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Forum Post: OccupyTheConstitution Quality of Life

Posted 12 years ago on Jan. 1, 2012, 4:30 p.m. EST by A3Admin (0)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

When it comes to measuring the performance of our government, we must have goals to measure against. If the words of the Gettysburg Address have any value, then the concept of a government "by the people, for the people" is one of the best summaries of our founding goals. Another way to put this is Quality of Life for ALL of the people. There is another saying that we hear all the time which most people completely misunderstand. It is credited to Bentham and John Stewart Mill, "…the greatest good for the greatest number." Most people view this in the form of a percentage. That is, "as long as, say, 80% of the people are doing well, what's the problem?" The problem is, as the population grows, how many people are there in the 20% that are not doing well? We hear often now that 25% of the families in the U.S. go to bed hungry every night. 25% seems to be a "small" number, right? But viewed as an absolute number, this is 75 MILLION people! For our society to have any chance of viewing itself as "humane", this is a tragedy. 1 million would still be a tragedy. 10,000 would still be a tragedy.

So, to be worthy of our human potential, we need to reevaluate our priorities as a society. We need to address what QUALITY our collective effort, i.e. our government, is bringing to the least capable among us. We need to set out GOALS based on Quality of Life.

This, however, opens up a huge and controversial discussion: what is the purpose of life? How should people treat each other? A key assumption I keep hearing among the 99% view is that, 'people, through their governments, should build a world that "GUARANTEES" EVERY HUMAN BEING sufficient support to achieve our founding goals of LIFE, LIBERTY and PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. This is not a short term objective either. We want this for ALL generations in the future, not just for the benefit of people in power now. If this is so, there are necessary implications. It means we need to add two more DEMANDs to the Occupy Wall Street list:

  1. Congress shall establish a Department of SUSTAINABILITY, with the responsibility for developing a WORLD MODEL that addresses ALL the known and reasonably anticipated factors which significantly affect the welfare of human society. All new laws presented to congress for action must demonstrate that they are not harmful to future life on this planet, EITHER in aggregate or LOCALLY.

  2. The criterion used for social planning related to judging harm shall not be limited to economic indicators, but, rather, must hold PRIMARY, parameters accepted by WORLD populations as contributors to the QUALITY OF LIFE. The WORLD MODEL must EXPLICITLY state the PUBLICLY ACCEPTED BASIS for economic disparity which is used to judge harm.

These issues are discussed further at http://a3society.org under Sustainability.

The purpose of this post is to gather a very wide range of input from EVERY person in society about what is important for a "good" QUALITY OF LIFE for them?

(This post is part of a collection of posts aimed at launching a new process called the National Opinion Collection System (NOCS). For more information on the process, see http://occupywallst.org/forum/occupytheconstitution-introduction/ )

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[-] 1 points by JadedCitizen (4277) 12 years ago

Nice website. The discussion about absolutes deserves more attention than it normally receives.

[-] 1 points by ChristopherABrown (550) from Santa Barbara, CA 12 years ago

Article 5 convention NOW!

Yea, I like to see such discussion on absolutes. They are much more valuable to us in communication than most realize. From that site.

http://a3society.org/


"Absolute: Latin absolutus, from absolvere - to set loose, free from limitations: unlimited, uncombined, changeless, unconditional, not comparative or relative to something else; any belief, doctrine, concept or idea that is regarded as complete unto itself and therefore subject to no exterior circumstance or condition; UNIQUE."

"Absolute . . . something that is not dependent upon external conditions for existence or for its specific nature, size, etc. . . . in some schools of philosophy, the one ultimate reality that does not depend on anything, and is not relative to anything else . . something that does not depend on anything else and is BEYOND HUMAN CONTROL."


In fact, absolutes are so valuable for our communication, our unity, that part of the bizarre pre 9-11 appearances of 9-11 in film places emphasis on compromising our perceptions of absolutes. This is from the film "face off".

http://truthasaur.com/misc/insectims/9-11faceoff-absolutes.jpg

The web sites definition is accurate, but a little too academic to be very useful to us politically. More of a debate method study.

In politics, it's fairly simple. We have ABSOLUTE needs. Our constitution maintains a sociological structure that has us working together to meet our needs, or at least in theory. Unfortunately, through various collusions, we are faced with a situation where distortions to the absolutes of our reality, by corporations and infiltrations into government, are being used to slowly destroy what we need.

The destruction is on many levels. To understand more about Article V,

Lessig power point on article V http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gpbfY-atMk

Lots of facts here about Article V. http://algoxy.com/poly/article_v_convention.html

Article V conference, Lawrence Lessig at harvard 9/25/11-other attendee video comments http://vimeo.com/31464745

Here is common sense strategy that includes a way to prevent a runaway convention, which might not be a real fear at all. At any rate the idea makes it so we can actually practice democracy because we are informed enough to make real decision.

http://algoxy.com/ows/strategyofamerica.html


[-] 0 points by DiogenesTruth (108) 12 years ago

America does not ascribe to any "World Model" for quality of life. if that is the case, then world poverty, meaured at $2.50 per day will be our standard.