Can democracy work in a world losing the plot?

Facing the threat of technological and economic slavery, now all nations, societies and communities face a further common challenge. How might our systems of governance help re-orientate humanity to live in regenerative harmony with each other and the life-giving natural milieu?

On Friday 1st December an important event occurs in Washington DC - a deep inquiry into policy and governance. The theme is '... thinking as if democracy matters'. ?

In the Holos Earth Project the issue of new forms of governance is a key generative theme. It embraces, from the holistic perspective, the question of how individuals, communities, societies and nations might organise themselves in a fundamentally transformed way. (Generative theme 5: ?https://holos.earth/themes/ and https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/holism-governance-claudius-van-wyk/)

That is why we encourage you to participate in a Dupont Summit on the future of democracy this coming Friday 1st December. Colleagues, Kerry Turner and Richard Knowles, will be participating.?To register for the on-line event go here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/policy-governance-and-thinking-as-if-democracy-matters-tickets-731382844777?aff=oddtdtcreator.

Does democracy still matter?

After he was voted out of power in 1947 Churchill lamented:

‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

I want to pre-frame Friday's event with four considerations about the role of leadership; law, culture, freedom and ethics.

Leadership

Those with the courage to take on the responsibility of leadership in this 'edge of chaos' era must discover their deeper complex human adaptive intelligence. To better manage today’s complex challenges and opportunities all of our 'taken for granted' institutions and practices must come under rigorous scrutiny. Simplistic solutions are a distraction. Whilst key insights can be drawn from system dynamics and applied complexity theory, approaches now, more than ever, need to be evaluated and applied within the philosophy of holism. Leadership thus needs to be defined by holistic systems practice.

There is a growing and worrying trend toward political populism with it's one-liner slogans. The shift in perspective needs to be away from trying to address societal challenges with simplistic cause-and-effect linear approaches. It needs to be towards learning to address the dynamic and uncertain context with process-orientated engagement. Holistic systems practice will be characterised by insight, compassion, resilience and innovation.

Law

Already as a Cambridge University law student in 1893, Jan Christian Smuts, who would later become Churchill's trusted right-hand man during the second world war, published an article, 'Law, a Liberal Study'. There he pondered whether the legal system should enable citizens to acquire culture - " ... to enable development in the best and widest sense of the term."

Looking at the way society might be organised, the dynamics of the individual in society, he declared:

"The greatest work that can be done in this world is the harmonisation ... of the unit within the whole. It endeavours to combine the opposing forces that respectively fight for 'meum' and 'tuum' into a working harmony.

But he stressed that in this endeavour to harmonisation, the Person is recognised. "The rights of Personality become more and more inviolable."

Freedom

Continuing this theme Smuts published an article 'Homo Sum' (June 1899). It was a re-inquiry into slavery from an ethical perspective with the core premise of '... the advancement of mankind.' The consequence of slavery, he argued, was the ending of all hope for freedom and thus the descent to degradation and despair.

There was a distinction between an individual in existence and Smuts' notion of Personality. Advocating 'enthusiasm' as the enabling attitude to life, this related to passionate engagement with life to which the individual could uniquely respond, and thus find own 'being', or 'Personality', in that response. The converse was an attitude of pessimism and apathy which would ultimately lead to parasitism. Smuts concluded that according to the laws of nature parasitism would lead increasingly to degradation and ultimate annihilation.

State

Against this above consideration he pondered the foundations of society and the relationship of the state to the individual.

"Will it favour the development of the individual ... or (dwarf) him to the dull commonplace of paralysed existence, to the level of the state-fed pauper?"

Earlier, writing in the Stellenbosch Students Annual (1893/4) Smuts concluded:

"Society is founded in convenience; human nature is grounded in passion. If ever ... society sets itself against the individual, the convenience of the many against the primary requirements of the individual, then convenience and passion will have to measure their relative forces."

This view of Smuts has profound bearing on the role of law in governance. In 'Homo Sum' (1899) he concluded:

" ... no law is thinkable without Personality, law being but the very faintest recognition of the harmonious form in which Personality reveals its essence."

Sarah Gertrude Millin, in her biography, 'General Smuts' (1936), points out that 'Homo Sum' dealt with slavery; spiritual, economic, as well as physical. The Memorial to African American History shown in the photograph above attests to America's awakening of awareness in this regard.

As we consider the future of policy and governance on Friday, technology, in the hands of corporations and the state, and humanity's enslavement to a human and ecologically destructive economic order, must take new meaning.

Culture

For Smuts the role of the state was to reverence the individual's progress to self-realisation of Personality by nurturing an enabling culture. Societal culture would then be an expression of individual culture. The advancement of society thus would be dependent on the advancement of the individual. Here he had a highly idealistic aspiration anticipating holistic leadership. He wrote in 'Law, a Liberal Study':

"That person has the greatest culture who, through association with nature, and the individual and collective life of mankind, individually and collectively, has thought deepest, felt most and seen farthest." ??

Nature

Think about this - 'association with nature' - it calls for a visceral re-engagement. Smuts had such an experience of a mystical self-transcendent 'being' with nature - see: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/politics-today-urgency-transformative-spirituality-claudius-van-wyk/

Humankind

Think about this - 'association with the individual and collective life of humankind' - it calls for a compassionate embrace of all humanity in its confused striving - as Churchill said: " ... in this world of sin and woe...."

Thinking

Then consider 'thinking deepest' - it calls for profound reflexivity - the antithesis of populism.

Feeling

Then think of 'feeling most' - it calls for a visceral embrace of collective human striving - of delight in its progress, of compassion in its travail.

Seeing

And then think of 'seeing farthest' - it calls for insight, intuition, and hope; founded in faith that humanity is on a cosmic journey - that we are intrinsic instruments of creative cosmic evolution.

Inwardness

In 'Holism and Evolution’ (1926) Smuts wrote about the 'inwardness' of evolving Personality as our identity embraced 'us' in nature and 'nature' in us - thus embedded and embodied. But inwardness also embraced the entire human journey, both individual and collective. Personality thus was the highest expression of holistic evolution. With mind-challenging vision he said:

"The universe is individuating as the individual universalises." ?

This insight Smuts tried to introduce into the Preamble of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights - they didn't quite get it then - maybe we are ready for it now - see: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/smuts-defines-sacred-individual-claudius-van-wyk/

Ethics

Smuts contrasted 'what is convenient' to what is 'right'. Levi, in 'Jan Smuts' (1917) takes issue with those who accused Smuts of 'utilitarianism'. Smuts, in 'Homo Sum' (1899), stressed that morality and ethics were bound up in 'influences' and 'consequences'. But rather than his ethics representing consequentialism, he was pioneering a new form of holistic ethics. Millin (1936) describes holistic practice as 'the cooperation of effort'. She quotes Smuts' own words in this regard:

"...The reconciliation of matter and spirit, the temporal and the eternal, the finite with the infinite, the particular with the universal."

With illuminating insight Millin then summarises that as "... the reconciliation of creation with God."

Smuts, this great thinker, politician, warrior statesman and ecologist, has set the bar high for our consideration on Friday. We invoke his spirit to guide us now.

Register

To register for the on-line event go here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/policy-governance-and-thinking-as-if-democracy-matters-tickets-731382844777?aff=oddtdtcreator.