Accurate Democracy. 
Introduction.
Thanks.
print. translate.
| Accurate Democracy. |
Election Systems.
Introduction.
Thanks.
print. translate. |
 |
Giving Thanks |
|
|
Some of the people who have helped this project
About the author How I picked this research project Unlike tyranny, democracy thrives on constructive criticism. This work would not have been possible without the criticism, generosity and friendship of these people: Scott Hauser, Don Heyrich and Dana Greenburg, Katia and Will Kramer, Scott Kimmitt; Catie Mains, Rusty Post, Steve Rock and Barbara Dragul; Bill Sanderson, Cat and Micheal Thompson, Marti Walker; and Franknbsp;Ensign The Evergreen State College's Academic Computing staff, particularly Mike Simmons;
Henry Hammer, Kat Kinkade, Keenan Dakota, Leslie Greenwood, Paxus Calta, Tree Bressen, Scott Busby, Many members of River Road Unitarian Church including Bob Johnson, Rev. Bill Muray, Ted Overman, Susan Kinoy, Helen Popenoe, John M Richardson, and Margory Ware. Patricia Ireland, Barbara & John Richardson, Dr. L. Bruce Anderson, Dr. John R. Chamberlin, Dr. Brian Meek, and Dr. Nicolaus Tideman. Ten years of unpaid work developing PoliticalSim TM and Accurate Democracy took a toll on my health. But compared with fighting poverty and corporate feudalism, this has been a pleasant decade. My work was inspired by physics teachers Camilla Fano at the Sidwell Friends School and Byron Youtz at The Evergreen State Collage, and by my father, Dr. William C. Loring Jr., a wise practitioner of applied social sciences; through the U.S. Public Health Service and the World Health Organization he taught the art of building participatory organizations. Robert Loring
About the AuthorThis letter, to my professor of design process, described the development of my philosophy and my drive to democratize political and economic power.Many years ago I left Oberlin College because it wasn't helping me to investigate directly enough the questions I, and many other teens, felt were paramount. The central one was "What is the purpose of life, my life in particular?" By asking acquaintances a series of "Why do you value that?" questions, I found that all value systems have unreasoning end points, either a loop or a stone wall. A simplistic and factitious example: "Why do you eat?" "To stay alive." "Why do you want to stay alive?" 1)"To eat!" (a loop), 2)"Because that's all there is." (a wall). Most often the end point or loop invokes God's or nature's authority. Ultimately this means that the individual's responsibility to design a value system and a life is abdicated to someone else who thought up the particular God or nature invoked: a philosopher, a scientist, a government, an ad agency, et cetera. But we should not necessarily accept those values nor even everything we personally sense is actually given by God or nature. The Creator is either not all knowing and powerful (in which case the creation may have mistakes and should not be accepted as is), or is, and deliberately created a universe in which evil can prosper and the good may suffer. Nature's evolutionary competition may spawn situations which we as individuals or groups would be happier without, i.e. the usual competition for scarce resources may lead us to nuclear annihilation. It seemed to me then that the purpose of life was happiness, as it is variously defined. One may define it as pleasure / pain maximization (or S & M) or surrender to God's will (or to the war game) or any other way of meeting a core set of values. The key question then is: "Emphasizing which values will most likely lead to my/our happiness?" It seems likely that the values should be congruent with most human needs and predisposition's, the laws of nature and of spirit. We may decide to subdue or change some of our animal nature but we don't want to fight God or nature any more than we have to. Yes, this brings me back to where we all started, but it leaves me freer to knowingly pick which urges to be sensitive to, freer to try various lifestyles, freer to accept or reject, as friends, people with different points of view, and freer to let it all ride.
How I picked this research projectI need to be inventive; that's where my passion is.I searched thoroughly for a "shallow field" where one creative person could make a significant difference. A field where one could improve relations between people (the most reliable predictor of a person's overall happiness) by inventing "tools between people". The tools, I felt, should be self-reproducing at very low cost with no damage to the environment or advantage to the rich. They should, of course, promote peaceful, reasonable relations. Voting systems are tools which define a "signal relationship", a very public model showing us the way to treat each other. Thus voting affects our quality of life, not only in setting our policies but in setting the mixture of conflict and co-operation, the respect we give and receive. Do unto others... I feel the U.S. culture is out of balance, that it emphasizes too much competition, individualism and materialism. Certainly it appears unbalanced compared to the other highly developed nations and compared to most traditional cultures. So I want to invent tools to help people co-operate. To truly give to others and make lives better than they would be without my work, these have to be tools we need but that probably won't be researched and developed by companies or governments because they can't be patented for profit or hoarded for advantage.
|
 |
 |
Accurate Democracy 
