Portugal: Do Not Vote!

It’s the most democratic thing you can do!

Here is why you should not vote: There are plenty of better things to do with your personal time, for yourself and for your community than go voting! With this time you could be doing something much more meaningful with direct results on your life.

What you need to do is to work on the democratic decisions at the community level. If you train to mobilize people for discussions and alternative solutions to the current issues and events, or even just to meet to clean the streets every Sunday morning (instead of listening to the church monologue), you will be learning the fundamental power you hold, the power of assembly and of communal decision making. This is one important thing you can be doing with your time. Voting alienates you from that.

dontvoteBut even if your vote indeed manages to make a difference and a new party is elected, nothing will change. As you see everywhere else, it makes little or no difference at all. Take Greece for example, compare what Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras promised and what Syriza are doing now. Once in power, politicians realize they have no power, they are all contractually and legally bound to institutions and corporations. Take a look at the history of democracy over the last century. The pattern is there, you just need to read about it. Don’t trust my word, do your homework.

Or use the same time you are planning to waste on going to vote to gather friends and discuss (on financial matters, tax dodging, how companies like PwC facilitate it, how alternative currencies can be created in your community with blockchain…)

So if the new central government comes one day to your doorstep and forces significant changes which alarms you, you are now in a much better position and far better networked with your community to fight back and demand what is needed! Why? Because you invested your time in the community instead of voting! Because you trained for the essential feature of democracy within your community: universal informed decision-making!

Are you seriously going to invest your time to legitimize the power for a few people you never met?

No! Use your time wisely! We do not need to feed their desperate attention-seeking pathology. Invest in yourself and in your community! Self-governance is possible but it will never come from politicians, it will come from all of us.

The same people who are so desperate in getting a job that they will spend days kissing random people in the street!
No! Do not vote!

And please, if you don’t like my arguments (Julian Assange says something similar), write to me, inform me, but do so during the upcoming Sunday in Portugal!

Do not vote!

Pedro Aibéo is an internationally awarded MSc Architect, MSc Civil Engineer; founder of the Gamified Cohousing Oy, of the World Music School, and of the “Cidadania” theatre+games group. He has a PhDc on ”Architectural Democracy” at Aalto University, and is a drawing teacher and a graphic novelist. Read other articles by Pedro.