Arthur, one of the later lumps thrown into the story adding to the base stock was it seems an attempt by the Norman nobility to propaganda the story with their direct links to this historic and mythic King of Britain so as to encourage greater links to legitimacy of their right to rule the Ango-Saxons via bypassing them to a Celtic/Roman prior claim to such a title! Of course much of this also carries on the back of persuading the people of a common shared system of values often assumed in the doctrine of Divine Right of Kings, but no less a major component of Legitimacy:-

"Legitimacy is a ‘…a psychological property of an authority, institution, or social arrangement that leads those connected to it to believe that it is appropriate, proper, and just’. Thus viewed, legitimacy is the belief that the law and agents of the law are rightful holders of authority; that they have the right to dictate appropriate behaviour and are entitled to be obeyed; and that laws should be obeyed simply because that is the right thing to do."

(Although the legend/myth/history of King Arthur points to an deeper level of legitimacy than merely the literal imposition of "divine right"). A more historic though equally dramatized story by William Shakespeare is Richard III.

Fact or fiction: the Machiavellian rise to power & short reign of Richard III

Interestingly Richard III is particularly depicted with villainous attributes by William Shakeaspeare, and as last of the Plantagenets before the Tudor succession of "Royal legitimacy" began, perhaps William Shakespeare was currying favour with the powers of the day in order to successfully hold his plays and be well received publicly and politically via such propaganda easing the thorny issues of legitimacy? Such seems likely when a fuller more historic picture is produced such as from The Richard III Society - A Brief Biography and Introduction to Richard's Reputation it seems a significant misattrubution of Richard III's character has been achieved by Shakeaspeare directly related to the issue of legitimacy and the new authority of the new King.

This theme of the interchange between Authority and Legitimacy appears to arise in another form in Dr. RAE North's The Many And The Few book. What appears to have been necessary propaganda during World War II's The Blitz and Battle Of Britain by the RAF to encourage people (bombing reporting changed, emphasis on the bravery of the RAF) what subsequently has been discounted is the efforts of so MANY people.

Necessary propaganda for it's time, but now national narrative that undermines The Many?

And this is directly relevant to today: We are governed by a few over the many. Fitting this into a general schema:-

• Governance Type 1: One-Many: Divine / Metaphysical Legitimacy and hence Authority (Islamic Civilization)
• Governance Type 2: Few-Many: The "Capable" Few Legitimacy and hence Authority (Western Civilization)
• Governance Type 3: Many-Many: Real Democracy Many Legitimacy and hence Authority (Globalization)

I think one of the dangers to progression of the above, is mixing the problems of one civilization to another in the role of governance and hence legitimacy and authority as per Roger Scruton in The Road To The European Union. For many people the recent tragedy and terrorism in Paris will be to ask questions about Islamists/extremists. I think if you look at the above schema you see that Governance Type 1 as per Richard III for another example leads to a more violent world however that manifests, the rise in violence is the result. The statistics as per Samuel Huntington in The Clash Of Civilizations tends to back this up if you re-classify via the above schema where the One may be a legal or national government and the many may be multiple tribal communities/factions all under one nominal rule for example divine rule but practically fractious: Authority cannot be derived from tenuous legitimacy alone, and hence violence and los of political freedom invariably arises from Dominance via power and conflict.

 Legitimacy Theory: Cognitive, Moral and EXTERNAL Pragmatic underpinnings

In the Western Civilization, by contrast, the notion of divine rule has passed, it is too subjective a relationship: The basis of nations has shifted emphasis of power from family or tribal units towards individuals (citizens) and the state/nation. The overhead of group cohesion of tribal units is less and hence the secularization of politics from religion and perhaps the trend of less violence in the world that Stephen Pinker describes in The Better Angels of Our Nature correlates positively with as per Democratic Peace Theory or as per Amartya Sen:-

''No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy,''  [This, he explained, is because democratic governments] ''have to win elections and face public criticism, and have strong incentive to undertake measures to avert famines and other catastrophes.''

National symbols and democratic electoral voting systems now provide legitimacy of rule of law and authority of government in the exectutive and legislative functions of governance of the people. I remember reading a report from one of the Global Bodies such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP):-

 Development Index Map from 2010

You can see above a general pattern: Type 2 Governance appears to lead to higher measures on the multiple indexes of development of societies across multiple data sets. If we look at the tragedy of Paris this week, we can at least take solace and comfort in perceiving these two very broad and very general patterns between the two types and KNOW we are progressive and such actors of terror are regressive and they are merely pawns of greater trends of violence due to out-moded and pragmatically poor results of governance.

However, there's a cautionary tale: We don't appear to as yet hold a vision of current trend that is possible towards Type 3 Governance (Many-Many) which it seems is "container" tag or description of use connecting the process of Globalization and interconnectivity between nations and the effect of this on our Type 2 Governance such as the UK's "Representative Democracy".

Pete North: What is David Campbell Bannerman smoking?

An example of the politician projecting dominance and hence not listening

"UPDATE: I challenged Bannerman on these points. His response was repeated obfuscation with totally irrelevant points, followed by blocking me. I suspect he just doesn't understand the point at all. These people are not up to the job of running the leave campaign." 

 This may not be the best example, as twitter is notoriously shallow for communication, but I tend to see the dominance behaviour in many such as DCB, Daniel Hannan, Ruth Lea, Dominic Cummings and of course in David Cameron. Apparently Arron Banks also does this: Most people do: But do they also allow themselves to listen?  Our government has had 43 years to use their capacity to understand and educate this understanding to people in the UK: They have not listened and have concerned themselves with the apearance of legitimacy only as per previous blogs: Argumentum Ad Infinitum or Pattern Recognition or Our Government: No ifs, buts or maybes.

What our government has done is effectively take 43 years worth of membership and cram all of that, all the undemocratic major Treaties (x7) into the voting public making a single day's choice x1 on the upcoming EU Referendum day.

That is the most damning illegitimacy of our government: The Few-Many Relationship In Action.

One of the problems of the Type 2 Governance that does not seem to appeal to Type 1 is the loss of "Moral Authority" as per the concept diagram above. Equally what WE must concentrate on is the quality of the "Cognitive Legitimacy" of our Government in this system and it's relationship to Pragmatic Legitimacy of execution of policy. Our politicians appear to hold very very low Moral Legitimacy, they are characters similar to the schemers we enjoy watching on our televisions such as Game Of Thrones: Chaos is a Ladder. In previous blog posts the lies over the EU by David Cameron remove all or any moral authority he ever purported to hold. Eating a hot-dog or drinking a beer with another world leader are all "mummer's farce" designed to make him appear to be "one of the people by the people for the people": He excuses his privileged position of Eton and Oxford and mentoring for Number 10 Downing Street but is yet another Prime Minister from such an "aristocratic" background.

We have detailed The Great Deception of our Government and David Cameron over the EU as well as the failures of our Government to promote prosperity, namely they lack Pragmatic Legitimacy too which must be down to a lack of Cognitive Legitimacy. Peter Hitchens makes the point that democratic legitimacy, the system itself is a set-up for such people:

Peter Hitchens: Does our government have any right to rule us?

Coming back to David Cameron's democratic legitimacy: The Harrogate Agenda: An Opportunity For THA:-

Dominance-Submissive Interaction In-Built into our politics = No Communication because there is no listening pressure; only dominance projection

"Direct election would correct a manifest unfairness in our current arrangements, exemplified by Prime Minister David Cameron who gained office by virtue of 33,973 votes in the 2010 general election. All those votes were cast in the constituency of Witney, which boasted 78,220 electors. The rest of the nation was not allowed to vote for the man. He may have been elected as an MP, but he was not elected as prime minister through a general franchise. 

Furthermore, when Mr Cameron holds office on the back of 10,703,654 Conservative votes, from an electorate of 45,844,691, his franchise represents only 36 percent of the votes cast and less than a quarter (23 percent) of the overall electorate. In any election, the PM hardly ever reflects the choice of leader for the nation."

In George Orwell's 1984 quote:-

• Type 1: "True": 2 + 2 = 4 ;  2 + 2 = 5
• Type 2: True: 2 + 0 = 2 (Spin) => True: 2 - 2 = 0
• Type 3: True: 2 + 2 = 4 (Apparently only if governments are made up of the governed themselves... and hence listen to themselves)

In Type 1 Governance, there's a deep issue with even the political freedoms of the first assertion. In Type 2 Governance we assume that our Government at least may have some legitimacy but their lying and their ineffective Governance is merely "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.' ~ Churchill. However what's actually true, is that  the Cognitive Legitimacy is related to the Pragmatic Legitimacy (eg ERM via Lawson/Howe, eg 2008 Financial Crisis via Brown as per Lakshmi: Goddess of Prosperity (2) ).

Looking at that above index, nations that score highly appear to be well ordered, organized and in general employ greater democracy such as Norway (strong grass-roots movements) and Switzerland (direct democracy). If we start with 2 + 2 = 4 a basic truth in our communication, and we avoid the dominance of politics by "The Few" aka The Establishment, then we may find that comunication is opened up and stronger Cognitive application to our national decision making is effected... this cannot be done in the EU by the way:
Our dispute with the EU cannot be resolved

Strategy week: the politics of expectation

 The British Model = Cameron = Our National Politics low quality = Not Listening

But first we have to understand Legitimacy and it's relationship to Dominance before our "leaders" start listening to "We The People". We have a plan FLEXCIT, and there are many other Brexit plans all inferior cognitively, but if your leaders are not listening then we have the illegitimate liar David Cameron and his warmongering, recession-inducing "leaders" leading us into a series of future unfortunate events: Strategy week: the politics of expectation 

We have a choice who to listen to as per White Wednesday:-

Strategy week: triangulation

 Listening & Legitimacy: I don't think either Leave.EU/Vote_Leave or BSE listen given they're made of the same people as Cameron and Osborne.

In my opinion the stronger triangulation for any voter to think about is this: Which "triangle" holds Greater Cognitive Legitimacy and consequently can also exhibit Morally Greater Legitimacy (attempting to work honestly and present results as they are)? Can we suppose that those two combined will yield Greater Pragmatic Legitimacy, too?

 Power To The People

Freedom is the freedom to BE ABLE to say... and be heard.