Personal Democracy Forum 2008
Session: The New Renaissance
Note by David GalielDavid_Galiel:
Andrew intro - divided conference by focus - day one, how new media is changing political campaigns, day two how new media can transform civic life.
The construction "personal democracy" is the prop - it is an oxymoron. There is personal responsibility, but democracy is a social phenomenon. The idea of personal democracy has actually been a barrier to progress. The concept came from the Renaissance, the notion of the individual at the center of all things. The democracy that emerged from that focused on the rights of the individual. The Enlightenment was ultimately based on the privilege of white men to make their own individual isolated determinations, and then weight in in democratic vote so they can go back into their private studies and be individual.
The less we have a concept of ourselves as part of an organization, part of a society, the more we think of ourselves as a collection of self-interested individuals, the easier we are to control and the harder to work together, because we see ourselves as competing individuals with conflicting interests.
"Mass movements" are not really about collective action; they are about individuals with temporarily aligned interests. This is exacerbated by mass media, top-down communication and "branding", which are desocializing and individuating. Marketing brands is about getting individuals to associate with the brand, not with one another.
Politics doesn't happen by leaving home and going to part of "that thing", it is happens by being who you are at home, in your community. The next shift will be to decentralized authority, to collectives having local power. The value is created at the periphery, not the center.
Reviews history through lens of participation. Jewish Torah scrolls, opportunity to become readers. Printing press, opportunity for some to write and many to read. Blogs, opportunity for everyone to write and everyone to read. But that is still not creation, it is reporting, it is feedback, it is voting. He argues that in a true participatory democracy feedback is not just writing about it, not just being citizen journalists, but rather being actually deeply involved in the process of civic governance. Open source participatory democracy. Elected officials not put there to do something for us - rather, put there to create the conditions that allow us to do things for ourselves.
(very impassioned speech, but I'm not sure I buy his dismissal of the power of citizen journalism, or that it is quite as passive an activity as he asserts; talking with one another about things that matter, IMO, is the first step towards civic participation. I don't think the current surge of political awareness and activism is unrelated to the democratization of publishing.)
The construction "personal democracy" is the prop - it is an oxymoron. There is personal responsibility, but democracy is a social phenomenon. The idea of personal democracy has actually been a barrier to progress. The concept came from the Renaissance, the notion of the individual at the center of all things. The democracy that emerged from that focused on the rights of the individual. The Enlightenment was ultimately based on the privilege of white men to make their own individual isolated determinations, and then weight in in democratic vote so they can go back into their private studies and be individual.
The less we have a concept of ourselves as part of an organization, part of a society, the more we think of ourselves as a collection of self-interested individuals, the easier we are to control and the harder to work together, because we see ourselves as competing individuals with conflicting interests.
"Mass movements" are not really about collective action; they are about individuals with temporarily aligned interests. This is exacerbated by mass media, top-down communication and "branding", which are desocializing and individuating. Marketing brands is about getting individuals to associate with the brand, not with one another.
Politics doesn't happen by leaving home and going to part of "that thing", it is happens by being who you are at home, in your community. The next shift will be to decentralized authority, to collectives having local power. The value is created at the periphery, not the center.
Reviews history through lens of participation. Jewish Torah scrolls, opportunity to become readers. Printing press, opportunity for some to write and many to read. Blogs, opportunity for everyone to write and everyone to read. But that is still not creation, it is reporting, it is feedback, it is voting. He argues that in a true participatory democracy feedback is not just writing about it, not just being citizen journalists, but rather being actually deeply involved in the process of civic governance. Open source participatory democracy. Elected officials not put there to do something for us - rather, put there to create the conditions that allow us to do things for ourselves.
(very impassioned speech, but I'm not sure I buy his dismissal of the power of citizen journalism, or that it is quite as passive an activity as he asserts; talking with one another about things that matter, IMO, is the first step towards civic participation. I don't think the current surge of political awareness and activism is unrelated to the democratization of publishing.)
