We so take that for granted!

For the people who have never been raised to it, it's like hieroglyphics. They see the pictures, but what does it all really mean?

Another thing that's tough to learn is the art of building consensus on a large scale, especially when The Guy In Charge makes things go without bothering about it. Without it, self-governance can't be done. It turns into fragmentation and civil unrest. Negotiation is hard, because each side has to give something up.

There can be no effective negotiation unless all sides of an issue have a public voice. Unless people have a habit of voicing their thoughts, the thinking for one's self is just an exercise in self-improvement. Speaking up in public is scary, because someone may disagree with you, and because then you are accountable for your thoughts. Sometimes it's even dangerous. But it's essential to a government representative of the collective will of the people, not just the will of a small group telling everyone else what they are to think and to want.

Running a community is hard work. Making your vote count takes application. Voting even when you don't like the choices takes determination. For a community to govern itself without those with control issues taking over every little thing requires a civic ethic that encourages, and even requires in a peer-pressure kind of way, that everyone take a turn at running something insofar as he or she is able.

Unless one knows how to do these things from example, that is, one has grown up with it (which North Americans and many Europeans have been fortunate enough to do), it takes a serious effort of will to form the habits of democracy. It really is very easy to let someone else do all that stuff. Multiply this out to include most of the people in any given place: that's a lot of serious effort of will.

I understand that you wouldn't choose dictatorship over democracy, and I understand why. I wouldn't either. But I think that we, all of us here, are the beneficiaries of a happy accident that has given us the tools and the character to make the choice with our eyes open.

Dictatorship is something that just washes over a community and takes over while the people don't care or don't know or don't understand or are too scared. We have to choose democracy every day.

Regards--
Mary Anne