The European Dream
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007Europe needs self confidence on real facts, it needs courage to express these facts and then use the European dialogue tradition to develop new realities based on these facts.
Central value should be the ongoing dialogue on the quality of life, started with Socrates and still going strong nowadays with people like Russell and other philosophers and Beuys and other artists. This Socratic dialogue is the format for active citizens.
We should change the industrial system invented by Europeans to a system in which the production of good things is stimulated and awarded.
Growth in this system is the growth of value for more and more people.
The web 2.0 change is a start for changing systematically in stead of improvement of a bad system.
We can realize the dream of maximum democracy that means maximum participations of civilians in deciding on regulations that regulates them.
Essential in that system is the sustainable dialog about the system itself, not the system is in charge but the dialogue rules the system.
We can do this by rethinking radically some buttons of our system, let us change these buttons.
Since it is about the quality of the good life, we need to submit our research, politics and business to the valuable and meaningful needs we have not only as individuals but also as a community of individuals with a long term horizon. We will not need false politics if we have good dialogues about the meaningfulness of our needs.
This means transform the economy of desires nto a culture of preferences.