On Adversarial V.S. Collaborative Representation and Governance

Posted on by theothersullivan 4 Comments

One simple change to the way in which we’re governed, with one simple exception:

All new legislation and changes in legislation require an 80% majority vote of parliament to pass, excepting when:

  1. Said legislation or change in legislation grants rights/freedoms previously denied to any specific segment of the population, then only 50.1% majority is required.

I’d go for 100% consensus, but in any body greater than 1, that’s impossible.

Rather than one party spending their first 1-2 years in power working to undo the previous party’s changes because of ideological differences of opinion, they’d actually have to work together for any work to get done. This should be the natural evolution of democracy.

The agnostic recipe for accepting religious teachings without cognitive dissonance:

Posted on by theothersullivan 8 Comments
  1. Read sacred texts with care. Take notes. 
  2. Acknowledge human authorship of said texts in historical context
  3. Separate and discard practices and behaviour reliant on belief in omniscience, omnipotence or omnipresence. 
  4. Separate and discard practices and behaviour which denigrate any group of people as “less than,” or “unclean” on the basis of any criteria. Criteria may includes, but are not limited to: age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, body shape, skin pigmentation, native language, hair colour, hair length, tattoos or lack thereof… No, really… anything.
  5. Separate and discard practices and behaviour based on lack of refrigeration, understanding of biology, proper hygiene, and or physics (see point 2)
  6. Separate and discard practices and behaviour reliant on higher authority. This includes reliance on gurus, Imams, Priests, monks, and or keepers of the sacred colander.
  7. Ask self: “Self, does this teaching make me want or try to be better person without hurting anyone?”
  8. Season with salt and pepper
  9. Serve warm