The Big Answer

To link to this article from your blog or webpage, copy and paste the url below into your blog or homepage.

Lappé and DuBois present a book full of ideas about how ordinary citizens—not politicians—can get involved in democracy and effective civic culture.

They, like Toffler (in Powershift), see power as changing, and the old paradigm’s lower quality versions of power—wealth and force—as yielding, and appropriately so, to higher quality power (more representative of the characteristics of the new, ecological-holistic paradigm) such as knowledge. They see clearly how one can use the positive power of persuasion, knowledge, creativity, relationship and even humor to empower oneself as a civic activist. They see power’s old-paradigm definition as boggled down in zero-sum, win-lose thinking, but its new-paradigm definition as flexible, dynamic, and win-win. They see the bonds among people as the most important of all positive power sources. They see the old social engineering S.O.P.s as bogged down with a service model, relying on experts, service giving, disability focused, deficiency centered and problem focused. (Bonds evolve best in community irl f2f—less so via internet networking where one forms connections but rarely bonds. See Why Do We Need Communities? and Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?.)

But they see the new, grassroots, civil activism S.O.P.s as utilizing a Living Democracy model, relying on shared decision making, enabling and empowering, clients sharing knowledge and insights, real listening, tapping unappreciated capacity, problem solving, networking, and ability/resource centered. See also The Healing Web: Social Networks and Human Survival, A Systems Perspective of Parenting: The Individual, the Family, and the Social Network, and Preventing Child Maltreatment Through Social Support.

The service model in bureaucracies says send out our 'experts'

They see citizens as people with resources and abilities, with responsibility for themselves, needing to be empowered and not handed a service, and part of a holistic system. Lappé and DuBois realize that the people are responsible for their lives, not the government. They have realized that the people are the solution; the government is not the solution. Whatever social engineering tendencies Lappé may have once had—as a Berkeley liberal (who has wised up wonderfully)—she has now happily transcended in favor of citizen action and empowerment. She and DuBois know that grassroots movements and civil actions actually work to solve problems, and that Big Government creates more problems than it solves.

Heroic NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has demonstrated the type of courage and wisdom we all need to aspire to

Rebelling against the unjust, immoral Vietnam War was a good and patriotic thing to do, just like the Occupy Wall Street demonstation, which was a message to the powers-that-be that America is tired of the lies, corruption, and limitless greed that has led the Oligarchy in charge to keep squeezing more and more money from the lower and middle classes until it's worse than just that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

In the U.S., the 1% people get 99% and the 99% people (us) get 1%. Is it fair we get leftover scraps and they pig out?

Now it's the 99% get poorer while the 1% get richer. The OWS demonstrators coined the 99%/1% phrase to highlight the unfair power and wealth dynamic at play in the U.S.A. Like the heroes Edward Snowden and Jack Kevorkian, we owe the OWS protestors our thanks for their courage and dedication. But protesting and rebelling can only take us so far. In the case of our government setting itself up as the answer (via social engineering) and then proving repeatedly it is anything but the answer (it's the problem), it is the civic and social actions we take for ourselves that actually provide answers. The authors nailed it: grassroots movements and civil actions are where our constructive actions should be focused.

They say: quit looking to social engineering superheroes and rely on local community efforts

As long as corporations are the main deciding force in elections rather than the citizens, democracy will be impossible

Their book shows democracy functioning very well via citizen problem solving. (But of course the American "democracy" system in general is looking pretty bad—see Who Will Tell The People?: The Betrayal Of American Democracy and Supercapitalism). It also shows how the reader can participate in such successes.

For example, instead of socially engineering a family with an at-risk child by removing him to an institution or foster home, and instead of sending money because of the “poverty is the problem” cliché, a social worker can be sent to do what the family really needs: help with parenting, help with lifestyle errors, help with budgeting, reaching out not to “social services” but to social connectedness and networking, help with communicating feelings and needs, and help learning how to express anger and frustration constructively rather than win-lose destructively. They say: “. . . most families can learn to solve their own problems rather than relying on social services.” This is called the family preservation approach. Think of it as like the old saying: Give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.

Give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime

It would be better if parents and schools taught such things to their children as part of child-rearing and these people taught it to their offspring when they grew up, ad infinitum. But when this doesn’t happen, society has to choose between empowering the at-risk or spending a small fortune on them in the criminal justice system. (The more that good people, whether in or out of the MC movement, spread good information about effective parenting and effective communication and relationships and lifestyles, the less any agencies at all will have to get involved in the lives of citizens, of course. See Why Register for an MC?.)

Registering for MC search and match

In describing their Living Democracy prescription for effective civic community functioning, they underline active listening as one of the most important skills to empower the process. This, as you know, is the key to P.E.T., which has been around since before 1970. Another important skill is vision: You need to “reimage” current reality to more nearly match your values and needs. (This, of course, is the essence of the MC movement, which is designed to revamp lifestyle realities so they’re an exact fit with what we want, value and need. An MC is the ultimate empowering structure.) See Why Do We Need Communities?.

As long as corporations are the main deciding force in elections rather than the citizens, national democracy will be impossible, but local democracy can still work

The authors say there’s no “formula” for empowering civil democratic functionality. The decentralization and demassification of society, coupled with lots of reliable communication, relationship, nurturing and parenting information, combined with the “think globally, act locally” movement and the civic activism revolution now under way—all these give us hope that the society’s social problems have great hope of being addressed, because of the new context and worldview in which this addressing is occurring. Lappé and DuBois are saying that without a bottom-up approach in which social problems are addressed by the citizenry, the society will continue a downward slide into Haves and Have-nots, empowered and disempowered, and more sexism, racism, crime, family problems, etc.

Below are a couple of proofs that what's occurring is The Biggest Redistribution Of Wealth From The Middle Class And Poor To The Rich Ever.

Evidence the oligarchy has directed the corporatocracy to drain most of the wealth from all U.S. citizens that are not rich and give it to the rich. Source: Congressional Budget Office

More evidence the oligarchy has directed the corporatocracy to drain most of the wealth from all U.S. citizens that are not rich and give it to the rich. Source: Congressional Budget Office

The income gap between the rich and poor is huge and obscene

They’re saying that the discredited idea that governments will somehow fix things because “that’s their job” and that’s how “democracy” works will only lead us down the path to hopelessness and desperation. Even though they can see the point of left leaning people who say that corporate dominated media are keeping us uninformed and isolated from each other, they realize that it is we who choose whether or not to be at effect of these realities or at cause as citizen activists. More about being at cause here: WHY Register for MC Search and Match?.

MC with Japanese Garden with Childcare Hub

(MCs are the epitome of how people will act if they get informed about effective lifestyles and relationships. Citizens are tired of their alienated isolation from intimate friendships. They want something better than the social networking connections from Facebook which are counterfeit community pretending to be deep social bonds. Networking connections are not the deep bonds humans need. These cyberconnections are part of deep friendships only when supplementing preexisting deep friendships.

Citizens in MCs will enjoy optimal, benevolent (and free) childcare and elder care options, and empowered relationships and parenting methods

Citizens in MCs will enjoy optimal, benevolent (and free) childcare and elder care options, and empowered relationships and parenting methods

Citizens in MCs will enjoy optimal, benevolent (and free) childcare and elder care options, and empowered relationships and parenting methods. They will have no need to rely on social networks in cyberspace to achieve the pretense of community. They'll have the real thing in the best form it has ever existed. Ordinary citizens—not politicians—can get involved in democracy and effective civic culture, starting with Lappé's and DuBois' ideas, but then moving up to even more effective ways.)

Let us stay on the path of empowerment via citizen activism and avoid straying off the path toward the delusion of political salvation

See Why Do We Need Communities?, Democracy—an American Delusion, Freedom of the Press—an American Delusion.