How many times have we heard it? A government wins an election based upon presenting a binary choice to an electorate, and then proceeds to claim that it has a mandate to do what it likes regardless of the dastardly opposition. It may even claim its influence to be ‘unifying’ and ‘healing’.
The reality is, however, that such a form of governance is actually a tyranny, a profound form of ARROGANCE and IGNORANCE, based upon the assumption that ‘whoever wins is right’ and whoever loses is ‘wrong’. There is no better recipe than this for guaranteeing the disaffection and despair of those depicted and humiliated as ‘losers’, no matter how few or many of them there are.
True democracy isn’t a winner-takes-all competition between one side and another of an argument. True democracy involves the bringing together of all valid (by which I mean truthful), even if partial, views in order to establish an all-round comprehensive view that brings all these views together rather than placing them in binary opposition.
True democracy therefore depends on developing a naturally non-binary philosophy. This is radically different from both the abstract dualistic philosophies upon which objective science has been founded, which treats matter and space as opposites, and from the monism that regards reality as all the same ‘unity’ or ‘oneness’. This is where the philosophy of what I have called natural inclusionality, comes in, founded on the experiential awareness of what I call natural inclusion. Natural inclusion is the evolutionary process through which all natural material forms come into being and diversify as flow-forms, mutual inclusions of space and energy in receptive-responsive relationship. In essence, such a relationship-based philosophy is a philosophy of Love and Life as mutually inclusive presences, not opponents.
True democracy, based on our experiential awareness of how we naturally are as living, loving, breathing, sensitive human beings, hence provides the basis for a truly community-based or ‘Communitarian’ politics, which respects both our individual uniqueness and what we have in common with one another. Winning and Losing are irrelevant — what matters is our human empathic understanding of one another and the situations we and other life forms find ourselves in. A truly realistic and compassionate politics that does not denigrate others, but seeks to bring them together in natural dynamic communion.
Doesn’t that sound rather more likely to bring together and heal than the elective tyrannies that we have been misled (in every sense of that word) to think we have to put up with?
Here’s a painting I once made called ‘Honeysuckle Sharing Circle’, which symbolizes this receptive-responsive calling together of diverse views into natural confluence. I hope it inspires you in the same way that it inspires me.
