Originally Posted by
Citizen's Nephew
It's of greater value than no vote at all. An example would be jury service - we have to be jurors and we have to, for a period of time, listen to and understand the facts of a case and are expected to make a decision.
Democracy is meant to be a form of governance by the whole population. In the last election, only 42% of the UK population voted. Of the people that did vote, for a large number, under our current [un-democratic] system, their vote was a waste of time because they will have no representation at a local or national level.
I am totally skeptical of the justifications of power i.e. monarchy, church, political parties - and believe we must take personal responsibility for the environment and the society we live in. Abdication of that responsibility is, to me, a gross form of societal sabotage.
I must be clear here, I am not in favour of the status quo, far from it.
We are already living through a mass extinction event. The way we, as a society and on an individual basis, live, is unsustainable and our current environmental crisis is far more important than invented left or right politics let alone political parties.
We have a responsibility to each and every one of us and the ecosystem. We have a personal responsibility to educate ourselves, communicate effectively, and work together in decision-making, and in order to do that, I believe we have to reject the status quo and the notion of political parties.
The value of our vote, right now, is not worth very much because it gives too much power to the state.
We cannot continue to expect anything other than a social and environmental disaster if just over half of a population share no collective responsibility. For the vote to be compulsory it has to be of value though, and you quite rightly raise that issue.
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