Here is where the road gets a bit rocky.  Some idealists have told me that they want to change government at one fell swoop.  That would require a revolution of immense violence, which would lay to waste all progress of civil and political rights along with the political institutions that support the existing paradigms of democracy.  In yesterday’s Post #101, we discussed “What is right?” and determined that using Kurt Wright’s process of 5 questions to answer that question allowed us to discern what is working Ok and what is not. 
 
In a society that has chosen to pursue social peace and stability, we discern the right of self-determination as one that requires the highest responsibility on the part of citizens in a democracy.  {Do I need to say that citizens in nations that are not founded on democratic principles do not have the right of self-determination?}  It is a highly responsible political and social right because it can be exercised to any limits, as long as it does not interfere with the right of self-determination of others.  Here, again, the three moral imperatives of social sustainability are invoked.  

This is not confusing as its simplicity is implicit:  Do anything you like in or with your life as long as it does not hurt or inhibit that same action by others.  {Even suicide inflicts unwanted obligations on others, and violates those three moral imperatives.}  When you begin to incorporate this simplicity into your thinking and social, political and economic/financial behavior, you have begun the process of being able to live with fewer laws – the beginning of the simplification of government.  Hmmmm, that would mean that we would become more directly responsible for our actions and inactions. 
 
I hope you are beginning to see the personal cost of living in a socially sustainable society, one that is socially stable and at peace, one that has the prospect of giving our progeny a bright future, perhaps even without war.  Social stability as this requires the symbiotic relationship between citizens and their society become much more transparent, obvious and evident.  If you asked someone on the street today to describe the symbiotic relationship that exists between themselves and their society, you would probably not receive on intelligible answer.  We have a long way to go, don’t we?  

Freedom and liberty are held in balance only when citizens fully accept their individual social responsibilities to exercise their right of self-determination.  And this must be enculturated in our children by their parents who understand that connection.