Democracy 3.0: Chaos Before Order

Democracy as an idea first arose in ancient Athens in 5 BC. Through the U.S. founders’ break with King George III of England, Democracy 2.0 arose. Neither was perfect nor a utopia. Democracy 3.0 won’t be perfect or a utopia either, as Aryeh Tepper explains in “Leo Strauss, Bigotry, and the Blues.”

Yet what will democracy in the 21st century and beyond look and feel like? What design principles will allow for a transition from representative democracy (2.0) into something incorporating the best aspects of a liberal society, in terms of citizenship rights and responsibilities, while ameliorating deficiencies of a highly technological age with unprecedented virtual connectivity and concentration of wealth and power? 

The answers to such inquiries will certainly be complex. But to honor our ancestors and the unborn to come, we must try. This effort will be trying, full of trials and tribulations. Yet as guideposts on our journey, certain concepts, metaphors, and images can smooth the way. 

Interdependent Independence

In July, in the essay “Can Civic Jazz Resolve Our American Dilemma?”, I focused on the thesis of Gregory Clark’s excellent book, Civic Jazz. Early on, I quoted Clark:

In Kenneth Burke’s concept, the rhetorical and the aesthetic—argument and art—necessarily combine, and in America they combine in the project of shaping individuals in the image of interdependent independence that follows from the civic ideal of E pluribus unum. That so many Americans seem unwilling to claim that interdependence along with their independence, even to admit to it, has always been this nation’s basic civic problem.

—Gregory Clark, Civic Jazz (p. 26)

As we transition to another phase of democracy, it’s chaotic, like the space in between water being liquid and becoming solid ice or a gaseous vapor. We’re in-between, in a liminal space, uncertain about what the future holds and whether we, as Americans and even as a human species, will survive. Is there an order on the other side of chaos and complexity? 

In the transition, we’ll need to decide what to take with us and what to let go and leave behind. Wouldn’t you agree that this is a mature perspective on change, in which we understand that some things must be maintained and conserved even as we progress onward and (hopefully) upward? The civic ideal of the nation—out of many, one—must be maintained.

Interdependent independence, then, is a concept to maintain and to aspire to. It’s also the title of a conversation on democracy, released a few days ago, that Jewel, Amiel Handelsman, and I had with Wendy Bittner, host of the Not Simple podcast of the Cultivating Leadership group. 

Infinite Diversity of Tributaries

Albert Murray

In the “Atlanta” chapter of Albert Murray’s South to a Very Old Place, at the end of one of his characteristic riffs of multi-leveled insight, he presents an image for this journey:

The fugitive slaves found out about forked tongues shortly after the Indians did. Perhaps too many of their up-north raised descendants have until recently preferred or pretended to forget it, but even during the heyday of the Underground Railroad all you had to do was meet a few abolitionists in their Yankee hometowns, in which free Negroes were even more rigidly segregated than in the South, to realize that their fine Christian zeal (not even theirs!) for black liberation did not go hand in hand with any all-consuming commitment to equality of opportunity or to any truly comprehensive conception of pluralism as the ideal for an American social order. And yet no image is more appropriate to the motto E pluribus unum than that of a mainstream fed by an infinite diversity of tributaries.

—Albert Murray, South to a Very Old Place

In the “ensoulment” aspect of his metapsychology, philosopher, psychologist, and educator Zak Stein tells us that images are key for the formation of our characters and recognition of our souls. That said, the image of a “mainstream fed by an infinite diversity of tributaries,” as representative of the soul of a pluralistic American character, is another important finding for our journey. 

To Be Continued . . .