Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [14]
In other words, once U.S. corporations have been permitted—through citizen noninvolvement in the process—to emit into the environment each year what now amounts to almost four pounds of toxic substances for every person on earth, it’s simply too late. To dispose safely of this enormous quantity would require several times the profits of the chemical industry. Commoner argues that the record of the last two decades demonstrates that without citizens taking greater responsibility to ensure the halt of production of toxic substances in the first place, there is no solution.22
But, taking a position on anything, even speaking out in the classroom or workplace, is a scary proposition for most of us. How do we gain the confidence and the capacity to participate in earth-shaping decisions?
Citizen democracy is a learned art. Earlier I noted that we’re not born citizens. True, anyone can respond to a few TV ads and pull a lever in a polling booth. But real citizenship is an art. Like the art of dance, music, or sport, we persevere only as we learn to do it well. If we feel awkward or foolish for too long, we’ll just stop! On the other hand, if we are learning the particular challenges and rewards of an art, we continue even if our “performance” is far from perfect. So, too, with active citizenship.
How do we as a society, and as individuals, come to take seriously building our capacities for expressing our values and interests in common problem solving?
The process can begin in family life. In 1985, my children—Anthony and Anna—and I wrote a book together. It’s called What to Do After You Turn Off the TV.23 Our idea was to entice families away from letting TV dominate home life, so they might discover the joys of each other’s company. We told of our own experience of eight years without TV and interviewed hundreds of other families to capture their experiences. We were struck by how many close families had developed some version of a “family meeting”—-a special time when everyone comes together to make plans and talk over problems that might have gone unresolved. Children in such families gain an early start in acquiring the capacities—for dialogue, compromise, mediation, and reflection—that can make them effective citizens.
Above I suggested a critical role for schools in learning the democratic arts. But equally important are the voluntary associations in which the majority of Americans are engaged—through religious affiliations, or in groups like the PTA, the League of Women Voters, Kiwanis, or Greenpeace. Can we come to see such involvements not just as means to solve a particular problem, or to address a given issue, but as occasions for learning the democratic arts, as opportunities for learning that can sustain our involvement throughout our lives?
So many people who become involved in addressing social problems experience early “burn out.” If we do not attend to the arts of reflection and evaluation of our progress, if we do not work to perceive how our particular effort is tied to long-term society-wide change, we soon feel like retreating into our private worlds. We deny our need to make a difference in the larger world. We deny ourselves.
As we begin to value the process of democratic renewal itself, seeing our efforts not as stop-gap measures but as engaging in long-term cultural change, we can attend to making that process rewarding—consciously measuring our success in incremental steps, deliberately creating celebration and cultural expressions to sustain our energies.
Growing up, most of us learn that “politics” is about staking out a position and defending it. The “art,” if there is any, is winning—not listening in order to understand the interests and values of others. If we are locked into pre-set positions, interaction at best hones our arguments but cannot awaken us to new possibilities. Creativity is lost. Thus, in the emerging citizen politics, listening may be the first art. Many