Conviction 5 - Consent/Domestic

>> Social revolution and political redefinition to facilitate the rise of truly consensual governments backed up by a strong civil society

The What

A massive mobilization of human capital behind the objectives of social development, human consciousness building, and the convening of grassroots humanitarians in frequent meetings. These grassroots meetings will form councils which allocate democratically collectivized wealth to social innovators and those who have well thought through plans to incite the fundamental betterment of society. In this, Synthesis and affiliate organizations seek to better the quality of civil and democratic society. In order to build democracy, the approach has too often been a top-bottom theory where the government is not a reflection of society but rather an arbitrary intervener in it. To invigorate a society to embrace democracy and understand how to operate within the democratic system it must be organized along the lines of traditional and well-known social conventions. It is necessary, at this point, to illustrate two things. Synthesis regards democracy as a doctrine that must be adopted through choice and political evolution. Synthesis, nor any of the organizations it creates, will force or co-opt governments into adopting democratic structures that society does not desire. It will not ignore or shun non-democratic regimes. That being said, it does regard democracy as the best form of government for defending human rights and regardless of the government type, Synthesis will endeavor to defend these rights both peacefully and if necessary militantly. If in this defense it is decided that a government's structure will only give rise to more abuses, it will be changed.

When it is said that Synthesis seeks to improve the quality of democracy it does not mean the spreading of a superficial form of it to non-democratic nations. It means the cogent improvement of democratic society in those countries that already have democratic structures, which are a great many. There are two initiatives through which Synthesis will endeavor to do this. First, the strengthening of society by the convening of people's parliaments that deal with local issues and also provide a means for people to participate in the supranational structure. The formation of these grassroots humanitarian councils will give rise to aggregate discussion groups for the immediate redress of social ills. These councils will take a bottom-up approach, mobilizing people directly, rather than waiting for the orders of government to listlessly trickle down.  Second, Synthesis advocates a new system of government by consent based on the tenant that democracy is not necessarily congruent with this idea when support for a particular government has dropped below a certain critical threshold.

 This conviction also allows provisions to be formed that modify the rules of war to protect civilian lives and make governments more accountable to their civilian populations. As a consequence, the structure of society will hold government exceptionally accountable to the policies that it forms at home and abroad by virtue of society’s mass organization. This means that civilians will be more politically competent to vote, protest, and make the popular will known to those in power. The quality of a consent-based political system is determined by the education and organization of society along humanitarian lines. An atomistic society, a radically individualistic one, will only have an exceptionally superficial democratic life-span where nobody involves themselves in the betterment of the collective beyond the act of voting.

The Why

To improve the quality of political participation where citizens control their own destiny through organizational social frameworks. Democracy is not always government by consent. When a government maintains less than a specified percentage of support from its own population it should be dissolved. Not dragged out until the population is so sick of the hypocrisy and mistakes of those it no longer wills in power it loses all faith in politics. This is not to mention the fact that once the government has lost mass support its agendas are compromised and few initiatives can be enacted for the betterment of society. This will not only strengthen democracy and social faith in politics but result in the leaders that are most capable of leading getting their chance to shine early rather than idly waiting for an unpopular and incompetent government's term to end. An organized society is more capable of keeping tyrannies at bay because an internationally connected and educationally enlightened society will have the ability to recognize political regression, the organization necessary to overthrow tyrannies, and the ability to mobilize in order to redress social ills. Continue >