Mushrooms in a Fairy Ring

A quick one:

I was reading The World is Flat again while in Borders for the 20% discount sale they held this week; Thomas Friedman has come up with yet another revised edition (the Red Edition) with two additional chapters, the ones I was reading. They didn't add much to the overall story, merely expanded some anecdotes in the Green Edition of last year, except one thing: he said, and i paraphrase, if what you want is not being done, that just means you're not doing it. In reference to Internet information uploading technologies and the Net itself as a medium of dissemination and civic action.

Civic action. I'd met Alex Au in person the other day and he said that political participation only counts when it is offline, in real life, otherwise it'd just be all sound and fury and merely an outlet for venting et cetera.

And then I read Sze Meng's latest post in Singapore Angle about what attributes the next PM should have, where he said in reply comments that "maybe the system is not cranking along fine because there are not enough robust actual dissent (aka make it harder to run) taken into serious consideration in major policies."

And it all sets me thinking. Thinking about political participation online and offline, about political participation as a citizen and as a member of Parliament. Do you see the false dichotomies and parallels that Alex Au and Friedman have drawn? - Like mushrooms sprung up in a fairy ring after some rain, there have to be roots that were always there growing deep and quietly, but steadily. Political participation of the true type, that is offline and in the real world by citizens, or that is offline in the real world in a political party by very active citizens, does not jump straight from total apathy. Civic action and becoming a member of Parliament both do not occur overnight; there has to be some effort and thought given by concerned individuals or groups, to matters at hand. To me there is no significant distinction between growing roots and growing mushrooms, because when the rain comes, as it will one day to all of us somehow or other, you will get good mushrooms from good roots anyway. So we can keep busy growing the roots, it is quite a full-time endeavour, as well as not being afraid to grow large nice mushrooms when we ownself feel necessary.

Let us talk more about roots and mushrooms. If the mushrooms, the desired outcome, is to have public policies that show equal concern and respect (concern for the individual's well-being, respect for the individual's right to self-determination and privacy), you must have the roots, people who are interested in discussing policies on those merits of balancing concern and respect, which is something different from the power struggle for policymaking in a government setting. Some people also call this rather altruistic type of action "civic action". If "civic action" sounds too fiery to be palatable, I would personally consider this roots to be a large but essential part of the political structure known as "deliberative democracy". To get a government of this type, you must have citizens who deliberate and discuss in meaningful ways (that means with good intentions for being constructive contributors), and who have been tested through the fire of public debate exposed to all persons in society (yes I mean all) on public policies.

To get good government, you must have citizens who can be government. This means your citizens should be interested in government and in policies. Yet in this country the average citizen's opinion is constantly devalued as too unsophisticated for thorough and fair hearing ("heartlanders" vs "cosmopolitans", "the conservative majority"), as if they can't speak for themselves liddat. And browbeaten endlessly with this personal attacks, we end up being the sheep we were told we were. Much kudos to Shianux for his stunning exposition on this, a while ago.

I wonder. I wonder why it seems to be the unspoken status quo in this country that deliberative democracy is perceived as a social ill, as "dissent", the Freudian slip of Sze Meng's mind*, when in fact it is the sole right and responsibility that every citizen has towards the care of his country. How could anyone rely on others to do his thinking for him, to align his values for him, to declare without transparency or accountability that 'this' is dissent and 'that' is not? Indeed, why is robust actual "dissent", the voice of your people, hardly officially acknowledged to exist?*

Civil and rational discourse. Deliberative democracy. Civic action.

Perhaps a short course of self-study on political philosophy is in order. Blogging has to wait till later, then.

*I acknowledge Sze Meng was discussing the question of why the citizens' roots and mushrooms don't seem to affect any government policy. But the authoritarian nature of this country's present political structure is not something I am well-read enough to critically discuss. I can only bitch about it very quietly in my offline world to raise some minimal awareness. Definitely need to grow more roots in this area of thought.