This-essay is a7309111.htm which is available at the web-site www.essayz.com. See more notes at the bottom. Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay By-Months By-Years By-Words Webs of Like-&-Un-Like ESSAYS <==> Like-&-UN-Like This-One ========================================================== %CITIZEN POWER 730911 The citizen in a technocratic society (which is at the same time organized as a democracy) faces a dilemma. It would appear that only persons with technical competence can understand the questions which call for value judgments. On the other hand in a democracy citizens should never leave basic value judgments to any elite group---be it defined by heritage, power, possessions, training, or intelligence. Thus a citizen in a technocratic democracy has a responsibility which he/she apparently can not fulfill. This situation will continue so long as technocrats are allowed to decide what questions are important. What is needed is a transcendence of the technocratic state of consciousness. The survival of democracy depends upon this. Such a transcendence is slow in coming because even at the grass-roots level of the democratic process (precinct caucuses, county conventions, and state conventions of the major political parties) there is a tendency on everybody's part to try to cause others to share self's conviction that certain issues and/or candidates merit other's affirmation. Because we have only so many elected positions the candidates get thinned down. In general there are well regulated electoral processes which insure that this happens in a reasonably fair way. Typical citizens have no corresponding powerful way of participate in setting priorities regarding current issues. In practical terms their major practical information-input is to object strongly to the inclusion of a few improper items in the laundry-list-of-worthy- causes which is called the party platform. In setting priorities the fact that a citizen regards one problem as deserving high priority and another one low priority--- can not be registered in the present political process. As a result all worthy causes get listed and little gets done. Citizens will be relatively powerless to effect change until they devise ways to generate a mutual awareness of what most citizens most want done first, through the gathering of information regarding what degree of priority different citizens wish to assigned to different possible courses of action. As a citizen-led system of setting priorities is created, the technocratic state of consciousness may be transcended through the concerted decisions and actions of real persons participating in helpful political action. (c) 1999 by Paul A. Smith in GO: essayz.com "Search for Integrity and Honesty" (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================
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