{"id":3491688,"date":"2022-05-12T11:04:11","date_gmt":"2022-05-12T11:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3491688"},"modified":"2022-05-12T11:04:11","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T11:04:11","slug":"deliberative-democracy-and-gaianism-natural-complements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2022-05-12\/deliberative-democracy-and-gaianism-natural-complements\/","title":{"rendered":"Deliberative Democracy and Gaianism: Natural Complements"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Prugh explores the overlapping qualities that Deliberative Democracy and the Gaian Way share, and their cross-fertilizing potentialities.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

Not long ago\u00a0Resilience.org<\/em>\u00a0featured an\u00a0essay by Stan Cox<\/a>\u00a0of the Land Institute in which he warned of two \u201cgrim prospects\u201d:<\/p>\n

[O]ne, that continued abuse of the ecosphere could render much of the Earth unlivable for humans and myriad other species, and two, that the United States\u2019 current political drift toward autocratic rule could accelerate, dashing any hope of attaining a multiracial, pluralistic democracy. These two emergencies are intertwined. Either we find meaningful responses to both, or we fail dramatically on both.<\/em><\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s right, and I agree that the two emergencies are linked, both in the United States and more broadly around the world. As David Orr has said, the problems of climate change (and the rest of the\u00a0polycrisis<\/a>\u00a0elements) and the state of our democracy exist in an\u00a0\u201cintimate and reciprocal\u201d<\/a>\u00a0relationship. To fix one, we need to fix the other as well\u2014that is, Orr believes, we need to reinvent democracy. I agree with that point too, although I believe one key aspect of an effective reinvention is actually more like a resurrection or a recapture of some ancient practices of community self-governance that live on in deliberative democracy (more on that below).<\/p>\n

Why might this be relevant to Gaians? Deliberative democracy (DD) shares some key features with Gaianism and is intrinsically compatible with it, to the point that Gaians might think about taking an interest in practicing and promoting DD.<\/p>\n

First, Gaianism is about reverence and respect for the natural world, and its nurturance. At its core is the deep understanding of our embeddedness in, and utter dependence on, the ecosphere. Gaianism seeks to cultivate reconnection with and reverence for nature partly in order to reframe our relationship with it and reduce the damage we do.<\/p>\n

\"mushrooms\"<\/p>\n

A deliberative discussion of industrious denizens of the woods.<\/em>\u00a0(Image from Phil59 via Pixabay<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Likewise, deliberative democracy, and its scholars and practitioners, hold that the ailments of modern democracy have to do with people\u2019s alienation from the process and disaffection with its results. People very often feel unheard, unseen, disempowered, and generally not consulted\u2014except occasionally via the blunt instrument of periodic elections. DD is a powerful way to reconnect people to the governance of their communities, regions, and nations. It\u2019s a way to begin restoring \u201creverence and respect\u201d for our politics, and thus a form of therapy for the body politic.<\/p>\n

Second, both Gaianism and DD are \u201corganic.\u201d That is a much-abused word, but I think it\u2019s allowable here; I mean it in the sense that they arise out of \u201cnatural\u201d circumstances that are deeply rooted in our evolutionary history as social primates. The reverence and respect for Gaia obviously arose out of an appreciation of nature\u2019s powers and the need to be intimately familiar with it in order to survive; modern Earth-systems science has only deepened that understanding. Deliberative democracy\u2019s basic practices arose in the thousands of years in which humans lived primarily in groups small enough for most people to have an ongoing say in their governance, whether they were organized hierarchically or not.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

An organic gathering of community members to discuss forest rights in 2008.<\/em>\u00a0(Image from Nnnamaharashtra via Wikipedia<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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The third parallel requires some set-up, starting with this list of trends testifying to a widening separation from nature:<\/p>\n