It has been over a week since I have written a blog entry at Orient Lodge, and much long since I have written anything for Greater Democracy. However, there has been a lot brewing in my mind and hopefully this long post will pull together many thoughts on how democracy can be more participatory and deliberative in the age of Internet technology.

First, I should provide some background. I participated on a panel about Tools for Online Activism at Online Social Networks 2005. While we did not spend as much time talking about tools as I would have liked, we did spend a lot of time talking about technology, politics, journalism, and many interesting facets of democracy; pure democracy, direct democracy, true democracy, representative democracy, deliberative democracy, extreme democracy, semiotic democracy, participatory democracy, connected democracy, etc.

All of this provided plenty of material to think about as I prepare for the panel at South by Southwest entitled, “How to think about democracy and technology”. The description of the panel says,

Direct or "pure" democracy is often considered unworkable. It doesn't scale well, and it's difficult for the general population to make decisions that require specialized study. Its opponents relate democracy to "mob rule" or "tyranny of the majority." Do pervasive Internet connectivity and technologies for discussion, debate, and advocacy make the concept of pure democracy more viable? Will emerging social technologies facilitate a more democratic system of government? What is the appropriate role of technology in political campaigns, issues advocacy, and the election process?

It also provides an interesting backdrop to what has been going on in Connecticut. The Fairfield County DFA Meetups have recently formed a steering committee and we are working on how we will be organized, what we will be working on and what our mission statement should be. Statewide, leaders of DFA Meetups have been sending lots of emails back and forth and have had a meeting about how we can all work better together.

There are many strong willed people in all of these groups and building trust, and striving for openness and consensus is a difficult task. If we have this much contention between people with very common goals, perhaps direct or pure democracy truly is unworkable.

In the Online Social Networks conference, we talked a bit about different approaches to democracy, and the idea of deliberative democracy particular catalyzed a lot of my thinking. So much of the political discourse of late falls into black and white, or red and blue type thinking. The goal of political discourse seems to be about talking about how ones opinions are right, and ones opponents’ opinions are wrong. Yet this is far from deliberation.

This is compounded by the prevailing broadcast methodology of politics, where ideas are reduced to sound-bytes produced by political leaders. Consumers of politics and consumers of the news are not expected to think for themselves. They are expected to accept whichever ‘unbiased’ source most closely matches their own opinions. This is getting carried over into new media as well with left leaning bloggers banding together and right leaning bloggers banding together and again, there is no opportunity for discourse, dialog or deliberation.

In previous entries, I’ve talked about the search for common ground. Yet one recent discussion led me to think that even this may not be the best goal. Instead of working towards a goal where we find a common ground between political beliefs, perhaps we need to seek space where differing political beliefs are encouraged to thrive beside one another.

Here, my thinking goes towards that of the problems with monocultures. As we learn from horticulture, when a monoculture is dominant, such as with a potato monoculture in Ireland in the 1800s or a grape monoculture in California the in 1980s a simple threat to the monoculture can be devastating. To protect against this, hybrid vigor needs to be sought.

Perhaps the same is needed in political discourse in the 21st century. Perhaps we need to encourage a vigorous hybridization of political thought. The question becomes, how do we this in such a polarized political environment, and what role does Internet technology play?

In a recent email about events in Connecticut, another activist wrote me saying,

Although we strive to be democratic, it may be wise to have a little bit of monarchism creep in to keep the gears oiled. It may be good for you to be the King a bit.

After decades of faculty meetings, subcommittee taskforce meetings and efforts to produce well thought-out and carefully constructed documents, the one conclusion I'm sure of is that a crab is a giraffe designed by a committee.

Humans love to talk, and argue, and form alliances, exclusionary cells and cliques - and more often than not this is the downfall of many groups advocating pure democracy

After reading through a long litany of divisive emails over the past few days, the suggestion sounds very appealing, although given the strong personalities involved, I suspect unworkable.

However, the bigger issue is what are we trying to do anyway? There is a desire to stop the right wing agenda that is causing so much damage to our country. We need strong leaders to stand up against the right wing demagogues. Yet this is falling into the same problems of the right wing leadership, or even the traditional Democratic leadership. It is staying with the same old top down, broadcast oriented, father knows best paradigm of politics.

Instead, we need to promote transformative leadership where everyone gets a chance to develop their own voice and become more involved and deliberative. How do we do this? I’m not sure, but two quotes come to mind. The first is from Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” By being more open and more inclusive, and spending less time playing the king, perhaps we can get more people to own their own leadership. However, sometimes, I also feel a little like Brian, from The Life of Brian, yelling to the crowds, “You are all individuals”, only to hear everyone chanting back, “We are all individuals.”