Momentum

It's not a soapbox day today (though my strong feelings about the goodness of feeling good and being good and doing good did come to mind as I wrote the following), but I have been pondering. Pondering does not lend itself to brevity or necessarily clarity. Thus I ponder...

Democracy does not, in my mind, mean turning on a dime. There is nothing in human social systems to suggest any positive, productive change can occur instantaneously. I was brought to this thought by another blogger's post on the subject of democracy. I especially enjoyed the last paragraph. Anyway, it got me thinking about the bad things that happen in our country and the responsibility we as citizens in a representative-democratic state have to address the bad things.

In most cases conscious attempts at change occur in response to perceived problems and crises. When things go well, if we take note of them as true successes, then we might change only insofar as we slack off in effort, which itself produces a change of some kind. If we took note of a success and kept doing what we had been doing, and success continued, we might fail to see it as success anymore. It disappears, leaving behind a sense, at best, of complacent comfort, and at worst stagnation and decay. Ironic, isn't it?

You can't be neutral on a moving train. --Noam Chomsky

Anyway, I do not believe democracy is about success and failure but about response. (The subject of failure and democracy is intriguing though, and I found several interesting posts on the subject: first, second, and third.) The actions and reactions of millions of individuals and groups form an often unconscious collective, one that reinforces and reinvents the system, the society. People are unbelievably powerful, even as we feel individually anything from conceit to helplessness. Whatever I feel individually, I am contributing to a larger feeling in society as a whole. My malaise, my diffidence, my enthusiasm, they feed into and off of the feelings of all those with whom I have contact. So everything begins in some sense with me (and you). Over our feelings we have some control. More important is what we act upon, as over this we have considerable control. Whatever I act upon or react to individually, I am contributing to a larger body of action, influencing more directly the world around me.

I am not under any orders to make the world a better place. --Troy Dyer, in Reality Bites

Democracy is not about turning on a dime. Democracy is about the collective will of all its participants, the sum of individual actions and beliefs. Democracy begins with me, and with you, as does any social construct. The government, the society, are ours for the influencing. We do so whether we intend to or not. So what influence are you having right now? Is it a positive influence?

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. -- Rush, from the song "Freewill"

Go do something good. You'll feel better, I promise.