Chapter 4c
Our Faith in 'the Process'


We all have lived our lives under a system in which some points of view are granted easy access to the Means of Communication, while others are denied access at all. This has made many of us cynical about the prospects of people of diverse points of view having the capacity to come together, through democratic discussion and consideration, in which ALL points of view are given equal access to communicate, and all are afforded equal respect and consideration, to identify their common ground, in order to establish common goals.

While we must not be naïve fools who fail to recognize the consternating foibles of human nature, neither should we fail to properly recognize the more noble instincts and traits that we all possess. While we must employ stringent democratic disciplines, including exacting penalties for behavior that does not meet the responsibilities and expectations we set, to guard ourselves against assault from the baser qualities in our nature, let us also trust that we all have the capacity for Reason, and that we all have the innate moral sensibility to consider the interests of others, not just our own. Let us trust that these more noble traits of human nature can prevail, nurtured and augmented as they must be, by the democratic systems and disciplines that we create with that end in mind, to guide us towards mutual understanding and common goals.

While we believe that as conveners of this project we must constrain ourselves from setting an agenda for the organization before it even exists, (we do not believe it would be ‘democratic’ for a small group of conveners to establish the agenda for a large group of citizen-members), it is only natural that people who set out to accomplish something as ambitious as what is proposed herein will have their own hopes and objectives in mind for the group’s agenda and purpose. Like all humans, we are imperfect creatures given to our own biases, and it is inevitable that these biases will find their way into this proposal, as is already evident. We can only ask your indulgence, in advance, for this, because we are only human. Try as we might, anything wrought by human hand will contain human bias.

To counterbalance our inevitable bias, we again re-assert our firm belief that as conveners we should hold no special powers to control the direction of the organization, save the one objective as clearly stated, which is to build the group as a truly democratic group, and then ‘launch’ it in a manner that will favor its success.

To be successful in this noble and single-minded objective, we must discipline ourselves to the one goal of building democratic structure and procedures for the organization. We must enjoin ourselves from using our positions as conveners to establish entrenched ongoing control over the group before it even exists. When the organization is built, when it becomes a functioning democracy, those of us who served as conveners, will THEN have the same opportunity as all other citizen-members to advocate for our own ideas through the democratic procedures that we create, as to what the goals and objectives of the organization should be.


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