{"id":27589,"date":"2017-11-03T11:02:30","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T16:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27589"},"modified":"2017-11-03T11:02:30","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T16:02:30","slug":"ticking-a-box-is-no-longer-an-option-david-van-reybrouck-on-elections-imagination-and-brexit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27589","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Ticking a box is no longer an option\u2019: David van Reybrouck on elections, imagination and Brexit."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Ticking a box is no longer an option\u2019: David van Reybrouck on elections, imagination and Brexit.<\/a><\/h3>\n

David van Reybrouck<\/strong><\/a> lives in Brussels, is a pre-historic archaeologist, but works mostly as a literary writer, and as a non-fiction writer.\u00a0 He\u2019s probably best known for his book \u2018Congo: the epic history of a people\u2019, for appearing in the film \u2018Tomorrow\u2019 (\u2018Demain\u2019),\u00a0and for his more recent book \u2018Against Elections: the case for democracy\u2019, which is a brilliant read.\u00a0 We met up via Skype, and talked imagination, Brexit, and reimagining how we make decisions together.<\/p>\n

I wonder if you had any thoughts on in what ways the current way that we practice democracy in the West diminishes our imagination, maybe particularly in relation to our ability to imagine something other than business as usual?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You could say that the procedures we use today to do democracy have drastically narrowed down the scope of what is politically imaginable.\u00a0 To me, although I\u2019m interested in politics, it\u2019s become quite a bit of a boring game, really.\u00a0 It\u2019s all about winning elections, trying to build a coalition, trying to run a government, or be against the government that is in power.\u00a0 The bickering that is going on is not very rich.\u00a0 The strategies that are being used for political gain and political loss are less interesting than watching the Tour De France on a boring day.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Political journalism very often has come down to a form of sports journalism, really.\u00a0 Like, who has made what manoeuvre and what will it bring to him or to her.\u00a0 The political game as it is being played these days is a pretty boring one, and a pretty predictable one, yes.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Ticking a box is no longer an option\u2019: David van Reybrouck on elections, imagination and Brexit. David van Reybrouck lives in Brussels, is a pre-historic archaeologist, but works mostly as a literary writer, and as a non-fiction writer.\u00a0 He\u2019s probably best known for his book \u2018Congo: the epic history of a people\u2019, for appearing in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14285,16853,204,253,5971,858],"class_list":["post-27589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-business-as-usual","tag-david-van-reybrouck","tag-democracy","tag-elections","tag-rob-hopkins","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27590,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27589\/revisions\/27590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}