I’m grateful to @Eceni for bringing John Izzo and Suzette Masters together. The ambition of the conversation is great, but I’m 50 minutes in and the most insightful and important things so far have been said by Manda herself https://overcast.fm/+WYWjMLG0s
Discussion
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@urlyman For some people, this is revolutionary - we have to meet people where they are and if you're already way beyond this, that's GREAT - but not everyone is... and we're trying to form the widest coalition possible. I suspect my solo one (recorded after this) will reach you more deeply
@Eceni Hi. I listened to and appreciated your solo.
Please see the rest of my thread, in particular the bit about Sarah Stein Lubrano, offered as constructive criticism.
I’m thankful for what you are doing
…There’s a bit where Suzette rightly says: “I think all of this focus on deliberative democracy goes far in the sense of creating new ways of people making collective decisions together that feel right, but it doesn’t actually tell you what policies you need to move forward.”
She later says: “I’m obsessed with articulating a vision for the future that the public would want to buy into. And right now, the way candidates run campaigns, they never actually have to answer that question…
…“What does the world look like that you are bringing about, and how are the policies that you’re advocating bringing those things about?
…What if … you had your candidates engage in speculative fiction exercises based on the policies that they believe in and that they espouse. And then you imagine those immersive worlds 20 years out, and then the public gets to decide, is that what you want?”
Hmm. If those exercises are not grounded in thermodynamic reality they *don’t change anything*.
…So far, biosphere reality is not present in this discussion except when it’s mentioned obliquely in passing by host, Manda.
The conversation is all about forms of deliberation and governance and not at all about the realities that underpin whether any of that can work.
And it’s here where I sense Sarah Stein Lubrano is on the right track.
We cannot align ourselves with realities we are far removed from by just deliberating https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/114664927294576425
…Throughout the conversation with John and Suzette, Manda asks variations on “how do we get there?” where “there” is “a future we would be proud to leave to those who follow us”.
My view is that has to start with *doing* things that we absolutely know we’ll need forever: food, water, care.
So creating experiences that put us intimately in touch with those begin to create the starting points where the right kinds of conversation can happen
…Put another way, mechanisms of good governance can co-emerge from doing regenerative things. It cannot precede regenerative practice
…I made it to the end.
Finally, in the last 9 minutes, Suzette and John (more so the latter) voice the things that should have been the bedrock of the 89 minute discussion, so that it could then have gone on to discuss the how.
Maybe next time
Good point.
If memory serves, the UK tried "candidates engaging in speculative fiction about how great it was going to be if their policies were enforced." It was called the sunlit uplands of Brexit. It was very fictional, but it convinced a lot of people.