Alternative Editorial: A Valentine To Democracy
Dearest D,
You know you are loved. You know that at least half the world - if not more - holds you up as the model, the best way to be together in the modern world. When we fall short of your ideals, we’re ashamed. When others challenge your principles, we give our lives to protect you.
And yet I sense you are struggling.
The word is out that you're going through an identity crisis. You've long complained that your image is being hijacked to enslave people rather than to free them.
While you stand for the right of every citizen to participate in creating our common future, the vast majority of us cannot see our place in the decision-making system on offer.
We are only offered one chance to speak every four to five years. And that only in response to leaders who cannot see us as co-creators. Only as consumers of the decisions they make.
Politicians take your name in vain and you're afraid that your spirit has disappeared from the public space.
It pains me to watch. Dear D, how can I help you?
Come, run away with me to a quiet place. Away from the news headlines that insist that this is not a time to free the people, but a time to control them. Away from the clamour of addictions - eat this, drink that, buy everything. Away from the trance of tribal culture which fools us into thinking that 'most people' are incapable of upholding your truth.
This quiet place will not be overly familiar: not the usual kind of place for you to be seen and heralded. Where people on soap boxes use your name to incite us to war. Or parliamentary benches, full of your representatives, pour vitriol on each other.
No, this will be full of people who rarely meet each other or mix together. We gather without our habitual costumes and blinkers on and, in the early stages, just sit together and break bread - pot luck, each of us bringing our favourite dish to share. Instead of speeches, we invite people to offer their music or their poetry – or jokes - to each other and see what happens. We dance.
In amongst these people will be many with skills and experience in holding space and listening for the diversity on offer. A diversity that arises from cultures, genders, intelligences of all kinds, currently ignored. There will be people who possess many different forms of agency - designers, strategists, builders, carers, people who befriend others, some who like to contemplate. Some will have spent decades re-imagining the public space, others will be invited to shape their circumstances for the first time.
Even if some of these people were part of the world you are escaping, this is not a place for their old ways to thrive. To make this a place where you, dear Democracy, will feel comfortable, we design it for regeneration – always able to draw on our core and common resources. We’ll use them in ways that cause whole room participation – for whole system flourishing - rather than simply for narrowly selected groups.
In some ways we are simply taking lessons from nature. If soil can be brought back to biodiversity to give rise (when carefully stewarded) to a multiplicity of crops, can't humans also? If we have the right conditions for social diversity to thrive, will we not also give rise to initiatives, businesses, structures and governance that enhance and develop our collective well-being? D, wasn't that your intention and purpose all along?
I know that you've rejected my calls until now - you’ve not been willing to come with me and call this new place your home. Perhaps I've misled you, describing it as “quiet” or even “a place” to run away to. After all, what good would it do society if we were required to leave it, in order to change it? And how likely is it that the energetic work we need to do, to get us out of the mess we are in, will be “quiet”?
Maybe this place is not really elsewhere but exists where you reside - in the hearts and in the dreams of every citizen. The place we yearn for that we know is possible. It's just that until now, we can't put our feet down in that space and call it real. Surely, it's not enough to leave it disconnected from the reality of our everyday lives: the one where the planet is burning, social injustice rules and division is our mode of operating. This disassociation between the mind and the body is rupturing our mental and spiritual health.
So let me try again with you, D. Let’s reconnect our hearts and dreams to a real place where we can make a home for you. Let’s withdraw our power and agency from the place you cannot thrive in and relocate it in the world of regenerative communities. It's another world, but it’s hiding in plain sight - never talked about by the mainstream media, rarely acknowledged by the state.
It can be seen in the relationships between people who care for each other and build networks of interest and support - families, friendship groups, communities, clubs, festivals. It has a slowly developing infrastructure - pieces of tech, local currencies, time banks - that connects us to each other as complex humans and conscious communities, working for a flourishing planet. This is not yet in operation everywhere - but it’s becoming known to those who are searching. You'll see it in ecovillages, wholistic food and energy projects, cooperatives, commoning networks, climate centres, bioregional networks… So many new pieces every day becoming part of the infrastructure of a healthy planet.
And every now and then, there are calls for you to make yourself seen and heard here - “make this the home of Democracy!” New forms of decision making are popping up where they can - Independent Citizen Assemblies, Peoples' Assemblies, Participatory Budgeting. There's a new experiment about to take place with Pol.is across community agency networks in the UK. All of these are building democratic architecture to help people on the ground in communities all over the world. They are choosing to connect themselves to the climate, economic and social-justice solutions that we know already exist.
I know, dear D, there is very little you can do entirely by yourself - you are but an idea that arose from the minds of humans. But let me tell you how we - planetarians everywhere - are now preparing a new home for you where you will be happy. Simply lend us your ear and be open to change.
You only have to say the word - and when people come to visit you in their dreams and come to know your heart, their feet will be standing on very different ground when they reawaken. Instead of seeing the streets as threatening, depleted, full of waste and excess, they will see the people in all their lively potential, the networks they weave, the communities they inhabit.
Instead of walking with our heads down, avoiding the intrusion of those we don't know and certainly distrust, we’ll look up and feel curious, fascinated. Instead of seeing the dying days of a civilisation that used the planet as an object to plunder, we will be witnessing the early signs of a butterfly breaking through from the chrysalis.
And this new ability to see differently, as agents in the world, will be nurtured by the community agency networks (CANs) that exist everywhere. Some are new - but some are as old as the hills. Any circle of people that holds the flourishing of each individual as key to the flourishing of the community and the planet - the I-We-World axis - is a place worthy of investment. It could be a happy family, a good school, a Transition Town or ecovillage, a neighbourhood network or a pub…so many possibilities, D!
D, you have so many resources - people's passion and yearning, their willingness to give, even sacrifice - that are all so wasted in the corridors of power. Come and invest them over here.
Because if you come this way with us now, a great shift will occur. Others will be able to see each other, in their relationships, as the place where you, Democracy, truly live. They will be keen to connect to each other, share their tools and practice, begin to build governance systems that make your home stronger and more attractive. Their love for you will become a beacon for humanity.
I’ve said enough. Whatever you decide, dearest D, remember that we, the planetarians, remain devoted to you.
Be our Valentine.