Introducing Auspicious Reasoning

Some ideas taken from a forthcoming article from The Journal of Writing in Creative Practice

Collectively - we are Dysfunctional

• At present, governments take advice from some of the brightest experts in their fields
• Nevertheless, human collective actions are often unwise, and sometimes downright counterproductive.
• Why? A few prominent politicians are given symbolic responsibility for the actions of society as a whole.
• We aspire to a bureaucratic, ballot-box system of governance for all.
• This limits civic responsibility to the making of critical, often negative choices.

Everyone Should Dream

• As voters and consumers, we are merely required to choose. We are never asked to dream.
• Citizens should be required to conduct their own future-based, imaginative reflection.
• It should be every citizen’s duty to envision beneficial ways of living.
• Joining dreams together might require new, collective modes of outcome-centred reasoning.
• It would require a radical overhaul of the education system and a flatter mode of governance.

The Need for Consensual Reasoning

• Would co-creative democracy by more effective than representation politics?
• If so, we need more collective, imaginative and outcome-centred modes of reasoning.
• It would need to be highly situated and contextualised.
• We need to reward conduct with emergent collective benefits, rather than claims to goodness.
• It would therefore be sensible to explore ‘design-thinking’ as a possible basis for development.

Why do we like Rational Logic?

• Rational logic remains popular because of its high level of internal consistency.
• It is useful for formulating truth-claims or defending a rhetorical position.
• It also encourages bureaucratic, cynical and solipsistic reasoning.
• it is less helpful for facilitating actions by consensus.

Governance should include Metadesign

• Politics traditionally uses legislative and fiscal measures to inhibit bad behaviour.
• Both work at the level of categorical logic,
• Design intervenes by managing forms and their affordances.
• Both approaches should be combined within governance by metadesign.
• It will draw upon many sources - for example knowledge ecology

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