A Book & Concepts Discussion Series

Paul Schumann – CenTexWFS

Explore the principles & technologies
Explore how they are affecting our
- Social change efforts
- Democracy
- Upcoming election
Explore the future of democracy
To learn from each other

“Diversity plus freedom of creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality.” Clay Shirky

Same Different

Values

Different

Same

Information

“Failure to scale is evident when people feel disenfranchised, when they no longer have sufficient contact or interaction with their government to see their wishes reflected in its actions.” Mitch Ratcliffe
Politicians express this disconnect by seeing only their own well being, sacrificing the common good for their own benefit at the expense of others.”

“Mohandas K. Gandhi said, ‘One cannot unite a community without newspaper or journal of some kind.’ These separate trends of individual expression through blogs, an egalitarian journalism, and organized online activism are waking unrecognized communities of interest that will confound a political system designed for representation geographic constituencies. A concerted effort by the peoples of the world can transform the perception of the means and ends of government. Meanwhile, politics, the art of participation in social decision-making and a practice closely related to being ‘polite,’ which means to achieve refinement, continues to function essentially as it has throughout history, through debate and compromise among people.” Mitch Ratcliffe

“An answer to the continuing debate about political process will be based the integration of many, though not all, threads in recent human development into an expanded concept of the individual as the basis for the concept of sovereignty and the redefinition of the role of government institutions in order to revitalize political processes. A political philosophy must incorporate more than the experience of participation. An analysis of power, definite ideas about the role of the citizen and the government, and the principles society will embrace about the value of the individual are required, as well. Extreme democracy seeks to provide these foundational ideas to place the thrill of emergent organizations into socio-political context.” Mitch Ratcliffe