You can govern yourself. You can govern with others. You can learn about political planks and political platforms, how to do governance, and about political organization. It's about active citizenship, civics, a more perfect union, and we the people. It's about participation. So, the focus of these many posts is on democracy, justice, citizenship, governance, co-operation, and democracy.
The Word Is "democracy"
How to do it is the main objective, but it helps to know what it is.
Democracy means government b the populace at large. You and I are part of a populace.
In a democracy the power, authority, and doing is with and by the people. The people often being the citizens. As a member of the people, you have a lot of company.
Democracy entails the participation of ordinary citizens in their own government and is much more than just voting.
A dictionary tells us that democracy is government by the people, especially by the social class considered the ordinary people. By us that has been considered government by the citizens of the country. As a citizen of a country considered a democracy or a democratic republic you are not doing your duty as a citizen their by voting. That is not governing. Voting can be a part of governance. Holding a public office is another part. Having a fulsome say I who your armed forces kill is another part. Participation in the nominating process is an important part. Participation in overcite of governmental doings is a big part of active participation in your democracy. Democracy must be done by citizens.
Your dictionary may tell you that democracy is a mode of governance in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly. Government is done directly by the people. Perhaps you do not want the responsibility of governance. That's fair, but then it does not seem fair for you to say you want democracy. Of course there are degrees of democracy to choose from. As a citizen of a "free" country you are free to choose.
A democracy occurs when everyday citizens take responsibility for authority. They have the great advantage that they are many and that no one of them has to do everything.
Democracy seems proven to be too bothersome for most common people of America. But then even a republic seems to be too bothersome for many of them. Even the running of a republic calls for citizen responsibility.
It is very difficult for new citizens to know how to govern when they had grandparents did not teach their parents how to govern. Most schools, primary and secondary, have taught almost nothing about how to govern since a little after the second World War. The U.S. was becoming an empire and it is hard for an empire to be a democracy. It is difficult for an empire to be a republic. It is not easy for new citizens to govern themselves in such a situation. It is still possible. Our Constitution still allows for much self governance.
There is still much about governance online for those who would learn. There is information about citizen governance, social governance, republican governance, democratic governance, self governance, and more. It may be good to have in mind that those who choose to take no active part in their governance have taken a step toward and there is less use now for even a good slave.
My newer dictionary says that a democracy is based on democratic rule. It does not make the nature of democratic rule very clear. It may be something like fair and effective rule together. It could be rule be citizen activity wherein each citizen has equal opportunity to participate in rule. I like to use the word "governance" rather then the word "rule." This same newer dictionary also says that democracy is the principles of social equality and respect for the individual in a community. This book does little to clarify this. We can figure it out pretty well, even if we have to recheck the meanings of a few words.
Interesting stuff. There seems to be a lot more to be learned about democracy and how to do it. Well we have heard that "practice makes perfect." Well it does seem that practicing the doing of something does often seem to help us get better at that doing. We can practice some governance. We could practice some self governance together. We could practice governing ourselves. We could choose to practice democratic self governance together in any way we choose. If we wanted to we could to choose to look alternatives to democracy. We could choose to try find out why so many have been interested in democracy for so long. We could try to find out what the values they saw in it were. We could look for examples of well working democracies today.
The idea of democracy is active in the minds of many people of the USA from the very beginning. They chose to begin with a republic. Why? We could choose to find out how a republic is well done. We could learn something about how a government is kept going well. We could find out how to do a government well for the most of its members. We could find out more about what makes for good results from governance.
Could democracy in a group or organization for learning help that group be successful? Why has it been thought that a republic is more practical than a king? Why has it be considered that a democracy is better than one man rule or oligarchy? Why might self governance by yourself be an important aid to self care.
It seems that when we feel the need to learn something, there is plenty to learn. It is possible to learn together. Democracy might help us learn together better. Now, what are some of the main principles of democracy?
You could suggest a simple improvement for this little and help me correct my errors. You can use the "comments" section just below.
Thank you for reading.
Richard S
Dialogue With RCS: More About the Nature of Our Dialogue
Dialogue With RCS: More About the Nature of Our Dialogue: What's our dialogue practice group good for? Some reminders follow. Some reminders about how the practice is done are also included. ...
RFK Jr., Foreign Policy
2024 Presidential Policy Perspectives with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
This important talk is about us: our rights, our education, our constitution, our children, our lives, our reality, our truth, our honesty, our knowledge, our governance, our nation, our pride, us together in appropriate humility and love of life, our actions, our responsibilities, our republic, our democracy. Our mutual wellbeing is up to us. Good leaders can be a real help, but it is up to us.
RCS
2024 Presidential Policy Perspectives with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Presidential Policy Perspectives with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Viewers of Governance With RCS
Stats: Why the Great Changes?
The top viewers here were long our top viewers in this order: The US, Colombia, Western Europe.
The top viewers have now become:
First: Hong Kong
Second: China
Third: Colombia:
Fourth: Canada
I am very surprised that Hong Kong has the highest number of viewers here now. The United States of America held first place here for decades. I am very sad not to see the U.S. as one of the top four.
I am gratified, that even now when I am no longer able to publish often, that I do still have so many visitors and readers!
Thank you for your visits.
Richard Sheehan
Now Is The Time For Us to Practice Our Governance
We have put the power to govern us into their hands.
Who are "we?" We are the citizens who have abdicated their responsibility to take care of themselves together. Who are they who accepted the power we refused to accept? They turned out to be what some have called the super rich. Many of them knew the great value of that which had been left to them. They appreciated the great value of America the beautiful. They took the responsibility for governance and used it well. Most of them were not even surprised by the immense carelessness of so many U.S. citizens,e
Schooling Around You
Here I write with our public schools in mind, but the writing may also apply to most learning opportunities in the republic and to the culture we pass on to the children, youth, and all of us.
For example each citizen of the republic has some direct responsibility for the schooling the of the children and youth around us. Such schooling benefits each as well as those being schooled. The better that schooling the better the benefits for all of us. To fulfill that responsibility we need to maintain among us a useful understanding of our citizenship, an up to date concept of the doings of a republic, and a knowledge of the kinds of schooling we want to share among us.
Among some of us the word ''schooling" is becoming a "bad word" much as the word "politics" has. A politic is a way of governance. It is up to us to choose the best ways for our governance. We can choose very bad politics, but that does not make politics bad. We can choose very good governance, very good ways of taking care of ourselves, we can each politic we choose an excellent one. Schooling is much like that. Schooling has meant imparting the best ways of doing life that we know. There exists bad schooling but that does not make schooling bad. We have the power of choosing good schooling, and better schooling, and to aim to have the best schooling we can.
Much good schooling has been done in homes, by parents, grandparents,
siblings, friends, and neighbors. Still some schooling is best done by experts we choose.
Where we are citizens of a republic we have responsibility for much of what our children and you learn and that which we ourselves learn. And we and the those who come after us certainly benefit from that learning. In our republic each and every one of us has some responsibility for the learning of our children and youth. Paying taxes does not fulfill that responsibility, seeing how those funds are used might. You and I and our fellow citizens have responsibility for the quality of our future citizens. The quality of our citizenship and the quality of our lives depends much on our learning. That learning can be strongly supported by the schooling available to us. We are many so the doing of our schooling need not be burdensome. We may accept the benefits of the schooling around us with pride.
When we are parents of children and adolescents we often become more aware that our responsibility for their education is more than legal and moral. It is vital for the quality of our culture. It affects the very survival of our culture and species. We often become more aware that we are all responsible for the improvement and maintenance of our society and culture. When the people of that society and culture do not fulfill that responsibility, God help us. A society or culture can die. Some times that death can come quickly. Let's remember that we are the ones to see that the best of our culture is passed on to our offspring and the carriers of our culture.
We know that culture is more than something found in a museum. Our culture is all that we are not born with. It is all that we experience, learn, understand, remember, and more. We also know that our common culture is all that makes us a people.
There is a world of practical doings to consider. One of these is assuring that we have competent and appropriate observers of our schools report to us. We must find, train, and keep eyes on observers whom can be well trusted by us and who deal well school officials. And, also who do not interfere with the instruccion they observe. We must also observe school administration. Then we need to support those who help us to interpret the information gathered and then to report our findings.There is plenty for active citizens to do, but we are many and help is available. If we need a boss, we can choose her.
We can help teachers to obtain that which they need to do their job. That help could include helpful ongoing education for them, small enough class sizes, helpers for them and their students, appropriate help and support from parents and others. what happens and what is done in our schools is up to us and we could use ongoing education for ourselves. It is great that there are so many of us.
It is up to us together to decide how we want our schools to be. We need to have their purpose well in mind. We may have to school ourselves in that sort of decision making. We do not want to be the responsible many, but want to be smart too. How do you want that particular school near you to be? What is it important for the students their to learn. We may decide how we want the lives of our children, our youth, and ourselves to be, what we want to learn, and what we need to learn. Perhaps there is more to learn about learning to learn!
We need to show up for our governance of our education and that of our children.
There is little that we have to do on our own. Our common governance needs to be handled by us together or we may end up in a very unpleasant place in deed.
We need to show up for the decisions as to what our youth and children are to taught and how that teaching is to be done. We do not have to do this alone. In reality it It may have to be done together. Of course when it is for us it is best done with our participation. We are free to consult with our teachers, our neighbors, our youth, and the best experts available, but we need to show up.
RCS
The Word Is "organize."
Sometimes it is about guts
The word organize is closely related to the word organ. Important meanings for organ include tool, instrument, and implement. Organ can speak of guts as well as it can of a musical instrument. Could that imply that guts are available for the formation of a melodious and harmonious organization!
The word organ has referred to an implement for doing work. An organization can be a tool for getting things done. To organize can be the process of making a tool to get things done and even to the process of maintaining an organization. So, to organize can be the can be the process of making and maintaining a tool to get things done.
To organize can be thought of as a derivative of organ and once meant literally to furnish with organs including to do so to form a living being. So, your organization can be alive and active. And so, your organizing activity could provide your group with a coordinated, coherent structure; might it even be done so as to include guts and music?
To organize is to cause to develop an organic structure. You may look at your organization and see that it is alive and well! I feel enthusiasm for the doing right now.
To organize can be to arrange or form into a coherent unit or functioning whole. In governance that unit or whole may consist of lively persons. We can organize to get things done.
We seem to have a handle on the nature of "to organize," but there is much more about organizing which is worth knowing.
We know that organize means to establish organization or an organization. We may consider that there are organizations because there is organizing going on. These days there is a growing interest in the development and maintenance of political, social, and civic organization. This growing interest is developing in many persons new to it. They know that an organization consists of activities and doings by actors and doers. They are developing some ideas as to why it is done and a few ideas as to how it is done.
Organization for cooperation may be one of mankind's earliest activities. It is mostly learned by ongoing observation and practice. It benefits greatly from ongoing dialogue. When a number of us are doing something together, Talk of what we are doing; why we are doing it, and how we agree to do it, is important to our success, The quality of that talk is certainly important.
Actors and doers learn and keep abreast of group and individual called for by their dialogue, their observation, and their talk. They learn varied functions which contribute the whole and collective functions. Much is done together. In a democratic organization even more is done together. Persons unite and accept specific responsibilities for an understood purpose. Persons unite for a particular purpose and take on certain responsibilities.
An organization is often a more systematize co-operation rather than a less systematized activity, One can observe that organization can be a powerfully effective social tool. We may organize a mechanism for taking care of business and discover that such organization is vital to that business.
An organizer is one who organizes. In a democratic organization the more complete the participation in organization, the more lasting and powerfully effective that organization often is. The organizers put the guts into the organization. An organizer acts to put life and action into her organization. An organizer activates the process of making your organization a tool for getting things done. When you do not participate in that process you make your organization less democratic and less effective. Your organizing acts to cause your organization to develop a better organic, living structure for doing well.
An organizer sees his job establishing and maintaining his organization as he and his fellow members have decided.
For an organization to endure organizing must go on. You may find it useful to use your own initiative from time to time. However, if the organization is to be truly for us it must be truly by us.
Organization is much about co-operation, so, to organize is much about helping the members of the group to practice co-operating. We can find or make opportunity to talk about this kind of cooperation. We can learn to improve the way we talk together.
Thank you for reading,
Noam Chomsky - The Crisis of Democracy
The name of the the report sounds dishonest to me. Democracy points to our participation in our governance. That is what democracy is, right? We must learn to govern so that we may have income, honor, freedom, dignity, and understanding. and understanding. This a very young Chomsky!
rcs
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
350. The Risks of a Deteriorating Democracy feat. Victor Davis Hanson
Victor David Hanson on the workings of democracy. Education to support democracy. What it has meant to be a citizen. What is a citizen? Who is a citizen? Classic education. How has democracy been done. An understanding of democracy is still not overly difficult to find.
Our present system of education does little to support democracy or even describe it.
Prepare to Vote Together in Joy
What does it mean to say that "There is no such thing as not voting?"
Voting is not enough, but it is an important power. Voting matters. Citizens are finding that voting has been a joyful affair and is not their pleasure. For them it is become doing it together as a sort of celebration of citizenship. Some have found pleasure in face to face organizing together.
Together they find good reasons for voting. Together they find that they are successfully claiming their power. Seems to me that finding joy and power together is pretty darn good,
For a Pleasant and Useful Behavior
We can practice talking among ourselves.
It seems time to begin speaking to one another about that which is important to us. By us, I mean more than friends, family, political party, or religion, although those dialogues too are very important. I mean, for example, a better cross-section of your town, or city. So, it seems important to learn some new and useful dialogue skills. Our willingness to try and to practice such skills can take us to a better society, to better governance, and to a lot of personal satisfaction.
I heard on TV recently, a suggestion to be informed, connected, and invested. It got me interested. I thought it seemed a good idea to be well informed, well connected, and well invested in our society. I also thought that it might well take more thought.
I have also thought that it is good for our well-being to practice freedom, equality, brotherhood, and even goodness. It thought that it would be even better if it were practiced in our daily lives inclusively all over our land. It does seem kind of a good direction to try to go, doesn't it?
The above suggestions and thoughts seemed could perhaps be more effectively done when they included the practice of participatory governance. Even, if it does not include this and much of the above, some talking together about that which is important to us does seem a very good idea.
Fairly early in such talk we need to understand meanings, and to talk them over until we have abundant mutual understanding of what we are talking about. Such talking over must not end. our talk must continue if we are to act together.
Words are important for the meanings they carry. "Governance" may be easier to understand and taken in than is "democracy" or even "participation." The phrase "participatory democracy" may be newer and more important to understand than one may imagine at first. It is important that we come to a fuller understanding of each others' understanding or it becomes difficult to act cohesively.
If we are to co-operate effectively we need to keep aware of our understandings which are mutual at the present time and those which are not. Doing so necessitates ongoing dialogue on meanings and understanding of phrases such as:
~ Well informed about the nature of our society
~Well connected with others in our society
~ Our citizenship
~ The practice of supporting freedom to and freedom from.
~ The nature of equality in society and in governance.
~ The nature of and importance of brotherhood and goodness in our daily lives
~ The meaning of and the great value of inclusiveness in the maintenance of an effective we and and effective us in our doings.
These phrases and ones like them have not been used much among us recently. To develop. enough common understanding of them among us may take a lot of talking-over. Many of us already believe that the practice of talking-over is very important now. We are capable of learning to dialogue well enough to become a satisfying and effective us. We are capable of helping our children to develop their dialog power to better effect than we have.
Our good talk can guide us to action that leads our humanity to survive and thrive.
You are more than welcome to comment.
Thank you for reading.
How to revive your belief in democracy | Eric Liu
Your Belief in Democracy
How to revive your belief in democracy. Let your democratic values be a bit more like your religion. Share your democratic civic ideals, values, and morals in face to face fellowship. Show up as a citizen. learn more about by the doing of democracy.
RCS
Commitment to One Another and Show up as a Citizen
Your Belief in Democracy
How to revive your belief in democracy | Eric www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqKYtA3pK1c&t=611s
Show up as a citizen. Share your civic ideals, values , and morals in face to face fellowship. Let your democratic values be a bit like your religion. Learn more about the doing of democracy.
Common Focuses of Governance: It's up to us
Colombians and others around the world have similar needs and wants some of which they have begun to articulate much like this.
Wants
We want a better education and a better quality of life for our children. We know that we need to clarify among ourselves what we understand to be the nature of "better education." We all have ideas of what we mean by "better quality of life," but we have not shared those ideas among ourselves well. We are not sure of how clarify and and share our understandings and ideas among ourselves in ways which allows us to act effectively toward common goals. We know that we have much to learn, but do not have a plan for doing that planning together. We believe that we can define the kind of education we want for our children and for ourselves and know that we have not shared that definition well among ourselves. We believe that we can define the quality of life we want and have not shared well the nature of that life among ourselves. Nor have we shared well our ways of realizing that life.
We want good health. We want to take better care of our health and we want better health care. We realize that our health can be better cared for with some co-operation, but we have not made adequate arrangements for that cooperation. We realize that there are costs for healthcare and are will to to arrange to pay those costs, but we do not know how mosts of our neighbors are willing to act together with us to satisfy our wants. We imagine that some of our neighbors might want to talk about common wants, but when, where, and how. It seems we have and great deal to learn and more to do together. We have not been doing togetherness very well these days. We are willing to act to the best of our ability, but are finding it difficult to do so.
We know that we have a lot to learn, but often find that our days are too short to do what needs to be done now without taking on new activities,taking on new activities. Even so,we are willing to consider what is most what is most important to us and that which is most urgent for us to learn. However, we do not know how enough of us can get together to share this doing! We are beginning to realize that learning more of self governance can be a vitalbe a vital step toward gaining and maintaining good governance including an adequate income. It seems that some how, we will need to form a learning group.
It sometimes seems that our wants exceed our capacity to fulfill them and that seems to true to are needs too! We want justice and co-operation in our lives. We want to practice peace building and maintenance. We could consider together the rights we are willing to claim and and to realize that rights call for responsibilities. But where will we find the energy and the time to do so. We are not even sure of how to get together. We sur can't do everything at once. We are willing to consider how we can develop our quality of life, our personal and common economy, and the improvement of our personal and social well-being. Well, we can't that we don't have anything to do.
Needs
We are willing to consider what we need from from institutions of higher learning to help us function better as a society, as a people. We need time and space for more togetherness, a time to practice co-operation and to learn from one another. We can't do everything, but we can do something, to take care of our common needs.
We are willing to better know and to preserve the realities of our history and to focus on its beauties and lessons, but we have unfilled needs. We too often find that we lack enough safety, enough quality food, enough adequate housing, and enough political power. We may lack quality education for our children and have many other lacks. We are beginning to feel ready to practice fulfilling one of those needs together. We are potentially many with a variety of capabilities.We need to talk together about the nature of our cooperation. How will we arrange to get together?
We are not willing to be pulled away from the best in our culture and we are not willing to have it wrested from us. We can use our memories of our past to help us deal with with the real happenings, doings, and feelings of today. our feelings of joy, honor, anger, pride, shame, hate, and love are important to us. We do not always have the words to express our wants and needs, but we do want to feel connected to the fonts of our culture.
We are willing to work to be well housed, well fed, and to feel some security. With some comfort and safety we can better enjoy the benefit of realizing our common identity, who we are, and how we belong together.
We want a full portion of the benefits of togetherness. We can enjoy benefiting from our cooperation in housing ourselves and in teaching our children well. We need some time to take a breath and remember who we have been and who we are. We want as much truth and reality as is comfortable and just a bit more so as to know that we are learning. We are able to feel the feelings, but we want honesty, development, and growth in our lives. We know that there is value in accentuating the positive, and eliminating the negative asa tendency in our lives. We now that lies and and ignorance degrade the quality of our lives.
We can enjoy learning together, and from one another. We do not have to move forward alone, we can do so together. We know enough about co-operation to make a good start.
We can find ways of helping one another to do a pretty good job of of taking care of our basic needs. By taking time to talk among ourselves, we can figure out how to do that job and arrange to actually do so.
Our history and our knowledge of our ancestors can be very useful to us. We can benefit much from the most real stories about that history and the doings of those ancestors. Our memories can help us to tap the power of realistic dreams and imagination.
Together we can provide ourselves healthier food and learning. Good food for mind and body is very good for us. With well nourished minds and bodies we have the energy and knowledge to care for ourselves together well and to help our children and youth to that same nurishment.
Together we can learn and practice effective ways to avoid wars, violence, and other dangers to humanity. Avoiding dangers is not the same as eliminating them. Dangers are always with us, but we are capable of improving are ability to deal with them.
We can determine to practice valuing, honoring, and respecting one another and to enjoy benefits of doing so.
Listening So As to Better Understand
We can rediscover that ongoing dialogue is very valuable. Today men, women, and youth are finding that their dialogue leads to the initiation and maintenance of valuable alliances which lead to effective cooperation and the gaining useful aims together. Such togetherness can be lifesaving.
Well, it seems that there is truly a lot of useful learning we can do. We know that together we can learn better ways to help our children, youth, and ourselves to better learning. We suspect that this better learning is, in large part, listening to understand, especially to those whom we see as different from us.
We do not seem to be ready to begin practicing collective responsibility yet!
We need to be ready. We may need to strengthen our weness. We may benefit by listening to one another a bit more. To be a we takes more effective communication than ever. Collective responsibility is a bit like co-operation. It may may be a longer lasting lasting , farther reaching, and grander co-operation than is usual, but well within our capability. Can we be we if we cannot decide on one thing, one feature of our society for which we are all collective responsible, can we be we? Any power we can have is in our we-ness. We must have the nature of our responsibility well in mind.
We can find healthy ways to support/help one another in justice, fairness, and equality. We can do it together. A group of five can be powerful, and we are capable of forming co-operating of 30 or forty. And, one group can co-operate with another group or two. To do so well we need to practice listening to one another well.
We can come to a common understanding on a much needed want of ours and come to a better understanding of it together and then consider how we can act on it. Maybe we are not able to act on it yet, but maybe we can begin to act or to get ready to act. We can come to consider ways to act together in effective and satisfying ways. We can practice doing so together.
Together we can come to understand a more useful part of politics. For example for the love of Christ, which includes our love for one another and the right and useful love of stranger and enemy, we can think, speak, and act for a better us. We can call our politics: listening, communicating, understanding, and acting for our common good. Open political discussion can be powerfully good when it is done together, that is democratically with egalitarian space for each and all. Our truth and justice can be our powerful tools.The practice of dialogue skills is useful.
Education
We can allow effective education and social inclusion to develop among us and we can practice that education and inclusion and enjoy their benefits. We can let the value of non violence be taught as well as ways of self care and protection. We can aim to avoid violence and to consider ways of doing so. We need laws we can all understand and we need to be willing to improve our understanding of them. We need to learn and to teach alternatives to violence and aim to practice those alternatives.
Teaching, education,and learning can be so attractive, effective, and felt by learners to be so appropriate to them that they are grateful students rather than dropouts. The trick is to make sure that it truly is so important and valuable too.
Part of that appropriate learning is learning to take care of our own health and that of or children as well as to cooperate public health.
Appropriate adult education can be very useful in helping those engaged in small scale agriculture to produce a good income for themselves and a variety of excellent food for their fellow citizens. But, that help depends on the excellent, appropriate, an ongoing education of their instructors.
Those instructors are not only needed to help these small scale agriculturalists to deal with the production of their product, but also with its marketing, and more. More may well include aid in co-operating with others in in their business in distribution and sales of their produce. Their successful production and distribution activities helps us all to healthier lives.
Health
We can use methods of measuring the quality of health among us. We want to do that because our health is important to us. once we know where our health is doing well and where it is not Once we know the pertinent details of that information we can decide how to act on it. We will know who among us is most capable of helping us to make appropriate health decisions and of taking and of taking appropriate health action because we have been cooperating with them on a regular basis.
Production of healthy food
Small and medium food producers need, want and need and deserve appropriate support. They often benefit by their organizing to provide themselves that support. Their produce is very important to us so we often rightly choose to cooperate with them to help provide appropriate help. Such support can help them to provide us in a timely manner: needed and wanted fruits and vegetables, and some animal products. With our help producers may find it more economical to provide those where they are wanted, when they are wanted, in appropriate quantities at acceptable prices. With such cooperation it is often possible for producers to gain favorable recompense for their great work.
Much of the support needed by agriculturists is more of of an informative and practical education than it is any form of monetary subsidy. Our governmental cooperation in securing them access to land, water, and markets is appropriate. Such aids and services are needed in distant rural areas. The development and production in those areas are important to and necessary to each republic. Aid for getting produce to market is particularly important.
Agricultural associations are especially important for areas at a greater distance from metropolitan centers. Agriculturalists of these areas have needs particular to them. These same same areas are also able to support the needs of the republic in ways other areas are not. One way is to prepare for future needs of a growing republic. Another way is to provide people of the land with a greater variety of foodstuffs. But they also need closer contact with the help universities and governmental offices. Other needs are more dependable transportation for getting their produce to market and more timely information about the needs of the market.
Other producers of food are located very close to or actually in metropolitan areas. Their land and water cost are often high, but their transportation costs are low and they are very close to their markets and can get delicat foods to market quickly and in a fresh state. These small producers can also benefit from the help of universities and government agencies and by prompt information about market needs. They can benefit greatly from their own organizations.
Agricultural production aids, in the form of information, education, access to the means of production and marketing on all levels such as county and state levels. Sime of this aid is also deserved by larger agricultural enterprises. Monetary subsidies are seldom needed or deserved.
National Development
National development of any country still needs attention to food production. We can profit from consideration of our experience with food production. Attention to the effects of governmental action on the quality of food production ought to be included in that consideration. We can also benefit by deciding that we want our consideration to be congenial. Of course we will also decide when and where we shall do our considering.
In Colombia as well as in most countries we will come to see that some agrarian reform is an ongoing necessity. That reform may often include the nature of some distribution and redistribution of land. Climate change is a reason for this, but not the only reason. Such adaptation includes the necessity of some learning and relearning and ongoing dialogue among concerned and effected parties. The major aim most often is excellent food production and equity of distribution of food and funds. We have finally come to realize that we need to attend more carefully to quality of the food produced.
The need for such attention is important in the United States, Colombian and most nations and people on Earth. It is time for emphasis to be given given to not only the quality, but also to the variety of food produced. We benefit, for example, from the variety of vegetables, fruit, nuts berries, and herbs available. We can benefit from the varieties of types rabbets, poultry, venison, beef, fish, pork, etc available to us. We can also benefit from some public support for sensible innovation.
Land availability is an important consideration, as is reparation and redevelopment of poorly used land and new lands is important. Co[operative use of land should have some encouragement.
Dialogue of what to produce and how to produce agricultural products ought to be wide-spread and ongoing with related widespread education. Related learning opportunities ought to be made available.
Learning
There is much which needs our consideration, but I am old and life is short. Each of us often feels there are more than enough demandes on us and we feel little need to look for more. Still food is important and sometimes climate change can be brutally rapid and many of us may need to adapt rapidly. Our grandchildren will also feel the need to it. We can help prepare them to make vital life adaptations and and even leave them an Earth a bit easier to adapt to.
We can do something to help the the great majority of the population to the learning and understanding they may us to be more adaptable to Earth's realities. We can help provide them with considerations of a humane economy, rights, fair-trade, responsible consumption, self managed finances, growing understandings of nutrition, life, death, and everything.
Communicating
To survive in good form many more citizens and people in general will need to participate regularly in one or more dialogue groups. Such groups need to be self informative and educational, but also to participate in social decisions and actions. They ought also be active in the development of organizations dealing with local usages of resources, job creation, employment of youth in important and respected activity, cooperative banks, drinking water and all they see as necessary and possible.
the dialogue groups I speak of need not to be formalized, incorporated, or granted permission, but only to act within established law. That is they may operate much as did the many clubs and civic organizations which once operated in the US.
The people of the US, Colombia, and around the world have a possibility of benefiting a lot educationally by participating in citizen groups, clubs, a cooperative, a mutual association, a community organization, a community council ecological clubs, a community action board, or a dialogue group. All such groups have benefited from open participation policies. Nearly everyone and anyone may start such a group or organization.
We know how to co-operate associative forms of work and play. A cooperative economy can be an integral part of a whole economy. This facilitates the participation and benefits of a growing and developing part of our fellow citizens. Such participation can work to protect a vital part of our citizenry. It could even act to support and stabilize our food production. The development of wide spread citizen participation makes a stronger, more stable, and more congenial countries.
We need an ongoing, active, social dialogue to take care of ourselves well.
Unions and other nonprofit organizations invite us to let go of our dispersion and isolati and act together for our mutual benefits like pleasure, abundance, safety, protection, and development. They also keep us aware of our fundamental rights, of economic and social rights, food autonomy, pure water, and a lot more. So let's practice supporting ourselves together with our daily practices of co-operation, organization, and of developing meaning and understanding in our lives.
Let's acknowledge that we have much to learn and that we are willing and able to learn together. Get ready.
rcs
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