Constitutional Convention Project: Base Document

Document is not yet available.

It has been temporarily delayed due to more exigent matters which have arisen (as such things tend to do).

In the interim, Richard and I have written, below, some preliminary thoughts, inspired, in part, by meditation on Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. If you wish to add your thoughts in response, e-mail them to me, and I'll add them in.

Perhaps these reflections will felicitously develop into that document: "Not yet and yet already."[0]

Here: An invitation into an epicurean garden for an unrushed, perambulatory philosophical conversation. An invitation to "walk around" in a virtual space which fosters reflection and the pleasures of discussion -- a space which we hope shall be "non-linear" not simply in the sense of facilitating flexible access to what is already known, or even adding to it ("ad astra..."), but in the deeper sense of nurturing essays in revisiting things which may have seemed firmly established, to see pregiven "facts" in different ways and to bring into the light what was so "obvious" as to have escaped notice altogether.

Why the conversation? Why convene here, and try to constitute and sustain a retreat from the madness of the world? (Is this even possible in "Cyberspace", where the exigency to keep the scroll bar moving and scan the text, or to jump to the far end of yet another link insistently presses upon us?)

We seek to become more richly human. To (re)constitute ourselves.

We propose that to be human is fundamentally to be in conversation (think about it: How could it be otherwise? Other than having fallen into some kind of obliviousness or enthrallment, which you are able to recognize only later when you look back on it, you always find yourself thinking about what you're doing, i.e., engaging in a conversation, even if "only with yourself". And that looking back which inserts the non-conversational into your life is itself conversation....).

We find ourselves always already in a conversation which we did not initiate, the form and content of which, consequently, are merely given facts rather than considered choices and designed products. To make "the conversation that we are"[1] be a theme of that conversation is a way of making that conversation more self-accountable, and thereby to make progress in changing ourselves and our form of life from what we merely happen to be, into the good we might become.

One purpose of a constitutional convention is to negotiate strategies of mutual protection. To establish long term, sustainable protections in view of the vicissitudes of nature and society (including: "human nature"). Another purpose is to nurture what can grow in the sheltered space thus hopefully secured, including, first and last -- as both starting point and destination --, useful and pleasurable conversation.

Is this an invitation to turn the other way, to burn Sodom, and not look back?

How can we learn from history unless we look back? How can we devise protective strategies to prevent recurrence of history's worst nightmares (and also its less spectacular deadening tendencies: unthinking habits of belief and social interaction, etc.), without addressing them? Inevitably, even if we do not look back, we continue to carry forward the past, in all our habits and beliefs which come from it. We see the future, in an ultimately unknowably large measure, in terms of our past. But perhaps the distance which language opens between ourselves and the things enables us to discuss what ought not exist without becoming part of it (being turned into a pillar of salt, frozen by Medusa's visage, etc.). Better: Being able to discuss it, after first enabling us to gain distance from (perspective upon...) it, may then help us put an end to it ("Never again!").

But can one know what is right by studying what is wrong? Does the picture of disfigured, cankerous flesh provide clues as to what a healthy body might look like? Does endless critique of what is, indicate what ought be? How do we discover health: healthy relationship, healthy economy, healthy ecology, when such things as the accelerating, hypertrophic busyness and exploitation of the global "Market" are taken as 'normal' or even to be victories?

Other than chance encounters, we can only encounter in reality what we have previously encountered in fantasy.[2]

Perhaps Epicurus was right: A restorative environment is needed, conditions which we believe may approximate health, where we can convene in order to reconstitute ourselves. Jefferson's Monticello was such a place. The architect Louis Kahn[3] endeavored to construct such spaces in our time.

To partake in the pursuit of wisdom: for the love of wisdom, and the wisdom that resides in love. A love that places business and bargaining in their proper place as serving life -- as part of what we deliberate and decide about in the encompassing conversational space which is our life.

Away from that which merely (however obtrusively!) is.

To most richly elaborate our humanity, we should be having this conversation in the face-to-face hermitage of an instance of that pantheonic architecture -- Jefferson's, Kahn's or perhaps our own.... But here we seek to explore what is possible without any physical edifice (beyond a computer screen and keyboard and the, of course, massive technological infrastructure behind them). Even a picture of Monticello provides an imaginative "place" for and stimulus to thought.[4]

We need many such places for the many people and conversations, who will need to be included in this constitutional forum, if we are genuine about our intentions.

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matt. 18:20)

[t]he polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be. "Wherever you go, you will be a polis": these famous words became not merely the watchword of Greek colonization, they expressed the conviction that action and speech create a space between the participants which can find its proper location almost any time and anywhere. (Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 198)

A constitutional conversation? Why? To pursue common understanding and agreement in relation to the constitution of an ecopolis and eutopia -- a new Theleme and Uraniborg[5] --, to determine sustainable, globally protective strategies, to reconstitute the terms of global cooperation, to take responsibility for protecting that impersonal and always potentially conflictual space which we share with billions of strangers on this planet -- strangers human and, perhaps, of "other species".

This pantheonic setting is a stage set -- hopefully, what D.W. Winnicott called: "a holding environment" --, for an intensely personal, yet shared philosophical journey, a place to work (borrowing the imagery of Emmanual Kant's essay: "What is Enlightenment?") from the tutelage of the conventional to the maturity of the post-conventional -- toward ever greater self-accountability. Getting beyond our juvenile roots in whatever ethnicity we each happened to have been reared, we will depart from the conventions of old to reconvene, to take responsibility for determining a future which we can defend, not with weapons (which might make sure that it existed), but with reasons (which might show why it deserves to exist). We shall constitute ourselves, not as Australians, Americans, Hutus, Tutsis, Bosnians, Croats, Christians, Muslims or whatevers, but as self-accountable universally reflective perspectives upon the world (that elusive "whole" of which everything is a "part") -- so that at last the hermetic vision of an infinite universe where every point is a center and there is no periphery (neither leaders nor followers...) shall be realized in our daily life.

In this beautiful pantheonic setting, unemcumbering ourselves of prevailing authority through the prophylaxis of shared reflection, we will convene to constitute our integrities, in alignment with that which "WE THE PEOPLE" shall concur will be required to reconstitute relationships of the world's people into a world trusteeship and custodianship (and, we hope, a joyous universal play-ground!) of inclusive integrity.

With Diogenes[6] as the guardian at the door, let our passage begin! Prospective convenors will assert the right and responsibility not to belong to any segregative entity (nation, culture, race, religion...): freedom from subordination and subsumption (being merely "a part of a larger whole" -- when, in truth, no "whole" can be larger than the individual human minds which encompassingly think it!) -- belonging to none so as to be trusted by all. They (we!) will also claim the freedom for association: to bring cooperative social intelligence to bear as our best resource and the necessary starting point for political renewal. And also that we may have truly human life now and always:

the comfort upon earth----[7]

If you are interested in joining us, write to enter into our conversation .

Footnotes

[1] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, Cambridge MA, 1981, p. xxiii.

[2] Gordon L. Hirshhorn (private conversation).

[3] See also http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/brethomp/history/Kahn/index.html, which is a fine site, but takes a long time to load.

[4] See, e.g., Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, Chicago, 1966, for information about how the ancients and Medieval scholars employed "memory palaces" -- elaborate fantasy architectural schemes -- to organize knowledge.

[5] Theleme was Rabelais' fantasy abbey devoted to the "rule" of Matissean joy of life (Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book I, ch. 52 et seq.); Uraniborg was Tycho Brahe's real community, on the Danish island, Hven, dedicated to scientific research.

[6] Diogenes, espousing the philosophy of Cynicism, discarded the notion of citizenship, in favour of a community of the wise, without geographical boundaries, a cosmopolis.

[7] Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil (tr. Jean Starr Untermeyer), New York, 1945, p. 104.

Links to Other WEB Sites of Potential Interest

• Declaration of Independence.
• Untitled (an undergraduate Honors Thesis, titled: "CyberCivics: Analyzing Internet Nation Building").
• The Lautenia Home Page.
• Stewards Planetary House Homepage.

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http://geocities.datacellar.net/Athens/Forum/4825/basedoc.html
Brad McCormick, Ed.D.
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13 March 2004 (2004-03-13 ISO 8601)
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