Letter published in Nov/Dec. 1995 NEXUS
Editor,
Regarding “Question Authority” (July/August): Many religious leaders have exploited their flock for money (selling indulgences in past centuries, tickets to eternity, etc.) or sex (why Mia Farrow and the Beatles fled the “Maharishi”), spreading confusion and even death (Naropa’s late leader Osel Tendzin giving HIV to young students, thinking his power would prevent its transmission). Yet true teachers exist you can trust your soul to. It is said: “There’s fake gold because there’s real gold.”
In the political realm the same holds. Here most leaders are fleecing the flock. But there’s now “the world’s first post-modern revolution” (says author Carlos Fuentes) in Mexico, whose leaders the Mayan Indian “Zapatistas” say they “lead by obeying”, and have instituted true democracy, with all the Indians and supporters voting in “consultas” (referenda), by which means the “Women’s Laws”, etc. were instituted. The Swiss people have made their own laws since 1848, now voting four times a year for the future they all want.
Connecting the two realms was the inventor of the word “synergy”, Buckminster Fuller, whose book _No More Secondhand God_ proposed citizens “voting by telephone on all prominent questions before Congress” in 1940. He wrote: “If direct democracy is not tried now, future generations will again champion it and there will be world civil wars until it receives adequate trial.”
The Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela are among those proposing referenda on their countries’ futures. This is also the goal of Boulder’s Voting by Phone Foundation, which uses the name of the tool (successfully tested by the National Science Foundation) that makes it easy, environmental, and inexpensive, as well as more secure than current voting systems.
For information on the history, status and future of real democracy, please see our world wide web pages, linking to Mexico, Tibet, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, California and even Alabama, at: http://www.evanravitz.com/vote or contact us at 440-6838 or evan@welcomehome.org. The great liberation is near.
Evan Ravitz, Director, Voting by Phone Foundation
University Hill, Boulder
(Nexus ran a story on us, in 1992, as I recall)