Abstract

(This is the prologue to a book examining the causes of day-to-day strife in the populations of modern democracies vying to live and assert the freedoms promised to them by systems of governance supposed and expected to represent them.) Voters, the population at large, no longer want representation but participation. But how is that achieved? The technological means are certainly there for each one of us to express opinion, bring forth ideas, mobilise groups with common purpose. The growth of the social, political, and professional consciousness has gone beyond the stage of conformism and acceptance. The time is ripe for mechanisms that create profound bottlenecks to be superseded by better means, less procedure, less posturing, full involvement at grass roots.