1) The only antidote to hierarchical rule is bottom-up participatory
democracy, 'real' democracy -- self governance. Any form of
hierarchy, even if it begins with good intentions and strong
subsidiarity, eventually becomes aggrandizing, centralized, and
serves the interests of some ruling clique.
2) Real democracy must be all-inclusive and must be based on the
harmonization of everyone's concerns, leading to policies and agendas
that take everyone's concerns into account, and which everyone
supports. Real democracy has no place for competing parties or
factions, no more than for street brawls.
3) Democracy is a process, a way of dealing with problems, a way of
collaborating, a way of communicating, not a set of institutions or
rules. The emergence of democratic process is equivalent to the
transformation of our culture from being based on domination and
factional competition, to being based on harmonization -- a variant
of what Eisler calls a 'partnership culture'.
4) Democracy must start at the local level, in a unit or 'community'
that is small enough that it can maintain an ongoing, inclusive,
democratic process. Plato said that a society must be bigger than
3,000 in order for it to be 'governable'. If this is true, then the
smallest democratic unit should probably be 3,000 or less.
5) While individuals are the democratic participants within a
community, it is communities as-a-whole that become the participants
in larger-scale democratic processes. If something is coming up for
discussion, each community involved finds its own consensus
perspective on the issues, and sends a delegation of ordinary
citizens to represent that consensus in council with other
delegations in the region. This process, based on harmonization
dialog, repeats fractally up to the global level, with feedback loops
to the involved communities, who must ultimately ratify any outcomes.
6) Program cannot precede the democratic process. Program must arise
out of the democratic process, as that process itself comes into
being, co-evolving with that process. This implies that the
democratic transformation cannot be preceded by the choice of any
ideology, which would bring with it a wholesale adoption of program.
7) Based on evidence of many different kinds, I believe that this
kind of democratic process, based on a cultural transformation toward
collaboration and cooperation, would lead to the generation of
immense energy and creativity, liberated spirits, and wise decision
making. Whatever wise ideas any of us may have in mind, we will have
an opportunity to toss those into the dialog when the time comes. We
have no right to expect others to adopt our programs in advance, any
more than we would adopt theirs 'wholesale as-is'.
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