Reply To: Preamble is too verbose

[Fabrice Luijten]

Hi Jakub,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Together with one of the 55+ participants (Koen van Bremen) I discussed your point. And to some extent we agree to your point that a minimalist version is less prone to triggering the dividing discourses of politics. Which would lead to an ‘easier’ acceptance/ratification of this kind of document. So from a realpolitik-perspective, we agree on your point.

On the other side, we felt that in a foundational document like this, it is important to start explicitly with the purpose of the ‘game’, before going into the ‘rules of the game’ (I am using the analogy of a board game here). Otherwise, why play the game at all if it is just rules and procedures? Where is the value in that? So the topic we came up with: “How can we clearly state a purpose for the federation that inspires us as a civilization to live up to our potential, without falling in the pitfall and the domain of day-to-day political ideology and discussion?”

This insight lead to an interesting discussion on what should be the purpose of the federation? This discussion learned me that,
a) to have this discussion with each other every now and again is really interesting, insightful and important. Because it is a discussion that helps bring alive the soul of this federal body.
b) some central points like ‘the pursuit of happiness’ are really not that obvious and might be open to alternatives like ‘dignified existence’. For instance, this would change the Ia text from:
– “that the federation of the United States of Europe hereby established by us has the task and duty to support us as citizens in our search for happiness in freedom;”
into
– “that the federation of the United States of Europe hereby established by us has the task and duty to support us as citizens in our search for a humanly dignified life;”

So I would like to finish this post with a couple of questions to the other participants:
– Is it worthwile to request a video call (as suggested in progress report no. 4) on the 23rd of october to discuss what should be the overall aim / purpose of the federation?
– What do you think of ‘the task and duty to support us as citizens in our search for happiness in freedom’ as the main purpose of the federation? Do you agree or would you have other suggestions?