Among the most important qualities of a just society is that we are able to meet our needs without undermining the ability of others to meet their needs. Among the many needs we humans have is our need to be seen, heard and taken seriously. The on…
The process and mandate of panelists in citizen deliberative councils tend to make randomly selected people act much more responsibly as citizens while on the council. A recent article in the New York Times Magazine notes that randomly selected pa…
This is an excerpt from my recent response to an activist who felt that stopping an attack on Iran was the most important issue we faced, given the horrendous likely consequences of such an attack on Middle East populations and on the global econo…
The power of conversation is real but not total. People sometimes take an oversimplified perspective of the power of dialogue, deliberation, and choice-creating to deal with tensions between people. EIther they think “just talk” can’t do much to r…
The Co-Intelligence Institute’s summer fundraiser is over. The results: Funds raised: $8048.11 // Target: $20,000 // Percentage raised: 40% We send our deepest thanks to the 57 of our 1891 subscribers who responded. If you or anyone you know can b…
Pollsters, politicians and pundits quote public opinion polls to tell us what the public thinks. Deliberative democracy advocates promote public judgment to deepen public opinion. Few people talk about public wisdom – what it could be and what it …
Recently, thanks to a subscriber, I reread my article from several years ago – “Diversity is as big as the universe”. It covers a lot of ground well and I think you’ll enjoy it.
For years I’ve known people who gave away their professional services as a gift, explicitly encouraging (though not requiring) gifts in return to allow them to continue their work. I’ve also loved the idea of “paying it forward” – enjoying as a gi…
Below are highlights from Jane Mansbridge’s IN CONTEXT article “Unitary & Adversary: The Two Forms of Democracy”, which was itself an excerpt from her book BEYOND ADVERSARY DEMOCRACY (1983) which has had a significant impact on my thinking. I ofte…
A year ago Doug Reil, the associate publisher of North Atlantic Books, explored with me the possibility of writing a manifesto to clarify my vision of a wise democracy. The culmination of that conversation is my new book EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM: …