Open Civilization is a concept of civilization as a metaculture. When we think of 'civilization', we tend to think of Rome or Greece, as our earliest cultural examples of such. These were both monocultures, of greater or lesser degrees of inclusivity, but our modern "western civilization" accepts almost anything anyone wants to toss at it. Be here and create a culture, and you're part of Us unless and until you do something so offensive someone with power decides it's worth taking difficult action to remove you. And even then, you get to fight back and it's hard for them to succeed.
My first thought had been about the liability of officials for doing their jobs. Accountability is a key value, and being immune to prosecution for not doing one's job is not being accountable. But, while *my* first thought, it's not the first thought for OpenCiv. What *are* those jobs, and what are they intended to accomplish? What are the goals?
To create as much human fulfillment as possible. To create joy, love, and beauty. Who defines those? The citizens. Who are they? Whoever they say they are. It's *possible* they'd say so and be *wrong*; people are capable of error. On a first approximation, if someone is capable of saying "I am a citizen, and here is how I discharge my responsibilities as one", then so they are and so they do. We need and have ways of figuring that out -- and sometimes *those*'ll be wrong too, but I think we're pretty good here. And then there's my own pet terror, the narcissist amoral opportunists; we need a way to deal with them. I have one, but again while this is vital to *me*, it's about a third-order consequence within the bounds of the system.
As a living entity, an Open Civilization is both a top-down *and* a bottom-up structure. Also deeply interconnected and interdependent. It's a life-form, life-forms are messy, and there's no way to get around that. But it *is* possible to do a decent job of describing what one is, what *this* one is, and how it works, and that's what I'm working on.
I want to love as much of humanity as I can get my arms around, and I want to expand the definition of what it means to be human as far as I can push it.