Civic Intelligence: Will We Be Smart Enough, Soon Enough?

douglas

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Civic intelligence is the term that refers to the collective intelligence of people as applied towards shared challenges in a fair and effective manner. Lacking a commonly used name, civic intelligence, though it already exists as a phenomenon, will not receive the attention it deserves. Civic intelligence in a general way measures how well a community, nation, or society responds.

Civic intelligence can be intentionally cultivated. What makes some societies smart? Why do some societies respond intelligently to shared challenges and some do not? What is the role of educational institutions, government, the media, etc.? Civic intelligence simply the next generation of democratic practice: Democracy as a way of promoting the collective thoughts and actions of citizens.

Civic intelligence is more of a theme than a precise recommendation. It represents a way to describe both how societies come to make decisions now but an idealized way to make better decisions in the future.

For more information, see the Civic Intelligence pattern (http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/pattern.pl/public?pattern_id=1) from the Liberating Voices pattern language project (http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/), an online collaborative effort to build a "pattern language" for bottom-up citizen-led information and communication initiatives.

Why Is This Idea Important?

Given the complex and potentially catastrophic nature of 21st Century challenges, the explicit consideration and cultivation of civic intelligence is more important than ever. These challenges will not be solved by a small group of very powerful, rich, or smart people; they will only be solved if the combined talents and resources of millions of people are directed towards them.

Idea # 1059Communications Strategies, democracy, collective intelligence

Comments

rogerweaton 9 months ago

Being smart about being smart is a smart idea - truly!

justingriffis 9 months ago

It is interesting, I have seen a lot of proposals on this list and all of them promote civic engagement, but the effectiveness of that engagement seems to be directly tied to whether or not it is intelligent engagement. Otherwise we might have a very un-intelligent engagement producing bad results.

So YES to civic intelligence! It is the precursor to good citizen-led governance!

antoinette_lasalle 9 months ago

When the inmates began to run the asylum, we got the education system we have today. The dumbing down of America was treason; the fruit is the Resident of the United States.

freedomfighter4theplanet 9 months ago

Democracy Versus Republic

These succinct definitions of what is Democracy and what is a Republic was produced by the US Army in 1928, These definitions have been quietly withdrawn since, soon after.

Democracy:
A government of the masses.
Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of "direct" expression.
Results in mobocracy.
Attitude toward property is comunistic-negating property rights.
Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate. whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
Results in demagogism license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
Democracy is the "direct" rule of the people and has been repeatedly tried without success.
A certain Professor Alexander Fraser Tytler, nearly two centuries ago, had this to say about Democracy: " A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of Government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a Dictatorship."
A democracy is majority rule and is destructive of liberty because there is no law to prevent the majority from trampling on individual rights. Whatever the majority says goes! A lynch mob is an example of pure democracy in action. There is only one dissenting vote, and that is cast by the person at the end of the rope.

Republic:
Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them.
Attitude toward property is respect for laws and individual rights, and a sensible economic procedure.
Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences.
A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass.
Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy. Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress.
Is the "standard form" of government throughout the world.
A republic is a form of government under a constitution which provides for the election of:
an executive and
a legislative body, who working together in a representative capacity, have all the power of appointment, all power of legislation all power to raise revenue and appropriate expenditures, and are required to create
a judiciary to pass upon the justice and legality of their governmental acts and to recognize
certain inherent individual rights.
Take away any one or more of those four elements and you are drifting into autocracy. Add one or more to those four elements and you are drifting into democracy.
Our Constitutional fathers, familiar with the strength and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government. They "made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic."
A republic is a government of law under a Constitution. The Constitution holds the government in check and prevents the majority (acting through their government) from violating the rights of the individual. Under this system of government a lynch mob is illegal. The suspected criminal cannot be denied his right to a fair trial even if a majority of the citizenry demands otherwise.
Difference between Democracy and Republic, in brief:
Democracy:
a: government by the people; especially : rule of the majority.
b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.
Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences

Republic
a: a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government.
b: a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.

Democracy and Republic are often taken as one of the same thing, but there is a fundamental difference. Whilst in both cases the government is elected by the people, in Democracy the majority rules according to their whims, whilst in the Republic the Government rule according to law. This law is framed in the Constitution to limit the power of Government and ensuring some rights and protection to Minorities and individuals.

The difference between Republic and Righteous Republic is that in the Republic the Government rules according to the law set up by men, in the Righteous Republic the law is the Law of God. Only in the Righteous Republic it can truly be said "One nation under God" for it is governed under commandments of the only One True God and there is no pluralism of religions.
Autocracy declares the divine right of kings; its authority can not be questioned; its powers are arbitrarily or unjustly administered.
Mobocracy: 1. Political control by a mob. 2. The mass of common people as the source of political control.

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