Governance, Dialogue and Dialogue for Governance

 Me

            I have been asked who I am. An honest easy answer is "me." Longer answers which are the truth, the whole and nothing but the truth are more difficult. I'll try a longer answer, but not so long that it might contain outright lies. Let's see, I seem to have become a very old man who's brain is in a bit better shape than his body. I was mostly raised in a tiny desert town in the state of California, USA. I am the one who signs many of these essays "rcs." My full name is Richard Carroll Sheehan. Richard and Carroll are my given names and Sheehan is my surname or last name. Carroll was the family name of my paternal great grandmother. I am an American citizen living in Colombia. I am, in important part the result of my history. Still, it seems to me these days that I wake up each morning a bit different person  than the one who went to sleep the night before.

            As a youngster I was taught that the U.S.A. was a republic which a great many citizens wanted to become increasingly democratic. We were taught that full democracy was governance directly by all the people and that each of those people was a citizen. This full real democracy had never been accomplished, but was a good orienting goal. It was a way to go. We could move toward a democratizing republic. I learned that the American Declaration of Independence strongly suggested that in the new nation the people were to be the citizens; democratically active self-governing citizens; citizens, by right, responsible for governing the nation. That is the ideal to be striven for.

History           

             Still, many of the founders of the country realized that the majority of the prospective citizens had little experience at self-governance. They saw that the new citizens could use some preparation to become self governors. The U.S. Constitution was designed with that in mind as so it was written as a sort of representative democracy. They certainly did not want the country to be a kingdom, theocracy, or anything but a republic with a chance of becoming a growing democracy.

            From my reading of our history I gathered that the idea was the people, the new citizens, of America to become increasingly the more democratic govenors of the republic.

We were choosing to govern ourselves as we wanted in our nation of self made and self chosen laws. So our style of government would be the one we chose, devised, and ran. It was our responsibility and right to govern ourselves.

            Today, at a national level, it seems that most of us have chosen to abdicate the right and responsibility to rule. We have already abdicated many of the rights and responsibilities we had. It seems that many of us have not considered that this may be a slide into powerlessness and uselessness. It also seems that this abdication of active citizenship is not working out well for us.

            We have a lot to learn and a lot to begin practicing.

            Most of us have never become Federalists but we have some history of being democratic republicans.

            I know of the abdicators I have written of above, for I have been one of them. I did not abdicate my active citizenship from conviction but rather most from some laziness and considerable ignorance. I seem to have walked around in a fuzzy have with some deeply buried idea of something like a democratic republic while acting as though voting and being a fairly decent person made me an effective, active, citizen. What a strange dream.

            Now I may be "to soon old and too late smart." I know I now have much less energy than I once had, but I believe that it is not too late to do something. Now I am doing something to claim or reclaim some rights. Those rights seem mostly to be about governing myself as a American citizen together with my fellow citizens, or perhaps together with my brother and sister citizens, or better, my family of citizens.

Our Beliefs

            I believe that our voices matter. I believe that it is important that we be heard. I believe that it is important that we hear each other. I believe that listening and listing to understand is a skill we can practice to our great benefit. I believe that we can effectively claim justice and equality, responsibilities and rights. I strongly believe that our republic and its democracy depends on our daily engagement in governance. I believe that our governance depends on the quality of our discourse. Our thoughts and our communication direct our mutual activities. Our actions, our activities orient our governance. I believe we govern well when we practice our governance together.

            I begin to see our discourse as a form of our "new" dialogue. To get our governance done well I believe that we need to claim time to listen to one another more and probably to do so more regularly. We need to have opportunity to listen to each other's say about our wants and needs, and importantly, about the nature of our governance.

Our Dialogue

            We can claim and reclaim rights to govern ourselves together with fellow citizens. An important right is the right of association an important part of the right of association is the right to talk among ourselves, to listen to each other, to dialogue. Take a look at the Bill of Rights part of our Constitution.

            Our voices matter, our faces to. Our face to face talk can be a great power and great satisfaction. To be a we, our association is vital. It is vital that we be heard and that we hear each other. All topics of our dialogues can be important. That dialogue can be about a traffic light or about justice, equality, public health or anything we want it to be about. Democracy can be a topic of our dialogue. I strongly believe that our depends on our engagement and the quality of our discourse. For many the nature of our democracy and of democracy in general can be an important topic of our talk. 

            I have begun to call our discourse, our group talk, our new dialogue. Our dialogue is important. It helps us to be us and to be we the people. Our thoughts and our communication direct our mutual activities. Our activities, our actions, orient our governance. Our dialogue helps us to practice our governance together.

            To get our governance done well we need to claim the time to listen to one another enough; that includes regularly enough. We need opportunity to have our say about our wants and needs about the nature of our governance, to listen to what others have to say. Including talk about our experience and how it has affected our point of view can be a way to improved understanding and appropriate trust.

            Our dialogue is a great aid to our co-operation and decision making.  Our working together effectively and appropriately can be strongly supported by our ongoing dialogue, our hearing one another, and understanding each other. Our democratic decision making can be well begun with dialogue.

            Certainly our responsibility as citizens is to govern ourselves and that by doing so we can live more pleasantly and abundantly. We can learn from one another and practice our learning together. Our dialogue leads to our resilience.

            Our governance is up to us, its abdicaction is likely to be a step toward uselessness, toward a uselessness which may be worse than slavery.

            The power of determining our governance is ours. Not practicing it is our loss. Practicing our governance is a way to a of life that it is a satisfaction and pleasure to have and hold. Together we can provide ourselves for a greater chance for a civic life of pleasure and satisfaction. You can come see that governance is part of life: family, work, town, state, and more. You to are a part of our life. Voting is not enough. It is not always necessary, but part of voting is finding your way to the nominating process. Together we can do all that is necessary for our governance. Neither you nor I have to do everything, but all of us together have the responsibility for, as a US example, state and county governance. We are responsible for the people in state and county positions. Often we are responsible for their nomination, election and oversite. That is a lot to do; luckily we are very many and we are the bosses and can work out ways to make our effectiveness easy on ourselves. The support of government is up to us. If we do not accept our responsibility will take it up as theirs and they by boss us, dismiss us. or deal with us as they will. It be as my old aunt used to say "Üse it or lose it." 

            We can think of governing ourselves as a major way of taking care of ourselves together. We do not have to take care of ourselves. When we do take care of ourselves we so not have to do it all at once. We can take it up as our orientation and goal. Now is the best time to get started. The longer we wait the more difficult doing so becomes.

            Taking up a responsibility can be work or much like work, but togetherness often brightens one's days.

            So, we find that we can talk and that we can cooperate,  and begin to be aware of being a we. We may begin to consider what kind of we we are. We may find that many of us consider ourselves citizens. Some begin to consider the nature of a citizen. Than we find ourselves reading these paragraphs.

            Here we read that the writer seems to value a kind of talk he calls dialogue. We may find that he considers dialogue may improve our ability to cooperate. I am that writer. Maybe I can find the ability to clarify that which I am writing about. I am writing about two fairly large topics: dialogue groups and democratic governance.

            A dialogue group is a way a number of persons to talk together to better effect than is often usual.

            Democratic governance is a way to better government than many of us has experience. Democratic governance may be better called participatory governance or participatory democratic governance. It is a form governance which emphasizes the active involvement of citizens in the decision-making process. It aims to insure that all citizens have an equal opportunity to participate in shaping policies and influencing the direction of their communities or countries.     

            Thank you for reading.

                                                                                RCS

Do No Harm (or try a bit harder to avoid it)

Our more recent wars

            You can begin an exploration of our wars on History With RCS. Use one or more of the various search apps there and begin searching: war, wars, or our wars.

The apps Labels or Archives are useful tools and may be good places to begin your search.

            In this piece I will remark on the nature of some of our more recent wars. They were often call wars on ''terror.'' That, to me, seems a misnomer. In my experience wars are made on people by people. They are made on men and usually include women and children, not to mention youths.These days they usually result in the death and maiming of more noncombatants than combatants. The purpose of most wars is killing men and so crushing their power. Other purposes have included vengeance and taking over resources. Less often, it is for protection from actual invaders. The results of most war are ugly and include: rage, hatred, and death, of puppies,  grandmothers, babies, garden plants, plus the usual men, women, ect.

            I have heard it suggested that by becoming better at avoiding war and other killing we give ourselves a chance for a better life. Wise men have said that by trying to do no harm we make more room for health and happiness in our lives. This sounds right but people do experience anger, rage, fear, and an urge to vengeance. All feelings which can lead to unpleasant actions. But these days we often kill in rather cold blood when someone of authority tells to do so. Luckily we can sometimes do so by pushing a button or pulling a lever and never having to see the results.

            Many of our recent wars do not seem to be resulting in lasting goodness. They have led to the deaths of many including wives and mothers, which resulted in the considerable rancor among survivors. In those wars social organizations were disassembled, infrastructure and other physical resources destroyed. unmeasured damage to our environment resulted as well as partially measured damage to our economies resulted. Another result was the wounding, deadening,

and mangling of hearts, minds, and souls of survivors. Doings and happenings which may be worth considerable effort to avoid.

            Still, peace at any cost is not very peaceful and too often of little good. If peace and war extremes, there is likely a mean between them which could be a golden mean. Diplomacy, negotiation, and dialogue toward mutual understanding could be ways to better ways then killing one another.

            Just the better use of language could prove useful. Instead of  war on Syria or on Ukraine, it may be more realistic, and true, to say war on Syrians and war on Ukrainians. We can be reminded that human persons feel more pain and loss than does a country and thus act more carefully, but maybe not.

            I understand terror as being a strong fear. I may be pleased to scare the hell out of an invader of my home and be pleased if he were terrified. However, it is usually best to alleviate fear. Reactions to fear can be unpleasant. Killing people is not a good way to alleviate fear except from the dead. The dead are no longer terrorized, but the friends, family, and countrymen may have lasting anger to express. It seems good policy to consider alternatives to killing and terrorizing. Dialogue for understanding can be an effective alternative.

            Those who have been called terrorists have been considered patriotic heroes. They have often been those struggle against a much stronger foe. Some French men and women did a fair job of terrorizing German occupiers. American Colonists did a bit of a job on English military and others before and during the American Revolution. The Irish used some terror tactics to become a nation once again after perhaps a 1,000 years of troubles.

            War is often not always the best way of  dealing with strong fear or the greater discomfort which is terror. 

            From the perspective of an American citizen I note that the ability to choose to make war or not was once directly up to American citizens. War was usually honorably declared and in most cases it was up to the citizens to decide to declare war. So, it was up to them to be very clear as why we should systematically kill other humans. Many found that distasteful and so gave up their right and responsibility of making war or not. Humans can be a peculiar lot.

            I am am an American, a citizen of the United States so I hope you can excuse me for using us as examples.  We have neglect many of our own rules and laws dealing with war. We gave up much of our rule over our armed forces  and so let them be move toward being more like a mercenary organization. Not everyone is of this opinion and I can understand why. We, the citizens, gave up much of our power over the financing of American wars. No war was to be finance for over two years unless we voted for that financing. It seems many felt that unreasonably aukward. Taking time each two years to reconsider our reason for killing of humans seemed unreasonable to some so the process was simplified. At one time we were are armed forces, each man of age served at very little pay with a lot of patriotism. So, it was not so easy to kill when we had to do it ourselves. But that did not seem fair. As we had given up much of our war making powers why should we have to serve for little more than patriotism. So, we gave up the idea of a citizen armed forces and paid others a more mercenary like amount to do the fighting. Now we have we have better paid professional soldiers  who war to make a living, and for the country. Now it is easier, for us as a nation, to kill people we do not know and have never attacked us. Are armed forces do the killing with do deliberation or decision to do so on their part! At times we have not even heard that a certain people were being killed in our name with our resources! Sad happenings when a people give up governing themselves. Democracy can seem very far away. 

            Now we let our resources be used to kill strangers in their own land and perhaps their home while making no decision to do so! This now seems a continual activity. Now the killing from high in the sky without witnessing the happening.  Or, we can arm others to do so for us. Killing is paid for with resources which were once ours without thought or feeling on our part. We can easily make believe that it is not happening because we have abdicated our responsibility as citizens of a republic. With hazy eyes we do not see that we are residents of what seems very much like an empire. Still we have certain memories buried deep within, of honorable responsibilities and freedoms.

            How beautiful were are doings. How clearly we envisioned our republic moving toward democracy.

            Have we really let our republic slip through our fingers without a thought or care? It seems so. Are we giving a thought about the kind of people we want to be? It seems not. Are we willing to, at least, talk about it? Are we, we. or strangers whose thoughts are strange? 

            I believe that we can still an us, a we. I believe we have the courage to reclaim our freedom to govern ourselves. We can practice taking care of ourselves together and give ourselves a chance to revive our early purpose.

            We can learn again by doing again. We do not have to give up.

            You have read this. That is something. Thank you.

           I did not mean to write this much about ourselves, but it feels right to have done so.

                                

                                                                                        richard sheehan