Motivation
Civic intelligence is not a well-understood tool in today's America. As it was explained in the earlier section; civic intelligence and working together runs counter to the typical pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps American ideology. But in today's world, where there is such a huge array of vastly different fields, no single person can know or understand everything, in other words: the Renaissance Man is dead. This calls for a need to bring our collective intelligences together to solve our problems.
How can civic intelligence be useful?
Under what circumstances is civic intelligence useful?
What do we need to do?
How do we make it the basis for meaningful action?
ideas to flesh out the chapter below
There're many reasons to study, develop, and harness civic intelligence...
- Improve civic life
- build stronger communities
- create support networks that address poverty and other social need
- crime can be reduced when people look out for one another - the more connected we are, the less likely we will harm one another.
- strengthen business - knowing more about the local economy can make people more participatory in it.
- make local government more accountable - a well informed public is more likely to participate in important local issues.
- address national and global issues
- highly civicly intelligent local communities have the capacity to act well beyond their birders
- high functioning local communities are inspiring examples for others
- the more connected localized civic intelligence becomes with one another, the higher regional, national, and global civic intelligence will rise.
- change the nature of politics
- as civic intelligence rises, the organization and connection of the public increases
- highly civicly intelligent constituents rely less on government to enact change and provide resources
- as constituents become empowered, career politicians will be much more accountable to the public
