Image taken from http://www.thegloriousrevolution.org/
For many years, England strove to perfect their laws. The Whig Party, England's first political party, which formed not long before the Glorious Revolution, had "a dark view of human nature" (39). They struggled with the prospect of a few corrupt men trying to manipulate Parliament. With the help of teachings from Aristotle, they noted that "if one mixed and balanced power among rival authorities in a constitutional system, chances were that no single one of them would accumulate enough power to do the others harm" (39).
The same principles are being applied in multiple ways today. First, there is the idea of Open Government, which focuses on eliminating government secrecy and allowing increased public input and participation. A recent website called Challenge.gov has been set up and funded by the government to find solutions to many of the country's challenges today. It's free to participate and prizes are given for the winners of each challenge.
Also, there is the Free Software movement which is pushing to make as much software open to the public, not necessarily free of price, but freedom to run it, freedom to study how it works and make changes if one wishes, freedom to redistribute, and freedom to distribute modified copies. Much like challenge.gov, this capitalizes on the fact that the more eyes there are on something, the more likely it is for an improvement to be found, and that person in turn can open it up to others for enhancement. See gnu.org for more information.
These three events and movements are only small victories in comparison to what the world would be like if we successfully managed to fuse the world's intellect together into one giant mastermind.
Great connection. i had forgotten all about the glorious revolution. i think often i forget that in every event in history there are many other events that influence said event. i think it is important to see every important event in a larger context. thanks for the perspective check.
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