Governing as if we owned the place

Beyond your individual commitment to making a change, this page explores how you can demonstrate your status as a local owner in the community.

In a democracy we are all owners. We all share in a collective responsibility for the future of our community. That responsibility does not simply begin and end with a public voting process that disengages people and allows people to shirk their collective responsibilities. It begins with a process of envisioning a set of possibilities that we can all share and then translating them into necessary commitments and shared decision making that end in joint action and the realization of the Ottawa We Want.

What underlies this active democracy are the many, many conversations that we have amongst ourselves. This page outlines how this can be accomplished in a big place like Ottawa, and how we can possibly re-create a sense of community and shared governance that would suggest that we actually lived in Ottawa and that we had a stake in its future. As owners we care for the place and the people. In creating the Ottawa We Want we demonstrate we're not just passing through.

Mike Nickerson argues in Three Potent Steps to a Sane Economy for a fundamental mind shift in the way we approach our economy and our presence here on earth. Such a shift entails discarding our predilection towards built-in obsolescence and instead, returniung to the idea to design goods that are durable and easily repaired. Such a shift could be aqccompnied by advertising to reinforce attitudes of appreciation for durable and familiar products.Nickerson also suggests that we sit down and take stock of what really matters in our lives. Is it the mindless accumulating and consuming material goods? Are we OK with trading our lives, our very breath, for 'stuff'? Or are we more truly interested in the personal fulfillment that comes from progressive personal achievments, contributions to our communities, and all those things that come to us as learning, love, laughter, friendship, art, music, dance, sport, service, and the like, and provide us with real satisfaction. From the perspective of the latter why are we contributing to so much thoughtless resource exploitation and waste?