The genesis of vTaiwan is in that experience. Now, what I gather from you and Shu Yang, it’s around an 80/20 -- 80 percent regulation kind of stuff and 20 percent legislative. What’s the track of evolution that resulted in the shrinkage of legislative attention and the expansion of regulatory attention in the participatory process?
They need to be got together with Pol.is! [laughs]
Thanks for complexifying my thinking.
It’s a non-linear history. I was going, "Huh, how did this linear history happen?" You’re going, "Well, that linear history didn’t happen. There’s a much more non-linear history that happened."
Thank you. [laughs] I am learning so much, not just of the specifics, but of the nature of the complex realities, of which vTaiwan is only one. I tend to be usefully reductionist, but still reductionist, in a variety of my work. You helping me balance that with the realities that you deal with.
I was having a conversation with one of my other board members a couple year ago who had spent two years in Mainland China teaching English but engaging a lot with the students. One of the things that she introduced me to was the Mandate of Heaven logic.
I began to think, "What an interesting relationship could be painted between sophisticated public participation regimes and the Mandate of Heaven mythos." Without giving up power, you can access what the people want, and then do it for them, by using these participatory processes.
I’m wondering, from your proximity to that world view, if you have any thoughts about, "Oh, that’s a good idea," or, "No, that wouldn’t work," or, "You haven’t thought of these seven things," or whatever you might do with that. I’m just curious.
I understand that. Voting has a very minor place in my own ideology. I’m just curious, given the Communist Chinese structures, which I’m aware that they are hanging in your background, [laughs] in a very dominant way. There could be things that could happen that would be very messy for Taiwan.
Within the world of China, where there’s a lot of interest, apparently, in democratic reforms, but not democracy the way the West practices it, I go, "This is democracy in a way that’s different from the way the West practices it." What would it be like? Would this be a meme that’s a selling point for Chinese people who are trying to preserve the Chinese system?
It’s also unreal. We know that this is a falsehood. This is a myth in the negative sense and the positive.
There’s both a bastardized myth of democracy and a myth of the Mandate of Heaven, which is used to often justify rule that is not in any way wise or representative of the public will. From my perspective, this is a realization.
Within a top-down structure, if the top-down structure that has no voting in it -- or hardly any voting or depowered voting -- is established in a way that seeks the will of the people through deliberative activities, of the kind that you and I are engaged in, you don’t have to lose your grip on power.
You just have to legitimize it and become the representative and empowerment of the wise voice of the people. [laughs] I was curious where...
That’s an interesting choice in your putting trust in the middle of it.
Don’t change the screen. One of the things that came up during your last little speaking was the difference...If you have top-down power, there are status rewards to that, and there are psychological "having power over some people" psychologies that...
There’s also this financial/material benefits kind of power. It feels like the king or dictator can satisfy their "ceremonial status, live in great wealth" kinds of interests without corrupting the system where it matters for other people. It doesn’t cost a lot to support a king, for example...
...compared to the cost for the society. You could have a king that was the embodiment of...
If you have one-quarter of one percent the budget of the country is supporting the monarch, and all the rest is fulfilling the ideals of the people and the will of the people, you have the idealized Mandate of Heaven situation. The ruler is ruling through the guidance of the people. This is the Taoist leader, I guess, even more, who means well...
...themselves.
Yes and no, because I’m removing the voting. I’m saying that this is an inspired...I think, in the history of Greece, one of the top-down rulers initiated the original democratic forms, Solon or somebody. That kind of leader, who establishes a new order that maintains somebody at the top in power, but their hold on power is...
Anyway, blah-blah-blah. We can set that aside. Those are philosophical story/interesting things. I just realized that, for me, the thing that’s in the middle is the wisdom factor.
I know trust is easier to define and sense than wisdom.
Yeah. The wisdom thing is priority for me because the nature of our decisions, in terms of their wisdom or folly, given the level of power humanity now has, we can easily destroy ourselves in any one of one or two dozen major ways, all of which are proceeding in the wrong direction.
If we could have a philosopher king that would do the job, I’d go, "Let’s go for the philosopher king and off-load the democracy part of it." Democracy is not my central value, but I think the systems are so complex that having multiple viewpoints being integrated somehow has to be part of the puzzle in order to make wise decisions.
I know there’s no measure. I had this definition of taking into account what needs to be taken in account for long-term broad benefits. Of course, all those are debatable, just like equality is debatable and justice is debatable.
They are north stars to shoot for and to know that certain ways of doing things will systematically disable your ability to take into account what needs to be taken into account. Other ways will increase your ability to do that.
If you’re always recognizing you’re going to miss things all the time, you’re going to not take into account certain things, so you make your process iterative. It’s picking up the things you missed rather than trying to suppress the things you missed. It’s a lot of different things that can go into that.
I realize participation, inclusion, and accountability and transparency all serve my goal of wisdom. [laughs] It’s fascinating to put trust in the middle. It’s something to meditate on. It’s much more grounded in the people who are living through it.
When you say, "regulatory idea," what do you mean?
Just to let you know, I am not philosophically trained at all.
Thank you.
We can always try and measure them, but they’re not measurable, really.
My inquiry, the wise democracy pattern language, is trying to look at what are the dimensions that I can see, the different things that would need to be addressed or taken into account while you’re holding this wisdom regulatory idea at a government’s level. This is not the wisdom of individuals. This is the wisdom of crowds.
Not like the book says, "The real wisdom of the whole." [laughs] My way of saying is how to call for it and access and engage the wisdom and resourcefulness of the whole on behalf of the whole. That’s part of the way, I think, and when I look at what you’re doing, I go, "This girl’s doing it."
I’m just curious how...I have this page on the sources of wisdom that apply here. There were nine of them, and it’s not "The Nine." It’s just nine that I could frame and pull out. From that perspective, they suggest different ways to do things or tweak things that you already have going.
It’s like one those sources of wisdom is the holistic and systemic sciences, like systems thinking and ecology, chaos and complexity theory. The people who study these have a... [laughs] you might call it knowledge without portfolio.
It glosses over all sorts of other things implicitly because you’re studying basic structures of how the world’s put together.
For example, in a Pol.is exercise, to be able to include people like that, to be able to include ethicists, to be able to include people who understand the common ground among all the world’s religions, people who have deep time perspectives into the past and the future, whatever, some shamans thrown into the mix.
Different sources of wisdom, people who embody those different sources of wisdom, what would happen if you put a hundred of them into any given Pol.is to bring their perspective into that? They are throwing their items into the mix. They are doing their voting on different items, agree, disagree.
They are adding a wisdom dimension that wouldn’t necessarily be there by only picking the stakeholders.
That’s an example of an intervention that’s specifically designed because of the wisdom factor, which would not normally be put in there if you don’t have that in mind. Let’s do that. [laughs] I was even thinking you could have your stable of 100 or 200 people from whom you would pick.
For any given Pol.is, you could pick people out of that stable. You could pick people to advise a citizen deliberative council, too. Deliberations should have that dimension, also, which they often don’t. You can solve a problem for now, and it may be totally harmful to seven generations after us.
You meant "we," meaning everybody, or you and me? Which is the "we?" What’s the "we?"
[laughs] It’s like there’s this thing of "Think globally and act locally."
Think long term and act now. [laughs]
Your focus, I would say that’s an 80/20 thing. It feels like the 80 is on...Well, it’s not your decision to do it. That’s part of why it’s intriguing to me, the dance between intentional design and emergent design. You have an 80 percent emergent, 20 percent intentional design thing going on in what you’re doing for all I can tell. [laughs] If not 90/10 or something, I don’t know.
In terms of addressing...I guess I should just say, what are your thoughts? The fact that you talk about existential threats means you’re very aware of that dimension and what’s going on there.
That’s my center of gravity totally. There is a way in which I could care less whether we get our act together locally if we can just handle those because, if we don’t handle those, local issues will be semi-irrelevant.
For me, there is a different ratio because there is so many emergent dynamics that counter taking those things seriously. Some based on the way we have evolved as human beings. The limits and urges we have as human beings will often channel us toward short-term immediate kinds of solutions.
