Common Sense Essay, Research Paper

“PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”

– Thomas Paine, Common Sense ……

AN ABUSE or misuse of power generally calls into question the right of anyone to hold power. The allegation alone provides just cause for an open inquiry. if we find the allegations are valid, we can reject private efforts to usurp rights naturally vested in the public domain. We can take power away from the power abusers.

The good people of our world are grievously injured by an absence of genuine democracy governing any new mode of cultural communication influencing our communities. Regarding the Internet, we have a natural right to inquire into the governance of the interactive mass medium massaging our mentalities. Now an investigation is demanded by controversy over proposals for managing Internet expansion. Will autocracy or democracy rule? How does this effect us all?

Many circumstances have and will arise that appear local and yet are universal. Interactive media networks already are producing a measurable impact upon our world, sending out ripples like a stone tossed into a pond, or, sending out cultural tidal waves like a boulder dropped into a bathtub. The Internet affects us all.

Calling the question of Internet governance now concerns everyone to whom nature or nature’s God has given the power of feeling alive, and the common global sense to see the depths our interactivity here on network earth. The cause of a democratic Internet is the cause of humankind.

In discussing this matter, for democracy’s sake, may we wisely avoid anything personal among ourselves, for compliments and censure provide diversions. We might play personality politics, pretend being right matters more than being real, but we’re all in training, so why be distracted from the historic issues surfaced by recent events? Questions of power remain unanswered. What will be the nature of network governance in our interactive world? Shall our Internet be governed by a private committee, or shall open democracy govern global communication?

What say you?

Part I. ON THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL

“Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness…

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil… For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver.”

– Thomas Paine, Common Sense ……

ANY human endeavor needing more than one person to get the job done right requires a shared vision of cooperation to complete the task. The organizational metaphors we work by have changed over the centuries. Supplanting images of the feudal manor, in the Industrial Revolution we began viewing organizations as “clockwork machines.” The Computer Revolution then started us looking at organizations as integrated “systems.” We shifted from talking about “organizational structures” to discussing “organizational functions.”

But dead devices can never supply a viable vocabulary for describing human interactions in groups. We all live, love, learn, work, play, and vote in evolving cultures generated by our individual and collective “communication behaviors,” What we say and do forms our homes, schools, jobs, communities, and nations. Our use of language and acts of communication spin the web of all our relations. Relationships create our world. Communication is the central process of life.

Our Legacy of Tyranny

DISTINCTIVE and competing people and groups may interact peacefully when they agree upon a system of communication for mutual governance. Without a shared social contract, society soon descends into chaos. Out of crazy disorder appears a charismatic leader followed by true believers who impose their new world order upon society, for a season, until offbeat and outcast rebels sufficiently disrupt the status quo (while hermits hide away in dismay). Entropy quickly gathers speed, unraveling the social fabric, then disorder returns, a brave new leader conquers the throne, another dynasty falls, and so the cycle replays in every generation.

Swinging between the extremes of anarchy and tyranny, we dangle above the abyss of extinction like wild apes awaiting an alpha male racing to our rescue (even if our savior is female). We beseech gods for heroes and anointed kings, then slay the saints who tame the dragons. We make war, not peace in our time.

Lacking a sense of our interdependence, we disdain self determination. Trying to gratify our need for inner security with “external validations” (sex, fame, money, power, chocolate), we run amok. We refuse to balance liberty with responsibility. We’d rather not grow up. We’d rather make others wrong so we feel right. We’d rather let our lives fall into ruin than do anything useful to help ourselves survive and thrive. We’re like a starving man waiting to be handed food within easy reach. The pop-psych folks call it codependency. We hunger to be saved from the hard reality of saving ourselves. Our cravings have fed every tyrant since time began.

Buttressing a penchant for pledging oaths to monarchs and messiahs, another trait hindering us from “doing democracy” is our faith in hereditary succession. Once any authority becomes entrenched, we accept them as our new godhead without a word. Blind allegiance to any form of royalty degrades and lessens ourselves, so, permitting the claiming of power as an inherited right is an imposition and insult upon posterity. Just because someone has power doesn’t mean they can keep it.

We are each of us created equal with inalienable natural rights. No person or group, whether in a position of authority by accident of birth or by ascent from merit, has any right to put their own family or friends in perpetual power to the effective exclusion of all others. The benevolent despot of the day may deserve honor, yet descendants typically become insane from inbreeding. Why continue serving the reckless rulers who fiddle around as our homelands burn? Why must we fight and die for survival of the fittest in a world not fit for living? Why be fearful of fear itself?

Despite the inroads of democracy since the American Revolution, most people still crave royalty rule. Our organizations and government institutions are still reliant on top-down methods of management. Most of us are afraid to be our own boss. We feel safer with a leader making the difficult decisions for us. We obey because we want to obey. We want to believe. Security matters more to us than freedom. We are all born free, but everywhere we are enslaved in chains of our own choosing.

Seeking Hope For Democracy

LIBERTY unbound decays into depravity, so prophesy the recorded histories. We hire governments to protect and preserve us from our own lack of self restraint. We want governments to control us because we do not want to control ourselves. We cling to “dysfunctional” systems of hierarchical management like sodden alcoholics superglued to empty bottles. We are tyranny junkies.

Because of our culturally and even genetically perpetuated authority addiction, we act out a compulsion from our “low self esteem” to give away our freedom of choice to authority figures “higher” than ourselves. Rather than rule our lives from the inside, we yearn to be ruled from the outside.

Must we always let life turn desperate before Big Brother steps in with an iron fist to save us from ourselves — again? If the proper role of any government is defending us from the bad guys using force or fraud to meet their needs, whenever expedience overrides compunction, objective people might well wonder, what can make us refrain from utilitarian excess? Libertarian dreams of global free trade in open markets may rouse the passions, yet why evade accountability and personal growth whenever public interests counter private aspirations? Clich?s about our “enlightened self interest” are helpful, but where is our source of illumination?

In an era when cynicism often is warranted, can we see any rational basis for hope? In our age of “globalization,” most of us feel overwhelmed by the rapid pace of change in society. We suffer from “information overload,” what Alvin Toffler calls “future shock.” Small wonder we want to be rescued by digital messiahs.

In these hard times that test our souls, most of us feel powerless to make any real difference in the world. Many of us think that we cannot have what we want in life. We believe we’re too worthless, clumsy, dumb, or sinful to trust our own right use of free will. Aren’t we told in childhood that we should we expect the worst from ourselves, that we are born evil? Why live a lie? Why escape from freedom when the truth will set us free? Know yourself as living light.

Given the habits of our hearts, what will inspire us to make democracy work? What can rekindle the fire of freedom in our bellies? What can spark us into living with a love for life itself? What can inspire us to live the way our souls want us to live?

Interactive Global Sense

BECAUSE acts of communication construct our cultures as a cultures construct our acts of communications, because the advent of the Internet evidently is having a profound cultural impact already in our daily lives, can we identify any signs of the new media networks generating greater democracy?

New media technologies still confound many of us (at least, until the interface improves), but please pause to think about the nature of this new social force.

The “digital distributed networks” are widely decentralized, a woven lattice more than a vertical hierarchy. The global media networks, therefore, are innately more democratic than any previous medium of communication, from tribal drums to TV. Given the interplay between the media and our minds and our world, the more we use the new interactive networks to interact with others in our lives, the more we begin seeing how much our lives are interactive within our one fractal world.

Talk with anyone on the Internet who daily interacts with people around the planet. Active networkers often express an “interactive sensibility,” a deep awareness that we all can and must learn to get along because we all are “interdependent.” Their attitude is rooted in a visceral and visual experience of being linked to people and places through open communication networks, copper wires or laser light fibers.

Visualize the popular photograph of our blue earth alone in space, the snapshot taken on the 1972 trip home from the moon. How can we gaze at that sphere and continue pretending we’re separate creatures without any effect upon one another in our circle of life? Like the thumb and fingers of one hand working in concert, what if we know in our bones how interconnect with others? How can we continue to plunder and murder in our worldwide web of spirit?

What we do to others, we do to ourselves. What goes around comes around. Growing mindful of our unity amid diversity, a powerful global sense of our interactivity guides us toward responsible self rule, a personal choice to heed the subtle dictates of conscience in our interactions, the promise to be true to our souls. Evolving global sense then motivates us to practice personal democracy, the daily effort to consider other people’s realities when we interact with them, giving them a fair voice in the decisions affecting them.

From who we marry and whether we abuse our kids all the way through who takes out the trash and whether we recycle, all of our personal choices and actions have a real impact on the world. Knowing we’re interconnected, don’t we feel more willing to cooperate with one another in resolving our common problems?

Knowledge is power. Ignorance is bondage. We the people can enjoy freedom and prosperity if we share responsibility for conserving the peace. What if we implant into our cultural values a simple alertness to our global interactivity? What if this engram of global sense gets embedded into our cellular memories? In time, like a teenager entering adulthood, we could mature enough in our 21st Century Age of Communication to manifest the vision of democracy that ignited the 18th Century Age of Enlightenment. We already hold the power to mold the media molding us. (Devout skeptics may find therein ample cause for optimism about democracy.)

-o-

HERE is the design and purpose of government, to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. And here is the source and nature of government, a mode of establishing social order rendered essential by an absence of an interactive sensibility to curb our ruthless impulses. Our abuse of freedom makes government necessary. We may like to say otherwise, but regardless of our creeds or doctrines or social standing, regardless of whether personal interests cloud our judgment, the “still, small voice” within us says, this is true:

In our interactive world, responsible self rule makes global sense

Part II. THOUGHTS ON THE STATE OF NETWORK AFFAIRS, WITH CONCISE REMARKS ON A GLOBAL INTERNET CONSTITUTION

“…I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he [or she] will generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.”

– Thomas Paine, Common Sense …….

MOVING from general theory to a specific application, the central problems of democracy seem contained in the dispute over Internet expansion and the outcry over “privatization” of our public network by the leading trade and professional organizations at the behest of the United States Government.

The core question is fundamental. Shall our Internet be ruled by laws or by decrees, by and for the network users themselves or by and for the network technocrats? The choice is ours.

Volumes have been written about the unexpected emergence of the Internet as a medium for interactions among “anyone, anywhere, anytime.” As an unplanned cultural phenomenon, the Internet’s astounding unpredictability is half the fun and magic behind the miraculous growth of the new medium. Yet ambiguity presents difficulties. Without one shared vision of where we’re going on the Internet, what can we do to manage the social upheaval being produced by Internet popularity?

Someday, everyone alive could want a website, so we will need a lot of addresses. The power to register more “generic top level domain names,” (like the proposed “username.store or “username.firm”). is the power to award turf for development.

Authorizing additional categories of Internet domains is akin to declaring a land rush. Unlike Old West pioneers displacing duly defensive native inhabitants, the bold voyagers into cyberspace can settle explored territories manifested from virgin nothingness by the power of vivid imagination — and a willingness to make it so. Empires built from these new electronic domains may govern our lives in the new century, as do today’s empires. Therefore, we all qualify as network stakeholders.

A New Understanding

INTERNET affairs today are in a state of confusion. Our habit whenever anarchy befell in the past has been to find a visionary avatar offering salvation in trade for loyalty. Amid all the turmoil of Internet growth, which network leaders are not. volunteering to be our masters? We are under no obligation to accept any offer, however generous. We retain a right to find our own solutions.

Because the Internet emerged as a free and open “public switched network,” the right to govern the international network of networks is a sacred public trust.

Administrative control of the Internet was accorded to the original leadership by a consensus of the Internet community as the new media evolved. Their authority was unchallenged until recent efforts at privatization stirred us to question our systems of network governance.

And thus we arrive here now with the matter on the table before us. Let us stop, breathe, do our homework, and together choose what we want to do.

Instead of management by hierarchy, business as usual, what if we agree on a new understanding of network democracy expressed in an Internet constitution?

Our baseline reality is that we need to expand the Internet soon. The urgency is real, but so long as none of the governance schemes have become entrenched, the period of debate is not yet closed. Unwilling to await a genuine consensus, some major players have already begun to institute an Internet government [ICANN] despite growing international protests. Any coup d’?tat can become a fait accompli. faster than a cable modem loads a website if the common people stand idle. Only public protest to American political leaders may win a delay.

The urge to grow the Internet is healthy, but hasty implementation of any network expansion proposal could lock us into a “solution” we may one day regret. Contemplate the fate of all those “early adopters” who have locked themselves into dead-end technologies. In the same way, if we tolerate a precedent of autocratic network management now, the autocracy may become entrenched. Freedoms lost can be regained only after anguish and travail. Why be a house divided against itself when Internet alchemy evokes a sense of being linked into one global village?

Despite the mounting market demand for new domain names, an expansion moratorium will give us time to study more democratic proposals for Internet government, and then let’s vote about what we want.

Risking a Constitutional Convention

A PUBLIC inquiry is necessary into our present and future vision of Internet governance. Before our Internet expands, let’s establish a new social contract. Because we still lack the global sense to live responsibly free without any government, instead of reliance on despots, We need laws that can’t be changed at the whim of a committee. We need an Internet constitution with a bill of network rights safeguarding our natural human rights to access, privacy and security. We need a constitution balancing our freedom of expression with the right of parents to protect their children from predatory content. We need laws based on global sense.

Negotiations may be rigorous as we debate all the possible solutions, and we need to allow time for open discourse. This is why a moratorium is necessary. But if we interact with global sense and good faith, we can agree with good speed upon a fair deal for everyone. We can draft for international ratification a global Internet Constitution that acknowledges and upholds our public and private rights and responsibilities as individuals and organizations.

Why stumble into an abyss? Let us take time to meet and talk before we enact.

An Open Internet Congress was convened in Washington, D.C. two years ago under the auspices of the Association for Interactive Media, and anyone could attend. That gathering was not repeated, but any new assembly representing the broadest spectrum of Internet stakeholders would be suited to conduct the overdue inquiry into network governance.

In addition, once convened and meeting regularly, the assembly needs to promote and coordinate international public discourse about our constitution. Drawing upon diverse voices, the assembly then need to write a far-sighted document that institutes “participatory management” of our network.

A related task is developing and testing a trusty system of electronic voting with One Person One Vote, perhaps accomplished through some secure browser form. The big challenge here is preventing vote fraud or ballot stuffing.

While the precise provisions of our Internet constitution is a matter best left for any convention we may convene, if the presumption is not unseemly, here are my recommendations for consideration. Parliamentary governments are prone toward instability whenever confidence falters. Let’s draw upon the American model with a division of powers (legislative, administrative, judicial) serving the interests of the industry and networkers alike. We can debate term limits for elected representatives, but first let’s be committed to open and free elections.

A word of caution. Once any democratic constitution is offered for ratification by the Internet community, indeed, by the community of nations, the able assembly developing the proposal then must be disbanded and replaced by a fresh Internet congress elected through a direct democratic process. The new group must avoid committing the sins of the old group [e.g., IAHC players attempting to enthrone themselves through the "gTLD-MoU" in 1997, and the "interim" ICANN Board declaring; itself the "initial" board in 1999]. Never trust a leader who won’t leave office when the job is done. We already have enough despots trying to rule us.

Private citizens never have a right to claim power over public affairs without the consent of the governed. Anyone who tries to gratify themselves this way deserves to be investigated for attempted tyranny. Search for motives. The only reason for opposing open network democracy is to profit from a lack of freedom.

-o-

IF WE do our research intelligently, applying the basic critical thinking skills of deep media literacy, if we filter out the propaganda while seeing the reality of our interactivity, if we are accessing the same universal light of wisdom within us all, although this may well be a mighty big “if,” doesn’t it make sense that we would evolve a shared vision of network democracy? Through common agreement on a mature set of rules for fairly managing the Internet that’s affecting all of our lives, we won’t need kings to run our lives any more. We may become better beings in the bargain. Why not? Why not try practical idealism for a change? The only thing we have to lose is our addiction to living in chains.

Part III. ON THE ATTITUDE OF THE GLOBAL INTERNET COMMUNITY TOWARD NETWORK DEMOCRACY

“These proceedings may at first appear strange and difficult; but, like all other steps which we have already passed over, [the ideas] will in a little time become familiar and agreeable.”

– Thomas Paine, Common Sense ……..

WHEN Tom Paine wrote Common Sense in 1776, his purpose was persuading the people to support a revolution against the crown. He gave logical reasons for liberty from all royalty rule, and he convinced his readers (including George Washington) that freedom could be won by a determined people. Paine’s work also influenced Jefferson in writing the American Declaration of Independence.

Our situation today is parallel and equally urgent, yet volatile conditions invite a far gentler response than a gunfire on Bunker Hill. If this modern rewrite of a classic can do any good, I pray that Global Sense can help inspire us toward a declaration of our interdependence on network earth. Peace will follow.

Deferring Internet democracy for another generation is a mistake. We already are mature enough to make democracy work , if we but see our deep interactivity. Why wait until “we the people” are leaning out windows and shouting at the network that we’re mad as Beale, and we’re not going to take it any more?

Stop the War Before it Starts

Battle lines are being drawn between factions fighting to rule mass media. Before the Internet self-destructs from us demonizing our adversaries and polarizing the online community, before we insist everyone must be either friend or foe, before we trashcan a good thing, why not accept that all of our lives are interlaced, that every act has consequences, forgive our childhood pain, grow up, and “do the right thing” for our civilization? Aren’t we finished yet with global whining?

Please, stop the Internet war before it starts. End the rancor here and now. Release residual anger from past dissension. Embrace our connectivity. Account for all the network stakeholders yet unborn in our decisions. Why not ordain and establish a constitution that helps us form a more perfect union? Why not liberate our hearts and minds to imagine and create new realities that we cannot yet even imagine?

With little more than a “what if?” attitude and a “can do” spirit, the modern Internet has become the most powerful cultural force for democracy and global free trade in human history. Any attempts today to divert or subvert this cultural movement may be too little too late. The Internet is here, and it’s here to stay.

Rather than trying to postpone humanity’s destined rite of passage into adulthood by perpetuating “oldthink” addictions to monarchies and autocracies, shall we take advantage of our present “window of opportunity” and mature enough to give real democracy a fair chance for success? We are naturally good and deserve freedom.

Why not let the mind conceive a vision of network democracy as a quantum leap beyond hereditary succession?Why not take the next evolutionary step ?

If together we can practice the interactivity we preach, we may create a democratic system of Internet management. We may model a mode of doing business in the world that could push the most repressive regimes on earth onto the broadband highway toward honest communication and genuine democracy.

An open Internet can topple tyrannies like dominoes.

Network Democracy Makes Global Sense

Until network democracy is declared, we will be as the old procrastinator who day by day kept putting off an upsetting business, wishing that the chore was over, that someone else had done the job for him, always knowing what must be done, always haunted by the necessity for action.

Nobody will solve our problems for us, but nobody can succeed alone. If we want the job done right, we need to do the work together, each of us, without waiting for saviors to save us. After our toil arrives rejoicing, gratitude for a chance to do work that matters, the peace of knowing we did what we knew was right for everyone.

Let us take the time now to think and act with care, but we cannot delay too long. Many of the proposals have impending implementation dates. Why wait for passing days and weeks and months as the technocrats become entrenched? Why wait until reality slams shut the door on our generation’s best chance to have a constitutional network government that helps uplift our souls? Bring ascension down to earth.

Timely and calm protests to industry and government leaders can postpone full implementation of any Internet governance proposal [ICANN]. We have a duty today to safeguard freedom for tomorrow. That’s the job of every generation.

Each one of us matters now. Will we waive our rights for the comfort of never getting personally involved? A future revolt will never be necessary if we use our common sense now to meet together in good faith and speak reasonably in light of our shared interactivity. Please heed this appeal for an “evolution revolution.” Each of us has miles to grow, so why deny our duty to live responsibly free?

In our interactive world, network democracy makes global sense.

-o-

WE stand today at a convergence of many pathways. Shall we cross the communication bridges dividing us and pave a digital avenue to network democracy? Instead of eyeing one another with suspicion and doubt, why not extend to our neighbors the sincere hand of friendship? Why not unite in the certain knowledge of our universal interactivity? Freedom abides where we practice responsible self rule.

On such grounds and in your hands, the question now rests. Will democracy or technocracy, freedom or tyranny, rule the new century and the new millennium? Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of our Internet.

Ken Freed

Denver, 1997

[Rev. 1999]