Draft Constitution

Everything Is Connected

Sageocracy recognizes that every human being, every group, and every natural environment lives in connection with what surrounds it, and depends on it. These bonds are the very condition of life. An organization that ignores them makes itself fragile.

Seeing Before Deciding

A good decision depends first of all on a clear view of the situation. The person who decides must, above all, understand it. Their right to decide comes neither from their rank nor from their wealth: it is always the people who entrust them with this task, for a time. To govern is to see clearly before acting.

Thinking of the Whole

A decision, an action, or an organization is judged by its immediate effects, but also by its effects on the whole. A coherent decision does not solve a problem in its own field by sending it elsewhere. It takes a wide enough view not to create, further on or at another scale, the disorders it seeks to resolve.

Seeking Agreement

Sageocracy seeks syntony rather than compromise: an agreement that arises when human needs, what reality allows, and the balance of the living world stop opposing one another. No one decides on it by settling the matter: it comes when a situation is understood well enough for the tensions to untangle on their own. A decision is made in syntony only if no objection still stands. When syntony is not reached, a vote is held. A single objection does not block the decision, not even the objection of the person the decision concerns: that person is heard, and may turn to the courts. Those who hold public office vote in public, because they answer for it; citizens and jurors vote in secret. An objection that could not be answered is recorded with the decision.

Recognizing Contribution

Everything that truly helps a group hold together and live well is a contribution, whether visible or not, measurable or not. Sageocracy recognizes them all, even those our current systems ignore. Each person freely chooses what they bring; their dignity never depends on it, and they have the right to rest.

Answering for What We See

Our responsibility does not stop at the limits of our role or our field: it reaches as far as what we see. When we see how much everything depends on everything else, it is no longer a constraint imposed from outside, but something self-evident that we carry within us.

Correcting Course Along the Way

A living organization is never fixed. It changes with what it experiences, with what moves around it, with what it learns. In it, a mistake is valuable information: it makes it possible to correct course before tensions reach a breaking point. Scheduled reviews, set in advance by the adopted text, serve to correct the path. They are public, and they look at the state of the essentials, of health, and of the living world, not only at what is produced. No further step is taken until the previous one holds.

Respecting the Living World and Its Rights

The living world (human beings; animals, which are capable of feeling; natural environments; the life of human groups) is not a resource to be exploited. It is the framework of all human organization. A decision that damages it lastingly, here or elsewhere, goes against what makes life in common possible. When serious and irreversible harm is possible, the living world is given the benefit of the doubt. This respect extends to those who will be born after us and, beyond borders, to what belongs to no one: the oceans, the air and the climate, the poles, outer space.

Nature has rights that no one can take away. Forests, rivers, soils, seas, and the animals and plants that belong to them have the right to exist, to renew themselves, and to live according to their own cycles. Animals are never things, nor commodities: they are not traded, and the existing trade in them comes to an end in stages announced in advance. Whether they are raised, fished, or free, they are spared, from birth to death, any suffering and any fear that we know how to avoid. What is done to them is not hidden. The people choose the rules that protect nature and animals: they may change them to go further or to do better, never to protect them less.

Before the courts, nature has a voice. Guardians of nature speak in its name and for those who will be born after us, and may ask that whatever goes too far be stopped. The people choose them from among those who know nature: scientists, naturalists, and all those who have learned to observe it and to listen to it. Anyone may also defend it. Whoever does it harm answers for it, and repairs the harm.

Deciding Close to Home

The power to decide does not belong to a center: it always starts closest to home. The steward of a place, the person who lives in it or farms it, decides about it; then the community, the region, and the country each decide what concerns them. Each does so provided that it harms neither the living world nor others: it damages only what the earth, water, or air can regenerate, and imposes on its neighbors no new nuisance that they have not accepted. A community that harms the living world or its neighbors answers for it: the courts may order it to stop and to repair the harm. The courts may also, for a time, entrust the region or the country with deciding in that community’s place, but only on what relates to that harm. A community is a neighborhood, a village, a town, or a new place where people choose to settle together, with respect for the living world and for the land-use rules adopted by vote. It may keep its traditional ways of deciding, a council of elders or a village assembly, if everyone, woman or man, young or old, has a say in them, and if they respect what is never put to a vote. Those whose life is a journey (nomadic peoples, traveling peoples, seafaring peoples) may form a community among themselves, and are welcomed in the communities they pass through. Their routes, their wells, and their stopping places are commons that no one may close to them, as long as they harm neither the living world nor others. Everyone is part of the community of the place where they live; a town that brings together several neighborhoods or villages decides with them what affects them all. When a question affects several communities, each one sends one of its members for a time, and can recall them. The laws the people adopt apply everywhere. But the country imposes a project on a community only if the project is of national interest and harms neither the living world nor that community. In case of disagreement, independent judges settle the matter.

Deciding in the Open

When information is hidden, locked in separate boxes, or cut into pieces, no one sees the whole any longer, and imbalances arise. Decisions that bear on shared life, their reasons, and those who make them are known to all. Apart from the vote, the deliberations of jurors, the sources of journalists, and what is confided to those who provide care, who defend, or who help people reconcile, the only thing kept secret is what protects lives, under the oversight of an independent body. But everyone’s private life is protected: decisions and recognized contributions are public, but never what they reveal about the health, beliefs, or private life of others, nor what a person lives through, thinks, or buys.

No decision that affects a person is left to a machine alone. What shared tools know about a person is used only for the purpose for which that person entrusted it to them, or, anonymously, to know the needs of all. No one needs a screen to receive the essentials or to vote.

The People

The people are the citizens of the country: those who were citizens on the day it chose Sageocracy, those who become citizens, their children, and every child born in the country. A person who comes from elsewhere becomes a citizen when they live in the country for most of the year, for a period set by law, and take part in shared life. They must also speak a language of the country, or learn it with the help offered, and commit publicly to respecting this constitution. A person who was born in the country but grew up elsewhere remains a citizen; on coming to live there, they also commit to respecting this constitution, and take part in shared life. To respect is not to subscribe: no one has to share a conviction in order to be a citizen.

Before becoming a citizen, a person who comes from elsewhere takes part in the decisions of their community. If they commit serious acts that the law prohibits, the courts may, as a last resort, withdraw their right to remain. But no one is ever sent back to war, persecution, or a land that has become unlivable. Only the courts can withdraw citizenship, and only citizenship obtained through a lie.

Every citizen votes from the same age, set by law. Before that age, every child has the right to speak: their community listens to them on what affects them as well as on what affects everyone, and what they say counts. Votes are run by an independent body, which guarantees that they remain secret and are counted honestly.

The Power of the People

Power belongs to the people. No one governs in their place, and no one makes a career of an office entrusted by the people, or grows rich from public office.

A Sageocracy Council proposes the laws, and the people decide. Its members come from every region and every area of life. Put forward by the inhabitants of the regions, they are chosen for their competence and their ability to seek agreement, without running a campaign and without any conflict of interest. The people approve them one by one, for a term that the people can renew once, and can recall them. Each member chooses how much time they give to it, and is paid in proportion to that time. If one of them leaves, the others carry on, and only the people approve the person who replaces them.

In international relations, the Council represents the country and negotiates treaties. The people adopt or reject laws and treaties, by a majority of the votes cast, except for what this constitution reserves for a two-thirds majority; what they reject leaves in place what existed before. Enough citizens can always put a question to them. Before each vote, everyone receives, in good time, simple and fair information that presents on an equal footing the reasons for each text and the objections it faces.

During the crossing, the Council also guides it. At each scheduled review, this mandate ends, unless the people extend it. When it ends, all the members of the Council go before the people again; this new vote does not count as the one renewal allowed. The Council then keeps only what concerns the whole country and its relations with the world.

In an emergency, if there is no time to consult the people, the community affected acts, or the Council if the emergency is beyond the community, in full view of everyone. What is decided then goes no further than the emergency requires and ends with it, at the latest after a period set in advance by law. Only the people can extend this period, or reinstate these measures for the same emergency. Even then, nothing suspends dignity, life, the equality of all, bodily integrity, the right to a roof over one’s head and to the essentials, freedom of belief, of expression, and of informing others, the right to defend oneself in court and to be punished only under a precise law, known in advance, judicial oversight of any detention and of the emergency measures themselves, the refusal to bear arms, or the vote.

Few Laws, and Clear Ones

A society that sees what binds it needs few laws. They rest on a simple principle: what we do to others and to the living world, we do to ourselves. Do no harm to others, do not lastingly damage the living world, repair the harm we have caused: everything else follows from this. Laws are short, general, written to be understood by all, and each one states why it exists. The implementing rules that a law cannot itself contain are made within its framework, published, and open to challenge in the courts. A law that is too complicated is rewritten, rather than corrected by another law, and a law that no longer serves is repealed: each time the people adopt laws, the Council also proposes laws for them to repeal. The more each person understands what binds them, the fewer laws are needed. What the law does not say is settled, at every level, from the community to the country, through dialogue, repair, and the good sense of citizens who explain their decisions. A person who has caused harm is first helped to understand what they have done, and the response remains proportionate to the harm. But no one is punished without a precise law, known in advance.

What Is Never Put to a Vote

No vote and no agreement in syntony can take away or reduce the following guarantees:

• the life and dignity of each person, and the equality of all, women and men; no one is sentenced to death, tortured, or held in servitude;
• saying, writing, and publishing what one thinks;
• being informed by a free press: a news outlet belongs only to those who produce it, never to a company or to outside shareholders, only journalists decide what is published, and the press answers before citizens for the facts it asserts, never before any authority;
• meeting, forming associations, voicing opposition, and going on strike;
• voting freely and, as a citizen, in secret;
• learning, without any belief or worldview being imposed, not even this one;
• believing, not believing, or changing one’s beliefs, and never being forced to bear arms;
• keeping one’s private life, and the integrity of one’s body and mind: no one is given medical treatment without their consent, unless they are unable to give it;
• coming and going freely, leaving, and returning to one’s country;
• being detained only by decision of the courts; in an emergency, the courts review this detention at once, and then reexamine it at regular intervals;
• never being deprived of a roof over one’s head, of one’s everyday belongings, or of the essentials, nor of the place where one lives as long as one takes care of it and does not seriously harm one’s neighbors, those one lives with, or the living world (Article 15).

Every child is protected from all violence and heard in what concerns them, and what affects them is decided first of all for their good. Their parents have the first place at their side; a child is separated from them only by decision of the courts, to protect the child. No one is married without their free and full consent, or before reaching adulthood.

No one may be excluded because of their birth, skin color, religion, language, origin, sex, sexual orientation, disability, state of health, or opinions.

Any decision that affects a person can be brought before the courts. There, citizens judge in syntony, seek first to repair, and state the reasons for their decision, which are published without names, so that similar cases are judged alike. They are advised by independent judges, whom the people choose for a term that cannot be renewed, and who watch over these guarantees. A judge answers for their actions: anyone may file a complaint against them. An independent jury, which also includes citizens chosen by lot, may remove a judge for proven serious misconduct, never for their rulings. An independent body takes orders from no one; its members serve for a term, approved by the people, and are never chosen by those whom the body oversees. They answer for their actions as judges do. Before the courts, everyone is presumed innocent until their guilt is proven, and may defend themselves, assisted free of charge by a defender of their choice, and appeal. No one’s home is searched and no one’s communications are read without a judge’s approval, except to save a life, and the matter is then brought before the courts at once. No one is punished for an act unless a precise law, known in advance, prohibited it.

No authority, no community, and no majority can take away these guarantees, or the rights of nature. These freedoms are exercised without harming others: only a precise law, known in advance, may limit their abuse, without ever touching their core. When two of these guarantees collide, the judges seek the decision that preserves the core of each, and state why.

The Essentials for Everyone, Entrusted Land

The essentials are guaranteed to everyone, unconditionally: living in a healthy environment; having a place to live; caring for one’s health through whole-person care, which considers the person as a whole, with the support that a disability requires; learning; having the water and energy needed, the foods essential to a healthy life, clothing, and the means to communicate. All produce them, each in their own measure. From the first day, each community works to produce its own food and energy, as far as its land allows. What it has in surplus, it shares with those communities that lack it. During the crossing, the share of guaranteed foods grows with what the land, alive again, can give. Reserves are kept; if the essentials run short, they are shared according to need, in full view of everyone.

Land, water, and places to live are not investments: they are entrusted to those who live in them or farm them, and who take care of them. Indigenous peoples keep their ancestral lands. What one lives in remains one’s own for the span of a generation, then is passed on as a place of which one is the steward. What each person has at home for everyday life belongs to them. For what they cease to own, each person receives common compensation, under the same rule for everyone, up to a cap that the people set. What is known to harm the health of those who consume it is never encouraged or paid for; in stages announced in advance, what lastingly damages the living world also ceases to be encouraged and paid for; what cares for it is recognized.

Being a steward is a right and a duty: whoever lives in a place takes care of it, for themselves, for their neighbors, and for the living world. Whoever cannot do so, because of age, illness, or disability, is helped, never relocated.

No one is relocated for what they think or for their way of life. The only person who may be relocated is one who, through specific acts prohibited by laws known in advance, continues to seriously harm their neighbors, those who live with them, or the living world, despite dialogue and the help offered. If it is an illness that drives them to cause harm, care is offered to them first. Their community may then entrust them with another place where they can live without causing harm. This may be a place that another community agrees to open to them, or housing that society as a whole makes available to them. The courts review this decision before they have to leave, unless they accept it. They are never left without a roof over their head, and those who live with them and bear no responsibility for the harm may stay. When the person is violent toward these very people, the courts wait neither for dialogue nor for the community’s decision: they may ask the person to leave at once, to protect them. The damaging activity, for its part, must stop. If they persist, it is for the courts to determine what protects others.

Reliances, and the Transition Currency That Leads to Them

From the first day, Reliances make visible, and recognize, what each person brings to others and to the living world. They are neither a currency nor a rating: they cannot be bought, they rank no one, they punish no one, and they give no power over others. What a person thinks never enters into them, and the essentials never depend on them.

To ease the move from one society to another, a transition currency exists alongside them for a time. Everyone receives their share of it, under the same rule for everyone. Only an independent public body creates it, within the limit that the people approve, and publishes what it creates and what it is used for. This currency never pays for what is known to harm the health of those who consume it, and, in stages announced in advance, it stops paying for what lastingly damages the living world, according to criteria that the people approve and that anyone may challenge in the courts. It cannot be bought, cannot be invested, and earns nothing. If it is not enough to pay for everything, it goes first to what guarantees the essentials to each person, starting with eating, having a place to live, keeping warm or cool, and caring for one’s health.

What each person keeps of it decreases a little each year, then faster, and goes back to everyone. As it fades away, the guaranteed essentials expand, and the place of Reliances grows. The people may end it sooner, on an announced date, when a public review shows that what it still pays for is provided in another way. Reliances, too, are transitional: on the day when recognizing what each person brings has become natural, they may fade away of their own accord.

Peace and Welcome

Sageocracy settles no disagreement by force. If it is attacked, it defends itself at once, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. If its people so decide, it may help a people under attack that asks for its help. With other peoples, it works toward a world in which no people needs to threaten others any longer in order to live in peace. It brings aid, as far as it can, to peoples struck by disaster or by hunger. It keeps the treaties it has concluded with other peoples. If a treaty already concluded contradicts this constitution, Sageocracy honors it until it withdraws from it, according to the rules that the treaty provides. The armed forces obey the Council, which decides on their use jointly; if time is short, two of its members, designated in advance, decide on its behalf, by mutual agreement, and report to it at once. The armed forces never decide alone. A weapon capable of destroying life on a mass scale contradicts respect for the living world: the people are called upon to decide to renounce it. As long as they keep it, its use never depends on a single person. Sageocracy welcomes those who come from elsewhere, to the extent of what it can bear, examines every request for protection, and never sends anyone back to war, persecution, or a land that has become unlivable.

How a Country Chooses

In every country, anyone may freely say that they recognize these principles, in particular by signing up on the Sageocracy platform. These sign-ups decide nothing by themselves. When there are enough of them, the country’s democratic avenues can open: a public examination of the project, the revision that the country’s current constitution requires or, if that constitution forbids any change to its deepest foundations, the avenue it opens for adopting a new one, then a referendum. Where no such avenue exists, Sageocracy waits for one to open. This constitution is adopted only with at least two-thirds of the votes cast, and a sufficient turnout: the text put to the vote sets this minimum. In a federal country, or one that brings together several peoples, the text also sets the majority required in each of them, so that none is drawn in against its will. If one of them says no, it keeps its institutions, and those that said yes may move forward, if the pact that unites them allows it, by reaching agreement with it on what they continue to share. Until the day that it sets for taking effect, the institutions in place continue their work, and the people approve the members of the Council and of the bodies. On that day, the functions of those who governed and made the laws come to an end. Public services, municipalities, and the courts continue their work. Existing laws remain valid as long as they are not changed and do not contradict this constitution. The text put to the vote states which of them cease to apply on the appointed day; for the others, independent judges determine, in case of doubt, what contradicts this constitution. Judges in office remain in office until the people choose their successors. Citizens’ juries are gradually introduced into the courts, at the pace set by the adopted text; only the people can slow this pace. This constitution bypasses nothing and imposes nothing: it sets in motion what already exists, with a new legitimacy.

Revising the Text, and Being Able to Turn Back

This constitution may be revised in order to go further in what it has understood. It asks that this never be done for the benefit of a few, nor under pressure from what exists, nor out of weariness in the face of effort. Every revision follows the same path as the adoption of the text, with the same requirements: a public examination of the project, then a referendum, which adopts it only with at least two-thirds of the votes cast and a sufficient turnout, and, in a federal country or one that brings together several peoples, with the majority required in each of them (Article 18). It is always the people who decide, including to turn back. It is enough for a set number of citizens to request it for this path to open. This number is set by law, at a level that citizens can actually reach, and no authority and no revision can close this path. Nothing can take away the guarantees that are never put to a vote, or the rights of nature; the way they are served may change, but never so as to weaken them. Before any revision referendum, independent judges state publicly whether the project respects them.