The 2nd Paradigm Of Democracy

The Institute for Human Sustainability and EMANATION provide an effective upgrade for traditional democracies. Combined, they underwrite the 2nd Paradigm of Democracy.

The 2nd Paradigm of Democracy builds upon the existent and traditional 1st Paradigm of Democracy, with two systems that engage the existent linear, closed-end representative democratic process:

      1) The I4HS Process validates sustainable social designs for social processes, organizations, institutions, policies and laws; for examining, validating, and prioritizing public topics and issues; for validating old and new policies in light of the core values of social sustainability; and for validating their socially sustainable morality.
      2) Emanation provides an electronic enhancement to traditional democracies through the Emanation Process (TEP) and EM21, the public media Internet subscribership, that increases the quality of citizens’ contribution and participation in their representation.

Characteristics of the 2nd Paradigm. Where the 1st Paradigm of Democracy provided for equal representation of each citizen, the 2nd Paradigm increases the quality-value of each citizen’s representation by improving the quality of their participation in their representation.

  • Because the I4HS Process and the EMANATION Process are circular systems, they have built-in feedback processes to help users adjust to changing conditions. They are learning systems. We learn from using them and adjust our social and political decisions by using them. Because they begin at the local level, citizens are able to stay in touch with developments as they occur.
     
  • Both systems are ongoing and continual, operating 24/7. The I4HS Process develops and validates designs for social sustainability, publishes its findings, and feeds those findings into the Library’s database of validated findings for social sustainability. In TEP, citizens are able to examine the issues, self-educate themselves about the issues and the consequences of the options, and choose the option they think is best.
     
  • The 2nd Paradigm offers the potential of the collective leadership of citizens as they move toward a sustainable future using their collective intelligence. No leader has the answers for our difficult future, but answers will emerge from citizen’s collective participation.
     
  • These two systems support the old linear public representative form of democracy and offer a “holistic democracy,” meaning that they give equal access to every citizen who wishes to participate from wherever they are at any moment, and engage any topic in the spectrum of public topics and issues.
     
  • The 2nd Paradigm will be very familiar to Latin citizens, who are strongly oriented to the maintenance and sustainability of family culture, la familia! This is an essential aspect for preparing new generations to participate in the larger family of sustainable communities, and society as a whole.
     
  • It will feel comfortable and empowering to women because it is highly inclusive and seeks to share power. Inclusiveness allows and accepts the exceptions, without succumbing to them, and seeks acceptance of diversity to provide social congruence. It seeks to bring out the best in individuals, and asks them to provide the same for the good of themselves as well as their community. Sustainability is intrinsic to the mothering spirit of women, and offers the best of the feminine capacity for empathy, compassion, tolerance, and understanding with the masculine predisposition to take action.
     
  • It is non-traditional. It balances the “left-brained” culture of mainstream American society with the best that “right-brained” Cultural Creatives30 and women in general have to offer.
     
  • The 2nd Paradigm provides a cultural “gestalt” for making contributions to society that are far greater than the sum of individual contributions. It provides for a new paradigm of social organization for accessing social rewards that are not achievable by any traditional political or social process. 

Concerning The Emanation Process, the Internet has made it possible for millions of citizens in technologically developed nations to participate in an innovative democratic process that provides for ongoing dialogue between themselves and their public executives. Applying these technologies would provide for the same quality of participation for citizens as the king or, today, as elected representatives. If a democracy pursues the development of qualitative citizen participation as powerfully as it pursued the quantitative interpretation, that development would create a democratic representative process that has depth, breadth, and longevity.

30 - Ray, Paul H. Ph.D., 2000. The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World.