THE VALUE OF
THIS WISE DEMOCRACY PATTERN LANGUAGE

Why is the wise democracy pattern language worth studying, sharing, co-developing and co-evolving?

The wise democracy perspective considers how power, participation and wisdom manifest in democratic systems and highlights a number of problems that arise from their imbalance in current political cultures:

  • Power without wisdom is not only dangerous but also unsustainable, ultimately destroying itself along with much of life around it.
  • Power without participation becomes increasingly corrupt, manipulative and domineering, and thus riddled with inefficiencies, counter-forces and internal contradictions.
  • Participation without power is unsustainable, generating apathy and cynicism.
  • Participation without wisdom risks mob rule, majoritarian oppression, and the disasters of short-term narrow self-interest and manipulation.
  • Wisdom without power is useless, futile, frustrating, and obviously incomplete (or else it would have taken into account what was needed for it to be powerful!).
  • Wisdom without participation will miss important realities and not be “bought into” by those involved, undermining implementation.

The wise democracy worldview and the wise democracy pattern language thus explicitly address these issues with three broad questions that are seldom asked:

  • What would democracy look like if power were more wholesome, participatory and wise – and how might we move in that direction?
  • What would democracy look like if participation were more inclusive, wise and empowered – and how might we move in that direction?
  • What would democracy look like if its outcomes arose from collective wisdom that was more comprehensive, participatory and effective – and how might we move in that direction?

From a more holistic philosophical perspective, wise democracy theorists explore these questions:

  • What would power look like if it were of, by and for the whole?
  • What would participation look like if it were of, by and for the whole?
  • What would wisdom look like if it were of, by and for the whole?
  • What does it mean to say we want a democracy of, by, and for the whole?

  • The wise democracy pattern language makes sense – fascinating big sense – of what thousands of change agents in dozens of fields are already doing.
  • The wise democracy pattern language highlights important possibilities and dynamics that few people or groups are attending to which, if well engaged, could make a tremendous difference – especially if done together in a coordinated way.
  • The wise democracy pattern language names phenomena that many people have had floating in the backs of their minds but have never been able to articulate – and that many other change agents have never even thought about – thus creating a language that helps us to discern and discuss things we were never able to see or talk about as clearly before.
  • The wise democracy pattern language provides a compelling vision of radically improved democratic societies capable of developing the wise policies and shared activities and culture needed to survive and sustain our world for future generations.  This is the democracy dimension of sustainability and regeneratively.  And it is provided all at once as a big vision, a deep philosophy, and hundreds of actionable details.
  • The wise democracy pattern language expands, deepens and reduces the toxicity of human power and intelligence and empowers human caring, heart and spirit, inviting us to integrate more of our best humanity in potent, practical ways.
  • The wise democracy pattern language is social DNA – a “living blueprint” that can enable groups, societies and civilizations to consciously redesign themselves to co-creatively and wisely respond to changes and challenges.  Like DNA, the wise democracy pattern language responds differently to the different contexts it faces at each stage of collective development and, like DNA, it itself evolves – although unlike DNA it evolves with lots of human consciousness, choice, and creativity.
  • The wise democracy pattern language can be used to better network and organize democracy-enhancing change efforts and to develop synergies, collaborations, and coalitions among those efforts to weave more coherent and potent movements that include both existing activities and others yet to be undertaken.
  • The wise democracy pattern language can be used to educate people as co-creative participants in a more wisely functional and wholesome future – to teach workshops and – especially in harmony with other social pattern languages – to design entirely new and radically coherent educational programs, curricula, activities and institutions.
  • The wise democracy pattern language provides a stimulus for creating new forms of and focuses for democratic research, debate, and innovation.
  • The wise democracy pattern language provides a medium in which to learn about what others know and are doing and to share the importance of what we are each doing – and to teach and learn from each other in a focused ongoing community of practice.
  • The wise democracy pattern language provides a vision for all of us to work towards together that recognizes and empowers what we all do and is biased towards evolving, co-created, coherent collective activity rather than fragmentation, on the one hand, or, on the other being too attached to some fixed ideology or monolithic dream.  It provides not a utopian destination but a direction for social evolution and an ever-increasing capacity to generate practical collective wisdom so we can move together towards the realization of our individual longings and collective aspirations.

SO the underlying value and purpose of the wise democracy pattern language is to present and promote the possibility for a wisely self-governing society.  The more we understand what would be involved in creating such a society and what already exists that could serve that purpose, the more we will be able to develop it.  So we provide some exercises to help individuals and groups increase their – and others’ – understanding of and connection around the possibilities, resources, and dynamics that make up the wise democracy worldview.