CHAPTER 3..... A Theory of Democracy Introduction From Chaos to Chaos Biological and Cultural Evolution The Origins of Democratic Change Freedom, Equality, and New Community Constructing A Theory Of Democracy The Stages of Democracy Liberal Democracy Democracy's Next Steps Teledemocracy Reform Now

A Theory of Democracy These [fundamentalist] movements have a great deal in common beyond mere historical simultaneity. They are at one in rejecting a secularism that they trace back to the philosophy of the Enlightenment. They regard the vainglorious emancipation of reason from faith as the prime cause of all the ills of the twentieth century, the beginning of a process leading straight to Nazi and Stalinist totalitarianism... Each of these [fundamentalist] religious cultures had developed specific truths which, insofar as they provide the basis for a strong reassertion of identity, are mutually exclusive. All they have in common is a rejection of secularism; beyond that point their plans for society diverge and then become deeply antagonistic, with a potential for bitter conflict in which none of these doctrines of truth can afford to compromise, on pain of losing followers... Gilles Kepel The Revenge of God Introduction In the previous chapters I asserted the ultimate unpredictability of human events and the unknowability of human history, then constructed an outline of human history and made predictions of future crises. To resolve this apparent contradiction I also attempted to make a convincing argument that, consciously or unconsciously, we each try to make sense of our lives by fashioning for ourselves a story, and we do it in such a way that we create some degree of meaning for ourselves. Ultimately, however, our stories also incorporate attempts to create meaning in relation to each other and to a more perfectly self-organized system or being--whether we call it God, community, the nation, a better world system, or simply a better life for ourselves and our loved ones. From time to time, we test the reality of our stories, i.e., our models integrating past, present, future--and we model future possibilities. Increasingly, as we become more conscious of this process, consciousness itself becomes a more important element in our stories and in the evolution of human systems. Theories or historical models are then constructed with conscious and democratic choices as causal elements. Absolutism applied to such models would be inappropriate inasmuch as a model which incorporates consciousness as a causal factor must be predicated on the idea that degrees of freedom are inherent in the system. A consequence of this indeterminism in human affairs is that any theory of human history must be considered a "constructive theory," that is, it must be a theory that is known to be arbitrarily constructed in the human mind and therefore subject to testing and revision. One fallacy common to both the Marxist and the classical models of politico-economic systems is their mechanical reliance on determinant laws. Thus we have, for example, such oxymorons as the "laws of history," the "iron law of oligarchy," or the so-called "laws" (for example, the absurdity known as "Say's Law") of [free] market relations. These "laws" actually exist only in relation to a set of "if...then..." productions or to statistical probabilities, or they are relatively "determinant" only within very circumscribed units of more complex systems. Surprises and creative opportunities, however, are intrinsic to complex, adaptively intelligent systems. "Laws," if overgeneralized, are more a limitation of particular human minds than of the systems they purport to describe. Neoclassical approaches to political decision-making that include public choice theory--being based on aggregates of "individual freedom of choice"--are somewhat better, but ipso facto they remain centered on the "rational" individual's self-interest and on rules for aggregating "rational" individual choices within circumscribed systems. They depend almost entirely on a modern version of "the invisible hand" that magically, or in the modern case "mathematically," integrates individual decisions based on self-interest into a final decision that is alleged to be on behalf of the whole system. Such decision-making systems are ultimately self-contradictory. They tend to drift aimlessly. They function well for period of time, but without the introduction of a stronger community of laws and values that encourage cooperation toward mutually shared, universal goals, they eventually collapse inward on themselves. A "constructive theory of history" would model the coming into being of sociopolitical systems, the forces that hold them together, the means by which their structures tend to change over time, their underlying principles and purposes, and how they may change in the future. To be coherently related to other fields of knowledge such a theory should be sufficiently abstract or general to apply to human systems--or preferably to all systems--of every size, type, and complexity. It should certainly be applicable to an understanding of democratic systems, and it should suggest means of improving them. In addition, it should take into account the potential in human consciousness for surprising decisions, the roles of both chance and necessity, human emotions, the formation of group identities, and not least of all, consciously shared purposes. Above all, it should be of real value to practical efforts at improving the lot of humanity. The fuzzy outline of meaningful organization that I perceive in history, or the perception that gives me some hope that there is a meaningful pattern in history, is based on paradigms of systemic organization and change which are described in Appendix 1 for those readers who are interested. Appendix 1 makes clear, I hope, the philosophical notions behind the theory of democracy which, in turn, underlies the suggestions for social and political action that are spelled out in chapters 4 through 8. These suggested actions, however, can be justified independently of the philosophical underpinnings described in this book. One of those philosophical notions relates to the way we think about evolution. The concept of evolution by variation and natural selection has generally been accepted throughout the world and presently enjoys a high level of currency in all the sciences. But what is it that actually evolves? The forms which evolve, I would argue, are not simply the material forms which we perceive through our sensory inputs. These material forms certainly evolve, but they are rather like the clothing we wear. Clothing fashions and styles may change, but it is in the organisms which wear the clothing that the more important action is taking place. As fashionable clothing is to the organism, so biosocial organisms are to the organizational principles working within them. These organizational principles, which evolve through identifiable stages or paradigms, are the more important stuff of evolution--the deep stuff, because they are independent of their material manifestations and are, therefore, of more general significance. The evolving principles of organization, for example, can be transferred to other than carbon-based material organisms which depend on chemical energy. These deep evolutionary principles thus present the possibility of a dramatic leap to new evolutionary trees. For example, silicon (or mixed carbon-silicon) based self-reproducing automata, utilizing several forms of energy, with potentially higher levels of adaptive intelligence than presently enjoyed by human systems, are at least a future possibility. It is therefore not the particular matter-energy, molecular, or biosocial form which evolution takes that is most fundamental or universal. Rather, it is the correspondence among the underlying set of informational or organizational principles and their manifest forms, plus their relationship to an environment that makes the difference. The underlying pattern, one could say, "employs" matter-energy of various types to create, maintain, and evolve adaptively intelligent systems within an ecosystemic context. What we ought to regard as most fundamental to human survival is our ability to recognize both the underlying patterns and the ecosystemic patterns so that we can consciously construct our social forms to correspond with both the deep principles of organization and with the forces of natural selection in our changing environment. Knowing the deep principles of organization and their evolution helps to clarify the otherwise apparently random changes in epiphenomenal or manifest forms of nature. Democracy, as we see it in action, is a manifest biosocial process that corresponds to one of the underlying organizational paradigms described in Appendix 1 and outlined in Tables 1 and 2 below. _____________________________ From Chaos to Chaos In our thinking, as in our being, we start with the tautological idea that organization evolves out of chaos. This occurs as a result, firstly, of the randomly interacting forces in "chaos." Elements emerge from chaos by "binding" one another in relationship and then by maintaining themselves for a time in a simple form of organization. Since every dynamically organized system produces entropy while sustaining itself, we assume that the evolutionary steps out of and away from disorder produce yet more entropy in the environment. The elements in organized relationship then interact with the forces of "chaos" and evolve further by natural selection. This further evolution passes through discernible stages--each stage characterized by a dominant organizational principle. I have referred to these stages as paradigms of evolution and of history. The systems at each level or "paradigm" stage of history have a potential for evolving to a higher, i.e., a more complex and adaptively intelligent, level. Nothing "requires" complex systems to evolve in a particular linear progression, but the processes of self-organization combine with random events and natural selection to produce an overall evolution through recognizable stages toward higher levels of adaptive and self-organizing intelligence. Systems with greater survivability tend to accumulate--increasing the chances for variation and further evolution. Each higher level of adaptive, self-organizing intelligence requires, incorporates, and builds on the lower levels of negentropic organization through which it's forms and principles evolved. While the higher stages of self-organization, i.e., forms that are informationally farther from thermodynamic equilibrium [Prigogine, 1984], contain their own self-sustaining, and sometimes imagined, rewards for existence, it is important to remember that much of the structure of complex, living systems could collapse into disorder--or to a lower level of negentropy--with but a few wrong decisions by a few human beings. Human social, economic, and political formations--including democratic structures and processes--are special but fragile cases in the general evolution of life in the Universe. By relating the fragility of complex forms of terrestrial life to human decision-making, the TTAPS study [Turco et al, 1983] and its companion paper on "The Long-Term Biological Consequences of Nuclear War," [Ehrlich et al, 1983] which together uncovered the probability that nuclear war would be followed by a "nuclear winter" with devastating effects on living systems, were arguably the most important scientific developments in the second half of the 20th century--comparable in significance, at least, to the discovery of the genetic code. _____________________________ Biological and Cultural Evolution Kaufman has recently described biological evolution as a combined process of natural selection and self-organization. [Kaufman, 1993] Gregory Bateson had previously expressed a similar idea as follows: "...both genetic change and the process called learning (including the somatic changes induced by habit and environment) are stochastic processes. In each case there is, I believe, a stream of events that is random in certain aspects and in each case there is a nonrandom selective process which causes certain of the random components to "survive" longer than others. Without the random, there can be no new thing." [Bateson, 1979] The paradigms of systemic organization and change, which are described in Appendix 1 and applied in Tables 1 and 2 [not yet converted to HTML], can be used as heuristics to help explore and understand manifest forms in the evolution of political organization and of cultural, biological, economic, and other types of structure. Such models may help us to better understand the origins and development of democracy. Again, however, those paradigms can neither justify a particular choice of actions nor mandate acceptance by the reader of the suggestions for specific political actions. My purposes in presenting them are, firstly, to make my own philosophical biases explicit, secondly, to encourage philosophical and political debate about the means and the rationale for achieving sustainable human progress, and thirdly, to provide a possibly coherent outline for integrating political theory and political action. No actually occurring systems precisely match the theoretical paradigms described herein. However, neither the exact control structures nor precise accuracy in identification of these paradigms in action is as important as the truth or falsehood of the basic assertion, itself arbitrary, of a general pattern of evolutionary progression in political systems. It is only within the context of this assumed political evolution--which is ultimately tied to biological evolution--that we can generate the meanings, values, and purposes necessary to social decision-making. If, on the other hand, we believe that we have already achieved the "best possible democratic state," then stasis and eventual decay of that state is assured, because as the rest of the Universe evolves, democracy can only survive by progressing to its higher forms of adaptive intelligence. The patterns, which are presented in Table 1 [not yet converted to HTML] as occurring in a simple, orderly sequence, are in the "real world" infinitely more complex--and to us always somewhat "fuzzy." Each "real world" pattern contains elements of earlier patterns and structures that will only come to prominence in a higher type of pattern. The table is not meant to suggest that the length of time involved in the transition from each stage to its next higher stage is always the same. In fact there is reason to believe that a great deal of temporal elasticity is involved in these stages and in the transitions between them. There is the additional proviso that "analogical processes" can occur in relation to each pattern in the sequence. Each pattern is presumed to be more informationally complex and to offer an additional, adaptive advantage over previous patterns in the sequence. It should be emphasized again that each level or paradigm does not replace but rather conserves and incorporates previous paradigms, and foreshadows to some extent, later paradigms. In the evolution of a species of complex systems composed of complex elements, such as human beings, most or all of the paradigms are present to some elemental degree from the origin of that species, but at any given time one tends to be predominant and, therefore to be most characteristic, of the whole system. I assume further that the paradigm patterns within organisms are externalized into social patterns based on the same paradigm, and that there remains a correlation in the evolutionary progression of paradigms at the physiological and cultural levels of organization. Thus the paradigm of feedback and feedforward structures that functions to produce consciousness in the human brain eventually is projected, along with patterns of content in consciousness, to the levels of politically "conscious" decision-making from which echoes return to inform and change the processes and content of individual consciousness. ____________________________________ The Origins of Democratic Change Each of the patterns selected has a relatively simple, core control structure [also known as a theme, "meme," "idene," model, or paradigm] that is repeated in various ways throughout the society it characterizes. An apparently random event occurs, perhaps a technological innovation or a modified historical model that offers a solution to a problem, and a new core structure appears and begins to work. This core structure then sweeps through the psychosocial and cultural prairie like a fractal fire. Two examples come to mind, the first occurring at the origin of democracy in recorded history, the second at the origin of modern, representative democracy. In the first example, cited by Laszlo as an instance of "T-bifurcation" in historical process, a technological innovation occurred which led to an increasing prominence of the democratic principle of isonomia: "Technological innovations have triggered social transformations in the past; only the dimensions of the challenges posed by current technologies are new and not the challenges themselves. Humankind's first experiment with democracy is a case in point. Known as the hoplite revolution, it was a successful response to the challenge of a little-known--but highly significant--technological innovation. "The innovation concerned warfare. Around 700 B.C., iron became common and inexpensive enough for average citizens to possess. It was used to make offensive weapons as well as protective armor. This seemingly minor innovation was enough to effect some truly basic changes in Hellenic societies. In the Mycenaean age, warfare was the privileged domain of aristocrats, who could afford to purchase horses and bronze armor; chariots and cavalry played the dominant role. The privileged few led the battles and reaped the rewards of victory. But when iron technologies became widely available, military prowess came to the foot soldier. Against an infantry clad in armor and wielding iron thrusting spears cavalry was almost always defeated. The "hoplite phalanx," as it was called (hoplite comes from the Greek hoplon, meaning "tool"), relied on compactness rather than on individual action as it broke through the enemy ranks to throw their line into chaos. Hoplites became the most effective fighters in the Mediterranean world. Within fifty years they eroded the power of the aristocrats and took over the business of governance as well as that of warfare. Hoplites were not whipped into battle, as Herodotus writes that the Persians were. They fought on the basis of consensus developed through the logic of argument. Consequently the power that came to the citizens through the spread of iron technology triggered a reorganization that, in the Hellenic society of the epoch, was expressed in the principle of isonomia --equal participation in government. The social transformation that was thus created laid the foundations of Western democracy..." [Laszlo, 1987] The principle of isonomia, which also has origins in the functional patterns of the human central nervous system and in patterns of ownership and economic exchange, then made it possible to separate the powers of government and distribute them more equally. Still, since slaves and women were not included, less than half the adults were allowed to participate. Power accumulated around orators and generals. Class distinctions and class conflicts based on differences in wealth and property were still quite pronounced. Feedback loops were usually rather loose, though in a small, direct democracy it is more difficult to shirk responsibilities and to profit dishonestly. The second example of a pattern that was reproduced throughout a society comes from the period of formation of the first modern democracy. The following was written about the early history, 1788-1800, of the United States: "What had governed just about everyone was a principle which gave a strong accent to the ideology of the Revolution: the austere simplicity of the Roman Republic. The imagery of the Latin classics had penetrated their lives, words, thoughts, and acts in endless ways ever since they could remember. The almanacs of the day, with lines from Horace, Virgil, and Ovid, had sung the praises of virtuous husbandry. The chief propagandists of the Revolution had been classical scholars, and had signed their tracts with classical pseudonyms. The non-importation agreements had been supported by the symbolism of Roman frugality and abstinence. The entire literature of the Revolution was permeated with the imagery of Republican Rome menaced by the approaching shadow of the Caesars, and it was thus appropriate that in the Constitutional Convention appeal should repeatedly be made to the history of the ancient republics. The very nomenclature of government--'president,' 'senate,' 'congress'--as well as the official iconography, the mottoes of state, even the architecture, would all be heavily Roman. Somehow their behavior ought to be Roman too. James Madison (whose expression, according to one observer, 'was that of a stern Censor') said on the day titles were debated for the last time in the House of Representatives, 'The more simple, the more Republican we are in our manners, the more rational dignity we shall acquire."' (italics added) [Elkins, 1993] As mentioned in Appendix 1, creative process frequently involves the use of analogy. The process of creating the first recorded democracy was based on the lifting of the principle of isonomia from military decision-making, belief systems, and patterns of ownership--then applying it in the realm of civic politics. Likewise, the construction of modern, representative democracy was saturated with analogies taken from an earlier republic--a pattern that was fertile soil for the images of a new, more rational and more democratic system that was in birth. The latter images, expressed in the structure of the U.S. Constitution as a result of peaceful compromise among different interests at the Constitutional Convention, formed the core structures--together with the isonomic ideal of equal participation, the ideal of individual liberty, patterns borrowed from the Iroquois Confederation (including the designation of a "Speaker" of the House), and the philosophical ideas of Locke and Montesquieu. The principles of isonomia and individual freedom, which tend to presuppose each other, made it possible to conceptualize a government of three separate branches, dividing powers and functions in a manner consistent with the modern concept of a cybernetic feedback loop. This paradigm structure, which underlies modern, representative democracy, although it wasn't understood to do so until after the concepts of "information" and the "negative feedback loop" were formally discovered--in technological developments associated with communication and war--is still to be fully understood and implemented in most of our presently existing "democracies." [Wiener, 1948] Initially, again similar to the origins of ancient Greek democracy, these representational and decision-making structures produced a democracy of, by, and for the few. White, Christian, male, property owners formed the electorate. As mentioned in chapter one, only 6% of all adults voted in the first presidential election. Such a limited democracy was, in relation to most of its inhabitants, an authoritarian dictatorship in which leadership was selected "democratically" from among a small, elite group, by and for the interests of that small, elite group. Nevertheless, the core structures and related ideas began to spread. We can see the universal themes and patterns of a progressive democratization and its elitist opposition--in the division of forces at the Constitutional Convention, in the subsequent contest between the aristocratic centralists led by Hamilton and the supporters of a decentralized democracy advocated by Jefferson, through the electoral reforms of the 1820s, the extensions of the voting franchise to African-American men after the Civil War and then to women in 1920, through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the "Motor Voter Registration Bill" of 1993, and more recently in attempts to limit the power of big money over electoral processes and the influence of the corporate lobbyists that hover around every branch of government. _________________________________________ Freedom, Equality, and New Community Ideas about freedom, equality, and community led to separated decision-making powers and protection for the "The Rights of Man." Such radical new ideas were gradually becoming the intellectual coin of the realm in late feudal Europe and early colonial America. It is no secret that these ideas were politically and legally married, finally, in the Constitution of 1787--signed and sealed in "the city of brotherly love." If new ideas and historical patterns can be transplanted in innovative ways, and if technological invention can facilitate the origin and spread of new paradigms of political organization, what dramatic changes in democratic process might we expect in the next 100 years? As we have seen in the first two chapters, environmental conditions, overpopulation, the danger of nuclear war, and the human quest for meaning will likely lead to dramatic developments in democratic governance. The practical integration in political economy of the ideas of freedom and equality represents a formidable challenge--one that could not be met during the Cold War when extremists gathered most of us into camps that effectively separated and oversimplified the expression of these two fundamental values. If we now address the integration of the three basic values underlying democracy, we are faced with the kind of enormous increase in difficulty that physicists face when they move from the two-body to the "three-body problem." The third value, "fraternité," better translated today as "community," must be fully addressed, however, because without it democracy is dead and so, probably, are we. As Niebuhr emphasized, democracy is not brought into being by fiat. There must be a sense of community that binds people together. This "sense of community" is based on both a perception and a feeling that there is a set of common interests and values that will best be served by democratic representation in a self-government of the whole community. The issues of how to define that community, where to draw the boundaries around it, and how to achieve a perception of common ties and interests among formerly divided peoples remain largely unresolved in the post-Cold War world disorder. The problem, however, lies not so much in reality as it does in perception, education, belief, mass media, and political ambition. When individuals, egoistic politicians, or corporate-based special interests perceive it to be in their own best interests, they preach divisiveness. They take advantage of the mistakes of extremists and set up an overgeneralized straw enemy with themselves as protector of a group whose support they solicit. The private profit-making mass media then sensationalizes the conflicts, the threats, and the violence in order to increase their own profits and maintain the system that protects their profits. The only way to overcome the divisiveness is through a consciously planned and massively waged campaign against it, through substantial changes in education, through significant support from democratic governments and unselfish political leaders, and through the establishment of a democratically controlled, nonprofit and nongovernment, mass media. Larger and broader community, even species-wide community, can be created within a generation, if we take the necessary steps and move courageously ahead. In these initial three, primarily theoretical chapters, we are attempting to forge an outline of theory, of history, and of future possibilities that will provide a way of creating a deeper, larger, and more authentically democratic community. This project requires an understanding of the place, "purpose," and potential of democracy in the overall scheme of evolution. We are presently limited, unfortunately, by the forms within which liberal democracy is partially failing. The paradigm stage upon which liberal democracy is perceived to formally appear, however, is that characterized by an open, "rational-analytic process" in the affairs of human self-government. Liberal democracies, therefore, offer a path toward the fulfillment of the greater promise that is built into the ideas of democracy. The larger "purpose" or function of democracy is to further, by rational means, the quality and survivability of human life at every level from that of the individual personality to that of the human species and its supporting environment. It can only achieve its intrinsic purposes by providing a peaceful way for competing individuals and social groups to cooperatively resolve conflicts and make difficult political decisions that, through communicative ratiocination, "ration" the interests of each part and of the whole society, thereby enabling the whole community--eventually--to ensure and plan its future. With each advance in the evolution toward authentic democracy more people will receive its benefits, more people will perceive value in the larger democratic community, and more people will demand yet further progress toward higher levels of genuine democracy. _______________________________________ Constructing A Theory Of Democracy In several Native American tribes, every stranger that appears at the door will be invited in and offered something to eat. The adults of one such community teach their children to share at an early age. Children are gathered in one place and given food and other desirable items. "Then members of the tribe cry out, 'I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I'm cold.' From their abundance, the children are then led to distribute their bounty to others in need." [Kornfield, 1993] Modern democracies could learn much from this Native American didactic technique as well as from its isonomic spirit of sharing. If we are to survive the confusing conflicts of the post-Cold War period, the crises of a generation or two from now, and the brave new world that will confront the human species within one to three generations, or if we are simply to improve our lives and our systems of government, we must begin now to learn about "building up" from the "heart" of democratic process. At the close of the 20th century, there are few things more important in life than achieving this deeper, more thorough understanding and practice of the democracy--beginning with practical lessons at an early age. In the following pages we will outline some of the conceptual components that can be used to construct a theory of democracy. Among them are (1) mental processes, (2) information, (3) images of the ideal, (4) time and natural selection, and (5) "system magic." 1. MENTAL PROCESSES AND DEMOCRACY By what means do we bring the feelings of the heart, or the needs of a people, to the conscious content of the mind--or to the public discourse of a country? Through a series of transductions of information and energy the needs and wisdom of the body politic are transformed into the informational and decisional content of self-government. The warm hearts and souls of a people must somehow be maintained as we move to the cool logic of a government that is created to truly serve its people and to extend its hand in friendship to other peoples. In Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Gregory Bateson described the parallels he perceived between mental processes and processes in nature. [Bateson, 1979] Clearly, there are also interesting parallels to be drawn between the structure of the human mind and the structure of democracy. We do not need to be precise, or too serious, about such analogies in order to make good use of them. Utilizing Freudian concepts, as just one of many possible approaches, we can observe at the different but mutually interacting levels of human systems an ego and an Executive, an id and a Legislature, a superego and a Supreme Court. Information, ideas, and desires flow from the body of the people and from the outside world to the Legislature where the needs and feelings of different parts of the community contend and are transformed into rules for the behavior of the whole. The Executive function is to assess outer realities and inner needs, propose new rules, and decide what actions the body of the country will undertake in the world-at-large. The Supreme Court judges whether the rules of the country are being correctly applied and followed in accordance with the written "conscience" of the people, the constitution of the body politic, and the spirit or values embodied in the laws of the land. If the actions of government become dissociated from the needs and feelings of the people, both the government and the people are endangered, because this disconnection can not long endure without harm being done to the people--which would also be harm to the government of a self-governing, democratic, people. Periodic review of the laws and of their actual consequences in the lives of people is necessary to ensure a correspondence between politico-economic processes and the biopsychosocial needs of a living community. Information and energy that comes from outside the system or that rises from the body, or body politic, is transduced as it follows paths whose overall design reveals the structure and type of government. The structures or patterns of information flow in democratic government bear a strong similarity to the patterns of information flow in the human mind: (1) Both require individual elements with some degree of freedom in their relationships. (2) The individual elements must be in a functional relationship of equality with each other. (3) A la Bateson, there must be differences between the individual elements in order for information to be communicated between them. (4) The basic, functional unit, in both the individual mind and in democratic process, that enables rational decision-making together with self-correcting, goal-oriented behavior is the following: Whether in the mind or in democratic process, an Input is compared with a Standard value, and the result of this comparison (or other interaction that has the same effect) is sent on as Output. Information regarding the results of the Output circulate back again to effect changes in Input until finally either Input matches the Standard or the Standard is changed--by means not shown here--to match the Input. Figure 1 above is a simplified version of the feedback process that will be further described in chapter four as part of a proposed model of consciousness and in Appendix 1 under the heading of "rational-analytic processes." In both rational and democratic process this simple pattern is often subjected to the rules of symbolic logic in an effort to make it self-consistent, justifiable, and legitimate. If Socrates(input) is a man(std), and if all men(input) are mortals(std), then Socrates is a mortal(output). If the Legislature passes a national health act(input) that is consistent with constitutional law(std) and the perceived needs of the people(std.), then the Executive will implement the new law(output). In both the real mind and real democratic government these loops obviously become extremely complex and involve many elements, ensembles, and pathways. The more elements involved, of course, the greater the probability that information will be entropically degraded--or deliberately altered to serve special interests--and paradoxically, the more energy that must be expended to prevent entropy. Redundancy must be designed into the system so that if one pathway becomes defective others can carry on its function. The principle difference between a democratic and an authoritarian system is that in a democratic system the elements of the feedback process are separated among the separate powers of the government with the will of the people being the highest standard, while in an authoritarian system the principle elements of feedback control are centralized in the mind of one person or of a single, small group--sometimes in a hidden group of special interests--that sets the standards based on self-interests. This self-interested party is also the highest power in the system. The citizens then become, not free-willed participants in the feedback loop but rather, objects to be controlled and exploited for the benefit of the rulers. Ultimately, however, both symbolic logic and the democratic process are unable to sustain rationality. Gödel's Proof and Arrow's Impossibility Theorem prove, respectively, that both logic and liberal democracy are ultimately self-contradictory. These facts, among others, suggests that either we are stuck at an endpoint in the history of thought and democracy or that both a higher logic and a more advanced system of self-government await us in the future. The forms which I perceive likely to conserve but transcend both rationality and democratic process in the future are based first on a "whole system" logic, and then eventually, on the logic of self-organizing purpose. These future stages of democracy are briefly outlined in Tables 1 and 2 [not yet converted to HTML] and partially explained in Appendix 1. 2. INFORMATION AND DEMOCRACY Since we have now looked briefly at the flow of information in feedback patterns and at the entropy of information flow, we can now proceed to a finer level of detail--to "information" itself. Although we will not give either axiological (value) or epistemological (knowledge) primacy to those coded fragments of matter and energy that we call "information," we will of necessity base our theory of democracy on the organized matter-energy that is information, control, communication, and biosocial structure. We will identify paradigms and levels of organization, and we will show briefly how each level is related to a core structure. These paradigms, of course, are constructively selected and represent highly generalized simplifications of real life control system structures. Finally we should add that, although we can conceive of higher forms of adaptive intelligence, we must give epistemological, axiological, and praxiological priority to those processes by which we humans survive and evolve. We have emphasized the importance of the idea of "information" and its flow through the cybernetic structures of mind and of democratic government. Information is variously defined at various system levels. We will claim a bit of information as the smallest and most universal unit of our theory. A bit [binary digit] of information is usually defined as that amount of information that enables a "yes or no" decision, i.e., a choice between two alternatives. In order to incorporate the idea of meaning, I will define information more broadly here to mean a pattern of energy or matter--the smallest unit of which is a bit---that signifies or symbolizes something which, when communicated, produces in the recipient a change in structure or enables a decision to be made. Since others have dealt at length with cybernetics and the theory of information as these apply to political systems, [Easton, 1965] [Deutsch, 1966] I will only briefly describe their relevance to the structure of democracy and its evolution. "Information" is a concept that has been central to both science and public policy in every governing system during the Modern period--especially since information was "discovered" scientifically by Shannon in 1947. [Shannon, 1947] The concept of information is as fundamental as matter or energy to the democratic process. A democracy, like any living system, is a complex "channel" that is both "organized" by the information that flows through it, and conversely, it organizes the information that flows through it. Following Weiner [Wiener, 1948] and McCulloch [McCulloch, 1965] we can, theoretically at least, estimate the complexity of a democracy or a democratic process to be the number of yes-or-no decisions "necessary to specify its organization. This is the logarithm (base 2) of the reciprocal of the probability of that state and, hence, its negative entropy." 3. THE THEORETICAL IDEAL What is the best way to organize the flow of information through a human society? The following remarks characterize an "ideal democratic process" but could with modification be applied to any human system: (a) Information flows from all points in the Universe, at all times of the day, into human systems that are receptive. In an ideal democracy each individual and each elected representative is a decision-maker who makes decisions on behalf of the whole system and of self, family, local community, and of the constituents represented. Each makes decisions and takes action based on information that flows through them and then on to other decision points that are characteristically structured into, and that define, the democratic process. Each democratic constitution allocates different types of decisions to different component parts, groups, and assemblies that are designated by the constitution. All citizens are, in effect, signatory to the constitution even if they publicly oppose part or all of the constitution. There are two spheres of democratic decision-making: governmental and nongovernmental. Within government, decision-making is usually divided into three categories that correspond to the model shown in Fig. 1: (i) input or law-creating [legislative], (ii) value judging or law-interpreting [judicial], and (iii) output or law-enforcing and policy-making [administrative]. Of course, each of the three branches of government utilizes the input-->compare-->output-->feedback model at many levels within its own branch, within each of its departments and committees, within each individual's consciousness, within each individual's unconscious, homeostatic processes, and so on. In the nongovernmental sphere there are groups and organizations of variable longevity that spontaneously arise to meet perceived needs that are not effectively addressed by government. All of these nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), too, ought to be democratically organized. Actions and initiatives in the nongovernmental sphere provide sources of information and human energy that are usually missing in authoritarian societies. This sphere, however, is not usually as well-organized as government, and organizational work here is not as comprehensive or as available to the whole system. Within a certain range, smaller or less effective government requires reciprocally more NGO work and vice versa. The most effective ratio of governmental to nongovernmental organization is a function of culture, task, and subjective consciousness. Less government may mean more chaos and more opportunity for special interests to exploit the commons. More government, on the other hand, may mean the same thing. In contrast to the principle of the "invisible hand," considered reliable in economics by Adam Smith and in democratic politics by James Madison, the ideal democracy does not depend on a mystical means whereby the common good is allegedly served by individually selfish ends. "Ideally," each individual in an authentic democracy consciously integrates and serves both the self and the ideals of the larger community. Each individual and each representative group or assembly of individuals is a multileveled, living, intelligent system component that gathers information, transforms it into various usable forms, stores it, makes decisions on behalf of several levels of community, or transmits the information to other decision points. Within system limits, the more intelligently and accurately the components process information and transform it into action that furthers the values of all system levels, the better informed and more adaptively intelligent will be the whole system and all of its individual parts. At each decision node, or point, an input pattern is compared to the "standard" pattern of a "value," a "goal," or a "plan" as described in Fig. 1 above, in a preceding paragraph of this section, and further in sections (b), (c), and (d) below. Problems arise when individuals or groups place their own values and goals ahead of those values and goals that are perceived by the whole community to be in its best interests. This is a constant source of "drag," "noise," and inefficiency in every democratic system. It should be specifically countered by every democratic constitution and frequently addressed by every educational medium but rarely is mentioned in either context. History makes it increasingly obvious, however, that laws must be carefully designed, popularly understood, and consistently enforced if we are to prevent special interests from exploiting a democratic people. Unfortunately, "liberal democracies," based as they are on the Madisonian concept that each person or group acts "naturally" and primarily out of self-interests, are notoriously naive and deficient in coping with the tactics of special interests. In a democracy, voting methods and rules exist for aggregating many individual decisions, made at various levels of organization, into decisions that are made and executed at the whole system level. "Liberal democracies" rely too heavily on these rules, i.e., these organizational manifestations of the "invisible hand" which President-elect Clinton called "the mystery of American democracy." It is crucial to the success of democracy in the future that a culture of democracy be developed that encourages each individual to regard the self as being a representative of the interests of the whole democratic system as well as the family and self. Much of the legislative, administrative, and judicial work of democratic government ought to involve creating and attempting to clarify the values, goals, and plans that are representative of the electorate's needs and desires, then gathering or receiving the input which will be compared to those standards, and then deciding what action to take as a result of the comparison match or mismatch. Conflict also arises--and efficiency in the whole system decreases--when the electorate is narrowly defined, or the needs or wishes of one electorate are mutually exclusive with those of another. Conflict, of course, differentially stresses, damages, and shortens some of the lives of the individual parts and some of the individual communities--each of which, in the case of democracy, is the most precious value, and the raison d'être, of the entire system. Only when each community has democratically decided its values and democratically integrated those values with the values of all other communities will we truly have a democracy. (b) Ideally, there is a minimal set of values, goals, and plans that is consciously shared by everyone. This universal value set supplies the core group of "standard values" against which all inputs are compared. New values and secondary standards are derived from both this universal set and from a rational assessment of new problems, just as new laws are derived from both the constitution and from a need to specify new rules for resolving new types of human conflicts. When a sufficient consensus exists on the set of standards to be used, then the flow of inputs which are matched against those standard values leads to an effective and relatively harmonious set of outputs, which in turn, move the whole system toward its goals. Values, goals, and plans exist at several levels of organization within the democratic system, however, and each decision-maker has the task of coordinating and integrating these at each level. In a "syntropic democracy" each level of organization, each role, and each individual act is oriented to the set of universal values, goals, and plans, and each individual conscientiously moves toward the values and goals of each system level simultaneously. (c) As stated, every decision involves taking the information flowing to the decision-maker, comparing it to desired patterns, then transforming it into an output pattern that is sent to action systems, e.g., health care organizations or police departments, that carry out the will of the electorate. Information about the results of each action is then gathered as this information flows through the decision-maker's environment and back to the decision point. The core structure, however, is a matching or comparing of an input pattern to a standard with the result of this comparison leading to an action designed either to correct the next related feedback input, to change the goal or standard, i.e., to learn, or to let things continue as they are. [This process was originally described in other contexts most clearly by Wiener [Wiener, 1948], and later as the Test-->Operate-->Test-->Exit (TOTE) pattern by Miller, Galanter, and Pribram [Miller, 1960]; and then in the field of government by Karl Deutsch [Deutsch, 1963] and David Easton[Easton, 1965] (d) In the most fully developed democracy, negative feedback or the TOTE decision structures explicitly exist at all decision points, not only as the predominant control process for all individual parts of the system, but also for all groups of individuals, subsystems, and especially for the whole system. Ideally, any arbitrarily defined group of human beings could be selected at random, and the group's record of inputs and outputs in every domain (economic, political, cultural) would be essentially fair. Each self-identified group of human beings, if the system is functioning democratically, ought to be able to compare it's inputs and outputs with every other group and find that there has been a fair giving to, and a fair return from, the whole process, i.e., that the feedback to each group brings news that matches the commonly held sets of values or goals--or that the differences which remain are fair and desired. This can only occur if each ethnic, racial, cultural, gender, geographical, linguistic, political, and religious group identifies its interests with those of the whole community and vice versa. (e) Since specialization is inevitable, the feedback to decision structures should function among all the relatively autonomous units of democratic society to ensure that each part is performing in accordance with the whole social contract, and that the whole system is fulfilling its obligations to each unit of society. The "self-conscious," or monitoring, components of the democratic system are those which monitor the whole process and all of its subdivisions to ensure that the system functions as desired by the whole electorate. Each of the monitoring agencies should itself be democratically elected, however, in order to minimize the possibility that the monitors are influenced by special interests. This vitally important, democratic principle is commonly violated by the practice of administratively "appointing" individuals to commissions and regulatory agencies, thereby facilitating the influence of special interests. The work of democracy must include knowing, and democratically voting for, the individuals that fill every important monitoring or regulatory position. One significant defect in most of the so-called "democratic" systems today is the incompletely evolved presence of well-structured, goal-directed systems with carefully acquired negative feedback and independent monitoring to ensure that the goals of public policy are achieved with a minimum of error, waste, and corruption. As an example of this last point, David Osborne made the following observation of governmental practices in the U.S.: "Elected officials wrap each new program in a tight web of regulations--ordering certain activities, forbidding others, and dictating precisely how much can be spent on personnel and program expenses. Senior bureaucrats then tighten the noose, spelling out the exact process by which the program is to be administered and fracturing budgets into myriad line items. As a result, managers learn to follow every rule and spend every penny of every line item, whether it makes sense or not. "In short, bureaucratic governments focus on inputs--how much we spend, how many people are covered--but pay little attention to results. Schools are funded according to how many children enroll, not according to how well children do in one school versus another. Welfare is funded according to how many poor people get off welfare into stable jobs. Lending programs are judged based on how many loans they make, not on what happens to the businesses that receive the loans." [Osborne, 1993] In actual practice, then, the "democratic" government of the U.S. still consists, in considerable part, of outmoded, authoritarian, feedforward processes that direct people to perform actions but (1) do not include negative feedback to ensure that the actions were performed well or that the goals of the actions were achieved, (2) do not adequately rely on the autonomous intelligence of people in the field, and (3) are not adequately monitored by democratically controlled oversight groups. This was partially recognized in 1993 by the Clinton-Gore administration which is, at the time of this writing, attempting to introduce goal-oriented, negative feedback processes and greater reliance on the ability of decentralized control structures as part of their "reinvention" of government. [Gore, 1993] If successfully implemented, these changes would help lift U.S. democracy to a more advanced stage of democracy. As we move on from liberal democracy and its confining concepts of capital and of national sovereignty, the "decision-maker" will become, in an irregular progression, the representatives of international organizations, regionally defined supranational systems, and eventually, the representatives of the whole human species. In response to the changing universe we will continue to evolve and refine methods of coping with the whole flow of information from the cosmos through the human species and its ecosystemic supports. Every level of decision-maker would then, theoretically, become integrally involved in the flow of information and decision. When universality of democracy is truly achieved, peace and well-being will be secured throughout the planet for each self-identified people. Every nation will then be able to safely devolve to smaller, more efficient units of democracy. Smaller systems, such as the individual, the family, the group, and the community--as well as other formally defined bodies of democracy--will then become more autonomous as well as more consciously oriented to the universal set of values and purposes established by democratic means for the whole species. Democracy, in sum, is a set of information, decision, and control structures through which a portion of the Universe passes as its matter-energy and information evolves. It is, theoretically, a method by which living systems structure the flow of information and values to reduce violent conflict, improve themselves, and further their own evolution toward systems of higher quality and greater adaptive intelligence. Ultimately, again in theory--which is often subverted in practice--the decisions made in a democracy (or in any governmental process) are made on behalf of all the living systems that are affected by the governing demos and which are part of the ecosystem that sustains the life of the demos. In practice, and increasingly in theory, the decisions made by human organizations have impact on all living systems. Since all living cells probably evolved from the same original cell and have in common many bits of DNA information, and since all living cells on Earth are interdependent, it is appropriate that democracies, when globally integrated, regard themselves as representing not only their formally defined electorates but all other electorates--and all of Life. 4. DEMOCRACY IN TIME In the theoretical model, as democratic systems move through time they reach countless decision points where they either (1) choose to continue unchanged, or (2) they choose to change themselves--sometimes radically. These decisions are then acted upon by the forces of natural selection which, "naturally," favor adaptive intelligence, higher degrees of self-organization, and self-reproductive fecundity. Innovations in self-government that sustain the environment, benefit people and elicit participative support from more individuals and groups, will increase the adaptive intelligence of the system, improve both the quality and quantity of information available for decision-making, and speed the flow of information in all feedback loops. Such innovations will tend to survive by a combination of both conscious selection and natural selection as well as self-organizing pressures for cognitive consistency, rationality, peaceful resolution of conflict, and internal human "reward systems." Democracy is evolving via the combined forces of random change, conscious change, self-organizational forces, and by natural selection in much the same way that these forces operate in the physical and biological realms. [Kaufman, 1993] This view of democratic change is consistent with some elements in the views expressed by others. [Schumpeter, 1942] [Collins, 1989] Human values, part and parcel of every system of government, may be regarded as being subject to the same forces of natural selection and self-organization. Values must be appealing to human beings and incorporated by human systems in order to survive as human values. They must be consistent with the needs or unspoken values of life, or they will weaken the survivability of life. "Biocultural clades," i.e., ensembles of values, political structures, economic and cultural elements, and ecological subsystems that are tied to the same core progenitors, evolve and face the forces of natural selection together--making it sometimes difficult to identify the particular values that are most conducive to survival. This view is in contrast to, though not necessarily in contradiction with, more romantic notions of freedom, justice, and equality as absolute values set forth by a supernatural being to ennoble humanity--or as means by which we satisfy our need to feel that we are noble, that is, made of the same stuff as the gods. One can arrive at two identical sets of human values by either a secular or a religious path, and those who follow either path ought to look for cooperation and support from those who follow the other path. All views and hypotheses set forth here, however, are presented in the spirit of nature's "research program" and so long as life can consciously organize itself on the basis of values, this research will be unfinished. 5. MAGIC IN THE SYSTEM All values will only be decided over time by forces which remain beyond the capability of particular subsystems of the Universe. Consequently, though we have advanced to a point in political and economic evolution which enables us to consciously extrude the "invisible hand" from our models, we have not--nor will we ever--reach a moment in history when we can rule out all the elements of chance. These forces are larger than democracy, smaller than democracy, and present in the interstices of democracy. As mentioned earlier, the philosophical ideas involved in this theory of democracy are described partially to situate ourselves and our democratic processes within a general understanding of the material organization and evolution of the Universe. Ultimately democracies have to evolve and adapt within a larger sphere of coexistence and with specific dangers that will always be present in the rest of the physical Universe. I am attempting to proceed in a way that minimizes reference to romantic, mystical, or supernatural forces which, I think, contribute little actual support for a further evolution of human intelligence. Romance, religious faith, and mystical process will remain a prominent part of all our lives, however, because of both their subjective and objective relationship to the uncertainties of life. In addition to the eternal mystery of "chaos," there will always be a sense of "magic" in the unpredictable complexities of human love and in all its myriad manifestations and implications. The "mysterious" logic of love, however, not so mysteriously leads to many of the same conclusions reached by the logic of democracy. One can also find mystery in the ideals of science, the search for truth shorn of parasitic riders, and in the vast amount of knowledge yet to be gleaned from both living and nonliving worlds via faith in the value of hard work, scientific method, and practical creativity. Ultimately, however, the forces of natural selection and self-organization will determine which worldview works best. Capturing the minds of humanity by clever but temporal argument will always take second place to the ongoing real correspondences among the forces of nature, our thoughts, and our actions. There is magic, and a sense of reverence, awaiting each person who contemplates the possibility of perfecting democracy. Since democracy is a system of human self-government in which, ideally, each person has the rights and freedoms necessary to participate meaningfully in all decisions that affect his or her life, and in which each person receives respect as a result of unselfish participation, and each has a voice potentially equal to all others in opportunity for expression, there is a pleasurable feeling to be experienced as one imagines living in an ideal democracy. In contemplating actual steps taken to move society toward the creation or improvement of decision-making structures which incorporate each person's opinion into decisions made on behalf of the whole community as well as all of its individuals and groups, there is also the excitement of thinking about the happy and healthy faces of children and young adults who will believe in the future possibilities that democracy can offer them. In an ideal democracy the distribution among all citizens of energy, information, and representational power would be essentially equal; peaceful resolution of all conflicts would be taken for granted; and human personalities would naturally reflect a sense of wonder at the achievement of such progress--especially when comparing their lives with the wars and pogroms of the past. In a heightened awareness of the "great mystery of democracy," we would find further opportunity to bring into our decision-making processes a sense of awe as the eyes and ears, the sensitivities, the thoughts, the hard work, the intelligence, and the feelings of every individual and of every people come together to produce surprisingly creative, and therefore ultimately unpredictable, outcomes. _________________________________ The Stages of Democracy In comparison with the limited and self-serving perspectives of an authoritarian elite, "real" democracy would enormously expand the awareness and adaptive intelligence of the human species, liberating humans to create, and to thoroughly enjoy, new levels of culture and quality of life. No ideal of perfection can ever be completely achieved, but the stages of democracy can be identified by the ways in which they fall short of that ideal as well as by comparison to past achievements. And we can experience the excitement of the "chase" as we make progress toward our ideals, if together we select them consciously and actively pursue them. An organization characterized simply by a precise distribution of control and information equally among all elements would be more akin to the structure of a crystal lattice, however, than a living democracy. All of its energy would go into making every human relationship a manifestation of the perfect mixture of freedom and equality. We must therefore understand how the various elements of a democracy are different and unequal in practice as well as how they are free and equal in theory, and we must understand how larger, complex forces act upon democracy, how democracy tends by itself to evolve, how it inevitably retains some pre-democratic, quasi-authoritarian structures, and how it moves toward higher than democratic levels of organization--or higher than what we now understand as democracy. On the next page we present a table showing in simplified form the theoretical model of democracy as it stretches out over time. The hypothesized stages in the evolution of democracy correlate with the paradigms of organization that can be seen in the deep structures of evolutionary process--and in the evolution of structures of consciousness. The first table briefly describes the hypothesized stages that can be seen in the more general sweep--or grand scale--of history, i.e., over a much longer time span than seen in the following table. In Table 2 we apply the concepts in the same order but to history on a smaller scale, that is, to a finer slice of time and with somewhat greater magnification of detail. The reader should keep in mind the constructivist, and hypothetical nature, of any such model--but also its potential for contributing to the evolution and improvement of human self-government. Table 1. Stages of Democracy [not yet converted to HTML] _____________________________ Liberal Democracy Liberal democracy will be defined here as that phase in the evolution of democracy wherein the primary emphasis is on individual rights and freedom from arbitrary state powers, a tolerance of differences, and the pursuit of individual happiness within the context of a market economy and a global system based on national sovereignty. For extensive discussion and description of the ideas of liberal democracy, the reader is referred to the writings of Locke, Madison, Jefferson, Falk and the World Order Models Project(WOMP), Macpherson, Barber, Collins, Held, Rawls--all listed in the bibliography. The following table summarizes the hypothesized evolution of liberal democracy. Each stage, or phase, is briefly characterized in relation to three domains: (1) social and economic systems, (2) political structure, and (3) ecological policy. Many terms used in this and the previous table will be more fully explained in the chapters that elaborate on the proposed model for future democracies. Again, the purpose of conceptualizing democracy in this way is to make clearer where we have been and where we stand in relation to a possible, more adaptively intelligent and more democratic, future. Table 2. Stages of Liberal Democracy [not yet converted to HTML] _____________________________ Democracy's Next Steps Every party or movement for social change should take into account the possible evolution of democratic processes as outlined above. Parties that do not ally themselves with the almost universal yearning for progress toward genuine democracy run the risk of falling off the geopolitical map. Democracy, of course, has still not been accepted in large parts of the world, and even where it is supposedly well-established it has not efficiently resolved many of the problems that confront the human race. If after 200 years it seems to be failing in its principle tasks, then why think of democracy as the path to the future? Even the flawed democracies of today are much preferred to the antidemocratic alternatives. Furthermore, democracies have demonstrated some capacity for evolution and self-improvement. Democracy, it can be argued, deserves a chance. The truth is that before the first signature was placed on the first modern constitution the democratic ideal had been captured and deformed by a privileged elite--the very same forces which now block sane environmental policies and prevent us from stopping the international arms race that still threatens our future. Some East Europeans have said that "Communism didn't fail; it was never even tried." At the present moment in history, might we not say the same thing about democracy? Democratic government, we should remind ourselves, is not the solution to all human problems. It is, in and of itself, a worthy end, but it is also a means by which we can arrive at a variety of ends. Democracy lives as a cherished ideal and as the greatest hope for good gov-ernment among a vast majority of humankind, but is democracy in its current forms capa-ble of coping with the grave dangers that will threaten humanity in the 21st century? Can we overcome the anomie, apathy, and atrophy of political will that has seeped--or has been injected--into our veins? Is it possible to democratically control the moneyed interests that still dominate our "democracies?" If "democracies" become truly democratic, will we be able overcome the cultural inertia in time to resolve our major crises? While addressing these questions in the following chapters, we will also attempt to outline a way to re-capture both the ideal and the practice of democratic self-government. Our strategy aims to take democracy out of the hands of self-serving special interests and restore it to its rightful place in the evolution of all the Earth's peoples--so that we as groups and as a species can be more responsive to clear, present, and future dangers. However, democracy is not enough when is seen simply as a political decision-making process. A method of making social decisions without a world view, without knowledge and values that can take us beyond our immediate needs, is by its very nature a hollow and limited process. Up until now perhaps it was enough to base a narrowly enfranchised, democratic society on the individual's "inalienable right to happiness" or on the feeling of its citizens that they enjoy human rights and that their system works well enough to supply their material needs. The growing list of serious and unsolved problems that transcend national borders show clearly that a democracy designed to maximize the interests only of its own citizens will no longer work. Democracy was not the first system of governance that was based on an "ennobled idea." It was never simply a set of ideas, nor can it ever be simply an abstract, logical system. It is part of a living system, and if it is to be successfully implemented it must emanate from a recognition of the specific characteristics and needs of its living components. Capital, religious groups, absolute ideologies, gender, racial and ethnic identities, linguistic groups, class, corporations, industry, trade, geographic interests, privately-owned mass media, and other separate interests tend continually to bend the democratic process toward their own particular needs. Any democratic theory that bases itself on the construct of independent, equal, and identical individuals is a fiction that ignores the powerful affinities which exist among individuals who identify with the interests of distinctive groups. Democracy must always include measures that carefully and specifically address the tendency of special interests to take control of political decision-making, while at the same time preserving and protecting the rights of cultural, ethnic, gender, and racial groups. One of the great responsibilities of democracy is to provide equal opportunity and to elicit equality of participation among all such groups in the decision-making of the whole system, a task it will fail unless it also ensures that the distribution of other public goods to each group is fair. Philosophically, as well as politically, this poses interesting problems. Democracy is, theoretically at least, a method of decision-making by which everyone can participate on the basis of equal opportunity. As such it is a means of transforming inputs into outputs that serve the interests of both the whole community and individuals in a balanced way. Practically, however, some goods, whether material or nonmaterial values, will reach some people before others, or some people and not others, and that some goods will mistakenly reach people instead of the goods they need, that the interests of the whole people may be best served by limiting the circulation of particular goods, and so on. There will, in short, always be people to whom the system has not been completely fair. Democratic systems ought to expect this and provide a full and rational accounting later along with appropriate compensation. One further problem that challenges us perhaps more than any other is this: almost all of the selfish or special interests who try to distort the democratic process in order to make it serve their own ends do so by deception. Lying, half-truths, clever sophistry, false advertising, limiting the agenda for public discussion, exploiting the "fine print" and hidden complexity of big government--all these and more are the ways and means of special interests. A certain percentage of the cost of democratic government must go toward measures that protect us from the clever devices of special interests. In the face of these ever-present sources of imperfection and injustice, how can we best proceed to reform our societal institutions and decision-making? It may not be as difficult to solve these problems if we think in terms of one small step at a time. There are innumerable changes that could be made--some of which would speed progress more than others. The model constitution presented in The Universal Model: A Democratic Constitution includes several clauses that attempt to address the problem of deception. _____________________________ Teledemocracy We will now look briefly at technological developments that are likely to facilitate the transformation of liberal democracy to yet more advanced forms of democracy and help reduce the problems associated with special interests and deception. Computers with high speed modems and optical fiber networks make "teledemocracy" almost inevitable, and global teledemocracy much more feasible, in the 21st century. Here is one possible scenario for its development: 1. If the representatives in government consult with a wider variety of people more often regarding more issues, then the functions and purposes of democracy could be more adequately served. Further, if these consultative exchanges could be done quickly, democratic decision-making could be more richly endowed with the wisdom of the whole electorate. Democracy could thereby be more efficient and more adaptively intelligent. 2. Efficiency can be accomplished easily in the future by electronic means. The following is a proposal for a specific structure by which a world-wide, electronically based democracy, global teledemocracy, could be achieved over the next 25-50 years. 3. With the strong support of member nations, the U.N. could create a special commission to study, fund research, and facilitate a global education in preparation for global teledemocracy. Where economically more feasible, the teledemocratic system could be established in smaller electoral districts as pilot projects. First local computers, then regional and eventually global networks of computers can be set up with memory sectors organized for neighborhood, community, county, congressional district, state, national, and world decision-making--all communicating with each other in a "teledemocracy network." 4. Interactive terminals and radio antennae or optical fiber cables could be located in homes, worksites, bus and train stations, airports, businesses, libraries, post offices, DMV offices, and all government buildings including schools and hospitals, with channels on TV and radio sets connected to the network. Small handheld, interactive communication units could be connected to the network by telephone and/or radio. Voter registration or absentee ballots could be updated electronically by citizens who change residence or who travel abroad. 5. Each eligible voter will have a personal identification (PIN#) number and a "smart" ID card--[all-purpose, may also work as a credit card, health care card, transportation ticket, ticket card for theater, symphonies, sports events, "eco-credits," "work credits," etc.] This card could be inserted into telephone, TV, or computer terminals and updated or to store copies of voter contacts. Voiceprints, voice recognition, and speech synthesis technology will further facilitate confidential communication and security within the teledemocratic network. 6. On the computers at any one time there will be several issues (more when computers can handle it) that are being discussed and/or decided, locally at first, eventually at each of seven levels of government--community, city, county, state, nation, continental regions, and world. 7. Once a week or month each voter is eligible to state a preference on any particular issue and to register that preference or comment on the network. Registering a preference, however, is not yet a final vote. Rather it is information that helps legislators become familiar with developing public opinion. 8. A running total of preferences and summary of comments will also be available on interactive display screens, in newspapers, and in magazines. These will be periodically updated and will include graphic displays to show trends. 9. A record of activity on each issue, to include the number of new preferences, totals, # of changed preferences, the gender, ethnicity, race, age, occupations, residence area, party affiliation, country, etc., would be automatically calculated by the computer which also protects the identity of the voter's "secret electronic ballot." This record can be periodically published on screens and in daily papers. 10. The whole process will be available in several languages, including Esperanto--which will be promoted as an easy to learn second or third language for all people and as an intermediate or translation language for computerized translation systems. 11. When preference statement activity begins to slow down or stabilize at some level, or when other factors make it necessary to end deliberations and make a decision, the elected representatives may then choose to call for a vote and make the decision. Some issues may be decided only by the legislature after consulting public opinion. Other issues may be decided by teledemocratic referendum. Nothing would be final until elected representatives approve it--unless by law or decision the legislature leaves the issue to the people for a final vote by a specific date. Legislative methods for choosing a time frame for the decision-making can easily be extended from the floor of the legislature to the electronic forum. Following the above outline, some issues will be decided, not be the legislature, but by direct vote of all the people in an electronic referendum and then ratified by the courts. 12. Through teleconferencing with interactive television or computer terminals, explanations, discussions, and positions on the issues would also be available in easy to understand, multimedia formats on the network. Any individual could inform her or him self and contribute an opinion--with some format provided so that the opinions could be integrated into a "hypertext" version of the ongoing "telelogue." Anyone could then click on highlighted "hypertext" words or images and get background information or related statistics, and find out how many people support this or that wording of a bill and why. By this means the actual language of the bill could actually be written by a teleconferencing process to which each person could contribute--with specially trained legal experts monitoring and perhaps rewriting for final presentation to the voters or the legislator. The legislative agenda and its priorities could be established by the same process. 13. Elections could also be finalized by teledemocratic voting. Telelogues, with candidates positions clearly and specifically stated according to campaign rules, could continue through the course of a campaign. Voters could find answers to their questions at any time by interactive connection to the teledemocratic network. Through the use of computer codes, voiceprints, and software records, voting fraud could be almost completely eliminated. 14. In order to keep democratic participation "live," that is emotionally colored and with analogical input, people would meet in small groups or community assemblies for workshops and discussion of the issues. Incentives to participate could be offered as "credits" which could be exchanged for work hours or small sums of money financed through a system of personal teledemocracy accounts established with contributions from government, business, and individual voters. Each person could register preferences from their personal, handheld voting device while at the meeting, and an ongoing feedback display could inform people inside and outside the meeting of changes in opinions and moods. Candidates, of course, would still make their presentations at live meetings as well as through the media. In order to avoid undue influence by special interests, financing of elections should be organized by the methods stipulated in The Universal Model: A Democratic Constitution [Foreman]. 15. Since this whole process could be almost completely automated and computerized, legislative representatives could eventually be elected primarily to supervise the electronic data processing and to formalize the decisions made by the whole people using their teledemocratic network! Special interests could no longer buy votes. Electoral fraud would be effectively eliminated. Professional lobbyists could disappear. Corrupt congresspeople would find it more difficult to hide behind secret votes and obfuscating legislative procedures. A modified direct democracy could be accomplished, first on a local, state then national basis, and eventually on a global scale. Peoples and nations would finally be united on a peaceful, democratic basis while still retaining their thriving cultural, ethnic, and racial identities. 16. Mathematical strategies for improving the correlations among the results of voting procedures and the actual will of the people--incorporating the will of minorities--could be done automatically by the computers with printouts that openly display the methods, calculations, and results. Those who believe that "democracy" should not be in the hands of the people, and those who believe in true democracy, would finally be confronted with the full implications of their beliefs. Antidemocrats and their special interest affiliates would be clearly revealed. The question, "To democratize or not to democratize?" would finally have to be faced completely. The above scenario, which may appear utopian by today's standards, is likely to be approached on a global basis sometime in the mid-21st century if a "critical mass" of education and democratization can first be achieved. A teledemocratic world system, while competing for scarce resources during a time of economic, demographic, ecological, and sociopolitical crises, can become one of the most effective means of resolving those crises. The prominent role of technological innovation in the above example should not be taken to mean that advances in social evolution always follow or require technological change. In the transition to "syntropic democracy," described in Chapter 7, it seems likely that technology will assist but that the ideas and consciously chosen purposes of integrated and democratically united communities will be the most important factors. _____________________________ Reform Now Significant reforms can be accomplished before the onslaught of global crises if enough people get behind a few strategic, initial changes. There could also be, right now, a determined effort by a few to create small, model democracies that organize themselves (1) to respect all ethnic and racial groups that exist among humans, (2) to recognize and distribute fairly the limits imposed on us by the environment, (3) to respect not just human rights but also all basic human needs including a need to work, (4) to base themselves on a minimum, universal set of values and goals that will carry us beyond our immediate, self-fulfilling needs, and (5) to seek as a long term goal the political unity of the human race, while conserving individual and community autonomy, in a global democracy that aims to eventually extend human life beyond the planet Earth. Thus two approaches to social change will be suggested in the remaining chapters: one will be to reform existing democratic structures, and the other will be to create new democratic systems. Both approaches can, and should, be undertaken simultaneously, and both will be strategically designed to move us toward an ideal democracy for each unique cultural or historical context. The strategy will be to provide suggestions for people who live in any human society to participate in either reform or in the creation of local democracies that can join a larger and growing network of small democratic communities. In the next few chapters we will focus primarily on reform. In the fourth through the sixth chapters we will approach reform at several levels of the existing world system. In chapter seven, we will make a transition from reform to methods of creating new democracies, and we will discuss in some detail the creation and ongoing process of the new democracies. In reality both approaches lead to the same goals, and throughout this book it will be fairly clear that whatever path one chooses--if the recommended steps are taken--the end results will be progress toward a democracy which approximates the type and form described in the model constitution that is proposed by Will Foreman in The Universal Model: A Democratic Constitution for the Third Millenium.