Size and Democracy

In Parker Palmer’s book Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics worthy of the Human Spirit he speaks about the need of Democratic action needing free space. He is not just talking about physical but also space for ideas, images and ideals. This was also something Alex de Tocqueville pointed out in the early days of the “democratic experiment” here compared to fears that limited the size and content of public gatherings in his country of France.

He talks about how we can imprison ourselves to small spaces when we separate from each other. For example racists confine themselves, separating us from other. He quotes Terry Tempest Willianms describing the heart as the “first home of democracy,” “If our hearts are so small and brittle that they implode or explode under tension, they produce ‘ideals’ like Aryan supremacy…”

This got me to thinking once more just how different our country was when it was created compared to now. As profound as the found fathers thinking was they had no way of imagining what a nation this would become. While the Constitution and Bill of Rights remain our guiding principles to take most seriously, we must allow them to expand and change with our times and conditions.

In Christianity many of us have done that in how we understand scripture. We just plane ignore most of the old laws the Torah as being completely outdated and inappropriate to our times. We don’t advocate polygamy, explain how to sell our daughters, support slave ownership (though that took awhile), and the like. We adhere to the principles of moral thought as Jesus taught them; to love God with our entire being and each other as ourselves.

The first 13 colonies: New Hampshire, Massachusetts (Maine included), Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia (including Maryland, Kentucky and West Virginia), North Carolina, South Carolina, and George spread over 360,000 square miles and by 1775 had a population of 2,400,000. Today the country has 3,794,083 square miles and a population of 317,297,938. That is a major difference.

In the colonial days there was a lot of space. There were places to go and think and reflect upon our ideas of democracy, religion and the like. And there were places where we could easily assembly in large and small groups to talk about our ideas and ideals and values. I think much more physical space than today.

I remember in my internship in New York City in the 60’s, it was said that you were never more than nine feet on average from another human being. Or somebody was always in you space (your space being defined at the time as 27 feet.) You could feel it, and it was confining and promoted bad behavior. In that mass of humanity there was more isolation that in the little town of a thousand where I grew up, and I was a farm boy. Riding a tractor gives you lots of time to think and reflect and speculate; something I have grown to treasure over the years. Living in the ghetto, lacking physical space, you had to create mental space. Unfortunately, many did that through drugs. Which seemed okay to most folk as long as it remained in the ghettos of our land; but it didn’t stay there.

Parker Palmer’s main premise in his book as I can see it to this point is that we must have broken hearts. Not the broken heart of a lost love, but hearts that are broken open to reach out to others with broken hearts, to be in contact and community with others where we can share our ideas, ideals, values and concepts of democracy. This often results from broken hearts as many of us despair on the direction of our country and whether the democracy of the founding fathers, or the American Dreams are possible in today’s crowded world where we create boundaries and ways of separating from each other.

Parker Palmer became a Quaker. Quakers do not have clergy therefore functions of the clergy must be shared among members of the congregation and their abilities. In other mainline churches we like to farm out our religion to clergy to be religious for us and tell us what to do. Palmer talks about how members of a congregation would be identified as having good listening skills, so that if something was in need of psychological or spiritual help they could come to those folk knowing that their stories would be kept confidential and that they would be accepted as they were an allowed to work through their issues with the support, non-directive support of the fellow church members. This creates a lot of trust. And trust is something sadly lacking in today’s America.

Our courts are based on an adversarial process. It works and has lots of history behind it but I’m not convinced it is the best system. We have a two party system that I believe in as basic liberal and conservative points of view may be debated for the purpose of finding the best truth to work for the common good. But if you look around today I’m not at all sure we have a two party system. As far as I can see from my jaded point of view in congress we have Two democrats and no Republicans (perhaps a bit overstated) and lots of extreme groups who label others as enemies they can not trust and cannot even seem to talk to.

I hope Parker Palmer is right in his hope that hearts will be broken open so we can listen and talk to each other about common concerns. I hope that the voice of each citizen will be heard not just the rich and their lackeys. I hope that the American dream not just of wealth distribution but of ideas shared and valued will come into common play.

It is something to pray for even if you are an atheist.