Throughout the last few weeks, our PLP 10 class has been working on a project called “Think You Can Do Better?” You can check out the 2 previous posts I have on this project HERE and HERE. We just completed it, and with that marks the milestone of the first grade 10 PLP project finished. In this project, we had to create our own political party. The party that Nya, Josh, Erin and I created was named the Bright Party. Alongside the creation of our own political party, we started learning about a new form of note taking called zettelkasten (note box). The driving question of this project was “How Should We Govern Ourselves?”. I will answer this question in full at the end, but will also intertwine evidence of the driving question throughout the post.

Seen above is the final candidacy video that our party created. It outlines the basis for who we are, and what our party stands for. This work is a great piece of evidence on how I ended up with the conclusion for the driving question. It was really beneficial as each group member had to work together to complete tasks for the video. We really had to figure out how to govern ourselves so we could complete each task quickly and efficiently. Through this, I drew the conclusion that democracy and equality is really important when coming to a decision. This way, the outcome of the decision benefits everyone. I also thought how if one person was making a decision for the group, they needed to represent the people, each group member, and how in a real situation, we would need to represent the public.

This step in the project also helped me get a much better idea of what the Bright Party stands for. Getting a visual for each environmental issue and implementing each voice over on social issue showed me exactly what the Bright Party was.

Now onto our zettelkasten note taking method, my second piece of evidence. This note taking method is very special as it eases the connection process of all of your combined notes. Instead of searching through 8 binders of 3 different subjects of notes, you can easily refer and link your notes together. As my teacher once said, “the magic is in the links”. Originally, zettelkasten started before computers could link for you, so Niklas Luhmann used a tagging system to connect notes and categorized all his notes into 3 different types. Fleeting notes, Literature, Notes, and Permanent notes. Fleeting notes are quick thoughts you may have anywhere. The goal is to write it down asap so you don’t lose the thought, but also to make sure you can understand it later. Grammar and punctuation go out the window with fleeting notes. You will only be able to understand these notes for a few days or weeks so you will quickly have to transfer them into literature notes. Literature notes start to become more professional. They are meant to be very informative, so you can understand them for months to come and transfer them into permanent notes. Literature notes can be many thoughts and have to have proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Permanent notes are the final step in this process. Permanent notes are only one thought and should have minimal text and information as the main thought should cover all this. These permanent notes should last many years or even a lifetime. In the old days, Niklas had different boxes for each type of note but now we can use a special app called Craft. Craft does the linking and some organization for us, and I am very grateful for such a convenience. So what does this have to do with the driving question? Well, zettelkasten is all about linking, connection and organization. This drew me to the thought of how zettelkasten is very similar to how we should govern ourselves. A government should be very organized, each individual linked to the next. Also a good government should be connected, each part working together and even connected to other governments in a collaborative effort. Overall zettelkasten showed me that we should govern ourselves through connection and organization.

Source: Wikipedia

Now to answer the driving question in full. I believe that we should govern ourselves through the public. What I mean is that everyone in our community needs to have a say in what they believe as everyone is different. Before the government makes any big decisions, they need to make sure they are representing the people, or else it is not fair to the people living in that society. Even in non governmental situations such as moral dilemma, we still need to govern ourselves through the public, which would then just be whoever is present during the situation. I believe we should also govern ourselves through connections, each part of the government, or each one of ourselves opinions has to be connected. This way everyone’s decisions will be taken into account and so that the government can work together as a whole. Overall, we need to govern ourselves through the public and connections, so everyone has a say in decisions made, the people are represented, and the government is working together as one part.

This begs the question “how can we do better?” I think we can do better by changing our mindset, therefore changing the way we govern ourselves into a better way!