Sig, just stepping outside the box for a while, what if the olde idea of feudal nations sending representatives or leaders is too anachronistic? Even if the said feudal nations were required to be democratic [along the lines of UK, NZ, Switzerland, Japan, USA, NZ, Oz, Singapore etc rather than the Democratic People's Republic of Kampuchea, or Albania, where democracy was only a word].
Suppose instead that the UN was a supranational entity.
For example, in New Zealand, we have local authorities, which run their little fiefdoms within the overall ambit of the national political system and as circumscribed by that overall entity. The local authorities don't send representatives to the central government. The electorate separately votes for the overall entity. In a similar way, the USA has states, counties and cities, which run their own little fiefdoms, but the states send congressmen and senators and stuff to hang out in Washington and do pork barreling and perk collecting.
I imagine a severely circumscribed constitution for the supranational entity which would be run directly by the electorate, not by the nations or cities or provinces to which the electorates would also belong.
The politicians wanting to have a say in the NUN would have to appeal directly to the electorates for support.
The reason for a NUN is community of interest. People in a city or town have a community of interest with their local villagers. People in a country share common interests within their realm but broader and overlapping their village interests.
We the Sheeple of Earth have a community of interest in oceans, air quality, climatic conditions, ecological systems, space, Antarctica, rivers, electromagnetic spectrum, meteor impacts, cyberspace, border definition and protection, means of exchange [money], language, and no doubt some other stuff. We can exert our political will on those without our village honchoes or national pork barrellers getting into the trough.
Just a thought.
We might as well write a good operating manual and ditch the anachronistic, atavistic, carnage conditions of our xenophobic nationalistic tribal chimpoid antecedents which worked on dominance hierarchies, conquest, confiscation, rape, pillage and plunder.
A Hobbesian world red in tooth and claw and with "pink mist" = an obscene expression I learned recently, is unfit for human habitation. Adults should feel ashamed that they bring children into the world and that is what we are currently offering them.
We need to work on peace, light, harmony, happiness, health, longevity, prosperity, liberty, fun and love.
From the sidelines,
Mqurice
PS: The other day, we had Chuck Swindell, the USA ambassador to New Zealand, lecturing us that we need to get with the programme and accept weapons of mass destruction so powerful that they don't make pink mist, they deliver people straight to CO2, H2O and a few metal oxides. He seemed to think we'd figure he was making a good suggestion. He seems a nice bloke, but needs to go troppo and get with the programme against weapons of mass destruction. stuff.co.nz |
