Introduction

The pages ahead will provide repeated experiences of cognitive dissonance as the concepts unfold one after another as applied to social processes that have previously been assumed or ignored. We will begin from the bedrock of existence, and not assume that survival is given to every generation.

In the last decade, there has been an abundance of talk about “sustainability,” but almost no one has discerned and spoken of its two major components, material, and social sustainability. Even less discussed are the defining aspects of each. Material sustainability is measurable by its “quantity-object” definition. Social sustainability is measurable by its “quality-value” definition. You can buy iron ore by the ton, but acquiring peace requires parents with the skills and training to raise children with confidence, guidance, and love — and not for just one family, but for millions for families for generations after generations.

In a democratic nation, the values for the establishment of its and the values that have sustained our species for over 8,000 generations need to be congruent. In designing a socially sustainable democratic government and society using a singular value system will enable them to work closely together. When those values are more functionally embedded into the operation of social, political, and economic-financial organizations that support a society, the more smoothly it will operate.

Most people, who enjoy the values of a democratic nation, are usually not conscious of the necessity of value-integration between their social existence and their political existence. That only becomes visible when we see the incredible value-separation in a dictatorship or totalitarian regime. In those situations, there is a yawing gap between the values of individuals and the regime’s values. Because of those value-differences the potential for political rebellion is always present, and the cause of constant social-political dis-ease.

There are two major parts to the book:

1)    The Means … provides the toolbox and tools for citizens to reframe what I call a “Stage 2 Democracy” into a “Stage 3 Democracy.” The resources, or “materials” in this metaphor, exist in the innate skills and potential of each citizen. Citizens within the public provide the motivation and energy to transform their staid and antiquarian democracy into a system of social systems with the capability of learning from experience, and retaining that learned experience as wisdom.

2)    … to a Sustainable Democratic Society, discusses the primary work to be done in the societal-social and political-governmental pillars of a democratic society. The economic-financial pillar is the most difficult to deal with as the motivation for profit-making, profit-distribution, and equity sharing lie within the deep recesses of our human need to sustain LIFE, to survive not just for today, but to the foreseeable future. To change the culture of such a vital element of any society requires a multi-generational culture-change that will also addresses social justice, social equity, “what is fair,” and the common good.

The value system and a code of “organic morality” that is described in The Means … will provide the criteria to a Sustainable Democratic Society to design stable, self-sustaining, and sustainable families, communities, and national democratic societies. These values become a unified and uniform means of decision-making, a “code” for making socially sustaining decisions. Because the values are innate or organic to our species, even down to our DNA, this “code” is in reality an “Organic Morality” that is applicable to every race, culture, ethnicity, nationality, and gender, for all time. Such a morality has never existed until now.

The last chapters of the book provide for the redesign of Stage 2 Democracies to become Stage 3 Democracies. This provision is an evolutionary redesign, rather than an either-or choice. For Stage 3 Democracies to become successful, they must build upon the best elements of Stage 2 Democracies, while thoughtfully providing evolutionary developments to remedy the ineffective elements. Further discussion provides the means to form citizen-based, technological based democratic processes that protects contemporary democratic processes as well as providing citizens with the political leverage to “get something done.”

Enjoy !

 Daniel Raphael
 Evergreen, Colorado USA
 June 20, 2017