Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us

We are made to feel naive, looked upon as idealists and pointless dreamers. We are stopped in our tracks.

For each of us to contribute to the pool of collective wisdom, it is critical that the question we instead answer is: ‘What is in our collective interest? What is best for the nation as a whole?’ When we aggregate our multiple perspectives in answer to this question, we stand a good chance of getting to a better answer than any of us would alone. W

tapping into the energy and ideas of their people to resuscitate their cities and towns.

We live in the legacy of stories created generations ago. All of us inevitably perpetuate stories; no one, really, is to blame. Once a story is widely held and deeply rooted, this in turn shapes all further institutional and individual possibilities and actions.

Democratic innovations that are currently taking shape slowly and hesitantly – like liquid democracy (which equips people to allocate their voice to those they trust on an issue-by-issue basis, rather than the relatively blunt nature of electoral representation) or quadratic voting (which enables the quick and simple aggregation of the preferences

‘Anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.’

deep stories come in interlocking layers, some deeper than others, with the deeper dictating the available space for the shallower: personal deep stories exist within community deep stories exist within national deep stories.

UK telecommunications operator Giffgaff operates its customer service function as an entirely peer-to-peer model, its customers advising and supporting one another in return for either discounts or charitable donations from the company.

Citizens are literally ‘together people,’ from the Latin, humans defined by the very fact of their togetherness. We tend to think it is the other way around, but ‘city’ in fact derives from the Latin civitas, which literally translates as the citizenry.

I am intentionally avoiding using the terms capitalism and communism. These are so laden that they overwhelm us, stultify conversation and prevent us from seeing alternatives or taking action.