Jennifer Government is a create your own government game at http://www.nationstates.net/

Here’s what I voted today. This question — should voting be compulsory? — came up when I sat in as a guest at the Brooklyn Free School, a school where even the five-year olds have a vote. Unfortunately, the actual administration of the school is run as a non-profit benevolent dictatorship, not as a democracy. But the student democracy there is wonderful.

Wow Themes Decides: Should Democracy Be Compulsory?

Government Acts

The Issue

In response to a slow news week, certain highbrow newspapers have stirred up the debate over voluntary vs compulsory voting.

The Debate

1. “Compulsory voting makes about as much as sense as having the death penalty for attempted suicide,” says civil rights activist Roger Jones. “You can’t force people to be free! You can only give them the choice. Besides, if all those derelicts who can’t be bothered to get off their ass once every few years voted, who would they elect? I shudder to think.” This is the position your government is preparing to adopt.
2. “It’s not contradictory at all,” argues political commentator Anne-Marie Li. “The fact is, if not everyone votes, the outcome isn’t truly representative. Some groups–like elderly gun nuts–vote more often than others. That’s why always we always end up with such terrible politicians.”
   [Accept]
3. “This raises an interesting issue,” says Jazz Nagasawa, your brother. “And that is: why do we need elections, anyway? Seems to me it would be much simpler if you just decided what was right, and did it. Wouldn’t that save everyone a lot of time?”
   [Accept]

The Government Position

The government has indicated its intention to follow the recommendations of Option 1.

“I guess what I was trying to describe is a faith that admits doubt, and uncertainty, and mystery. Because, ultimately, I think that’s how most people understand their faith. In fact, it’s not faith if you’re absolutely certain. There’s a leap that we all take, and, when you admit that doubt publicly, it’s a form of testimony. Then what I think it does is it allows both the secular and the religious to find some sort of common space where we say to each other, Well, I may not believe exactly what you do, what you believe, but I share an experience in wondering what does my life mean, or I understand the desire for a connection to something larger than myself. And that, I think, is in the best of the United States religious tradition.” -Barack Obama, interviewed by David Remnick in the New Yorker in early November 2006

From middle school until a few years ago, I was constantly late. Whether it was getting up late for school or being late for appointments during the day. I was too late, too often. I wanted to be on time. Setting my watch back five minutes helped some, but I had an insight two years ago. This recently led a friend to a powerful insight in a seven-minute session I coached, so I’d like to share it with you. Do you constantly do something you’d rather not do? Read on.

So you’re constantly late? What’s your most intense moment of feeling when you’re late? Maybe it’s when you’re rushing in that last-minute sprint just before you walk through the door? Whenever you feel the most intense in your body, get up now, and get in that position. If you’d be running, then stand and get in position and feel it. Feel that intense feeling of being late.

Where do you feel it in your body? Which part of your body? How does it feel?

Okay. Now when else have you felt this feeling in a completely different situation? When else have you felt this in a positive situation?

It’s different for everybody. With me, I used to feel late in that last rush to wherever I was going. Bicycling three miles in a sprint to a job two years ago, I had a good fifteen or twenty minutes to intensely feel late. I felt the “late feeling” in my lower spine, in my shoulder blades and in the back of my head. To me, it feels shivery-tingly. The important thing is, biking late to work, I realized that, strange as it may sound, this is what love physically feels like to me.

I realized that this “late feeling” for me is very, very similar to the “love feeling.” The friend I coached said the late feeling for her feels like the great time in her life when she was accepted into her dream university. To a lesser degree, she said her late feeling feels like when she has a proposal to turn in, which feels like her waiting feeling as she waits for her proposal to be accepted.

Just as my friend’s late feeling is similar to her waiting feeling, my late feeling is similar to my waiting feeling when I would be waiting to be picked up from school as a young child by a family member. That waiting, it was suggested to me, may have left me wondering if I was loved. Which led me to wonder if being late is a chance to replay an emotion that I need. When I’m late, is it because I want to feel loved? The feeling is the same for me, just as to my friend, being late feels like being accepted.

I sought out more opportunities to easily feel loved. More time with friends. More hugs. And since I’ve done that two years ago, I haven’t been late.

My friend says that an easy way to feel accepted would be to do things where people tell her, “Yes,” more often. She said she’ll get more easy Yes’s in her life.

In conclusion, if you constantly do something you don’t want to do, identify that intense feeling you get from the bad, and does it match with something that’s been good in your life? Bring more of that good into your life in easy ways. And as you satisfy that feeling with good, notice how the bad goes away.