September 2002

POLITICS IN A NEW PARTICIPATORY PERSPECTIVE

Every political system belongs to a certain world view, you might say, is imbedded in a certain Eschaton. Eschaton is the Greek word for the realm of our ultimate strivings, for the horizons of our ultimate fulfillment. Hence, eschatology is the field of the investigation of our ultimate strivings and aspirations. Every political system (if only implicitly) is embedded in and grows from a certain eschatology. Industrial democracy grows out of the eschatology of material progress which is its guiding hand, and it conceives of the human as the consumer because this is what eschatology assumes — salvation through material consumption. In this eschatology, science and technology are enormously important, as the processes that deliver, as the vehicle for the realization of the dream.

Within spiritual democracy it is all different. The world is a sanctuary. The human is the shepherd and the guardian of this sanctuary. His chief guiding value is reverence. His ultimate aspiration is self realization — the life which is in harmony and peace with oneself and with other people. The main vehicle of the realization of our new eschatology is deep participation.

The meaning of participation has been known among people through the eons of time. But we did not have the courage to act upon our intuition, and so often we were confined to participation in shallow contexts. Only recently did science help us to unravel and establish the beauty and importance of participation. Why is the very idea of participation so important? Because we are at the threshold of a new era in which we discovered the beauty of participation, its pervading character, the intricate dance of participation of all life and of all galaxies.

The astrophysicist, John Archibold Wheeler, has said "we are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to be happening. We are not only observers. We are participators. In a strange case, this is a participatory universe." (The American Scientists, November/December 1974., p.689.)

The consequences of the participatory universe are bubbling in various spheres of learning and of human endeavor. But in politics we are stuck in the old paradigm of shallow participation: you participate in production and consumption of material goodies. A far cry from genuine participation!

We need to look deeper into the nature of participation and its various forms. There is a shallow participation and a deep participation. There is genuine participation and pseudo participation. You need to know which is which as we engage in co-creative process with the universe and social reality.

If you imagine two point, A and B, which are unconnected, they are two lonely monads. Now we draw the line below them. They now belong. They participate in making a line. Admittedly a shallow form of participation. But the example makes you aware what it is all about. It is about the context of belonging, which may be either shallow or deep, significant or trivial, fulfilling or unfulfilling, genuine or pseudo. Let us anticipate one of the conclusions. On the depth of your participation depends your fulfillment in the participatory universe. The more significant and deep the participatory context, the more significant and deep your self-realization.

Let us consider different contexts of participation. We play various kinds of games. We could call it pre-programmed participation. The rules of this participation are given. We obey them and participate because in the process we exert ourselves, we fulfill ourselves. Much of our social life depends on preprogrammed participation. This is also true of sports.

This is participation within explicit rules. We know what the rules are, yet we truly participate because our skills, ingenuity, talent and application can be exercised and extended— be it soccer or tennis.

The trouble starts when in some forms of our pre-preprogrammed participation, regulated by explicit and accepted rules, there are some forces and players who manipulate the scene from behind. We are led to believe that we participate. Yet, sooner or later we feel duped and frustrated because our participation is rubber stamping of what has been decided by Powerful Players behind the scene. These are the ones who truly participate, while we are mere pawns, to whom is given an illusion of participation. When the process of participation is manipulated and controlled behind the scene, we are but poor little actors on the front scene. We do not truly participate. This is what I call pseudo-participation, or shallow participation.

We are all painfully aware how much our political life and social life is manipulated by the invisible hands. Most of our elections are manipulated in this fashion. We have the right to participate by punching names which are chosen for us. In a similar fashion so much of our social life is skillfully manipulated and controlled: we have the illusion of multiple choices whereas all these choices are serving the vested interests of those behind the scene. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is just a clear awareness of how pseudo-participation works.

In conventional politics our political choices are manipulated and prefabricated by others. We have a ready menu to choose from. But we do not participate in composing the menu. The dishes are thrown at us. Let us be clearly aware that the products we buy and use are not the ones we design or want. These products are thrown at us. Thus we end up with apparently so many choices...of the same product.

A deeper analysis shows that our life styles are manipulated by Big Players and their vested interests — not by our predilections. It just happens that the same Big Players who manipulate our political agenda are the same ones who manipulate our life styles. The awareness of this should startle us. What kind of participation is it in which your political choices are imposed on you, the products you use are chosen for you, and your life styles are manipulated and selected for you?

The understanding of the participatory process is enormously important. This understanding informs you that democracy may be a very shallow and ineffective instrument for expressing the will, and real interests of the people. You are given various choices. And you vote. This is democracy. But only on the surface. In fact, it is pseudo-democracy. For behind the scene there are Powerful Players, sometimes large invisible social forces which the players only express and obey. These forces, however, pre-arrange the whole scene. You vote but you do not participate. This is the tragedy of our Industrial Democracy.

Let us look deeper into the meaning of various forms of participation. Our major problems may not be so much with Democracy but with our defunct and impoverished forms of participation. Beyond preprogrammed participation there is co-creative participation, within which we make the rules, at least contribute to making the rules — as we go along in our political life, in our social life, in our daily life. And of course, in our artistic life. How does a true artist act and work in his specific universe? He or she is intensely engaged in the process, which is all consuming and very satisfying exactly because it is based on co-creative participation. In the artistic process, there are no fixed rules which paralyze and thwart. Techniques and strategies are creatively used and new rules are invented as we go along to create things of beauty which are a joy forever. This is a paradigmatic case of true participation, of deep participation, of genuine participation, of the participation in which we are stretched to our limits and fulfilled to the brim.

We can now formulate some important questions which will help us to assess the validity of the participatory process in which we are engaged. Does it truly engage and involve us? Or does it treat us as pawns? Are we truly contributing? Or we rubber stamping? Do we feel this intense satisfaction as the result of stretching ourselves and contributing to something worthwhile? Or does the whole process leave us cold and empty?

We were born to participate. All life is a symphony of participation. Participation is the song of creation. All life sings while participating; withers away while deprived of participation. When life discovered the meaning of participation, and the vehicles of participation, it has discovered its most important modus for growth.

Nothing happens in evolution without participation. The meaning of participation is utterly simple, as it engulfs us all the time and as we are its walking embodiments. Yet, the meaning of participation is also utterly profound Participation is a mystery revealed to us daily.

How deeply can you enter into the immensity of the universe? As deeply as you can embrace it in the arms of your participation. Everything else is a mere shadow. The real thing is our immense journey of becoming through participation.

We all know the game called "trivial pursuits." It is a game in which you somewhat participate. But your participation is what the game says: trivial. This game epitomizes so much of our life in the technological society, whose other name is Industrial Democracy. We are engulfed in trivial pursuits. Our lives have been trivialized. We know it, we feel bored, we become empty, then frustrated. This frustration, born of boredom and lack of genuine participation, is often released in violence. In our times violence is often a human response to the denial of participation.

Spiritual life, on the other hand, is one of the most intense and significant forms of participation. While engaged in it, we participate in the ultimate things of our destiny. "He who thinks of God becomes God." (Mundaka Upanishad) This is a very terse way of saying that he who continually and intensely participates in this realm which we call the divine, slowly becomes it through his acts of creative participation. Can there be a more simple and yet at the same time more profound way of illumining to us a most powerful technique of self-transformation? Sri Aurobindo expressed the idea in a following way: "Aspire, and what you aspire to, attempt to become."

What we participate that we become. We read in the Dhammapada, a small bible of Buddhism: "What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Life is the creation of our mind."

We have to have the courage and imagination to see how the ideas about participation discussed here apply to our politics of the future. They apply simply, directly and on every level. We want to create the forms of participation which will bring about the renewal of our lives and of our entire political system. We do this by painstakingly examining which forms of participation are significant and which are not; next by consciously engaging in the forms of participation which create the desirable reality; then by living these forms until we become them, until we create a new social reality in a truly participatory manner — by becoming that to which we aspire. This is the way, and there is no other way. What I am saying is simple but not easy. We have to have the courage to take ourselves and the idea of participation seriously. And then our task will be less daunting than it at first appears.

Participation provides the key to action. Participation provides the light of luminous understanding. Participation provides the energy for self-empowerment. This is why it is so important. Spiritual democracy is a truly participatory democracy. In contrast most of the current concepts of 'participatory democracy' are faint shadows of democracy. The meaning of deep participation here outlined is one which involves us in the whole drama of becoming, of evolutionary becoming, of spiritual becoming — of which politics is an aspect and an outgrowth.

The meaning of participation and participatory strategies here presented are only a small fragment of participatory philosophy which I developed and published in the book The Participatory Mind, A New Theory of Knowledge and of the Universe, (Penguin 1994). This whole book is an adjunct to Spiritual Democracy; one of its invisible pillars.

We often expect our new political blue prints to be quite specific from the start. We (almost) want rules outlined for us. We want mechanisms for action. We want everything worked for us. This cannot be done. For this would not be genuine participation in which you creatively participate while making the rules, and while creatively applying them to the social realm.

This cannot be done for another reason. The future participatory democracy will not be made of one uniform cloth. It will be a mosaic of patterns worked out by different communities according to the requirements of their geography, of their skills, and of a multitude of imponderable factors which are woven into the fabric of any socio-political realm. Spiritual democracy or participatory democracy of the future will have many forms and patterns. It will not be one monolith for all nations and societies.

Democracy has never been the same solid uniform system for all societies — even when the conditions for democracy have been favorable. There have always been a variety of democracies. Likewise, we shall cherish a variety of participatory democracies — within which the rules of social conduct and the mechanisms for action will be creatively invented and imaginatively implemented by intelligent, resourceful and compassionate beings. In a word, don't ask me for rules and mechanisms of participatory spiritual democracy. If I gave them to you, I would take away an essential aspect of your participation. Without participation we atrophy in every sense of the term. We must take responsibility. We must participate. We must simply awake to the great call of our destiny.

PROF. HENRYK SKOLIMOWSKI