"False Options"

Responding to a recent newspaper article I wrote on citizen engagement, one Londoner said in her email: “I’m just growing tired of all the false options being offered to us by politicians and politics at all levels. I once used to believe that governments could work with citizens to find the most practical solutions that would at least leave something for everyone. Not anymore. I now subscribe to the school that believes politics has nothing to do with what really matters.”In that brief observation lies the germ of our current democratic malaise. Having worked from both within and outside of political circles, I can only come to the conclusion that much of what she says is true – and damning. Political parties often don’t really represent the opinions of ordinary people. Cities are beginning to witness the widening political chasm that comes with ideological persuasions at the civic governance level. It’s the partisanship of Ottawa neatly packaged into an adaptable format for cities.It is becoming more apparent to citizens that the political process at any level is most often dominated by rival elites representing ideologies that are fully irreconcilable with each other. What is the point of politics, then, if effective community-based solutions are no longer a possibility? The longer citizens permit this kind of political trench warfare to prevail the easier it becomes for them to behave more rigidly themselves. Letters to the editor, call-in shows, even Facebook and Twitter – all these are increasingly demonstrating the rigors of ideological and impractical outlooks as a cantankerous citizenry continue to square off against one another in ways that don’t seek for compromise solutions but merely become occasions for spouting opinions.Last week I received a note from someone who, owing to his own historic political persuasion, had already arrived at a conclusion on a situation that could have been easily augmented with some clarifying data had he only taken the opportunity to find it. “My conscience is clear,” he wrote back simply, implying that the new facts were actually secondary to his opinions. Ruminating on his statement throughout the day, I came to the realization that statements affirming a clear conscience are merely the trademark of the new ideological age in which citizens begin to extend the rigidity of party politics by another means. No one’s conscience should be that clear. Democracy is messy work, predicated on the reality that no one group has all the solutions. We have all made mistakes in our application of citizen engagement and often our beliefs have required updating and refinement. But when citizen conversation commences with a lack of humility, it’s not destined to result in a shared “win.”Ideological rigidity has the debilitating effect of obscuring the views Canadians have in common. It provides us with a distorted perception of the world, thereby confronting us with a series of bogus choices, of false probabilities. The result? Even when given the chance to work together, citizen engagement can unravel for want of a collective open mind. Great citizens transcend ideology in their desire to build better communities. They are at times capable of great vision, and the idea then is to seize that moment and act on it. Most times, however, the vision is slow in forming and patience with humility becomes the citizen’s most resourceful tool. As author James Sire saw it:“Truth cannot be constructed. To live in ideology is, as Vaclav Havel so eloquently reminds us, inevitably to live in a lie. Truth can only be revealed. We cannot be creators, only receptors.”There are citizens capable of progressive understanding, but they tend to acquire such things through broad exposure across various sectors – not by latching themselves to an ideological group and using it as a base to take on society. Political, financial and cultural solutions are remarkably difficult to arrive at should flexibility be at a premium. Where political or civic engagement becomes a matter of ideological opinions, you can be sure the real problems facing citizens will remain unsolved. Citizens mustn’t permit themselves to fall into the same trap as their political representatives – good people embracing rigid perspectives that are sure to create brush fires within any community.Any casting off of old ideologies won’t automatically lead to some kind of golden age of agreement among citizens or their politicians – democracy is too complex for that. Nevertheless, progress can be attained if we don’t come at one another with polarized views. We all want change, but it is precisely the arising of ideological warfare at whatever level that has made change impossible. The solutions citizens are looking for in their communities still wait to be addressed through common value and common sense.At the risk of being labeled a heretic for quoting Karl Marx, one of his observations is germane to our present context: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways: the point, however, is to change it.” Indeed. Yet that will only occur as we put the boxing gloves down and don our work gloves in order to build together a community to which we aspire.