Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Perhaps our long experience of sitting around campfires together and talking about what’s going on in the world around us, and what we ought to do about it next, can be recovered and put to good use again.
How the Rojavan democracy was made to happen should be of deep interest to everyone seeking a democracy built and nurtured from the bottom up.
How about it: Shall we leave the establishment of a steady state economy to the pro-growth “representative” democracies? Or should we sort it out ourselves?
I would argue our best long-term hope of improving our national system is for more and more local communities to build up robust and productive deliberative systems, to the point that people see the viability and positive impacts of the deliberative alternative, build up their skills to engage each other, and re-establish their trust in each other and key institutions.
If we set out to design processes to ensure horrible, unproductive conversations that keep us from addressing shared problems well, our current national system would do very well.
At this point in the ongoing democratic experiments in the United States and around the world, two things have become exceedingly clear: democracy requires high-quality communication, and we do not get close to the necessary quality naturally.
ChatGPT and its successors and rivals, whatever their virtues, are the latest agents in the corruption of the public sphere by digital technology, threatening to extend and deepen the misinformation, fabulism, and division stoked by Twitter and other digital media.
Think of it as a garden: you start with the soil, preparing it for seeding, and you work with the grassroots, cultivating a crop and nurturing it carefully over time. Democracy is more like an annual crop than a perennial one; it needs to be refreshed periodically. It won’t keep thriving if it’s left alone.
In addition to fostering communication and thinking skills, deliberation can lead to changes in how young people engage as learners and citizens.
All of the participating teachers agreed that their understanding of citizenship changed from one that emphasized following rules and helping others to one that fostered student engagement in making decisions together about shared problems in the classroom community and beyond.
Citizens’ Councils can also be part of a broader range of processes used within a given region to support a larger “deliberative system.”
Despite their differences, the intense time pressure, and being continuously filmed by a crew from Canadian TV (for an hour-long public affairs program) these ordinary citizens by the end of their third day had all signed a detailed, co-created, visionary agreement charting a course to greater mutual understanding by all Canadians.
