I agree. I am writing a lot, personally, what could be called 'Solidarity Economy Reference Guides' that I may release in a formal way, either through substack articles, free PDFs and/or at-cost books, of which, some may be geared to young learners or adults.
I want to translate the very technical system of Integral into local foundations that already exist for people in many communities, or they are familiar with them, such as local councils or deliberative forums, cooperatives, mutual aid networks, time banks, tool libraries, community gardens, kitchens and more along those lines - which would set up any community to more easily and quickly adopt Integral practices.
Interesting as always Peter. I appreciate that you are not treating democratic failure as a problem of bad leaders, corruption or insufficient civic virtue, but as a structural failure of information processing, feedback and adaptive capacity. That feels exactly right to me. Representation and voting are far too crude to metabolize the complexity of modern society, and what we often call democracy is essentially a ritual of legitimacy more than a functioning system of collective intelligence. I wonder however if there is an even deeper layer that sits upstream of the cybernetic one: the ontological and cultural assumptions carried by humans.
Cybernetic architecture can do a great deal - make consequences more visible, couple actors more tightly to the outcomes of their decisions, and help reject false gains that depend on hidden costs being offloaded elsewhere. But it seems less able, on its own, to address two deeper problems: the ontology of separateness and the formation of persons.
If people continue to experience self, other and nature as fundamentally disconnected, then extraction, domination, scapegoating and externalities will tend to regenerate even inside more intelligent governance systems. In that sense, the question becomes whether the culture inhabiting that system is grounded in a sufficiently relational understanding of reality to make harm less exportable in the first place. I think this is key.
I don’t offer this as a criticism of your framework so much as a possible extension of it: cybernetic coherence may still need ontological coherence beneath it if it is to remain stable over time.
A question I have is: Can you clearly articulate your ontological framework, examine the complete structure of CDS, and then mathematically “prove” whether or not engaging in CDS in and of itself teaches people (likely on a subconscious level) the complete ontological framework you want them to internalize? Maybe in other words: does the social architecture already contain, induce, and reinforce all the parts that the desired cognitive architecture needs?
If so, then structure can precede the needed enlightenment, if you will, and thus the enlightenment is not upstream or more fundamental as you propose (which is great).
That is a very good question that sharpens the issue in the right way.
I should probably clarify one thing in my original comment. When I used the word “upstream,” I may have made the relationship sound too linear. I don't mean that a fully developed ontology must already exist before better cybernetic structures can do meaningful work. That would make transformation almost impossible. I agree that structure can teach. A well-designed social architecture can shape perception, habits, expectations and even moral intuition over time.
My concern is whether structure alone can fully generate and stabilize the ontology it implies.
My ontological framework, stated simply, is that self, other, society and nature are not fundamentally separate entities interacting externally, but differentiated expressions within one interdependent field of life. Harm is therefore never truly exportable. What appears as an externality is usually a failure of perception, accounting, culture or structure.
From that perspective, I agree that CDS may already encode important parts of this ontology procedurally. Issue Capture, Issue Structuring, Knowledge Integration, Constraint Checking, Human Deliberation, Weighted Consensus, Transparency Logging, Dispatch, Human Resolution and Post-Decision Review all require participants to engage reality relationally rather than as isolated preference-maximizers. They make consequences, constraints, dissent, affected stakeholders, prior decisions and feedback structurally visible.
So yes, I think CDS can function as an ontological training environment. Structure can precede “enlightenment” in that sense. Repeated participation in such a system may train people, even subconsciously, into more relational cognition.
But I would distinguish between procedural relationality and ontological embodiment. CDS can teach many of the cognitive and behavioral correlates of a relational ontology: consequence-awareness, constraint-awareness, stakeholder-awareness, dissent-awareness and feedback-awareness. What I don't think follows from that is the complete internalization of the ontology. People can comply with relational procedures while still carrying separative assumptions into conflict, status competition, disagreement, scarcity or encounters with people outside the framework.
So I would frame it recursively rather than linearly. Ontology does not have to fully precede structure. Structure can cultivate ontology. But ontology also shapes how structure is designed, governed, defended, communicated and protected from technocratic drift or expert-class capture.
In that sense, my question is not whether CDS contains parts of the desired cognitive architecture. I think it clearly does. My question is whether CDS alone contains all the formational conditions required for that cognitive architecture to become stable as culture across time, especially under pressure.
So to clarify, I do not mean that ontology simply comes first and structure second. I mean that cybernetic coherence and ontological coherence need to reinforce each other. CDS may be one of the strongest procedural expressions of relational cognition, but the culture inhabiting CDS still has to embody the relational ontology the procedure implies.
“My question is whether CDS alone contains all the formational conditions required for that cognitive architecture to become stable as culture across time, especially under pressure.”
- I think here you are asking the exact same question I am.
It’s true, “upstream” makes it sound linear. But I get what you’re saying. You’re not saying “enlightenment, then structure”, we’re just asking now whether or not “structure, then enlightenment” is possible in complete form.
If it’s not, then how do you suggest humans can gain that added necessary ontological embodiment in a way that the structure alone cannot teach?
Of course this issue might be able to just simplify to: “you, as someone who knows what kind of ontology is appropriate, can contribute to the building of the system in a way that is informed by your ontology.” So if the structure isn’t already conceived well enough to fully enlighten humanity, then some enlightened individuals as yourself can tweak it until it is. ?
To be clear, I don’t think of myself as enlightened. I’m not claiming to possess a completed ontology. I point to ontology because it forms people. The way we understand self, other, society and nature shapes how we interpret conflict, responsibility, harm, disagreement and cooperation.
So I agree that CDS can train people into more relational cognition. A well-designed structure can teach through practice. It may even procedurally express a wisdom that exceeds the ontology of the person who designed it.
But I don’t think structure and ontology should be treated as either/or, or as a simple sequence. They work in tandem. Structure can train relational awareness, while ontology shapes how that structure is inhabited, defended, communicated, governed and revised over time.
So the question may be less “ontology first or structure first?” and more: how do we design and inhabit structures that train relational awareness while also cultivating the cultural and ontological ground that allows those structures to remain coherent under pressure?
I used the word “enlightened” because it seemed like an appropriate enough word. You don’t have to give disclaimers like that; maybe you do have an excellent ontological viewpoint that should be seen as “enlightened”? Idk. And nothing wrong with acknowledging it if you do. But anyway, I hear you. And I think I get your general point regardless.
And I agree the structure and ontology work in tandem. I don’t think we’re in any kind of disagreement there.
I think we’re still mostly asking the same questions though our articulations are different.
Like one nuanced clarification about something I said before: “it’s possible for structure to fully precede ontology” does not imply that “if structure precedes ontology at all, then it must precede it fully”. We know in reality that it’s not going to be that linear. But sometimes when making an analytic argument it’s actually easier to prove a strong (or exaggerated) point as a means to proving a weaker (i.e. more realistic) point, instead of trying to encapsulate the full realistic scenario precisely in your argument. So that’s what I was doing.
But at this point I’m just talking abstract math/logic shit, and that wasn’t the point of this thread lol.
So anyway, point is, I think we’re on the same page for all intents and purposes 👍🏼
The CDS architecture if properly designed might ultimately function to help us identify the malfunctioning areas and the associated ideas and ideologies in human thinking that have led us to our present crises. For example, Nation States and the United Nations each with their particular ideologies enshrined in constututions represent millenia of ideas and laws related to property, public and private ownership, shared access, the commons and many other ideas, ideologies and assumptions we have institutionalized. Consensual recognition might began to emerge as areas and ideas requiring review, where shifts in our thinking might help us avoid the unending violence, conflicts and wars, economic and military. The CDS might help guide us to focus our limited attention on revising those areas most in need of revision while that possibility still exists. Am I recognizing the potential of a well designed and implemented CDS module? One of the primary laws taught to early computer programmers was "Garbage in, Garbage out". Properly limiting requsite variety at every level is obviously critical to make any digital governance even possible. It would be remarkable to actually participate in a culture where democratic input actually mattered. The many layers of digital garbage embedded in today's programming irritates me constantly and is a huge impediment to a realizing a healthy transparent digital culture.
I strongly believe this model could be used to solve many of the problems in our society that divide us. Imagine a few hundred or even thousands of people building non partisan strategies around strengthening public coordination capacity, civic agency, and practical awareness of natural, civil, and political rights.
The ultimate purpose is to help people think more clearly about power, legitimacy, and cooperation — and to turn that clarity into something concrete, personal, and usable.
This includes but not limited to developing frameworks, templates, tools, articles, and graphics to help people understand and disrupt systems of perception control, false consensus, and manufactured compliance.
This model could be used for major projects as well like creating a universal public education program and better health care programs.
I'd appreciate any feedback regarding this line of thought.
I have been thinking a lot about the limitations of our system’s focus on procedural (or performative) democracy that never translates to anything substantive. As usual, you explain it in a manner that I only “dream” of. Will be following updates on the project. Thank you !
Beautiful description of a viable systems-based functional democracy.
As for the barely qualifying US 'democracy' being ripped and torn more every day by the fascist lunatic Trump Regime, I know the importance of removing the orange monster from power is of the utmost importance. I believe the only power left the people have is the general strike, nonviolent, but relentless and strategic civil disobedience campaign with clear demands.
The only movement I see that is seriously on the right track is founded and organized by a former Black Panther, Dr. Dillard, and is called Standards, Not Force. I encourage everyone who cares to check it out, support it and/or consider also supporting General Strike US which is looking to organize for a critical mass of 3.5% of the population to have a successful campaign (backed by Chenoweth research).
When the state create the money : The "Miracle of Wörgl" was a highly successful, short-lived economic experiment conducted in the Austrian town of Wörgl in 1932–1933 during the Great Depression. Facing high unemployment and municipal bankruptcy, Mayor Michael Unterguggenberger introduced a local, demurrage-based currency that stimulated the local economy and funded public infrastructure projects.
Commendable article, Peter. Your cybernetic framing of governance is genuinely useful, and I want to engage with it in good faith. However, I think the CDS architecture contains a foundational problem that your own article almost names but then pulls away from.
You write that democratic dysfunction "is not a problem of personnel or policy — it is a problem of structure." I'd push back on that directly. It's both. And collapsing the distinction between them is where your model falters.
The Collaborative Decision System is a first-strand solution to what I've been calling a double-helix problem. One strand is structural: better laws, better institutional design, better feedback architecture. The other is what I'd call the human substrate — the psychological and developmental condition of the people the system must process input from and be operated by. Your article's treatment of the "input problem" acknowledges that an uninformed or manipulated population produces incoherent output, then proposes to solve this through structured deliberation and constraint-based filtering. But I've argued at length that we're not dealing with an uninformed population — we're dealing with a traumatized one (although I concede that were dealing with both). Those are different problems requiring different solutions. Chronically dysregulated nervous systems en masse don't engender wise actions simply because you've handed them a well-structured interface. You just get garbage in, garbage out — more efficiently processed.
This matters especially for your constraint layer, which I'd argue is the most dangerous feature of the CDS architecture, not the most reassuring one. You identify ecological sustainability and human well-being as the two foundational constraints — and I agree with both. But "human well-being" is not self-defining. It requires an explicit theory of what human flourishing actually is — what I've been developing as the Arete Framework, grounded in the Greek concept of excellence as the fulfillment of purpose. Without that philosophical grounding, your constraint layer is a value judgment embedded in architecture and administered by whoever builds the system. All that is, is authority wearing a cybernetic disguise.
Your recursive democracy is a genuine improvement over representative compression. But the Syntegrity process you invoke for value conflicts still assumes participants capable of the structured high-bandwidth deliberation you're describing. That capacity is cultivated, not given. It takes time, mentorship, genuine self-knowledge — the inner work that no governance architecture can substitute for.
The architecture question and the human development question must advance together, each enabling the other. Building the CDS without building the people who can inhabit it is a first-strand solution to a double-helix problem.
>You write that democratic dysfunction "is not a problem of personnel or policy — it is a problem of structure." I'd push back on that directly. It's both. And collapsing the distinction between them is where your model falters.<
It's not as simple as saying that because the population is traumatized and deranged there is no/limited potential for positive structuring and productive output.
The constraint layer as presented in this article is generalized. It is always vulnerable to change, but that's beside the point here. If people come into the system with an interest for the system to work and understand it's properties and potential -- it will work. The minority dev IS the process of cultural development.
This is not an imposed structure that we idealize will represent billions of people as if initiated from the top down. It is an emergent one, and the early stages of integral will embrace people that choose to believe in the positive potential, guiding the way. Critical variety reduction away from the limitation you are amplifying. As far as Syntegrity, Stafford Beer literally created it because of the very problems you criticize. Perfect? No. But progressive.
In the end, all such criticisms are valid on a general level, but are pointless, pedantic ponderings on the applied level. We either initiate such a process with the assumption that a broader educational and emotional development will exist transitionally-- increasing the efficacy of the approach-- or we sit with the same noise we have now.
You're quite right that a traumatized population doesn't eliminate the potential for productive structural design. I was perhaps too loose in overstating the constraint. However, I didn't say deranged — I said traumatized, and the distinction matters enormously. That's a textbook straw man. You attempt to make my position easier to dismiss by making it sound more extreme than it is.
The question was never whether CDS can work in principle. It's whether the transitional assumptions embedded in your answer are load-bearing or performative.
And here I think you've conceded more than you realize. Your defense rests on the claim that early adopters who believe in the system's potential will guide cultural development from within — that the minority dev IS the process. I don't disagree. But that's precisely the human substrate argument wearing different clothes. You've just made the quality of the founding participants central to whether the whole thing holds. Which means my question — what kind of people, and how do we cultivate them? — isn't pedantic. It's foundational to your own defense.
On Syntegrity. yes, Beer designed it to address exactly these coordination failures, and I respect that lineage. Progressive is the right word for it.
But "pointless, pedantic ponderings on the applied level" . Overly harsh. Calling foundational questions about human capacity pedantic is a rhetorical move, not a rebuttal. Let's keep this clean. If the transitional assumption of "broader educational and emotional development" is doing structural work in your model, it deserves to be examined as structure, not waved through as background condition. Either it's designed in, or it's hoped for.
We agree on more than we disagree. That's why I follow your writings/podcasts. The disagreement is about whether that hope is a feature or a gap.
Strawman? Listen. If you disagree then don't participate. Nothing you have said here adds any value to anything. It's just bickering. Why I bother responding to so many people I have no idea anymore... If you wish to go about designing a system – please do. This is my recommendation for everyone that has nothing constructive to say to me. I operate in good faith. I try my best to take people seriously and absorb information. But your interest here is not actually in the spirit of progress.
A few words about responsibility in democracy and the erroneous views generally accepted as true...
"A Democratic State is governed by the law established by the People's Assembly, equally for all Citizens, and there is no room for demagoguery. If the state is guided by demagoguery, then the LAW is broken."...
"At every popular assembly, they read curses against the wicked, beginning with the statement: ...if someone takes bribes and therefore says one thing and thinks another regarding state affairs, let him die. For this crime, they established a penalty ten times greater than the amount of the bribe, because they believed that whoever takes payment for his future speeches before the people, when speaking before them, has in mind not the good of the people, but the interests of those who gave him the bribe."...
Ancient History | Athenian Democracy - Ryszard Kulesza
In Ancient Greece, the People's Assembly called then 'Ecclesia'. Today, we have all gotten this mixed up, and we no longer even know what 'Ecclesia' is or what 'democracy' means.
Some "informed by systemic propaganda" and thus "smarter," even those with doctorates, speak about socialism in an insolent and subversive way, mocking human intellect, saying: "Look how many people Stalin killed," or "You're some kind of socialist"...
And how can one reach an understanding with people whose "wisdom" is based on ignorance, or perhaps a deliberately subversive Machiavellian narrative based on ignorance?
You have engaged with your cybenetic ancestors and added some compelling ideas. If, let’s say, 14 million people in the USA took up your invitation, something might come of it. But in the US culture, it’s highly improbable for too many reasons. I still can’t find a smaller nation whose culture might be open to this project. We may have run out of time. Still, it’s a worthy project; people have to do something, they might as well work on this. So far, 39 people showed you some love here; we have ways to go yet.
We have a permaculture community here in Portugal. People know how to make bricks and dig a cistern with a shovel. I talk with people in our village and municipality about governance, energy, system dynamics, and many other topics; things that are integral to Integral. It's not easy to find ordinary, hard-working people with a vocabulary in cybernetics. Implementing new ways of living requires generations. The tech world and its products are black-box luxuries that people here may, someday soon, have to live without. When the time comes, things will be very simple, and communities will start learning again. The rogue, super-destroyer, USA is one of the few places where a small population believes in technocratic solutions and has the money and skills pooled across parasocial networks that can work on Integral. You must have a viable model in the USA. If it can not run there, the only other place with the resources and knowledge base is China, where I lived for 20 years. People need a plan for UNPLUGGED. We may need to go backward before a smaller population of people can move forward again. Find a way to preserve your roadmap and systems for survivors. Maybe they can scavenge their way into another form of techno-industrial world that needs a lot less specialized materials and different kinds of energy sources. If it can't run in the USA, it can't run without global supply chains for just about everything, from fertilizer and diesel fuel to mining machines, labor, ships, and universities. The modern world has been destroying itself for generations, and look at us now, wasting everything we have on wars to control what will be left when the last Nation standing starts picking up the pieces. Yep, Revolution Now, brother, Revolution Now, fans.
Why do you use the definition of " contemporary "politicians ( because you're well paid) ! An article about democracy without mentioning a constitution, the random draw of representative, the referendum, the creation of money by the state, the purpose of taxe,... etc et j'en passe et des meilleur SHOULD NOT EXIST.
great representation of a viable future, it would be great if somehow this material reaches early schooling. thank you! have a great cosmos!
I agree. I am writing a lot, personally, what could be called 'Solidarity Economy Reference Guides' that I may release in a formal way, either through substack articles, free PDFs and/or at-cost books, of which, some may be geared to young learners or adults.
I want to translate the very technical system of Integral into local foundations that already exist for people in many communities, or they are familiar with them, such as local councils or deliberative forums, cooperatives, mutual aid networks, time banks, tool libraries, community gardens, kitchens and more along those lines - which would set up any community to more easily and quickly adopt Integral practices.
Interesting as always Peter. I appreciate that you are not treating democratic failure as a problem of bad leaders, corruption or insufficient civic virtue, but as a structural failure of information processing, feedback and adaptive capacity. That feels exactly right to me. Representation and voting are far too crude to metabolize the complexity of modern society, and what we often call democracy is essentially a ritual of legitimacy more than a functioning system of collective intelligence. I wonder however if there is an even deeper layer that sits upstream of the cybernetic one: the ontological and cultural assumptions carried by humans.
Cybernetic architecture can do a great deal - make consequences more visible, couple actors more tightly to the outcomes of their decisions, and help reject false gains that depend on hidden costs being offloaded elsewhere. But it seems less able, on its own, to address two deeper problems: the ontology of separateness and the formation of persons.
If people continue to experience self, other and nature as fundamentally disconnected, then extraction, domination, scapegoating and externalities will tend to regenerate even inside more intelligent governance systems. In that sense, the question becomes whether the culture inhabiting that system is grounded in a sufficiently relational understanding of reality to make harm less exportable in the first place. I think this is key.
I don’t offer this as a criticism of your framework so much as a possible extension of it: cybernetic coherence may still need ontological coherence beneath it if it is to remain stable over time.
A question I have is: Can you clearly articulate your ontological framework, examine the complete structure of CDS, and then mathematically “prove” whether or not engaging in CDS in and of itself teaches people (likely on a subconscious level) the complete ontological framework you want them to internalize? Maybe in other words: does the social architecture already contain, induce, and reinforce all the parts that the desired cognitive architecture needs?
If so, then structure can precede the needed enlightenment, if you will, and thus the enlightenment is not upstream or more fundamental as you propose (which is great).
That is a very good question that sharpens the issue in the right way.
I should probably clarify one thing in my original comment. When I used the word “upstream,” I may have made the relationship sound too linear. I don't mean that a fully developed ontology must already exist before better cybernetic structures can do meaningful work. That would make transformation almost impossible. I agree that structure can teach. A well-designed social architecture can shape perception, habits, expectations and even moral intuition over time.
My concern is whether structure alone can fully generate and stabilize the ontology it implies.
My ontological framework, stated simply, is that self, other, society and nature are not fundamentally separate entities interacting externally, but differentiated expressions within one interdependent field of life. Harm is therefore never truly exportable. What appears as an externality is usually a failure of perception, accounting, culture or structure.
From that perspective, I agree that CDS may already encode important parts of this ontology procedurally. Issue Capture, Issue Structuring, Knowledge Integration, Constraint Checking, Human Deliberation, Weighted Consensus, Transparency Logging, Dispatch, Human Resolution and Post-Decision Review all require participants to engage reality relationally rather than as isolated preference-maximizers. They make consequences, constraints, dissent, affected stakeholders, prior decisions and feedback structurally visible.
So yes, I think CDS can function as an ontological training environment. Structure can precede “enlightenment” in that sense. Repeated participation in such a system may train people, even subconsciously, into more relational cognition.
But I would distinguish between procedural relationality and ontological embodiment. CDS can teach many of the cognitive and behavioral correlates of a relational ontology: consequence-awareness, constraint-awareness, stakeholder-awareness, dissent-awareness and feedback-awareness. What I don't think follows from that is the complete internalization of the ontology. People can comply with relational procedures while still carrying separative assumptions into conflict, status competition, disagreement, scarcity or encounters with people outside the framework.
So I would frame it recursively rather than linearly. Ontology does not have to fully precede structure. Structure can cultivate ontology. But ontology also shapes how structure is designed, governed, defended, communicated and protected from technocratic drift or expert-class capture.
In that sense, my question is not whether CDS contains parts of the desired cognitive architecture. I think it clearly does. My question is whether CDS alone contains all the formational conditions required for that cognitive architecture to become stable as culture across time, especially under pressure.
So to clarify, I do not mean that ontology simply comes first and structure second. I mean that cybernetic coherence and ontological coherence need to reinforce each other. CDS may be one of the strongest procedural expressions of relational cognition, but the culture inhabiting CDS still has to embody the relational ontology the procedure implies.
“My question is whether CDS alone contains all the formational conditions required for that cognitive architecture to become stable as culture across time, especially under pressure.”
- I think here you are asking the exact same question I am.
It’s true, “upstream” makes it sound linear. But I get what you’re saying. You’re not saying “enlightenment, then structure”, we’re just asking now whether or not “structure, then enlightenment” is possible in complete form.
If it’s not, then how do you suggest humans can gain that added necessary ontological embodiment in a way that the structure alone cannot teach?
Of course this issue might be able to just simplify to: “you, as someone who knows what kind of ontology is appropriate, can contribute to the building of the system in a way that is informed by your ontology.” So if the structure isn’t already conceived well enough to fully enlighten humanity, then some enlightened individuals as yourself can tweak it until it is. ?
To be clear, I don’t think of myself as enlightened. I’m not claiming to possess a completed ontology. I point to ontology because it forms people. The way we understand self, other, society and nature shapes how we interpret conflict, responsibility, harm, disagreement and cooperation.
So I agree that CDS can train people into more relational cognition. A well-designed structure can teach through practice. It may even procedurally express a wisdom that exceeds the ontology of the person who designed it.
But I don’t think structure and ontology should be treated as either/or, or as a simple sequence. They work in tandem. Structure can train relational awareness, while ontology shapes how that structure is inhabited, defended, communicated, governed and revised over time.
So the question may be less “ontology first or structure first?” and more: how do we design and inhabit structures that train relational awareness while also cultivating the cultural and ontological ground that allows those structures to remain coherent under pressure?
I used the word “enlightened” because it seemed like an appropriate enough word. You don’t have to give disclaimers like that; maybe you do have an excellent ontological viewpoint that should be seen as “enlightened”? Idk. And nothing wrong with acknowledging it if you do. But anyway, I hear you. And I think I get your general point regardless.
And I agree the structure and ontology work in tandem. I don’t think we’re in any kind of disagreement there.
I think we’re still mostly asking the same questions though our articulations are different.
Like one nuanced clarification about something I said before: “it’s possible for structure to fully precede ontology” does not imply that “if structure precedes ontology at all, then it must precede it fully”. We know in reality that it’s not going to be that linear. But sometimes when making an analytic argument it’s actually easier to prove a strong (or exaggerated) point as a means to proving a weaker (i.e. more realistic) point, instead of trying to encapsulate the full realistic scenario precisely in your argument. So that’s what I was doing.
But at this point I’m just talking abstract math/logic shit, and that wasn’t the point of this thread lol.
So anyway, point is, I think we’re on the same page for all intents and purposes 👍🏼
The CDS architecture if properly designed might ultimately function to help us identify the malfunctioning areas and the associated ideas and ideologies in human thinking that have led us to our present crises. For example, Nation States and the United Nations each with their particular ideologies enshrined in constututions represent millenia of ideas and laws related to property, public and private ownership, shared access, the commons and many other ideas, ideologies and assumptions we have institutionalized. Consensual recognition might began to emerge as areas and ideas requiring review, where shifts in our thinking might help us avoid the unending violence, conflicts and wars, economic and military. The CDS might help guide us to focus our limited attention on revising those areas most in need of revision while that possibility still exists. Am I recognizing the potential of a well designed and implemented CDS module? One of the primary laws taught to early computer programmers was "Garbage in, Garbage out". Properly limiting requsite variety at every level is obviously critical to make any digital governance even possible. It would be remarkable to actually participate in a culture where democratic input actually mattered. The many layers of digital garbage embedded in today's programming irritates me constantly and is a huge impediment to a realizing a healthy transparent digital culture.
I strongly believe this model could be used to solve many of the problems in our society that divide us. Imagine a few hundred or even thousands of people building non partisan strategies around strengthening public coordination capacity, civic agency, and practical awareness of natural, civil, and political rights.
The ultimate purpose is to help people think more clearly about power, legitimacy, and cooperation — and to turn that clarity into something concrete, personal, and usable.
This includes but not limited to developing frameworks, templates, tools, articles, and graphics to help people understand and disrupt systems of perception control, false consensus, and manufactured compliance.
This model could be used for major projects as well like creating a universal public education program and better health care programs.
I'd appreciate any feedback regarding this line of thought.
I have been thinking a lot about the limitations of our system’s focus on procedural (or performative) democracy that never translates to anything substantive. As usual, you explain it in a manner that I only “dream” of. Will be following updates on the project. Thank you !
Beautiful description of a viable systems-based functional democracy.
As for the barely qualifying US 'democracy' being ripped and torn more every day by the fascist lunatic Trump Regime, I know the importance of removing the orange monster from power is of the utmost importance. I believe the only power left the people have is the general strike, nonviolent, but relentless and strategic civil disobedience campaign with clear demands.
The only movement I see that is seriously on the right track is founded and organized by a former Black Panther, Dr. Dillard, and is called Standards, Not Force. I encourage everyone who cares to check it out, support it and/or consider also supporting General Strike US which is looking to organize for a critical mass of 3.5% of the population to have a successful campaign (backed by Chenoweth research).
See here for SNF: https://formerblackpantherspeaks.substack.com/
When the state create the money : The "Miracle of Wörgl" was a highly successful, short-lived economic experiment conducted in the Austrian town of Wörgl in 1932–1933 during the Great Depression. Facing high unemployment and municipal bankruptcy, Mayor Michael Unterguggenberger introduced a local, demurrage-based currency that stimulated the local economy and funded public infrastructure projects.
Commendable article, Peter. Your cybernetic framing of governance is genuinely useful, and I want to engage with it in good faith. However, I think the CDS architecture contains a foundational problem that your own article almost names but then pulls away from.
You write that democratic dysfunction "is not a problem of personnel or policy — it is a problem of structure." I'd push back on that directly. It's both. And collapsing the distinction between them is where your model falters.
The Collaborative Decision System is a first-strand solution to what I've been calling a double-helix problem. One strand is structural: better laws, better institutional design, better feedback architecture. The other is what I'd call the human substrate — the psychological and developmental condition of the people the system must process input from and be operated by. Your article's treatment of the "input problem" acknowledges that an uninformed or manipulated population produces incoherent output, then proposes to solve this through structured deliberation and constraint-based filtering. But I've argued at length that we're not dealing with an uninformed population — we're dealing with a traumatized one (although I concede that were dealing with both). Those are different problems requiring different solutions. Chronically dysregulated nervous systems en masse don't engender wise actions simply because you've handed them a well-structured interface. You just get garbage in, garbage out — more efficiently processed.
This matters especially for your constraint layer, which I'd argue is the most dangerous feature of the CDS architecture, not the most reassuring one. You identify ecological sustainability and human well-being as the two foundational constraints — and I agree with both. But "human well-being" is not self-defining. It requires an explicit theory of what human flourishing actually is — what I've been developing as the Arete Framework, grounded in the Greek concept of excellence as the fulfillment of purpose. Without that philosophical grounding, your constraint layer is a value judgment embedded in architecture and administered by whoever builds the system. All that is, is authority wearing a cybernetic disguise.
Your recursive democracy is a genuine improvement over representative compression. But the Syntegrity process you invoke for value conflicts still assumes participants capable of the structured high-bandwidth deliberation you're describing. That capacity is cultivated, not given. It takes time, mentorship, genuine self-knowledge — the inner work that no governance architecture can substitute for.
The architecture question and the human development question must advance together, each enabling the other. Building the CDS without building the people who can inhabit it is a first-strand solution to a double-helix problem.
>You write that democratic dysfunction "is not a problem of personnel or policy — it is a problem of structure." I'd push back on that directly. It's both. And collapsing the distinction between them is where your model falters.<
It's not as simple as saying that because the population is traumatized and deranged there is no/limited potential for positive structuring and productive output.
The constraint layer as presented in this article is generalized. It is always vulnerable to change, but that's beside the point here. If people come into the system with an interest for the system to work and understand it's properties and potential -- it will work. The minority dev IS the process of cultural development.
This is not an imposed structure that we idealize will represent billions of people as if initiated from the top down. It is an emergent one, and the early stages of integral will embrace people that choose to believe in the positive potential, guiding the way. Critical variety reduction away from the limitation you are amplifying. As far as Syntegrity, Stafford Beer literally created it because of the very problems you criticize. Perfect? No. But progressive.
In the end, all such criticisms are valid on a general level, but are pointless, pedantic ponderings on the applied level. We either initiate such a process with the assumption that a broader educational and emotional development will exist transitionally-- increasing the efficacy of the approach-- or we sit with the same noise we have now.
You're quite right that a traumatized population doesn't eliminate the potential for productive structural design. I was perhaps too loose in overstating the constraint. However, I didn't say deranged — I said traumatized, and the distinction matters enormously. That's a textbook straw man. You attempt to make my position easier to dismiss by making it sound more extreme than it is.
The question was never whether CDS can work in principle. It's whether the transitional assumptions embedded in your answer are load-bearing or performative.
And here I think you've conceded more than you realize. Your defense rests on the claim that early adopters who believe in the system's potential will guide cultural development from within — that the minority dev IS the process. I don't disagree. But that's precisely the human substrate argument wearing different clothes. You've just made the quality of the founding participants central to whether the whole thing holds. Which means my question — what kind of people, and how do we cultivate them? — isn't pedantic. It's foundational to your own defense.
On Syntegrity. yes, Beer designed it to address exactly these coordination failures, and I respect that lineage. Progressive is the right word for it.
But "pointless, pedantic ponderings on the applied level" . Overly harsh. Calling foundational questions about human capacity pedantic is a rhetorical move, not a rebuttal. Let's keep this clean. If the transitional assumption of "broader educational and emotional development" is doing structural work in your model, it deserves to be examined as structure, not waved through as background condition. Either it's designed in, or it's hoped for.
We agree on more than we disagree. That's why I follow your writings/podcasts. The disagreement is about whether that hope is a feature or a gap.
Strawman? Listen. If you disagree then don't participate. Nothing you have said here adds any value to anything. It's just bickering. Why I bother responding to so many people I have no idea anymore... If you wish to go about designing a system – please do. This is my recommendation for everyone that has nothing constructive to say to me. I operate in good faith. I try my best to take people seriously and absorb information. But your interest here is not actually in the spirit of progress.
A few words about responsibility in democracy and the erroneous views generally accepted as true...
"A Democratic State is governed by the law established by the People's Assembly, equally for all Citizens, and there is no room for demagoguery. If the state is guided by demagoguery, then the LAW is broken."...
"At every popular assembly, they read curses against the wicked, beginning with the statement: ...if someone takes bribes and therefore says one thing and thinks another regarding state affairs, let him die. For this crime, they established a penalty ten times greater than the amount of the bribe, because they believed that whoever takes payment for his future speeches before the people, when speaking before them, has in mind not the good of the people, but the interests of those who gave him the bribe."...
Ancient History | Athenian Democracy - Ryszard Kulesza
In Ancient Greece, the People's Assembly called then 'Ecclesia'. Today, we have all gotten this mixed up, and we no longer even know what 'Ecclesia' is or what 'democracy' means.
Some "informed by systemic propaganda" and thus "smarter," even those with doctorates, speak about socialism in an insolent and subversive way, mocking human intellect, saying: "Look how many people Stalin killed," or "You're some kind of socialist"...
And how can one reach an understanding with people whose "wisdom" is based on ignorance, or perhaps a deliberately subversive Machiavellian narrative based on ignorance?
You have engaged with your cybenetic ancestors and added some compelling ideas. If, let’s say, 14 million people in the USA took up your invitation, something might come of it. But in the US culture, it’s highly improbable for too many reasons. I still can’t find a smaller nation whose culture might be open to this project. We may have run out of time. Still, it’s a worthy project; people have to do something, they might as well work on this. So far, 39 people showed you some love here; we have ways to go yet.
This project is very low probability of emerging in a relevant way in the United States
We have a permaculture community here in Portugal. People know how to make bricks and dig a cistern with a shovel. I talk with people in our village and municipality about governance, energy, system dynamics, and many other topics; things that are integral to Integral. It's not easy to find ordinary, hard-working people with a vocabulary in cybernetics. Implementing new ways of living requires generations. The tech world and its products are black-box luxuries that people here may, someday soon, have to live without. When the time comes, things will be very simple, and communities will start learning again. The rogue, super-destroyer, USA is one of the few places where a small population believes in technocratic solutions and has the money and skills pooled across parasocial networks that can work on Integral. You must have a viable model in the USA. If it can not run there, the only other place with the resources and knowledge base is China, where I lived for 20 years. People need a plan for UNPLUGGED. We may need to go backward before a smaller population of people can move forward again. Find a way to preserve your roadmap and systems for survivors. Maybe they can scavenge their way into another form of techno-industrial world that needs a lot less specialized materials and different kinds of energy sources. If it can't run in the USA, it can't run without global supply chains for just about everything, from fertilizer and diesel fuel to mining machines, labor, ships, and universities. The modern world has been destroying itself for generations, and look at us now, wasting everything we have on wars to control what will be left when the last Nation standing starts picking up the pieces. Yep, Revolution Now, brother, Revolution Now, fans.
Why do you use the definition of " contemporary "politicians ( because you're well paid) ! An article about democracy without mentioning a constitution, the random draw of representative, the referendum, the creation of money by the state, the purpose of taxe,... etc et j'en passe et des meilleur SHOULD NOT EXIST.