As an American, I often ponder over the nature of democracy. As a student of history, philosophy and theories of politics, I regularly find myself coming back to central questions like "What is the essential purpose of government?" This question I find ever more pressing in the current age of complex nations and massive populations of people with apparently competing interests (perceived conflicts like that between environmental security and easily accessible employment come to mind). As I write this, on the anniversary of the birth of my nation, of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, that great testimony to progressive ideals, I find myself in Athens, where ideals of democracy (demokratia) began to take root.
Human history is characterized, across many national and cultural boundaries, by the fundamental question of whether people are (or can be) responsible, clear-minded and wise enough to govern themselves, or whether we need an ostensibly wiser, more responsible, more clear-headed ruler to tell us what to do so we don't destroy ourselves. In the Republic, for example, Plato argued that the ideal republic is led by a "philosopher king," wise, beneficent and well-educated, but with clear authority,.
Underneath this question are of course other questions like "Is there a population or geographic size limit that affects how efficiently people can govern themselves?" Or "Do we need to create fail safes to guard against rash decisions on the part of a general public which may not be privy to all of the facts or potential consequences of one course of action or another?" (This consideration, by the way, was exactly what led the Founders of the US to include the Electoral College into our otherwise democratic process of choosing a President: the fear that a poorly informed public might choose an unqualified candidate out of sheer popularity-- the process which this past November achieved precisely that result, ironically). So even the Founders of the United States, which is so often heralded (mainly by us, recently) as the paragon of Democracy and Individual Liberty, had some reservations about the extent to which the general public could govern themselves. They did, after all, refer to the enterprise of founding a nation based on the will of the people as an "Experiment." At least, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are both cited as having referred to their new Republic as experimental. Let's also leave off the table for now the obvious caveat that they excluded women and non-whites and non land-owning whites in the parameters for this experiment. The point here is that it was a work in progress and there was some faith that the essential ingredients were being put in place to form a "more perfect union."
And this brings me to my central question here: Where the hell ARE we with this experiment, exactly?
I see our Congress members embroiled in cronyism and bought off at unprecedented rates by private interests (thanks to a Citizens United decision that has Divided Citizens from the governmental process like never before.)
I see an electorate that is easily convinced by patently fabricated news stories to accept as fact anything that reinforces our pre-existing prejudices. (What? Not me...)
I see an increasingly rigid set of cultural and political identities that allow people a deep and dangerous kind of self-righteousness, creating a kind of Football Team party loyalty. The level of dialogue concerning the real issues-- and more importantly our common values-- degrades rapidly when the conversation becomes "My team is better than your team."
So what are the solutions to these deep issues? What are the saving graces of democracy that might yet make the experiment result in that more perfect union? If you ask me, it comes down to education.
In 1820, in a letter to William Jarvis, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"I know no safe depositary[sic] of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."
A democratic institution, even an imperfect democratic republic, is only as good as the education of the people who choose their representatives. In an earlier letter in 1805, he went further to say: "I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." It is thus more critical than ever that we double our best efforts to offer ourselves an education that is real, critical-thinking, culturally inclusive, which requires funding and in which trust in our teachers and accountability for good practices are not mutually exclusive. I would also suggest a couple specific subject areas that are not included nearly enough in the regular curriculum:
1) Conflict Resolution: we must deepen our ability to have dialogue about the ideas we disagree on, without storming off or unfriending each other or beating the crap out of each other (or worse). This requires a fair amount of humility, by the way, to hold to a curiosity in order to understand a different point of view rather than immediately trying to defend our own position.
2) Media Literacy: we must develop better skills for critically examining who is trying to convince us of what and why, and which assumptions we might be starting from.
3) Social and Environmental Justice: we don't all have access to the same resources, we don't play on a level field, and some groups haven't even been able to get into the ball park. But if Truth and Justice really are the American Way, then we need to be scathingly honest with ourselves about our own biases and work toward real justice for all. Did I mention humility?
4) Service Learning: service to a cause greater than ourselves is so often held up as one of the great character-building benefits of military service, and I think it can also be applied to many more peaceful kinds of service to our larger world.
5) Travel: nothing gives us a clearer perspective of where we come from than to travel some distance away from it and look back. To see that people think differently from us, and are still people. Our ways are not the only ways. These insights don't have to be threatening, but they can help us to refine what is good about our own customs, and throw away the things that aren't working.
Lastly, I will say this, on this 4th of July: I love my country (and by that I mean the land and my other relatives living on it), and I choose to continue to believe, against any odds, that the great Democratic-Republican experiment can some day become what it set out to be. But if perchance it doesn't, I'm also a citizen of the world. And so, at last, are you.
Human history is characterized, across many national and cultural boundaries, by the fundamental question of whether people are (or can be) responsible, clear-minded and wise enough to govern themselves, or whether we need an ostensibly wiser, more responsible, more clear-headed ruler to tell us what to do so we don't destroy ourselves. In the Republic, for example, Plato argued that the ideal republic is led by a "philosopher king," wise, beneficent and well-educated, but with clear authority,.
Underneath this question are of course other questions like "Is there a population or geographic size limit that affects how efficiently people can govern themselves?" Or "Do we need to create fail safes to guard against rash decisions on the part of a general public which may not be privy to all of the facts or potential consequences of one course of action or another?" (This consideration, by the way, was exactly what led the Founders of the US to include the Electoral College into our otherwise democratic process of choosing a President: the fear that a poorly informed public might choose an unqualified candidate out of sheer popularity-- the process which this past November achieved precisely that result, ironically). So even the Founders of the United States, which is so often heralded (mainly by us, recently) as the paragon of Democracy and Individual Liberty, had some reservations about the extent to which the general public could govern themselves. They did, after all, refer to the enterprise of founding a nation based on the will of the people as an "Experiment." At least, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are both cited as having referred to their new Republic as experimental. Let's also leave off the table for now the obvious caveat that they excluded women and non-whites and non land-owning whites in the parameters for this experiment. The point here is that it was a work in progress and there was some faith that the essential ingredients were being put in place to form a "more perfect union."
And this brings me to my central question here: Where the hell ARE we with this experiment, exactly?
I see our Congress members embroiled in cronyism and bought off at unprecedented rates by private interests (thanks to a Citizens United decision that has Divided Citizens from the governmental process like never before.)
I see an electorate that is easily convinced by patently fabricated news stories to accept as fact anything that reinforces our pre-existing prejudices. (What? Not me...)
I see an increasingly rigid set of cultural and political identities that allow people a deep and dangerous kind of self-righteousness, creating a kind of Football Team party loyalty. The level of dialogue concerning the real issues-- and more importantly our common values-- degrades rapidly when the conversation becomes "My team is better than your team."
So what are the solutions to these deep issues? What are the saving graces of democracy that might yet make the experiment result in that more perfect union? If you ask me, it comes down to education.
In 1820, in a letter to William Jarvis, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"I know no safe depositary[sic] of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."
A democratic institution, even an imperfect democratic republic, is only as good as the education of the people who choose their representatives. In an earlier letter in 1805, he went further to say: "I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." It is thus more critical than ever that we double our best efforts to offer ourselves an education that is real, critical-thinking, culturally inclusive, which requires funding and in which trust in our teachers and accountability for good practices are not mutually exclusive. I would also suggest a couple specific subject areas that are not included nearly enough in the regular curriculum:
1) Conflict Resolution: we must deepen our ability to have dialogue about the ideas we disagree on, without storming off or unfriending each other or beating the crap out of each other (or worse). This requires a fair amount of humility, by the way, to hold to a curiosity in order to understand a different point of view rather than immediately trying to defend our own position.
2) Media Literacy: we must develop better skills for critically examining who is trying to convince us of what and why, and which assumptions we might be starting from.
3) Social and Environmental Justice: we don't all have access to the same resources, we don't play on a level field, and some groups haven't even been able to get into the ball park. But if Truth and Justice really are the American Way, then we need to be scathingly honest with ourselves about our own biases and work toward real justice for all. Did I mention humility?
4) Service Learning: service to a cause greater than ourselves is so often held up as one of the great character-building benefits of military service, and I think it can also be applied to many more peaceful kinds of service to our larger world.
5) Travel: nothing gives us a clearer perspective of where we come from than to travel some distance away from it and look back. To see that people think differently from us, and are still people. Our ways are not the only ways. These insights don't have to be threatening, but they can help us to refine what is good about our own customs, and throw away the things that aren't working.
Lastly, I will say this, on this 4th of July: I love my country (and by that I mean the land and my other relatives living on it), and I choose to continue to believe, against any odds, that the great Democratic-Republican experiment can some day become what it set out to be. But if perchance it doesn't, I'm also a citizen of the world. And so, at last, are you.
