The purpose of The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government
It is reasonably safe to assume that if you have found your way to reading even this page, you are both aware that we are facing massive societal and economic problems, locally, nationally and internationally too.
The chances are however, that you will already have an idea or ideas of your own that anchor to what you have concluded yourself or that you agree with others to be the cause.
Common causes for problems like the Cost-of-Living Crisis, Inflation, National and Personal Debt, Energy Prices, Strikes and others too are identified as events such as Brexit, The Covid Pandemic, The War in Ukraine, or placed directly at the feet of The Government, a previous government, any one of The Political Parties or one or more of the Politicians involved.
However, it is not the events that the Country and the World has faced which are the cause of our problems themselves.
It is not the Political Party, the Group or Individual itself that can be identified as the cause.
Yes, the way that our Governments, Politicians and anyone with influence or responsibility for the response and measures taken to mitigate against or implement solutions to, or even see them through to conclusion are certainly a more informed way to think about these events, rather than it being all about the events themselves.
But even the response or way that those with power have responded isn’t the real cause of our problems.
Our problems are caused by the way that we, and more importantly the way that our Politicians and anyone with influence or responsibility that can affect our lives in some way thinks, acts and behave.
It is thoughts, actions and behaviour that cause everything. This is what really matters when it comes to the effects of every decision taken that affects Public Policy of any kind, and then finds its way to us.
The crisis that we face and the problems ahead were not deliberate. But they weren’t created by accident either
The UK and the world are sleepwalking towards disaster. Chaos that could have been avoided if the people who lead us – Our Politicians, had taken a very different approach to the way that they think, act and behave when it comes to the decisions they make.
Contrary to accepted thought or to any common or accepted narrative, the people who we currently elect to be Politicians are rarely the best fit to fulfil the role of being a public representative.
Poor Public Representatives make decisions subjectively, in an isolated or myopic way, and do so without due care and attention to the broad range of factors and considerations that the Public should be able to expect and already assume will inform the process of how objectively based Public Policy – which should be all of it – is made.
It is because we have been electing people who are not suitable to be Politicians for so long, that the negative impact from having poor decisions made repeatedly to solve that problems that previous poor decisions made by other unsuitable Politicians have created, that the effect on everything has been cumulative, getting steadily but unconsciously worse.
Bit by bit, ‘The System’ that we have has become increasingly skewed away from and in many ways proactively geared against balance, fairness and what we might call being just in about every conceivable sense possible, when it comes to the different life experiences that we all have.
What is ‘The System’?
For the purposes of making sense of Awakened Politics, ‘The System’ is the structure or framework that makes everything work (or not work) in the way that you and I experience life from the moment we look outside, leave or interact with businesses, organisations, and basically everything beyond personal relationships that lie outside of ourselves and outside of our homes.
For many, indeed for most, ‘The System’ only touches life or the experience of life in a number of very specific ways.
The ways that ‘The System’ touches our lives specifically can be defined by location, lifestyle, career, demographic, education and just about everything that can be used to define or identify a difference of some kind between each of us and anyone else.
‘The System’, for us, is most usually a lot of very different things that we have going on continually within our awareness – whether we are physically asleep or awake, added to an even greater list of things going on outside of our awareness that we may not even become or need to become aware of if we were to live a full life and exceed an age beyond 100 years old.
Whether we are aware of ‘The System’ or even parts of it or not, any system or what might be called an ecosystem has its own set of rules that make it work and keep it working.
The rules of ‘The System’ are defined, created, reviewed and maintained by a process that we understand as ‘Democracy’.
We elect Public Representatives or ‘Politicians’ to think about, research, consider and make all the decisions about ‘The System’ – which will ultimately affect us all, even when we are unaware that any or all of these decisions are affecting or touching our lives in some way.
The role of Politics in ‘The System’
To reach agreement, compromise and then conclusion on the rules of ‘The System’, a process of review, discussion, debate and regrettably even argument has historically taken place, based on alternative ideas, or sadly ‘whose idea is best’.
It is rarely, if not ever conducted on the basis of discussion to find agreement on what outcome will be best for everyone concerned.
This process of debate and everything that surrounds it is what we know as politics.
The people we elect as Politicians have responsibility for the rules that govern the thinking, the actions and the behaviour in everything beyond ourselves and our personal lives.
However, if the power entrusted to Politicians is misused or abused, rules can easily become law that mean the thinking, actions and behaviour of others can become unnecessarily, avoidably and unjustly detrimental towards us all. Whether it be us as individuals, as communities or even as a seemingly silent majority.
When we have entrusted Public Representatives to make decisions that are in the best interests of everyone, we are less likely to question the validity of those decisions because it immediately brings into question whether the decisions made by the majority in selecting them are actually sound. We will not therefore easily accept that ‘The System’ and that The Electorate could be the victim of abuse.
Why do we need Politics?
Let’s start with a question: How do you know what you need at any moment or for any reason or any purpose?
When you’ve thought about it, your answer is likely to be ‘from experience’ or rather, what you have learned from experience so far.
So, what do we do when we don’t have the experience to provide that answer?
The chances are your answer will be to look for and to find the solution – probably by tapping a question into a search engine like Bing or Google, or rather to learn it in some other way.
But what happens when decisions need to be made concerning the services like schools and the NHS, or the infrastructure like parks and roads that are common to us all, that we share, but are not under our direct influence or control?
Whether they are ‘services’ in the strictest sense, or infrastructure that is managed by a service of some kind, all these things that exist for the common good – because we will all typically need them of need access to them at some point or for some reason in life – must be managed with decisions made for us all, on our behalf, for that same common good.
Politics, in its strictest sense, is the debate or discussion that surrounds the management of these ‘public services’ and the system or procedure of decision making that creates, reviews and oversees the implementation of the management strategy for all of these things.
It’s what happens beyond this basic need for the exchange of ideas and discourse – where decisions should always be made in a fair balanced and just way – where the problems really start to begin.
Why do we need Government?
For the purposes of understanding Awakened Politics, it is important to recognise that the terms ‘Government’, ‘Public Sector’ and ‘Public Services’ are both interchangeable terms.
They stand alone as terms to different people, depending on the perspective or experience of the individual. In some ways they are arguably the same thing and in others they are very different. They are not in any way mutually exclusive.
In relation to Awakened Politics, Government itself is the decision-making body or if you like, the board of directors. It is the top of the management structure that makes the strategic decisions that the executive managers, administrative and technical staff (that make up the Public Sector and provide Public Services) then carry out.
We need and should be able to rely on government to ensure that decisions on our behalf are taken when they should be, and that their implementation into delivery and material form are then completed or continued in the way that they should be.
Who is The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government for?
Awakened Politics has been written with the UK Political, Government and Electoral Systems primarily in mind.
Whilst The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government is the fourth book in a series following ‘Levelling Level’, ‘The Basic Living Standard’ and ‘From Here to There Through Now’ that were also written and published in 2022, it could just as easily be the unexpected or unanticipated prequal, building on the way of thinking or methodology that was presented in the 2018 book ‘How to Get Elected’ too.
The fundamental basis of the idea or proposal made here is built upon an alternative ‘grassroots up’ system to the outwardly 4-Tier system of Government that we currently have in the UK.
However, the model of constructing Government or rather the way of selecting and appointing Politicians or Public Representatives suggested later could be applied to and implemented within different existing political spaces, if it were collectively decided to pursue The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government within the constituency or constituencies involved.
If you are reading this book, the chances are that you will either a) wish to see a system embracing Awakened Politics fully embraced where you are located, or b) Will be resistant to any process that will deliver it and a system of government or governance that will reflect it.
The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government has been written for people who are awakened to the need for all decisions on Public Policy to be made by others who are fully conscious or awakened to the realities of how life works.
Awakened Politics can only genuinely exist if we have Public Representatives who not only can but will translate and legislate in a way which makes sense of that understanding – and most importantly the realities of human nature – to ensure that we have governance that works responsively and proactively in a balanced, fair and just way for all.
Awakened Politics is for everyone and everything.
This Blog is part of the e-book ‘The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government’. Please do download a copy for your Kindle from Amazon, or alternatively, read the whole book FREE online once it is available at www.awakenedpolitics.com
Adam Tugwell 