Part IV: Democracy in Our Bones

“I wonder whether Americans still believe liberty has to be learned and that its skills are worth learning. Or have they been deluded by two centuries of rhetoric into thinking that freedom is ‘natural’ and can be taken for granted?”
--Benjamin Barber

Human beings skilled in “doing democracy” aren’t born that way.
Yes, we humans arrive in this world as innately social creatures. In fact, scientists tell us that if we aren’t nurtured by intimates from infancy, we shrivel up and even die. Neuroscientists are also learning that we’re hardwired to enjoy cooperation and also that our brains house “mirror neurons,” which beneath our conscious awareness mimic what we observe in others.

Yet despite our social wiring, effective democracy-making is an art that must be learned, just as one would learn to play the piano, dribble a basketball, or read. To create societies that foster life, we can build a democratic culture, one that instills certain habits of heart and mind as well as specific skills. On our website, we include an introductory guide to ten such “arts of democracy.”4 All this suggests that democracy be consciously taught in schools, not as a nice “add-on” for high-achieving kids, but as the key to transforming America’s failing educational system.

Democracy also calls us to rethink the meaning of security. We reactively reach out for a protector, but in reality the surest protection from fear and harm is what we together create by reaching out to each other.

The lives of people in Part Four suggest that learning to “do democracy” turns out to be not the “spinach” we must eat to move on to the dessert of personal freedom. Rather, it is the unending personal growth that makes life worth living.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

America is lost in a gnarled thicket of bought politicos, corporate con men and media hucksters. But we're lucky: Lappé has drawn the map that will get us out alive. Read it and get going.
-Greg Palast
Author, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

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