Richard Hoggart, British sociologist, director of UNESCO and author of First and Last Things:
“Democracy is never an abstraction. It has to be rooted in a sense of our own particular culture, of its virtues, strengths, limitations … It arises from the people we have known, loved, respected as we grew up, whether that was among the urban or rural working class, or the conscientious and public-spirited among the middle class, or the upper class.”
DFQ #008:
What can you take from this to think about today?
Democracy means different to different people and its always people around us who would make us support one cause while do the opposite for the next cause.
Kids grow and the way they understand and live concepts changes as the mature. Sometimes fast, sometimes slowly, sometimes make mistakes, trial and error, sometimes simply coping.
Same happens with humanity, with cultures, with society in general. As a particular culture matures, learns, grows, get experience, as fast as the the community strengths rise, develop new concepts and are disperse in the public life, the way that particular culture live democracy changes.
Democracy is alive, is built every day. It is not an abstraction.
democracy is ever-changing, and adapts to its need to participate within the human experience.
It makes me wonder how social media will change our democracy in America.
A friend from Central Asia visited me two years ago. She was shocked that there were no police cars anywhere in the neighborhood and she wondered why people here obey the law. In a democratic society, we all own the government and the laws and we know that obeying the law is best for everyone.
That each of us has a definition, in this case, of democracy, and they’re all different. So, effective communication may very well be harder and more complex than first thought.
To think about democracy as not a concrete set of rules, but an ever evolving community where all classes of people should be considered.
That democracy is not a set thing, it is a description of something we have experienced and so hold on to in a way that is uniquely ours, ours at the level of the individual and ours at the level of a culture, and as such it must be allowed to be created in its own way in different cultures. It is not something that can just be transplanted into a different culture.
Yes democracy rises from the people we have known, loved and respected. This is the community, my community of life. Where I have dialogue -Bohm kind of dialogue- face to face, with thinking, believing, and culture in common. As Sir Ken Robinson says we need a group, a team, nothing is achieved alone any more.
But today INTERNET facebook and else, are not means for the dialogue but for braking the social bonds. They ar superficial and postmodern , the culture of the synthesis in 30 seconds, almost all lies or semi thruths wich easily brake social capitals. We nee more person to person talk.
Democracy was meant to empower people to live the life free with its attendant rights and responsibilities. Today many democracies are nothing more than sham. The voice of majority is used as a whip to dictate terms and bludgeon the minority and the weaker sections.
True democracies respect all and do not treat lesser mortals as vassals.