Citizenship - "Stuck in the Middle with You"

I don’t know if you’ve noticed it is bookstores, but there has been an increasing amount of literature clearly pessimistic on the future of democracy itself. We’ve gone from believing we could “make the world safe for democracy” to now actually questioning if it has any validity at home. That’s quite a change, and I believe many Canadians are sensing numerous doubts to one degree or another.There are three great forces at work in our society – two seemingly impervious and one struggling for oxygen. Contrary to popular belief, government now appears stronger than any other moment in recent times. It’s not very effective and continues to face the erosion of respect, but its growing distance from those it was meant to support has permitted it to ruin the public space with partisanship, a tin ear towards the daily needs of people, and a willingness to be contemptuous towards the very legislative underpinning of our democracy. It continues down this dangerous path, in part, because citizens have failed to watch over and keep their governments to account.The second realm, that appears like a juggernaut overrunning the democratic landscape, is constituted by commercial markets. The public space is shrinking, owing to that favourite catchphrase of modern capitalism – privatization, and its continued penchant to loosen regulations as it pursues opportunities for investments and profits. We’ve covered this ground a fair bit this summer.And then there’s the third group, struggling for recognition and displaying little strength to combat the other two – civil society.  We are increasingly falling out of alignment because we have failed to resource civil society sufficiently to build up citizens as the important third sector of modern democracy.In a very real sense, democracy can only function if this civil society can mediate between increasingly partisan governments and wholly commercial markets. It must assist in bringing both government and the market into finding an effective third space between the power of the citizens and the freedoms we enjoy as private citizens.What is civil society? Simply, it’s made up of us – our families, places of worship, communities, voluntary associations, etc. that occupy those spaces where we meet and deliberate with others in public. It’s quite possible to exist in such groups without ever really discovering or getting to work with our neighbours, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Civil society is not a clan or an enclave; rather, it consists of groups and individuals who reach past themselves and their own experience to embrace others outside of comfort zones in the cause of creating a better community.Personally, I think civil society is showing real signs of life in communities across Canada, perhaps being forced into being because of the lack of attention paid by government and the private markets. It exists and it is growing, but doesn’t yet have the power or inclination to knock together the heads of the other two. We can witness this taking place in real-time as we follow the news south of the border. Citizens are broke, unemployed, lacking healthcare and public services, but the major political parties are so busy scrapping over the carcass of what’s left of democracy that the public is fully outside of the loop. Nor can citizens even protect their own investments, as the markets continue to be driven by a manic greed, lack of experience, and refusal to attain stability for the sake of democracy itself. Canada, as it has so frequently done in recent years, has begun to display the early warnings of such practices here as well.And so it is time for citizens to pull together to demand not only accountability, but also sensitivity from these other two behemoths. We must become the agents of such things rather than mere observers, consumers or voters. It is time for us to actually practice civil society, to build a mediating civic domain driven by voluntary associations that evidence an inclusive nature. It orients itself towards the civic realm and commits itself to defining, expanding and protecting the common good and the commons. It explores common ground, undertakes public work and thought, and pursues common relations, not professional ones.You and I are not only stuck with one another; we are stuck in the middle with one another. We have to not only practice tolerance, but we must pull together before these other two forces strip democracy not only of its potential but its resources. We are the agents of democracy, not governments. This is a fundamental shift. In the past we permitted governments to have some sway, but they are so disconnected presently from our daily challenges that they no longer have the absolute moral authority to act on our behalf. We must also become the democratic agents of the private markets, and that too is an imposing task. We must demand that private enterprise be more sensitive to the demands of democracy and civil society before it runs away with our birthright and our heritage altogether. How we perform this balancing act will be the subject of the next few posts, but for now we have to ask ourselves if we have the courage and the self-sacrificial spirit necessary to protect ourselves and our common good.