Democracy

Making the Word "Democracy" Mean Something

By John Taylor; 2006 Apr 03

The kids viewed the original "Ice Age" in the cinema a few years ago,
perhaps Thomas's first film outside the house. Now that "Ice Age II,
The Meltdown" has been released they are avid to see it on the big
screen as well. In the spate of publicity surrounding the premier this
weekend, I happened upon a newspaper interview with the actor who
plays Manny the Mammoth in these films. He came to fame quickly enough
to see what a mixed blessing it is. On the one hand, he has an annual
income of fifty million dollars; on the other, he must live in a gated
community separated by security guards from the rest of the world. His
kids cannot ride their bicycles in the street or hang out casually
with random friends. Their only social contacts are arranged "play
dates." I was reminded of Samuel Johnson's words,

"Wealth heaped on wealth nor truth nor safety buys,
The dangers gather as the treasures rise." (Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes)

What price community? What price happiness? What price freedom? The
barrios of many South American cities are dirt poor but throb with a
vital culture and social support that the few, the beautiful, the rich
and famous can only dream of. Last fall I set out my dream of a safe,
flexible community in my "mound architecture" essay series. The
experience of speculating upon a "full service" community of modular
apartments under a single roof convinced me that lack of design in our
housing is at the heart of all this segregation, bigotry and
restricted freedoms, obligatory even for the elite. A better design of
our environment uniting personal with social space would be the best
way to get the best of both worlds, for the poor the luxury and access
to means that the wealthy and famous enjoy, plus the flexibility,
relaxed freedom and casual friendships that the down at heel tend to
benefit from.

As long as there is such an inordinate gap between rich and poor,
powerful and powerless, famous and obscure, it will be impossible to
keep either side of the extreme safe, secure and free. No matter what
they do, all are slaves. Juliet Thompson recorded a snippet of a
conversation during an automobile trip between Abdu'l-Baha and the
Reverend Percy Grant. I wish she had not been all googly-eyed over the
two men and had taken the trouble to take down the whole conversation,
but here is the tiny bit she did recall:

"On the way down in the cab the Master talked about economics. `The
most important of the questions here,' He said, `is the economic
question. Until that is first solved nothing can be done. But if it
should not be solved there will be riots.'
"Percy spoke of democracy.
"`But your poor man,' the Master replied, `cannot even think of
economics; he is so overburdened.'

The point the Master seems to have made is that it is pointless and
deceptive to call a country a democracy as long as it contains
poverty. And by poverty you can include the overworked too, because
the end result for them is the same as if they were indigent. If you
must scrabble for a living every minute of the day you have no leisure
to live an examined life; you are poor even if you rake in fifty
million dollars a year. Anybody too busy to relax and think about the
good life is useless as a voter, because that is why you vote, to
attain the good life. Any political opinions he or she may form are
useless, mere reflex reactions. Even if they take the time to go out
and vote, their vote counts for nothing because they did not think
long and hard first. The poor and overworked cannot meaningfully
support a democratic government. It is a misnomer to call such a
nation a democracy. The democratic motions it goes through are the
prancing of marionettes, their motions having nothing to do with the
real strings of power.

Somebody with training in statistics should come up with a way to
factor leisure into the political equation. That way you could say
that a country whose average citizen has X amount of time for
reflection on her hands would be an X percentage democracy. "Canada,"
I could say, "Is presently a 36 percent democracy, but if we build
more parks and leisure facilities and make them more accessible to
all, and narrow the income gap by this amount, in ten years we could
call ourselves a 50 percent democracy."

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com