**Pattern Name:**
Self Governing
**Introduction:**
Navigating your own ship.
**Illustration:**
**CONTEXT:**
Governing is not about making decisions for others so they have to take care of you and yours. It is about making decisions and taking actions to take care our ourselves. It is where our lives and our decisions meet. It is not about out there. It is about here, where we live, how we live, who we are and who we are to become.
**PROBLEM:** **Attempts at governing are too often about controlling others rather than self-control.**
**Forces:**
**THEREFORE (SOLUTION):**
**Understand the system we are part of here and now. Collectively take back decision making and responsibility from absentee landlords and absentee businesses and absentee decision makers. ReLocalize pretty much everything.**
**Actions:**
Map your government systems.
Use the laws.
Change the laws.
Work with elected officials.
Change elected officials.
Get to work producing what is needed here and now.
**Consequences:**
More responsibility. Less ability to blame others.
Everyone in the community has the essentials.
Stop the tyranny of the majority through laws.
**Known Uses:**
**RELATED PATTERNS:**