We are at a crucial juncture in human existence. Besides the need to grow spiritually (and for those that haven’t read my earlier posts on this, I emphasize that this does not automatically include religion, which itself is a control system) we need to regain control of our own society. Do nothing and the Cabal (elite hierarchy) will finish the on-going movement to create a feudal system. If that sounds negative it is, and it and I have been trying to reveal this. But it doesn’t really need me to keep saying it. Unless you are doing really well financially and have convinced yourself all is OK, you know that the system we currently have set up has corporations running governments and the uber-rich getting richer with the rest of us getting poorer – a feudal system. The alternative that I have been talking about these past many months is one that we say “no more” and empower ourselves to change the system to one that works for us all. I have talked at length about community building and the need to generate Community Capacity (CC). In my Sustainable Living Textbook I cover CC as a part of Civic Agency. Harry Boyte has written extensively about Civic Agency and I recommend anything written by him.
“Political leaders and civil servants seeking to strengthen civic life help return us to a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Citizens outside of government who remember that the government is us, not them, claim the station of citizenship. They shift from being childlike protestors or dependents to being adult partners. Both sides create the shift from scarcity to abundance” (Boyte, 2008).
There are many wonderful types of democracies in the world and they exist because the people rejected the older monarchies with their absolute control. In the early days of the USA (1787) while the founding fathers were debating in Philadelphia how best the country should run, Ben Franklin was asked by an anxious resident of Philadelphia, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” (Defn Republic – a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.) The Cabal would have you believe that you have power by your sole civic duty is to vote, or as often happens convince you that your vote will not make a difference. Many countries require their citizens to vote – not a bad idea as long as the citizens get valid information about what they are voting about. Recall what I have said often, the Cabal keep us in control through separation – creating derision among us on issues of minor differences that work to polarize us and create hate and fear. What Ben Franklin meant by his statement on “…if you can keep it” is that powerful interests could manipulate the republic system to create citizens that were totally disempowered, if the citizenry did not take their duty to be citizens seriously! Just like powerful economic interests will trend to monopolies if left unchecked, so too would republics trend to autocracies if left unchecked.
Community Capacity (CC) is the check on the elites taking complete control. But this check requires all citizens to be active stakeholders in their communities. CC “is interaction of human capital, organizational resources and social capital that exist within a community. It is this capacity that can be leveraged to solve collective problems and improve or maintain the well-being of that community through informal social processes and or organized efforts by individuals and organizations and social networks.” Civic agency “describes how citizens become the stakeholders in their own well-being and not as receivers of benefits from external agencies.” (Jurin/Boyte).
From my SL text: “The term civic agency has a long history. It comes in various disguises such as citizen action, civic engagement, citizen agency, community organizing, and adult/community education. What it means is that we all work together and talk as rational adults to make something positive happen for the ‘common good.’ It is much more than simple involvement in civic affairs with citizens providing input for leaders to make decisions. It is where citizens shape their own lives and communities through respect of the capacities and resourcefulness of all community members to create partnerships through negotiations, ownership of the issues, co-learning situations and self-empowerment. In essence, it is a bottom-up citizen movement as opposed to top-down authoritarian dictates. It is the bottom up and top down working equally together to find solutions to civic questions and problems…Most of the founding fathers of the new American republic believed that active citizenship was key to building a just and proper government (at all levels) that was us, and not a them – government is the people’s servant, not vice-versa.”
It is the last sentence that lies at the crux of many of todays governments where elites (and their bosses in the Cabal) have disempowered the citizenry and eroded public institutions through a long process of designed civic disengagement with the sole purpose of building an autocracy. Most democracies have some form of constitution that states the power resides with the citizens. The founding fathers of the USA understood that very clearly when they started with “We the People…” Thomas Jefferson understood that ‘the people’ could only be effective if they were educated and could make rational and informed decisions. Throughout history, public education to one degree or another has always been a sign of a more enlightened population, especially when that education involved learning to think instead of simply learning facts that could be simply be a form of propaganda. An engaged citizenry involves communities involved in open dialogue and debating what is important and necessary. To understand how that occurs more clearly is the path of the next couple of posts. TBC………
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