E X P E R I M E N T I N
D E M O C R A C Y
A Plea To Those
Still Sensitive To The Glory Of Mankind & Humanity
According to Arnold
Toynbee’s massive scholarly studies on the subject there have been 22
Civilizations which rose, prospered, grew fat, decayed and died. Rome &
Greece are the best known to us. Many responsible writers feel that ours too,
the 23rd, is ripe with the symptoms of that cancerous dying out of a wh0le,
healthy people. However, never before in
the history of the world has any one organization of man-animals developed so
many technical instruments and so much behavioral knowledge to guide the human
condition as has our civilization. We
have the know-how to stop the decline.
But do we have the Will? Read Norman
Cousins, Robert Linder, Geo Orwell, Huxley.
With nuclear spines bristling the planet,
with the Red tide rising, where does one run and hide? Ask the courageous
heroes at the Pass of Thermopolae Warsaw
If you accept the delightful challenge,
Camerado, you are in sterling company. You stroll the peaceful trails of time
with Socrates and Jesus and Thoreau and Walt Whitman and Justice Douglas and
many more who make their presence known every time you dare to take up a
worth-while book. If you accept the
challenge as just the normal, un-neurotic condition of today’s Reality and
today’s Search For Happiness, then you are setting your sights beyond mere
excellence. You are sighting in on the stars. You are sighting in on your own
unique Greatness. It is your choice to
make. No one can demand you pick up the flickering torch. In fact, by subtle attrition, you will be
encouraged to let it lay there – until the precious spark of Love and
Forebearance and Evolution flickers out for the last time. What is your choice? Do you choose to be
Great in your own way, or merely a follower of the less-than-great? The Universe starts; Greatness starts with
the heart of a child. You are that child.
This, then is the final question: Can we
teach Democracy, effectively working Democracy to children? Democracy is the method
whereby the howling, snarling, snapping pack of man-animals organizes itself
sufficiently under chosen leadership so as to get its necessary chores of
living down in such a way that each individual retains the best parts of his
individuality and spirit, thus using his leisure time to dream up further
creative contributions to the progress of his community. This applies to the family, the neighborhood,
the city, the nation and the world-community... as well as to your Camp on
Laughing Coyote Mt. Our Experiment of
this day, when I withdrew entirely from leadership, has given some of us much
thought to ponder. The Privilege of FREEDOM of PESONAL CHOICE D E M A
N D S YOU ASSUME THE responsibility OF HELPING SOLVE THE PROBLEMS OF Life,
rather than becoming just one more part of those problems.
Can we teach effective Democracy to
children? Meditate this for a few years
as I have for the past 10. What do you
think? We already know what the modern Ceasars and Hitlers and the Stalins
think as they sneer and wait for us to break and let down our guard of
Democracy.
TDL
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