Reading this IS the New Politics

When a system has become so corrupted that it cannot maintain its establishment functions, then there is no hope of recovery, only replacement. All current theories of government are outdated, based on social foundations that are obsolete and irrelevant. For government to function successfully in the modern age, it must embody a radically new structure, one based on an open-source, collaborative decision-making process.
So-called representational government is insufficient for the simple reason that millions of individuals with competing interests, intelligences, and personal histories cannot be adequately defined by a few broad categories of political ideology. Whenever individual power is ceded in favour of remote, elite 'leaders', corruption is the natural outcome. Any political organization, or business for that matter, built on secrecy is incapable of being held accountable for its decisions and actions except through legal force, a legal force it should be noted, heavily skewed in fovour of those very same wealthy elites.
But a alternate view of politics, founded on genuine freedom, boldly asserted and enacted, is possible. It has required the advent of mass personalized communication technologies to allow this radically new type of organizational structure to emerge. We are now in a dire race to stop the squandering of intelligence that characterizes our current forms of government.
The true function of government is not to enforce ideological conformity, but to protect the collective social structure and to facillitate the efficient flow of goods\information. Its purpose is to distribute effectively the collective wealth\intelligence of society so that all might benefit from it. Up until now government has had to centralize in order to secure these functions, necessarily becoming stronger than any of the groups it administers to. This power differential has lead to the worst forms of abuse and imperialism, as this centralized political organism pursues its own goals and ambitions without regard to the consequences of its actions or the wishes of its supposed constituents.
This situation is now wholly avoidable, yet does not require the kind of mass mobilization that chanracterizes political force historically. Almost everyone is already engaged in the forms of socio-political action that are the foundation of this new concept of governance. Polity and society are inseperable- they represent two aspects of a unified system of action. So, rightly, we can say that polity guides society, and society guides policy. Change one, and the other naturally follows. The only reason that social actions are seldom recognized as inherently political is because of the degree to which politics has alienated those who bear its brunt. Once a government no longer functions, having become both remote and intrusively bureaucratic, then it must be overthrown- not by armed revolution (which is premised on the moral failure of violence), but by better, more directed social actions. In this way, the renewal of social action itself becomes the new form of government, without the need for power struggles or compromise. To govern, ultimately, is to direct one's own actions towards certain goals. Government can never be a system external to those it affects- such a structure betrays immediately its own illegitimacy.
The main component in this shift/revolution is not technical, but conceptual- in other words, individuals must become aware of themselves as social actors rather than simply as social beings. This distinction is crucial, but not obvious, and bears some examination.
A social being is at best a limited identity, a convinient label for a set of beliefs and preferances in relation to other social beings. It is generally speaking a passive orientation, absorbing influences from culture and recreating them as self. Social beings experience themselves as at the mercy of overwhelming social and historical forces, powerless to alter them. Their only options are to react, through protest (engagement) or altered consumer habits (endorsement). Neither of these efforts produces results of significance because they lack the leverage needed to encounter power on its own terms. We must become aware of the potent myths which have sprung up as validations of the social being, and counter them with the hard reality, that the consumer is not king, the citizen is not in charge.
On the other end of the spectrum however, a social actor is the inverse of the dysfunctional social being. He\she presupposes (and expresses) an identity not as a thing shaped by culture, but as a process- a state of ever-shifting goals and perspectives, no single one of which remains dominant. The social actor is a study in flexibility, capable of subsuming their personal interests within a greater field of benefit, always towards an ever-expanding sphere of inclusion. At heart, all social beings are simply social actors unaware of themselves, and it is this degree of unawareness which stands as the only tangible difference between them. The social being lacks the ability to see himself as an actor, fully capable of not merely reacting to socio-political circumstances, but effectively directing them.
Unfortunately, this task of education is enormous, opposed by a myriad of forces bent on the promotion of selfish individualism and socially destructive tribalisms. These forces are generally economic; corporate organisms which derive benefit from fragmenting social cohesion, by relentalessly advancing the flattering myth of individualism. But let us not imagine that the dangers of rampant individualism can be averted through some species of vulgar collectivism. Quite the opposite in fact. And while the individual is not more important than the group, neither is the group more important than the individual. This apparent paradox is easily resolved once one begins to look at the world through the lens of social action rather than social being. The social actor is a being, but also more than that, in the same way that a group is made up of individuals, but at the same time embodies principals and functions greater than any single person. The strength of a group is characterized not by uniformity, but by diversity. The the greater the degree of individuality exhibited by its members, the more resourceful, resiliant, and flexibly intelligent that group will be. True individuality and they myth of individualism stand in stark contrast to one another.
Individualism holds that one is alone, the center of one's social universe, an egocentric view wherein one's personal desires (and the fulfillment thereof) are the paramount concern, at the expense of all other considerations, both social and ecological. Contrast this to the fully realized individual, who sees and understands clearly that he is an integral aspect of a cohesive network of relationality, and that his actions are never without consequence. This realization acts to temper whatever purely selfish motivations dwell within him, allowing them to be transformed into constructive social action which thereby benefits the whole as well as the individual. Indeed, the greatest benefits to the individual come from those actions which increase the functioning of the group. And yet, if we are to take the proposition of freedom seriously, this cannot be accomplished through coercion or by external pressures or threats. Rather it must emerge organically, as a response to a greater degree of self-understanding.
Where this leaves us then is in a position to formulate and enact a new 'social operating system', one based on open-source principles and values.
The goal is to establish alternative institutions to the corrupt ones now in place. These institutions will be economic (banks, financial structures, investment rules), productive (businesses, manufacturing, R&D), infra- and intra-structural (transportation, energy, structure), legal (arbitration courts, reward compliance, punish defiance, disciplinary), educational (school, university, knowledge and information management), etc., founded upon core principles, rather than static documents from an historically remote past. They will be upgradable, open-source (ie. fully transparent), and user-managed\mediated.