Catching Up to History

Formal politics has increasingly come under suspicion as a less than adequate institution for guiding democracy through the shoals of what is clearly becoming a difficult decade. This isn’t always true not accurate, but the perception is growing and communities are feeling that they have to proceed with tackling significant challenges without the usual political institutions that served them in the past.What does that mean exactly? Well, for starters a vast array of community groups have sprung up in recent years across the country that are seeking to deal with the vital issues the political system seems disinclined to address. There resides in these groups a kind of linear thinking that believes if they keep plugging forward that eventually progress and change will occur. History proves they are correct, over and over again, in thousands of different contexts. This is how grassroots movements see it and they build on such beliefs through conversations, policy discussions, a focus on community engagement, and sheer hard work on numerous initiatives. This is the essence of democracy.But if recent technological innovations say anything it is that history is going faster with every passing year. What if time is proceeding at a pace that is simply outflanking our community efforts?Think of a ball that rolls across a level surface. If it weren’t for friction, the distance it travels each second would be constant. This is a linear reality, one which most democratic movements subscribe to. However, take that ball and drop it off a skyscraper. In the first second it would travel 32 feet. Yet the time it would take to travel the next 32 feet would be less than half a second, and its speed would grow increasingly due to the distance traveled. This is how the developments of history now appear to proceed – not in linear fashion, but exponentially.In past eras, all those home-grown democratic movements eventually caught up to the swirling of events that confronted their respective society and change appeared to happen overnight. The linear thinker believes this is what must happen again if Canadian democracy is to transform in a way sensitive the needs of our communities.The problem is in our modern age, however, that knowledge is growing exponentially. Climate change is proceeding at a pace that outstrips even scientists. Globalization has done in the last two decades what couldn’t be done for millennia. Capitalism expands its global reach by a factor unlike any time in history. Technological developments will radically alter our lives in the next five years, not the next century. Species are dying at rates unheard of. Stores of decreasing oil are now appearing at an unprecedented rate. In almost one century we have gone from the Wright brothers to the moon and now digital movements at the speed of light. This is the pace of history as we now know it, and it is nothing like the plodding pace of democratic innovation.Frequent any bookstore and you’ll find numerous books on small citizen gatherings and why they are so vital to community life. But it remains difficult to find anything dealing with the increasing gap between these linear and exponential realities. It could well be true that by the time we bring about democratic reform that we will be facing a climate cataclysm. By the time we reconnect millions of jobless to new employment, and entire generation might be lost to hope and despair. These are serious issues affecting our communities every day and will have to be met with a new kind of citizen engagement.Some of that is already happening. In London recently two groups envisioning a better and more engaged future for our city decided to join efforts that might very well double or triple the speed of the changes they are seeking. Two fairly new groups seeking change – Citizens Corps and Better London – are betting that they can embrace more transformation together than they can separately. This is beginning to happen across the country at a dizzying rate. For London it’s a breath of fresh air.Added to what Citizens Corps and Better London are undertaking must be the engagement of various groups across the sectors. This will prove more difficult but no less necessary. In fact it will prove pivotal to community transformation. We’re not talking about getting to know one another here, but actually working together under a coordinated plan to take back our cities and communities for the sake of citizens. This will remain our greatest test and to pass it will require more than smarts or even dedication. It will take citizens and groups who comprehend that change doesn’t fail because people don’t want it, but because sometimes they resist being changed themselves. Attitudes will have to be adjusted, relationships established and broadened.Gandhi used to proclaim that, “there is more to life than increasing its speed.” That’s an eternal truth. But if our community requires us to come together quickly for the sake of our collective life and prosperity in areas where we live, then life itself – community dynamic – becomes the goal and we will achieve it by moving quicker together, across sectors, with one another. Citizens Corps and Better London are pointing us in that direction.