Face-to-face Democracy
By Wade Lee Hudson
A fully democratic society relies on empowerment — self-empowerment and collective empowerment — and respect — self-respect, respect for others, respect for everyone’s essential equal value, respect for individual rights and liberty, and respect for everyone’s right to make ends meet and fully participate in society without being subjected to discrimination or oppression based on race, class, gender, or some other arbitrary characteristic.
Practicing how to be democratic — how to relate to others as equals with compassion — nurtures a more democratic society — a society with self-confident, assertive, respectful, empowered members. A democratic society, in turn, nurtures grassroots movements that promote ever more respect and empowerment — an upward, virtuous circle.
At the same time, however, self-centeredness and hyper-competition promote a lack of self-confidence and passivity among the general population, and, among activists, fragmentation and asymmetrical polarization — a downward, vicious circle that sucks ever more people into its vortex and may eventually hit bottom, unless we, the people, mobilize massive, grassroots movements to transform our nation into a compassionate community.
Book clubs, church groups, and activist committees often cultivate democratic equality. These groups are democracy laboratories that cultivate respect and empowerment.
Face-to-face, horizontal, self-regulating, self-perpetuating, peer-to-peer open-ended “democracy circles” explicitly committed to advancing “face-to-face democracy” could build on these examples. Organizations could incorporate such circles into their current work. Existing groups could supplement their activities with such open-ended dialog. And new circles could emerge independently, perhaps with two individuals inviting one or two others to form a circle, which would increase its numbers organically.
Many methods could be used to structure this face-to-face democracy. Systemopedia associates are engaged in brainstorming and evaluating some such options. Following is one possibility.
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Left-Right, Top-Down, or Multiple Identities?
By Wade Lee Hudson
Our primary problem is not “conservatism” or Donald Trump. Our most pressing problem is the Republican Party: an anti-government cult based on racist, populist resentment that serves the interests of would-be plutocrats. This cult scorns compromise, ignores fact, demonizes the opposition, and will accept virtually any abuse of power by the President. This dereliction of duty will open the door to untold abuses in the future unless Trump loses in November. Even then, the dogmatic, irrational Republican cult will remain intact and more effective leaders could be more dangerous.
Republicans frame this conflict as “liberalism” vs “conservatism,” and hurl “liberal” as a label to rile up their base. But this frame is false. Trying to place all political opinions on the left-right spectrum creates confusion. No one spectrum can capture the full range of political beliefs. Multiple spectrums intersect.
The conflict is actually between autocracy and democracy. If Democrats accept the left-right frame and attack Republicans for being “conservative,” they reinforce the Republican strategy. In so doing, they undermine the potential for gaining support from people who embrace a “conservatism” that includes (at least some) positive values.
Weaponizing left-right labels inflames destructive polarization. Not all polarization is destructive, but the polarization we witness today is asymmetrical—only the Republicans are cultish. Alternative frames that are more accurate could counter the Republican strategy…..
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Systemic/Essays
Democratic Equality and Democratic Dialog
By Wade Lee Hudson
Equality is the goal; dialog, the method. These two forms of democracy are interwoven. When we engage in democratic dialog and form democratic relationships, we democratize society and help establish freedom from oppression and the freedom to the means required for all to live a good life. We build popular movements with supermajority support that sustain meaningful change. Our means are consistent with our end. We achieve our goal, in part, as we pursue it. Democratic equality involves democratic dialog, and democratic dialog nurtures democratic equality. Face-to-face, democratic communities active year-round counter disinformation, help save the planet, and help steadily transform our world — one person, family, community, workplace, institution, nation at a time.
Individuals are not identical; we differ in many ways. Nevertheless, individuals are essentially equal. Democracy affirms this equality. Democrats practice what they preach.
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About/Wade Lee Hudson
My Story: Peer-to-Peer Community (Part One)
By Wade Lee Hudson
My first organizing was on sandlot softball fields. Boys would show up and two “captains” took turns selecting teammates, assigned positions, and set the batting order. Two of the better players, which usually included me, served as captain, but anyone could do it, and many often did. There were no arguments about this decision. Each captain was dispensable. The players weren’t dependent on a leader. Little did I realize that this simple, horizontal, self-regulating, self-perpetuating, peer-to-peer structure would become a community organizing model for the rest of my life — though, alas, I followed it imperfectly.
My second project was the high school chess club, which I initiated. After advertising, some fifteen students joined and met weekly. At the first meeting, we randomly determined each student’s initial position on a vertical ladder. Players moved up and down the ladder as they won or lost. Another peer-to-peer structure, this one within a larger, democratic hierarchy: the school administration.
During high school, as is common, I participated in a clique. Mine was a group of five boys who read and discussed iconoclastic literature such as H.L. Mencken and Bertrand Russell and frequently gathered at night to smoke pipes and play poker. That informal structure also nurtured a rewarding sense of peer-to-peer community. As Bob Dylan sings, “I wish, I wish, I wish in vain / That we could sit simply in that room again.”
When I entered the University of California, Berkeley in 1962, I joined a student co-op as a boarder.
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I seek a community whose members promote systemic transformation, engage in political action to improve public poilcy, aim to become better human beings, and set aside time to support each other with those efforts.
That’s it. The essential ingredients of a holistic community that involves the whole person and helps change the whole world. It seems straightforward and sensible. From time to time, I’ve tasted holistic community enough to convince me it’s practical. But those experiences, including my own efforts to organize one, have been fleeting, and I know of none I can join.
My primary motivation is that I believe holistic communities could help relieve suffering. As I address in Transform the System: A Work in Progress, it seems to me that most social change efforts specialize in ways that undermine their effectiveness. Most focus on either the outer world or the inner world. Holistic communities that integrate the two could provide mutual support for both open-ended self-development and improvements in the external world, including political action to impact public policy.
A mission statement for a network of holistic communities might be something like: to help transform our country into a compassionate community dedicated to the common good of all humanity, our own people, the environment, and life itself. That wording would enable people in any country to endorse it.
To help achieve that mission, community members might adopt a commitment such as:
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Edited 7/15/19
Beyond Left and Right: Compassionate Pragmatism
By Wade Lee Hudson
There’s no widely agreed-on definition of “liberalism” and “conservatism.” More specific terms like “egalitarian economics” vs.“free-market fundamentalism, and ”liberal democracy” vs. “authoritarianism. make sense. So do more general terms like “moderates” vs “revolutionaries,” or “pragmatists” vs “purists.” But supporters of one of those terms may agree with the other side on many sprecific issues. They can’t logically be lumped together on one “left-right” spectrum, which is incoherent and serves to divide and conquer. The three pre-Trump legs of the “conservative” Republican Party — fiscal conservatism, cultural conservatism, and militarism — could not logically be placed under the umbrella of “conservatism” on the so-called political spectrum. The “liberal” Democratic Party has had its own internal contradictions. There’s not one spectrum; there’s many.
Traditionally, the “right” has been said to affirm authority, order, hierarchy, duty, tradition, and nationalism. And the “left” has been associated with liberty, equality, solidarity, human rights, progress, and internationalism. But most people believe in all or most of those principles — because each holds value.
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There is self care of oneself and there is also self care of the movement. Self care of the movement means that we look closely at (1) how we treat each other (2) how we support each other (3) how we give each other permission to rest, relax and have fun (4) how we hold each other accountable for saying what we do and doing what we say (5) how we model a movement that those not presently involved are drawn to be a part of and (6) how we come through this difficult period of time better and not bitter. With all else we have to do it may seem difficult to also do this work of self care. However, in order to build a strong and lasting movement, it is critical to all the other work we do.
Keep tuned for more information about self care in the upcoming Broadsheets. We will look at each of the topics listed above with questions that you can use for discussion in your organizations and groups. For more information and to have someone come to your group, please contact Penn.
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As I wrote above we are going to look at each of these topics individually. I would suggest that you think of your own reactions to what is written below and then ask for time at your next meeting (if you are a part of an organization or group) and share this information and have a discussion.This is part of a larger article written by a friend of mine who lives and works politically in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is hoping that folks will sign on to a declaration called “Americans for Humanity.” If you want more information, please contact me and I will send you the 8-page document. What follows can seem rather harsh but please dig deep inside yourself and see where there are grains of truth and then talk with others. The first step to making change is always to be honest and name the problem.
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Stop Paying Attention to Trump. Start Paying Attention to the People Who Voted for Him
For the longest time, all during the presidential campaign, I kept telling people to STOP paying attention to the Twitter shenanigans of Donald Trump. He is a sociopath, a charlatan, and will be one of our most failed presidents. Not because of his agenda, but because of his lack of one. His role is to further the continued unraveling of this society. Just stop paying attention. I see no need to feed his ego need for notoriety by paying any more attention to him than the sentences I just wrote.
However, there's a real story here, one that most of the Left and the mainstream media are choosing not to follow. This story is not about Trump. The story is about the people who voted for him, and made him President of the United States….
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Sexual assault usually involves the exercise of power grounded in a lack of empathy. As an adolescent, Brett Kavanaugh displayed a serious lack of empathy. As a judge, his opinions have done the same. That lack of empathy disqualifies him from serving on the Supreme Court. But Democrats and Republicans have ignored those issues.
Selfish ambition is our society’s primary problem. The pursuit of power by climbing social ladders is the System’s driving force. One result is the abuse of power.
Two days prior to the Kavanaugh hearing, a New York Times editorial recommended to the Senate Judiciary Committee thirteen critical questions to be posed to Kavanaugh. The Democrats could have made certain that they asked those questions.
A recent public controversy about how Facebook bans content and a June 28 column by Thomas B. Edsall, “Don’t Feed the Troll in the Oval Office,” illustrate the importance of how “racism” is defined.
As reported on September 20, Facebook bans content that affirms “white supremacy,” which it considers a “racist ideology based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore white people should be dominant over other races."
But Facebook allows “white nationalism” and “white separation.” Trying to take into account how their policies impact people around the world (such as the Zionist movement in Israel and the Basque movement in Spain), they believe white nationalism “doesn't seem to be always associated with racism (at least not explicitly.)” Many white nationalist groups say they’re not racist because they don’t consider other races inferior, but merely seek to ensure the survival of the white race and white culture.
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