Alternatives
How can we produce a city that nurtures what is best and most beautiful in human beings?___________________________
[fill this in yourself].
"O let America be America again
The land that never has been yet
And yet must be.”
Langston Hughes
Functions of a City
Learning
Entertainment
Diversity and choice
Conversation and dialogue
Adventure and excitement
-- Economics and money-making
-- Safety and comfort
Spiritual inspiration
Anonymity and privacy
-- Transportation
Justice
Culture and art
Checked items are those which our leaders and ourselves adequately fulfill; the others are vast areas of parking-
lot-like desolation.
“No nation can last, which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart. It must discipline its passions, and direct them, or they will discipline [it], one day, with scorpion whips. Above all, a nation cannot last as a money-making mob: it cannot with impunity--it cannot with existence--go on despising literature, despising science, despising art, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence.”
John Ruskin
“The city will be governed by us and by you in a state of waking, not in a dream as the many cities nowadays are governed by men who fight over shadows with one another and form factions for the sake of ruling, as though it were some great good.... Perhaps a pattern is laid up for a person who wants to see it, and so beholding to constitute himself its citizen. It doesn’t make any difference whether it is or will be somewhere. For he would mind the things of this city alone, and of no other.”
Plato, Republic, Book VII & IX
“I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
“Democracy is not the highest goal. It is better than dictatorial regimes, it is better than monarchies, but it is not the end of the journey--because democracy basically means government by the people, of the people, for the people, but the people are retarded. So let us say: government by the retarded, for the retarded, of the retarded....Democracy cannot be the highest possibility man can attain. It is good in comparison to other forms of government that have preceded it, but not something that can succeed it. I call that meritocracy. I want a government by the people of merit. And merit is a very rare quality.”
Osho
Earth Democracy
“We are beginning to see that we are connected to each other through love, compassion, ecological responsibility and economic justice, which replace greed, consumerism and competition as objectives of human life.
“In Earth Democracy, rights are derived from and balanced with responsibility. Those who bear the consequences of decisions and actions are the decision makers....Earth democracy is based on those who pay the price for having a say, and those who carry responsibility for having the rights. This creates direct or basic democracy.
“All members of the Earth Community, including all humans, have the right to sustenance--to food and water, to a safe and clean habitat, to security of ecological space. These rights are natural rights; they are birthrights, given by the fact of existence on Earth, and are best protected through community rights over the commons.”
Vandana Shiva, Resurgence, Sept 2002
Expand Forums For Public Deliberation
“Establish a thoroughgoing democratic approach encouraging the active participation of citizens in the decision-making process through volunteer committees or commissions.”
“Deliberation day” and “deliberative poll.” “Voters would be called together in neighborhood meetings to discuss the central issues of the campaigns....They are thrust into a situation where they must offer reasons for their opinions and listen to those of others, each having real voices in a real group.
“State-level ballot initiatives…would establish Citizens’ Juries to examine every ballot initiative and offer an official deliberative public judgment to balance the torrents of special-interest advertising.....[Others] propose randomly selected citizen panels to interview and evaluate a wide range of candidates.
“There must be public exposure to an appropriate diversity of view....A broad spectrum of opinion must be represented, that people must be allowed to hear sharply divergent views, and that it is important to find not merely conventional wisdom and the reasons that can be offered on its behalf, but also challenges to the conventional wisdom from a variety of different perspectives. People should see, for example, that there are strong arguments for and against affirmative action policies, for and against a constitutional right to abortion, for and against government funding of the arts, for and against aggressive government action to combat certain environmental risks.”
Yes Magazine, Winter 2003
Commitment:
Devote at least 50% of your time to meaningful public activity
“Part of the discipline of daily life is to organize one’s activities so as to be able to devote a good share of one’s time and energy to public service in the community. That service cannot begin too early or be carried on too consistently; for the resorption of government by the citizens of a democratic community is the only safeguard against those bureaucratic interventions that tend to arise in every state through the negligence, irresponsibility, and indifference of its citizens.” Lewis Mumford, The Conduct of Life, 282.
Challenges
All government decisions should be based on quality, not quantity.
Protect small local businesses, neighborhoods, and public spaces.
Reclaim our streets. Reduce traffic. All streets should have sidewalks.
Quasi-public space (malls and big box stores): We should have civic freedoms that we once had in the public spaces that have been eroded. For instance, there should be the right to free speech.
Declaration of sovereignty
We refuse natural or cultural determinism, instinct and dogma. We refuse psychic and spiritual numbing, and decline membership in any group that diminishes our integrity by assigning our power to organizations. We stake our entire being on becoming and acting on what is real.
The declaration of genuine sovereignty recognizes that it is the individual--not institutions--who forms society and reestablishes it every day. It is not a statement, or any other public act, but the formation of a self that reclaims its full scope of action. This simple origin can produce a culture of care that would overcome continents.
Political sovereignty assigns power to governments. Inner sovereignty is a defeat of the bland state of the public mind. In all our active life--in what we do, make, feel, think, and care about--we will bring into being the culture and society that we envision.