Citizenship - "Investing In One Another"

Democracy was never a commodity, something you buy from a catalogue. It was a representative system devised as a means whereby we might deal effectively with our challenges and explore our opportunities. The mechanisms designed and put in place to facilitate that process have recently fallen into suspicion, and the decline of democracy has prompted, even forced, others to look for ways to bring new life back into the system.The Internet itself was just emerging as our politics fell into decline. This coincidence caused some to envision the new digital world as the “electronic frontier” – a new place for exploration, the search for human resources, and even new life. It was believed free thought would transcend borders and politics – a kind of electronic “commons” that would reinvigorate our public life together. It would be the new place to gather, as cities once had done for the emerging democracy movement in previous centuries.But we had no tradition, no history, for online discourse. As digital babes in the woods we threw ourselves into its domain with wonder, excitement and sense of limitless possibilities. Yet we didn’t all jump in together; the alienation we were getting from a disconnected politics merely carried itself over to that new frontier. We became the modern equivalent of the isolated homesteader or independent explorer rather than community builders. We have reached the point where the Internet has been characterized more as a contested realm than a cooperative one, an alienating frontier as opposed to an associative new community.For democracy itself there have been key advantages and developments. There has been the remarkable disseminating of government and political information to citizens, as an example. But in a very real sense it has done less well in creating growing collective audiences who utilize all that information to build stronger and more sustainable communities. Again, there are examples to the opposite, but without an explosion of citizen commitment to the public uses of the Internet the declining politics of the day will merely continue. And in so many ways, the prevalence of today’s Internet has increased the opportunity for political partisanship among adherents that appears especially adroit at separating us from one another and keeping it that way. This very partisan model seems doomed by its own marketing successes to relegating citizens to either crudely opinionated partisans or turning them off of the political process entirely because of the alienation one feels.To combat this corrupting tendency of modern politics, citizens have to locate and bring together those peers keen on building communities along a more inclusive model required for a vital place where citizens interact, live, play and do business together.Governments around the world are retreating from many of their shared responsibilities, in part because they are required to work with fewer financial resources, and in part because citizens refuse to permit the raising of tax revenue to maintain historical priorities. This is forcing communities to scrounge around, developing new ways of doing the same with less. Some of this was needed; most of it was forced upon them through the abdication of more senior levels of government. But Seattle’s experience has shown that a community’s problem-solving capacity can assist us in new ways of working together. But despite much success, Seattle is still struggling for ways to make the Internet more effective in creating deliberation and dialogue. While it can easily reflect the divisions or stated beliefs of participants, it has yet discover an effective way to use online tools for careful deliberation, discussion and community buy-in.Of necessity, such an effort in pulling together the various key components of a modern community with involve new collaborations and coalitions. The avenues of innovation will produce some solutions that heretofore were left undiscovered. But – and this is vital – they will also uncover the reality that some of the great needs of a community are impossible to create or maintain without a healthy political atmosphere and a sustainable tax base. There are just some things we can't afford that will require government resources if they are to be equitable and durable.It appears that the only way citizens can accept the need for specifically targeted tax increases is through the experience of pulling together and realizing that healthy communities require more than privatization, economic growth, more box stores, and rampant consumerism. Sustainable communities require our investment in one another – citizens always in the process of growth, understanding and enlightenment.Can the Internet be a vital component of such communities? It’s too early to tell, but if it works it will be because it drew the key components together to not only get by with less, if required, but to demand more from governments as the needs are properly assessed and quantified. That will take citizen engagement and the belief that government has a healthy role to play in our lives that can cooperate in a more balanced and sustainable relationship with market forces.To think that a virtual community could lead to the revitalization of communities is heartening and inspiring, but for that to happen citizens will have to figure out if they are “downloaders” or “uploaders.” That will be the premise of the final post tomorrow on the role of the Internet.