Introduction —
To be truly successful in the larger holism of a democratic society, Progressives will need to re-frame their view of local, state, and national democracies to include all other national democracies. The world is becoming “smaller” every year, so let us anticipate upgrading the designs for all national democracies to make peace and social stability more viable.
If Progressives choose the values and principles of social sustainability to push their agendas forward, then they will become deeply involved in the social, political, and economic structural architecture of designing and implementing social sustainability practices in all realms of a functional democratic society. Choosing such a role will need to include preparing the public to willingly choose to accept greater public responsibilities than historically “leaving it up politicians.”
The following proposal is unique as an effort of organizational development to increase the effectiveness, functioning, and longevity of democratic societies, governments, and economies. The proposal seeks to redirect social, political, and economic change that cripples societies, governments, and economies by incorporating the six core values of social sustainability into organizational structures and daily decision-making processes. The hypothesis is that doing so will give organizations the same degree of sustainability as has sustained our species for approximately 250,000 years. By extension of the hypothesis, using those values will produce a cultural change of beliefs about the sustainability of individuals, families, communities, and nations. Best of all, doing so will turn organizations and governments into type II learning organizations.25
When organizations begin to use these six values, we could predict, as Peter Senge26 suggests, that the decision-making processes of democracies will change, and that change will cause a change in behavior of citizens and leaders. We could go further and even predict that citizens and leaders will begin to think in terms of the integrated systems of democracy and social sustainability, and behave accordingly.
25 - Argyris, Chris. 1985. Action Science, Concepts, Methods, and Skills for Research and Intervention.
26 - Senge, Peter M., 1994. The Fifth Discipline, The Art and Performance of the Learning Organization.