democracy is coming
it’s coming to america first
the cradle of the best and of the worst
its here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and its here they got the spiritual thirst.
what’s all this talk?
well it definitely seems to be one of those things that you have to say if you want to be loved in public in america. democracy is good. even if we don’t really know what it means. of course this is where we can get into trouble. talking about what democracy actually means. and if we don’t have that conversation, then we risk winding up on the wrong side of history, which on a day to day basis is bad enough, and which over the next four years and two months could be personally (as in, to yourself) catastrophic. or maybe not. at any rate, we are going to have that conversation today.
what is democracy?
that’s the first question, right? i mean, what’s the point of talking about something if you can’t even decide what it is, and reach an agreement with everyone in the conversation as to just what the heck you are talking about? that’s just 2, 3, 4, 5 different conversations going on at the same time. and when you’ve got three hundred million people in this conversation..or six billion…
so the essence of democracy is one person one vote. and the vote is symbolic of having a voice in the conversation that results in the attitudes, the structures, and the actions that define our society; national, international, global. and the next question then becomes, are you participating in that conversation?
what does that mean?
the rights and responsibilities of democracy can be summed up simply enough:
- you have the right to participate fully in the conversation.
- you have the responsibility to participate fully in the conversation.
that’s the whole enchilada, or sprout and tofu wrap as the case may be.
democracy big and small
so that’s the spiel on big democracy, our relationship to the world generally outside our control; city, state, country, continent, planet.
equally, if not more important, there is the small democracy. this is the completely human sized democracy, your relationship to the world generally within your realm of control, your life: your work relationships, your personal relationships, your relationship with yourself: your body, your mind, your emotions, your spirit.
the supreme importance of the small democracy is that it is the foundation of the big democracy. if the democratic foundation of our lives is cracked and crumbling from a lack of attention, understanding, and constructive action, then how can we have a hope of positively influencing, much less experiencing, a fully functioning big democracy?
the small begets the big
we forget perhaps that this is the way of the world as it was created. acorns to oaks, tea parties to democracies. from two young and naive people committing to spend their lives together (the archetypal dyadic democracy) to a family of hundreds stretching for generations.
and so our little lives beget the society we live in, this global village first imagined by marshall mcluhan in 1962, and our attitudes, alignments, and actions determine what we are going to see when we step out the door each morning.
and so for each of us, no matter how wide or narrow our field of influence, the primary task of like is to nourish, cultivate, and preserve the little democracy of our lives. without an attention to our own inner workings, without a conversation to which all of our aspects are invited and encouraged to speak, our foundations will crumble, and with them, all that we hold near and dear, and any hope of a better world.
to be continued…
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