There are important implications to enacting a greater degree of creative agency in the process of governance. Indeed, it can be inspiring and uplifting to consider how things might be if our best intentions and passionate activity had an undeniable correlation with the quality of our political interactions across the globe. Still, I would like to venture beyond that mere inspiration and explore the significance of owning our responsibilities, and our role in coordinating our participation, that we may bring to life the unity that governance is meant to create, even if somewhat imperfectly.
We all have an inherent responsibility for the quality and integrity of our participation. I don’t think many would argue with this point, but let’s consider this historically. When constitutional democracies were first introduced to the world, political agency was extended to a greater number of individuals, but not to every person. It would seem that our forefathers believed that not every person was capable of handling the responsibility of political agency. For example, in the United States, voting rights were originally only extended to landowners, and slowly these rights were extended more widely. I will not claim that the justifications for determining those who had say and those who did not were always valid or appropriate, but I want you to consider whether some people truly weren’t up to the task of responsible participation in what was then a fledgling democracy. This could be merely a result of the novelty of the constitution itself; perhaps it needed individuals who could prove its value and create a culture around this new system. We have recently seen how precarious the first days of a new democracy can be; the example of Iraq comes to mind. Whatever the reason, it would seem that under conditions of increased agency, there exists an inherent increase of personal and cultural responsibility of which the people must be ready and willing to take ownership. To me, this makes sense.
The same is likely to be true for us. When we decide we want more creative agency – to enact real movement on specific issues and accomplish that which we only dream about – it will behoove us to start to look at what happens in governing with new eyes.
We are accustomed to approaching politics with an eye for right and wrong, and the battle between what I believe and what the other guy believes to be true. This has a quality I can only describe as ideologically self-centered, and I hope our future will see us exceed this perspective on politics. Indeed, governance is not limited to any individual or group’s agenda. It is one of the few activities in which we have a real shot at balancing and harmonizing disparate ways of existing in the world. And in terms of progress, we may even come to understand that movement on one issue has real impact on a host of other interrelated and intersecting interests. That is my conviction and principle. Recognizing such, our responsibility would be not simply to move our own interests forward, but to simultaneously protect and care for the realities and forward momentum of a wide array of other interests. And yes, this even means the ones we don’t agree with. Why? Well, the short version is that, within a culture that agrees about what is good and what is true, there tends to be little regard for the disagreement of an outsider. For that group of people to move and change, the initiative must come from within the culture itself.
In my mind, we are best served, at this time, attempting to see the dynamic and interrelated interaction of our various political motives, because only then can we begin to address the unintelligent clash of values and priorities that dominates our political culture.
If what I’m saying holds some truth for you, then the prospect of coming together across the trenches of ideology, worldview, and culture may seem overwhelming and beyond our political reach. I imagine many objections; it is infeasible, it is against human nature, or that some of these differing interests are actually and inherently opposed. I do not deny these objections, but I believe these are questions we need to address, not predetermined conditions of human reality. I understand the thinking, and yet, these objections are, in my opinion, tied to cultural circumstances. Circumstances we can change. Circumstances we can eventually transcend and replace with an entirely better set of interactions and conditions, given that we open ourselves to realizations significant enough to unify us beyond the limitations created by our insistence that our differences continue to alienate us to each other.
My opinion is that, in the most significant ways, the culture wars will not be won. There will not be a victorious segment of the human race and a final determination of who is right, who is wrong. The future will be ‘won’ by all of us, or none, for History is not one person’s more than another’s. We all inhabit the reality and mystery of existence equally. And even as we see inequalities in history, those are ours to bear in equal measure, for they have all had a part in creating this unique moment in time, a moment that is inalienably ours.
positive governance 