It is not changing conditions that cause the downfall of
societies, but the failure of societies to adapt to those
changing conditions. The survival of any species is
reflected in their ability to adapt to changing conditions.
Adapting means growing when change occurs.

  
The Apportionment Act of 1911 —

Primary to understanding the necessity for the evolution of mature democracies to become adaptive is to understand the “original cause” of social change that is everywhere around us. (Ref. LINK).

The cause that compounds the grievance citizens feel today (2017) toward their government in general, and public executives in particular, did not come about by a malicious and deliberate intention by members of the First United States Congress, but rather as an unanticipated consequence of the Apportionment Act of 1911.

“Less than 1%” The founding authors of the US Constitution foresaw the necessary growth of the House of Representatives. As populations grew more representatives were needed to represent those new populations. From 1789-1911, there was one representative for every 3,000 citizens. In 1911, it was realized that the House of Representatives had become so large and unwieldy in its procedures that the number of representatives was fixed by the “Apportionment Act of 1911” at 435 members. After 1911, population increases were apportioned to each representative:

A vacuum of influence. “Nature abhors a vacuum” is still true and especially true in the legislative chambers of Congress. The vacuum of influence caused by the “Apportionment Act of 1911” has been filled by special interest groups, political action committees, and corporate lobbies, for example, for their own purposes, not the public’s. The influence of corporations provides a clear and important learning lesson for mature and developing democracies: Corporations have a very clear intention and mission attached to their existence — to maintain profitability and increase profits. This intention is easily measurable.

Democratic governments do not have a clear and consciously exercised intention for their existence. Such a lack of focus results in much dithering about and “muddling through” with their ineptitude being obvious. See how easily corporations have manipulated Congressional members for their own ends, and it is not illegal! That need not be the case when democratic governments have clear statements of intention with specific criteria to guide them.

In other words, when the relationship between citizens and their democratic government has become dysfunctional, and their ability to affect political and governmental processes is almost non-existent for over 99% of the public, citizens feel pathetically incapable to effect the needed changes to improve their condition. Citizens feel incapable to engage the opportunities that are so obvious on national news as they compare themselves to those who have immense wealth, fame, and political power to get what they want. The humanitarian issues of social justice, social equity, what is fair, and the common good have become personal to most Americans.

The irony of this situation is that as citizen’s ability to influence their representatives has decreased, their technological capability to communicate with their elected and appointed public executives increased as robustly. Citizens are now better educated and better informed, with incredible technologies that empower them to communicate instantaneously with almost anyone anywhere in the world. It is here that we can see a crack in the door of opportunity that provides a beacon of light for an evolved form of democracy that is very, very similar to what exists today, but far more effective to sustain a democratic society and economy.

As the political-governmental sector has become more and more distanced from the effective participation of citizens, a growing anxiety has developed where citizens feel that they are powerless to participate in the control of their lives, particularly as social change continues to push the public relentlessly into the future. The cumbersome, even intransigent, nature of their state and national political and governmental processes greatly aggravates the angst citizens have with their ever-decreasing representative influence in government. Such angst originates in their frustrations to make effective personal decisions that fulfill the innate values of our species to create an ever-improving quality of life.

Characteristics of Our Stage 2 Democracy —

As a traditional organizational structure, this closed-end, male-dominated, linear process is hierarchical in nature, and related to the centralization of power farther up the hierarchy. By itself, a hierarchy is neither good nor bad. Its effectiveness is determined by how well it can adapt and work to resolve national and public issues and move communities, states, and the nation into the future.

Being male dominated, it is inherently masculine in nature with typically male-minded predispositions of linear either-or thinking. This unbalanced thinking is further reinforced by the linearity of the subject-verb-object linguistics of the English language, which unfortunately makes it easier for women to accept what men tell them.

As a hierarchy, the chain of authority is top-down, with laws and executive orders originating from governors and the president proceeding down to the level of citizens. This is in reality no different from the chain of authority of the king, a monarch, except that citizens elect those in the democratic chain of authority. All of this lends itself to a linear, authoritarian management process and pyramidal organizational structure, which makes it impossibly difficult for large hierarchies to produce effective local-level social programs. Citizen participation is limited to the vote much like a simple electrical “on-off” switch that only gets used every two years! It never accesses the ongoing and ever-present intelligence, wisdom, or knowledge of the voter, individually or collectively.

Pernicious “me-ism.” When the above characteristics of the 2nd Stage of Democracy are acknowledged and we add in the pernicious “me-ism” and “I’ll get mine first” attitudes of our contemporary culture, it becomes clearer how our state legislatures and Congress have become so embroiled in highly adversarial and competitive positioning. The adroit art of political compromise seems to have come to a miserable end.

What we see now is gross evidence of linear thinking: Adversarial-competitive, win-lose, with-us-or-against-us, either-or, us-them, us-or-them, our-way-or-the-highway, insiders-outsiders, and “winner takes all.” These characteristics and attitudes lead to further separation and political isolation between political parties, and particularly from the public. The business of democratically managing the public’s business has come to a sad and incompetent end.

Paternalism: The assumed cultural carry-over of monarchial governments. As radical as a democracy is to a monarchial regime, all immature democracies will fail, and that includes all existing developed democracies, whether the Unites States, France, Great Britain, Germany or any other democracy. Each of these democracies has a history of monarchial governance that acted much like a paternalistic and parental figure in relationship to its subjects. In that form of governance, the responsibilities of social, political, and economic/financial existence were not shared.

Monarchial regimes protected its authority, control, and power by holding back information for making decisions, leaving the public out of the loop. Yet, as grossly undemocratic as this form of governance demonstrates in its relationship to its subjects, that same paternalism, was carried over and embedded in the each of the new democracies of the United States, France, Great Britain, and Germany among others.

That development is not a fault of the American founders of democracy but simply a design flaw, a carryover that did not become apparent until 150 years later when American citizens had achieved far more capability through education, being better informed, and improvements in communication technologies.

In the early stages of an evolving democratic society, democratic paternalism is an advantage until the public has become better educated, more informed, and is technologically capable of participating in an ongoing “dialogue” with their public executives. If that paternalism does not yield to more frequent public participation as that society matures, the relationship between government and the public begins to take on a familiar, adolescent, and discordant “parent-child” interaction.

As with maturing children who give evidence of wanting greater responsibilities in the management of their own life, the public needs to take on more responsibilities in their own governance. Doing so has manifold benefits including becoming more solidly educated and informed about the realities of democratic governance in the matters that sustain their communities, states, and nation. We are all acquainted with “reality television” so the aspect of participating in a “reality democracy” should not take too much imagination to appreciate. It requires an “eyes wide open” approach to social, political, and economic issues with full revelation and transparency of the information and processes needed for decision-making to support the best options before decision-making occurs.

Said another way, there is a very definite disconnect in our contemporary Stage 2 form of democracy between those who govern and the governed. Even though citizens are better educated and vastly more informed, public executives still have a similar orientation toward the public as they did with the public in the 1700s and 1800s. This is a very unhealthy stage of democratic-societal evolution because it is has become stuck in a dependency relationship between much of the public and government.

Sharing the information. In order for citizens, the public, to come into their full responsibilities and the maturity of their relationship to their democratic government, it is essential that they have access to ALL of the information and become able to more frequently share their opinions and preferences to form what the future will bring to us all. Withholding information is something parents do with young children, but as they mature it is essential that they be given all the information no matter how stark that may be.

The realities of living in a world that is turning upside down and inside out requires mature thinking and mature deliberations of options that may seem severe compared to when times were easier. Citizens need to be fully informed and have a convenient means to share their informed preferences in order to make sound, timely, and responsible choices. That means being fully aware of the reality of their world – not protected from reality as is in our paternalistic democracy – but fully aware of the larger and immediate realities as well as the potential consequences of their choices. This is reality democracy — real-time information sharing and ongoing preference-sharing.

PARENT-alism. The relationship between citizens and their representative democratic government is too uncomfortably similar to that of a parental relationship with children. When the parent makes all the decisions for the child without ever consulting the child concerning any matter whether minuscule or life-changing, the child will become resentful and hostile because the child has come to feel that they are not of equal importance to the parent. This becomes particularly egregious as the child matures. Similarly, well-educated and informed citizens of mature democracies have come to resent the overbearing influence of their government.

Fulfillment of Our Stage 2 Democracy —

Evolutionary developments of democracies have almost always been preceded by civil unrest that varied from extreme violent political, economic, and social revolution to benign demonstrations and civil disobedience, such as seen in the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) social phenomenon. Yet, for discerning historians, those developments were preceded by an almost imperceptible creep of social and cultural change. In all historic cases participants did not include the conscious thought that their efforts should contribute to social sustainability.

The survival of any society and government is tied directly to the hope of citizens to improve the quality of their life, to grow, with the hope of becoming as equally valuable as any other citizen. When there is no hope, what develops may be much like the current “Arab Spring” that represents the yearning of citizens for equal political and civil rights as possessed by the monarch or dictator of their country. Citizens in long established democracies, as in the United States, also yearn to improve the quality of their lives, as the demonstrators of “Occupy Wall Street” seek the same quality of opportunity as the lives of the top 1%.

Citizens of many Middle East countries would be thrilled to have full democratic, political and civil rights as Americans enjoy. But, for Americans that is taken for granted. The demonstrators of OWS, and elsewhere, yearn not just for equality in quantitative terms but equality in qualitative terms. We are witnessing the gradual creep of social change that could result in a new paradigm of democracy. Social change as this is on the order of magnitude much like a chick that is engaged in a life or death struggle to escape the confines of its gestation. What will be the outcome?

Today, all developed and maturing democracies are on the cusp of not just an evolutionary development of democratic processes, but also a full blown cultural paradigm shift that will engage the evolution of every social, political and economic organization and institution in every democracy. The statement by R. Buckminster Fuller, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete,” offers a prescient insight into the events we are now witnessing in developing and maturing democracies around the world. What we must keep in mind is that to “create” requires conscious thought with an intention and design in mind to give that effort direction and form.