Democracy & Responsibility
Of all the forms of government in existence it is, I think, universally agreed that despite its many weaknesses the liberal democracy practiced in the United States and many other countries is the best. In a highly technical, liberal democracy, such as our own, how can we citizens, burdened with the great responsibility of active participation in decision making, prepare ourselves properly?
It seems to me that we must develop a better way.
I am a C-Span junkie. Fellow junkies understand my meaning but for non-junkies I will say this. C-Span has a seven-day a week three-hour program from 7 AM to 10 AM that encourages calls from viewers. C-Span viewers are generally quite interested in current event especially political matters. By watching C-Span the viewer develops an opinion of human nature as it manifests itself on the show. This view causes me to conclude that it is human nature to be irrational, biased, prejudiced and ignorant to such an extent as to cause one to wonder about the future of a liberal democracy. However, by looking in the rear view mirror one has to conclude also that all things considered we have managed to get this far without blowing ourselves up. Hope is evidently eternal and we shall continue with the trust that somehow we will muddle through.
While hoping that we can muddle through, it is also human nature to attempt to improve our chances by analyzing the situation and attempting to develop ways of improving the odds. What can we do to improve the odds that the world will still be turning when the year 2200 comes to be? Possibly, since we will all be gone along with many generations removed from us, none of us really gives a %^&$(.
Insofar as providing good workers for a high technology work environment, our present educational system seems to have performed at least adequately. Insofar as creating well developed critical thinking individuals capable of efficiently working with multilogical problems our present educational system is a disaster. This is obvious by noting that our technological ability is far outpacing our ability to wisely utilize the technology in a responsible manner.
If we were able to keep the work force well trained so as to maintain our advanced technology while adding a significant amount of education designed to develop the critical thinking skills we might have an answer to our dilemma. Our schools K through 12 and our colleges are attempting to develop a much richer education enhanced in the area of Critical Thinking and Socratic dialogue already. From what I can understand the advancement in this effort is slow and halting. Training teachers capable of teaching such disciplines presents a massive problem.
Can we wait until nature takes its course and in four or five generations we might have produced enough critically thinking adults to run the world in a responsible fashion? The recent disaster in New Orleans could serve as a wake up call to the catastrophes resulting from the old ‘head in the sand’ syndrome.
It is obvious to me that we must accept our responsibly now and the way that we can do that is to become serious minded individuals and take upon our self the responsibility of becoming a population capable of better understanding our self and our world.
In my opinion we can do this by utilizing the brain power of our adult population. It seems to me that our adult population refuses to use the magnificent learning ability that lay dormant in our skulls. I suggest that there is a great deal we can do to arouse our curiosity and become adult learners so that we can better understand what is going on so that we can uphold our responsibility as citizens of a liberal democracy.
Quote: “All men, like all nations, are tested twice in the moral realm: first by what they do, then by what they make of what they do. The condition of guilt, a sense of one’s own guilt, denotes a kind of second chance. Men are, as if by a kind of grace, given a chance to repay to the living that it is they find themselves owing the dead.”
“Coming to Terms with Vietnam,” by Peter Marin, Harpers, Dec. 1980.