This is the next in a series of posts on how to make our
democracy work better based on an article in The Intelligent Optimist magazine
(formerly Ode) by Tom Atlee.
“Therefore, a major activity of a democratic community is
developing the attitudes, skills, supporting processes and institutions needed
for people to engage creatively with their diversity, and discover creative
consensus without compromise. In this process, communities leave domination and
fragmentation (alienated individualism) behind.
Those dysfunctional approaches arise from a false dichotomy between the
individual and the group. In fact, individuality and community are two facets
of the same thing—our alive humanity.
Individuals and communities can only be whole and healthy when they nurture
one another.
“The crucial fact is that our shared world has become so
complex and speedy that keeping up with it is quite impossible for any
individual citizen. Thus, each of us cannot effectively exercise our individual
citizenship in any but the narrowest sense.
More and more, it looks like the only way we are going to be able to
understand and effectively, creatively engage with our rapidly evolving world
is through interactive, holistic forms of citizenship like citizen deliberative
councils. These forms of citizenship are designed to generate collective
intelligence—capacity to come up with effective responses, as a group, to the
challenges that affect our [individual and] collective well-being.”
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