Using the tools of democracy
I voted today.
Like all elections, I stuffed my ballot in the box and a little voice said �Is that it? People have died for this?�
Elections are always anti-climactic. Thirty-five days of being bombarded by messages and courted by spin leading to one moment � barely one second � when we mark an X in a circle and are done with it, somehow unsure if our singular contribution matters.
Many Canadians will not vote today precisely because they feel too small to make a difference, even in an election like this where small margins will tilt the balance of power. We labour under the misconception that voting is all there is to democracy, that it is the fundamental act. To lose faith in the power of the franchise then is to let go of the last apparent connection to the levers of power. For most people, to quit voting is to give in. It is the last act of capitulation before the clamouring politicians.
As the old adage goes �if voting could change the system, it would be illegal.� I happen to believe that voting IS important. But more important than voting is engagement because that adage is true: systemic change has nothing to do with voting. It has to do with citizens banding together to improve society regardless of government. Democracy is not about the freedom to vote � it is about the freedom and responsibility to act. It may be in fact that voting is the last freedom to be taken away � witness the former USSR or much of present day China. Autocratic and totalitarian, these states nevertheless preserved the sanctity of voting even while all other societal freedoms had been stripped away.
No, democracy is not about voting, and democratic societies do not advance, thrive and evolve because people vote every few years. They evolve because people use the tools of democracy to create societies that thrive: free speech, freedom of association, freedom to move. These are the tools of civil society.
Creating and maintaining a truly open and democratic society is founded in the individual responsibility of people to �live in truth� as Vaclav Havel said. I�ve blogged this before, but it bears repeating. This is form Jonathan Schell�s The Unconquerable World:
By living within the lie – that is, conforming to the system’s demands – Havel says, “individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.” A “line of conflict” is then drawn through each person who is invited in the countless decisions of daily life to choose between living in truth and living in the lie. Living in truth – directly doing in your immediate surroundings, what you think needs doing, saying what you think is true and needs saying , acting the way you think people should act – is a form of protest, Havel admits, against living in the lie, and so those who try to live in truth are indeed an opposition. But that is neither all they are or the main thing they are. Before living in truth is a protest, it is an affirmation.
— Schell, p.196
This is the way we build and maintain democratic civil society.
I�m getting ready to head off to Chicago on July 8 for a conference called The Open Space Giving Conference. It is all about how we use the tools of democratic civil society, including our own personal resources of talent, time, purpose and money, to create the kind of world we want, the kind that is promised by marking ballot, but the kind of world which only comes to life when citizens act together to bring it to life.
So as preparation for that conference, over the next few days, I�ll be posting a series of pieces on some of the hidden tools of democratic society, the tools we all possess that allow us to live in truth, even if the world around is exhorting us not to. These are the tools that, rich or poor, we all bring to the table. They are the tools that take us from purpose to vision to action, and invite us to all take hold of the mantle of leadership.
If you are coming to the conference, consider this an invitation to begin the conversation now.
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We are in the midst of a federal election here in Canada and it’s getting nasty. In an effort to counteract some of the negative spin, our public broadcaster CBC has been running a number of interesting documentaries. Today a producer followed three candidates in Toronto who were struggling with how to work with diversity rather than falling into the political trap of polarizing people.
One of the candidates was Borys Wrzesnewskyj who is a Liberal running in the west end of Toronto. He is the owner of the Future Bakery in Toronto, a thriving local chain that was founded by his grandfather. His grandfather came to Canada as a master baker, having earned that designation from the court of czar Nicholas in Russia in 1915. To become a master baker a receive that designation 100 years ago in Russia, one had to study for seven years and learn accounting and morality.
Morality?
Wrzesnewskyj said that bakers needed to learn morality because they feed people. He drew a parallel to politics and suggested that people running for office be similarly trained.
Its obviously a perspective that has sat with Wrzesnewskyj for sometime as this article shows from 1998:
“I’m putting food inside people, and whether they realize it or not, that’s incredible trust they put in me.”
It is nice to see someone connecting work and leadership to a bigger values-based context in the midst of this dirty election.
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Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
I’ve been enjoying James Joyce’s Ulysses as posted by Botheration. One page a day, pushed through my RSS feeder. What a great way to read a great book.
So what if it takes two years!
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Dave Pollard offers a graduation address for all those of us who had lame ones when we matriculated:
So your generation is in a double bind. You have been born into a vast and terrible prison that you think of as the only way to live, and nothing has equipped you to even see the need to escape, let alone the means. And the ecological, and hence human, crisis that the astonishing growth of this prison is precipitating will only be felt in your children’s, perhaps even your grandchildren’s lifetimes. How can anyone expect you to do anything under these circumstances?
The truth is, no one expects you to do anything. The only ones who will, have not yet been born, and while they will curse both my generation and yours, they will appreciate the double bind that led to our, and your, inaction.
But if you do decide to do something, for some inexplicable reason, perhaps because some instinct (something much more powerful than my feeble arguments and inadequate stories) tells you you have to do something, let me point out three tools you can use, and show you where we have begun digging a way out.
Read the whole thing.
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Lilia Efimova notes that Open Space makes you the one in charge and then asks: “‘No way to delegate’ 🙂 Can we found a trigger for self-organised attitude here?”
Yup. And the keys, as Harrison Owen will say repeatedly are that OST works with passion bounded by responsibility. Passion is what gets you out of your seat, responsibility is what causes you to take action.
With these two ingredients, and the tools to support them, you have a trigger for self organizing systems in humans. Open Space embodies a dance from individual intention, to collective storytelling, to self organization to individual action. I see these patterns beginning and ending with agency, as ideas arise out in each mind and heart and work their way through the collective space of story and structure returning again to the realm of the personal for the action to happen.
There IS a way to delegate of course, and in Open Space we call this “invitation.” Instead of foisting an agenda on people, you invite them to help you, work with you, create with you, do heavy lifting with you.
It’s not easy, and you have to create the conditions to support these kinds of things, but once you have the basic structures in place, it is amazing what can happen.
Passion bounded by responsibility lovingly contained within invitation. The ingredients for the inviting organization.