Some new-age philosophers (or should I say: “old-age philosophers”) claim that original thoughts cannot be contained with the original thinker. Once the thinker makes the thought, it is free to cosmically travel to other thinkers. No verbal or written words are required to release the thought; it just moves out of the original mind to be later picked up and enhanced by other thinkers. And these other thinkers do not realize the original thought came from someone else.
I have read how Albert Einstein is an example of thoughts travelling cosmically from person to person. These philosophers believe that if Albert Einstein had not found “The Theory of Relativity,” someone else would have. Many previous discoveries were leading to Relativity. Mr. Einstein captured the cosmic thoughts that were already floating around and put all the pieces together.
Maybe there are a couple of more angles. Maybe there was another scientist who got three-quarters of the way into Relativity and could not find that last quarter. He sent out cosmic thoughts, and Mr. Einstein captured those thoughts to finish the project, despite the two of them never meeting. Even though the first scientist is now an obscure figure in history, he still made an important contribution. And maybe we should acknowledge the opportunity Mr. Einstein had to complete this work. Had he been distracted with more worldly concerns, he too would be relegated to obscurity.
I have my own experience with cosmic thoughts. In 1982, I started employment with a major oilfield service company. I went from a lower-class kid who barely left his home province to being a traveller. I used Edmonton International Airport to go to Texas, California, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Northwest Territories. Big airports, big airplanes, restaurants, and hotels were new adventures in my life.
I was a strong young man in those days, so packing my luggage around airports was not that difficult. I sometimes helped people who were struggling with their luggage. But I saw something that CEOs and designers working for luggage companies could not see. I thought: “If all this luggage had small wheels, we could just drag our luggage behind us instead of straining our backs.” Pretty obvious, is it not? This was pretty low tech, even back in 1982. And we did land a man on the moon 13 years ago.
While I did little else to further my idea, my thought went out to the cosmic universe. It wafted here and there. It took a few years to find the antennae of CEOs and designers for luggage companies. Circa 1990, I saw a flight crew for an airline strolling through the airports with wheeled luggage. I thought: “I invented those wheels maybe eight years ago!”
Let’s just say I was responsible for putting that original thought out there. If I had not done this, the luggage companies would still be selling you luggage that strained your back.
The CEOs for luggage companies probably got a big raise for putting wheels on luggage. I got nothing. You should show your appreciation. You can buy my suite of “alternative democracy” e-books from Amazon Kindle or Rakuten Kobo for about $25.
The money would be nice. But I am more hoping that you read these e-books, which will then inspire you to build this alternative democracy for your children and grandchildren. In 20 years, they will be thankful for your ability to recognize that today’s democracy was so unrepairable and for your willingness to sacrifice a little time to build this new way.
I have called my alternative democracy “Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG).” I got my inspiration in 1992, after spending six years in a Canadian political party and seeing all the dysfunction in that party.
Basically, this new system has tiered, indirect elections. At the time of my “discovery,” I believed that I had original thoughts. But as I moved further into this project, I identified three historical examples of tiered democracy: 1) the early Christian church, 2) the American Constitution, and 3) Russian Communism. It seemed I had captured some cosmic thoughts that came from history that were not of my own thinking.
While all these versions of indirect elections had failed, I discuss the reasons for these failures in my TDG book. We need to learn from our historical mistakes.
I have been working on the TDG for 26 years. So, in all this time, I have been sending out cosmic thoughts for other thinkers to capture — and present this concept in their own way.
Maybe Arthur Juliani found these thoughts. He has recently published a Medium article about a new democratic structure that has many similarities to the TDG.
While I invite you to read Arthur’s article, the link is likely not going to work for non-Medium members. I'll just say that he has a different way to express tiered democracy than I have. His article might be something you can better relate to. Whatever gets you into building the TDG is fine by me.
Hopefully there will be more TDG-like articles written by more Medium writers. If you write your own TDG article, you will be reinforcing the cosmic thoughts I have been sending out for 26 years. That would be contributing to the eventual unfoldment of this new democracy. Sooner is better than later.
And in January 2023, I sold five TDG books. That is about half my 2022 total. Maybe my cosmic thoughts are finally finding their intended audience: people who know we can govern ourselves a lot better.
Published on Medium 2023
Political Philosophy of Star Wars
