positive governance

If we are to put it nicely, the process of politics often seems distasteful.  There are so many examples of politicians undermining their integrity and the consistency of their opinion and action, that it has almost become redundant to mention it.  Most of us will remember Eliot Spitzer using escort services, a habit made particularly distasteful by his history of prosecuting prostitution as a district attorney; or Republicans decrying a healthcare policy whose basic structure is the same as one they supported less than a generation earlier.  Occurences like these urge us to believe we are immersed in a political culture that flaunts its tendency toward the unscrupulous and the mercenary.  And, indeed, this may be the truth.  In part.

Yet, there is a perspective on this reality that softens its severity by considering the humanity of what our politicians do.  You might say that if our governors had integrity they would stand for something, that their positioning would play a second fiddle to their convictions.  Yet sensibly this would jeopardize their position, their efficacy.  After all, the expectations they face are sundry, diverse, and very specific. Despite the increasing polarization of the United States, and geographic segregation of people with similar party affiliation,  the prevalence of competing agendas and causes exists more prominently within each state, each district than was the case 50 years ago.  I am not talking just about the competition between Liberal and Conservative; I am talking about the competition between everyone’s pet project, each person’s array and priority of special interests.  Not only are we divided on party lines, but we are also divided on which issues are most important, and on how absolutist we need to be about our pet causes.  Before the internet, one’s vital interests – employment opportunities, lifestyle opportunities, educational opportunities – were much more limited by geography than today.  Now you can set up a highly specialized business in a relatively remote location – for instance, the friend of mine who conducts an international business translating language and culture from a small, domestic city, an hour from the nearest airport.  It follows that, as our everyday lives are increasingly specialized,  so are our causes and political passions.  You can no longer talk about job creation being the number one issue of voters without talking about the kind of job creation – after all, so many people in the United States now consider farm work to be beneath them, that many farms cannot find domestic workers to complete the work of harvesting.   Many people now would rather break out on their own as entrepreneurs than take a job they don’t like.  And this will be increasingly true if the trend of Millennials holds; this generation would rather live with their parents than take a job merely for sustenance and independent residence.

This trend toward greater specialization raises unsettling questions in my mind; I do applaud our dedication to greater specialization and entrepreneurship, but it does seem to create a bit of an odd and mismatched condition regarding our governing systems.  The way I see it, as our interests become more specialized and diverse, the problem of political connection and unification becomes a bigger hurdle.  How can we expect governors to represent such a wide variety of interests with skill and integrity?  And what does integrity even look like if there are so many very specific projects and interests being obscured by a two-party system that tries to makes a kaleidoscopic world appear as a geometric gray-scale?  This tends to create a subculture of outlaws, which, in the parlance of government, is exactly the role that lobbyists play.  The role of lobbyists is one to be examined very carefully, but put briefly, they effectively champion specific interests which might be ignored or under-served by the process of majority-creation.  We may not agree with their methods or their raison de etre, but on a whole I have come to the understanding that they represent interests that feel they need to go outside of the political system to accomplish their aims and protect their interests; often times this is not because their interest lacks some degree of legitimacy, but because in the vast array of interests, they are but a small fish in a big ocean, working with a system structured to care more about majority than about balancing and dignifying minorities.   In the meantime, our representatives are just fighting to keep their heads above water so that they might get something done in their time as public servants.

The subject of my inquiry here points at a reality that I believe shows our circumstances and systems to be misaligned.  What is a representative system if it does not endeavor to meet the people where they are at – if we do not endeavor to stand up for ourselves and the big picture of our world?  To truly give our representatives a chance at both the reality and the perception of integrity, we must arrange ourselves distinctly to honor the realities of this unforeseen world we have created. As it stands, our politicians have to accept that they are going to be seen as unsavory and power-hungry.  It is no wonder, then, that our political capital is built, for the most part, upon shows of power, harsh divisions, and shrewd positioning!

Look to the whole, to create the whole anew.

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.

How well do we know what people mean when they evoke the idea of liberty?

Freedom is a multifaceted and powerful idea.  It speaks to conservatives at the same time that it speaks to liberals.  At once it inspires the unfortunate and the fortunate.  It is a proud attainment in developing societies (freedom from poverty and scarcity), as well as post-industrial states (freedom to enjoy life), and even, from a certain perspective, in authoritarian societies (freedom from chaos).  And yet the definition of freedom shifts and transforms according to perspective and priority.

Through our various definitions, we often talk about freedom in two fundamental ways. There exist freedoms that liberate us from undesirable or crude life conditions, and also freedoms of empowerment and creative opportunity.

In the realm of the first mode there are many examples: freedom from tyranny, freedom from oppression, freedom from violence,  freedom from prejudice, freedom from cultural norms, freedom from the power and persuasions of our animalistic drives, freedom from hegemony, freedom from undesirable social obligations; the ways that we focus our impulse to free ourselves from the past are as varied as our conceptions of history and of  existence.

And yet there is freedom towards the future, too.  We can uphold many freedoms of empowerment and creativity: freedom to follow my pleasure or bliss, freedom to create a more positive future, freedom to independently choose my actions, freedom to spend my time and energy as I see fit, freedom to make bad choices, freedom to learn from my bad choices, freedom to be proud of who I am, freedom to live a full and unexpected life, freedom to profit appropriately for my work, freedom to be a part of the decisions that affect our lives, freedom to arrange our societal structures to support a host of freedoms in other areas of life, freedom to care for where we are going as a family, as a culture, as a nation, as a world…

And as I can mean freedom in one sense,  and you can mean freedom in another, I can’t help but ask if there is room for different ideas of freedom to see each other, to respect each other, to find a way to thrive simultaneously.  For instance, there is a conservative affinity for the freedom from tyranny, for the freedom toward self-determination. At the same time liberals demonstrate a preference for freedom from cultural prejudice and the freedom to create a society that actively supports diversity and inclusion through civil rights and activism.  From a certain light these freedoms are all positive and good, and yet they appear to clash more often than not.  Conservatives see liberals’ preferences as verging on oppression and tyranny, whereas liberals interpret conservative passions as means toward a prejudicial and merit-oriented society that continues to fail those whose cultural inheritance is unfavorable.

And what of this?  Are these essential oppositions?  I don’t know about you, but I want neither tyranny nor prejudice as the hallmarks of my world.  And I want both self-determination and a society that is willing to stand up for those who history has failed to recognize and respect as fully as it could.  Perhaps we haven’t always gone about our passion for liberty with enough regard for all the positive directions and applications for the impulse toward greater freedom.  Or we haven’t attended to our perceptions enough to see how we are creating conflict whose productivity, whose necessity is questionable.

How are we to govern our own preferences such? If we are to be fully self-governing as a society, we must first govern ourselves and our perceptions. If we are to be free to accomplish our passions, to engage with our deep sense of freedom on a large scale, then I would hope that many of us would take some time to see and respect others’ affinity for freedom as fundamental, even through our great differences and disagreements.

I imagine a future built in such a manner. I see in us a possible freedom to enact a world in which our leaders are empowered to synchronize our creative efforts and to transform our true diversity into a dynamic wholeness.

Welcome!, I would like you to join me, for a moment, to feel into our common future!

. . .

When you look to the world, what do you see?

As you make choices, where do you focus your effort and attention?  On the things you enjoy?  On the aspects of life that represent importance and meaning?  Or on the arenas in which you feel capable and accomplished?  How much do you look to bigger pictures of the world we inhabit – scientific, cultural, philosophical, or spiritual?

When you look into the world of politics, into government, where so many human elements merge and collide, where big pictures are so necessary and yet so often at odds with each other, are you interested?  Are you engaged?

And when you see the way our leaders make big decisions, and how they handle the important work of bringing people and perpectives together, do you feel satisfied or even inspired? Empowered?

Or do you find that politics seems distant, almost like something unfathomable that happens in another time and place?  Perhaps you feel uncomfortably close to the political process and you want that distance, despite the real consequences at stake.

I know many people who experience distaste and dissatisfaction in response to politics.  A friend recently applauded my interest in the future of governance, and even as he encouraged me, I noticed that he spoke with remove, and his words fell a bit flat. I was left with the impression that though he appreciated that I want a change to happen, he ultimately felt disillusioned or up against a behemoth too big to move.

This kind of sentiment is common. Many people feel that they lack ownership over the process of governance, that meaningful participation is ephemeral at best.  Many of us want things to be different, sometimes in distinct ways, sometimes just as a feeling, but we often think that there isn’t much we can do.  Some people I know even feel desperate and jaded about where we are headed; something is definitely going wrong, that no one can, or no one will fix.

Does this describe an experience you know? Is it your own experience? A friend’s? How many people do you know – especially sophisticated and well-intentioned people who might do so much good – who have given up on
politics and government?  I have known quite a few.

This picture I have presented may seem to cast a dark shadow on our future. It may appear as if our society is broken or dysfunctional, even rotten to the core, but I would like to propose something a little different.  Perhaps the feelings of discomfort and dissatisfaction are better than we expect, because, more than anything else, they awaken us to the recognition that something big must be done.

I do not believe there is anything particularly wrong with our system, or that we are a democracy on the verge of collapse.  However, we are experiencing a crisis, precisely because so many of us sense that we could be doing so much better to become a more perfect and fruitful union, and that, somehow, we are not living up to this potential.

These are growing pains.  And in this spirit, I would like  you to imagine that our world – our government, our politics, the very fabric of society – could be unexpectedly noble, brilliantly authentic, and simply more positive than we currently know.  Imagine what this means to you, what this means to the people you love, what it even means to the people you don’t love.

It is my conviction that politics does not have to be all about winners and losers, power and impact, with the adversarial relationship being at the center of our political culture.  And, far and beyond, I sense that subtlety, creative inclusion, and gritty transparency have a very real and essential part to play in our future self-governance.  How this might play out is still a work in progress, but I am dedicated to finding out exactly what this vision can accomplish.

And so – I invite you to join me in exploring the possibility of creating an improbable future!