(Except from the Voter Directed Democracy book.

About the Author

Again, this political theory will never be about me or about any individual. The political theory of Voter Directed Democracy is solely focused on equally empowering all eligible voters and implementing this innovative political philosophy at all levels of government. That said, I’m a man and I live in La Crosse, Wisconsin of the United States of America. I believe the most credible scientific and spiritual frameworks humanity should follow all essentially confirm the same truths and promote the same messages about human existence. They are all calling on humanity to make loving, compassion-based decisions through the building of inclusive and collaboration-based communities in order to achieve the best social, political, and economic outcomes for the greatest number of people.

The relationships and identities that are most important to me at this time are being a father, son, friend, and founder. Nothing is more important to me personally at this time than being a father. It is my greatest responsibility and privilege to fill my kids’ lives with many types of kindness, love, fun, adventure, resources, structure, and healthy boundaries. There is nothing better than sharing with them everything about our world that I find to be important, interesting, fascinating, intriguing, and fun while also teaching them about the parts of our world that cause pain and suffering and might also hurt them. Being the best parent I can be every day is by far the hardest and most rewarding part of my life. I also believe the most important relationships any adult human being has are those that are focused on helping and supporting and improving our world for younger generations. Whether you are a parent, grandparent, uncle, aunt, family friend, teacher, coach, or mentor of any kind- those are your most important relationships on a cosmic scale. The only way society progresses forward and improves over time is if older generations invest considerable amounts of time, energy, and other resources into younger generations. Billions of humans from all around our world have instinctually and intentionally done this for millennia. The majority of humans today also devote huge portions of their personal and professional lives to ensuring that society improves for the next generations. None of this time, energy, or other resources are ever wasted. Our personal and collective futures deserve our best effort, each and every day.     

I also deeply value my identity as a son. I have been blessed with two wonderful, hardworking, intelligent, and loving parents. The majority of everything I am today is a direct or indirect result of who my parents raised me to be. My father is a man of kindness, justice, and integrity. He is a true gentle giant that has a deep respect for everyone’s inherent human dignity and has pursued and promoted justice for others in many different ways throughout his life. My mother is a woman of compassion, care, and love. She has devoted a huge portion of her life to alleviating the suffering of others and cares so deeply and so passionately for so many people. Please also know that all of us are of course flawed in various ways, have made many mistakes, and have struggled deeply physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually like all human beings are destined to do. Also, the strong relationship I have with both of my parents was not always great, ebbs and flows, and has developed over time as all three of us have explored the world, grown, and learned. Nevertheless, I aspire every day to grow into the man they raised me to be and the example they set for me.

I also deeply value my identity as a friend. Friendship is what makes our world go round. It is the thread that connects the strongest parts of our social fabric. All of my most rewarding relationships have a foundation of or, at minimum, include friendship. I have been so lucky to have found friendship throughout my life from a variety of sources. I have found friendship in my wife, neighbors, peers, members of my community, coworkers, relatives, older humans, younger humans, and so many others who I have shared interests, hobbies, and experiences with. I am thankful for all of the friendship I have experienced from life-long friends to humans that I only had one moment of friendship with and everyone in between. Friends have brought fun, adventure, laughter, mutual support, community, celebration, knowledge, and so many other wonderful things to my life. Few things in this world are better or more healing than sharing time and laughs with friends. Friends are such an essential part of human existence and I am truly grateful for all of the moments of friendship I have experienced.   

I am also just beginning to grow into and fully understand my identity as the founder of Voter Directed Network. It is a sincere privilege to be a part of this collective journey to improve, modernize, and evolve democracy. I also find this work to be so hopeful and I deeply desire to bring a sense of hope to this work every day. There are many challenges and obstacles ahead of us on this journey but I will do my absolute best to build this company and do this work with integrity, transparency, accountability, and collaboration at the forefront of all that we do.      

Lastly, I have a Bachelor of Science degree in social work from Viterbo University and a master’s degree from what is now the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at University of Chicago. When I have time, my main hobbies include doing theatre, hiking, camping, and spending time with people and dogs that I think are talented, funny, interesting, kind, and intellectually stimulating. Currently, much of my time away from work is spent raising my children with my wife and I would not have it any other way. I also find the immense diversities and complexities of art, sports, science, spirituality, and labor to be infinitely interesting and incredibly dynamic. I feel like I could have endless, wonderful conversations about all types of art, sports, science, spirituality, and labor. Similarly, in relation to the things we consume and enjoy in this life- music, tv, movies, sports, games, food, drinks etc.- I always have the same approach: I am inherently curious and value diversity, and I am open to a lot of different experiences. There are so many interesting, uplifting, and positive things in this world to experience. Currently the types of music I listen to most frequently are: all types of rock, folk, musicals, hip hop, pop, soul, and country. So much great, interesting, and diverse music began and/or evolved in the United States. I think our innumerable contributions to music is one of my country’s best cultural contributions to humanity. I also love movies and TV shows. The types of movies and TV shows I watch the most are: science fiction, fantasy, action/adventure, thriller, and comedy (stand up and sketch primarily but there are some good comedy TV shows and movies). Lastly, I also follow a bunch of sports. I love the diversity of competition and strategy in sports, I love how sports can bring such diverse groups of people together, and I love watching human beings push their bodies to the limits and specialize in such specific, beautiful athletic movements. I find watching sports to be very relaxing and incredibly entertaining. There is also a long, undeniable, and powerful relationship between political ideas and sports and other forms of entertainment. You simply cannot accurately explain the success of any recent large-scale political idea without discussing the impact that sports and other forms of entertainment had on the promotion of the idea. The sports and the leagues that I follow the most currently are: the Summer and Winter Olympics, the NBA, the NFL, football from UEFA and FIFA, the majors of tennis and golf, the UFC, the NHL, MLB, and NCAA everything.

Thank you again for reading this book, believing in this theory, being active on Voter Directed Network, and all your efforts to promote Voter Directed Democracy and help modernize and evolve our democratic republics.

Sincerely,

AVK

(Originally published in the Voter Directed Democracy book.)

Background

“Who the author of this publication is, is wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the Doctrine itself, not the Man. Yet it may not be unnecessary to say, That he is unconnected with any Party, and under no sort of influence public or private, but the influence of reason and principle.”

-Thomas Paine (Philadelphia, February 14, 1776)

The above quote from Thomas Paine perfectly encapsulates my honest perspective about who I am in relation to the political philosophy of Voter Directed Democracy. It should not matter who I am as who I am has nothing to do with the legitimacy of any of the logical abstractions or conclusions contained within this book. However, insofar as Voter Directed Democracy is an emerging political philosophy and I desire, more than anything else, that we are successful I thought it would be helpful to give you all a little insight into where the professional journey of writing this book and developing Voter Directed Network began. Then, for the same reasons, I will give you a little information about who I am.

Some of you might be wondering what other writings inspired me to write this book and I thought I would open up a little bit about that. I felt deeply inspired by the book Common Sense by Thomas Paine. This was such an important document for democracy in United States history. When Common Sense was written in 1776 the colonies already seemed committed to revolution against the British colonial authorities and that book helped spread a pro-democracy message, recruit soldiers for the revolution, and galvanize the colonies together. The current frustration in the United States and around the world at our corrupt government systems and our collective desire for democratic advancement and evolution is very similar to where the United States was in 1776. So many voters are enraged with our current corrupt party driven democracy and recognize the need for something different. Voters undoubtedly have all the motivation and desire we need to embrace political change and choose to collectively evolve our ineffective and deeply flawed political systems once more as we began to do in 1776.

The structure and content of this book was also partially inspired by the essay The Servant as Leader by Robert K. Greenleaf, which was first published in 1970. This essay is what started the Servant Leadership movement, which, in short, is “a non-traditional leadership philosophy, embedded in a set of behaviors and practices that place the primary emphasis on the well-being of those being served” (Greenleaf.org). I personally support this leadership philosophy and have seen the incredible impact this philosophy can have on a community as many organizations and businesses around my city in Wisconsin have implemented this leadership model with remarkable success. I believe the Servant Leadership philosophy can work hand-in-hand with the political philosophy of Voter Directed Democracy; however, I do not believe that openly supporting or embracing Servant Leadership should be a prerequisite for a Voter Directed Elect Official or candidate. Each Voter Directed Elected Official or candidate and voter should form their own opinion about the Servant Leadership philosophy. Nevertheless, I was deeply inspired by this leadership philosophy when I began to write this book.

Additionally, writing this book was also grounded in pursuing the answer to two primary questions: 1. What is wrong with our world that causes so much unnecessary systemic human suffering? 2. How can we improve our world to solve the problems that cause so much of this unnecessary systemic human suffering? I answered these questions for myself by relying on two specific sources of knowledge: my education (both formal and informal) and what I have experienced. So much of everyone’s political opinions and life view are almost entirely shaped by their education and what they have experienced directly or indirectly in their lives. My perspectives and opinions are no different. I am the man I am today and hold the opinions I have today because of my formal and informal education and what I have experienced.

Educationally, I focused my efforts on answering my first primary question from a social science perspective. This is because I have always felt that I was fortunate enough to live in a very advanced time and in a very technologically advanced country that is constantly making improvements, solving problems, and creating volumes of well utilized and integrated knowledge in computer technology, medicine, engineering, mathematics, and other hard sciences. What always seemed to be lacking, however, was our ability as human beings in the United States to solve our most pressing social, political, and economic challenges consistently and collectively. This is the disconnect that has always puzzled me. Human beings in the United States and around the world are so much smarter, more creative, and more compassionate than the systems that our governments have created for us to unnecessarily suffer under. That said, having some struggles and challenges in one’s life is helpful. To have something to push against and drive you forward can be very helpful for human beings and often leads people to success. But it is the inexcusable, unnecessary amounts of avoidable systemic human suffering related to our social, political, and economic challenges that has always puzzled and frustrated me and pushed me towards studying the social sciences.

My undergraduate and graduate educational background is in social work. Many of the sociological theories that we studied and utilize help us understand human behavior by analyzing and understanding the impact of an individual’s various social, political, and economic environments. What most social scientists definitively know we should be doing as a community, state, and nation to create the best social, political, and economic outcomes for the greatest number of people is so often depressingly and radically different from what we are actually doing as a society via political decisions at all levels of government. This knowledge and other parts of my education led me to the Fundamental Premise of Voter Directed Democracy that the vast majority of our social, political, and economic problems are the result of bad political decisions. This conclusion helped me answer my first big question. What is wrong with our world that causes so much unnecessary systemic suffering? Answer: bad political decisions.

To answer my second primary question, I needed to talk to more people and investigate this question from much larger and more diverse sources of knowledge. I always found myself pursuing different types of diversity in the people I wanted to converse with and learn from: diversity of thought, diversity of identity, diversity of education, diversity of income, etc. I am beyond grateful for the many in-depth conversations I have had with real, honest people who were willing to share where they stand and why they feel a certain way about our most significant human challenges. Through these many conversations I confirmed, among other things, that political faction and disagreement will always be a part of any healthy and functional democracy. Yet, nearly everyone I spoke with about our various social, political, and economic challenges seemed to agree about many important foundational elements of democracy and wants a better “system” that is more transparent, more representative, and significantly less corrupt. As I outlined previously, there is not a lot of disagreement amongst voters in relation to the foundational principles of democracy and how an ideal, modern democracy should function. Seemingly everyone, from all political spectrums, hates political corruption. Everyone hates the political manipulation from elected officials and various media outlets. Mostly everyone knows our political systems and structures can be improved and a significant majority seems to want a more evolved and modern democracy; but many people do not know where to start. In other words, the vast majority of the humans I have conversed with about these issues see and understand the political corruption and flaws of our current political systems but do not know what to do about it. Many feel powerless to do anything about it. With this knowledge, I was able to answer the second question: How can we improve our world to solve the problems that cause so much of this unnecessary systemic human suffering? Answer: Modernize and evolve the world’s Flawed Democracies and authoritarian government structures into Voter Directed Democracies in order to equally empower all legal voters to collectively make all political decisions at all levels of government.