Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota
Followers and supporters of the religiously conservative Republican
Bush administration consider America to be an exemplar of democracy on
earth, a living portrayal of how the whole world ought be modeled and
molded. This claim is based largely on America's rise to fiscal and
military supremacy in the world and not on America's accomplishments in
honoring the values of Democracy.
Religious conservatives take this supremacy as an indication of God's
favoritism and will for American dominion. We have fought and bought our
way to the top of the heap and, once there, we feel justified in being
there and in remaining there, even if that means assuming self-righteous
postures, adopting unilateral policies and demonstrating belligerent
behavior in the eyes of the world.
Since World War II, the European democracies have continued to give their
people more voice in defining democracy and they have clearly made more
progress in meeting the educational and medical needs of their people. In
contrast, American Democracy has, since World War II, made an exponential
retreat into religiously despotic capitalism which pits each American
against every other American in the desperate struggle for both raw
survival and mindless affluence.
As a result, educated Europeans no longer look to the world's first formal
democracy for guidance and wisdom in the pursuit of honesty, fairness and
equality. Europeans look to America in order to comprehend how they will
need to respond to the further machinations of America's newfound
religious capitalism (seen justifiably as right wing neofascism in pursuit
of a pax Americana).
Under the Bush administration, America has failed to comprehend and honor
the values of Democracy. Instead, it has conjured up and honored the
values of Old Testament religion and crony corporate capitalism. These
approaches in "compassionate" conservatism have largely removed
America as a global role model for Democracy.
Bush's America has relinquished its obligation to personify and promote
Democracy, replacing this duty with its desire to personify the Old
Testament god (as the world's judge, jury and executioner). The rest of
the world is left with little option but to learn about Democracy
elsewhere, and many have turned to the European Union and its less violent
approaches to bringing Democracy to the world.
Those with a genuine interest in Democracy and human rights can always
look to the human rights basis of nascent Christian political philosophy
and to the natural philosopy of the EuroAmerican Enlightenment and the
wisdom of Democracy's founding fathers (people like Spinoza, Locke,
Jefferson, Franklin and Paine). As individuals, we can also look inside
ourselves for insights into what is meant by the term
"Democracy" and the concepts of human rights, freedom, fairness
and equality. This is something every individual needs to do, simply
because any democracy suitable for all of us will certainly emerge on
earth from the intellectual grasp of democracy resident in each of us.
The concept of Democracy remains at the cutting edge of cultural
evolution, as the only political philosophy conducive to global human
maturation and world peace. This is true because the dialectic human
values of Science and its political philosophy, Democracy, embrace and
transcend the values of both western religious systems and eastern ethical
systems. As a result, the values of Democracy, as Jefferson predicted,
have rolled "round the world" to create a global awareness.
But, there are other resources available for learning about Democracy.
Beneath the cultural level of organization, of course, resides the
biological level of organization. When we look (literally) inside
ourselves, we see another source of natural philosophical guidance.
BIOLOGICAL DEMOCRACY
The cultural world arose from and resides atop the biological world. It is
only fitting, then, that the most profound pre-existing examples of
democracy on earth come from our knowledge of the biological world inside
ourselves.
The human body is actually a marvelous orchestration of 1014
or about 100 trillion highly specialized and highly integrated cells
functioning as a integral whole, all derived from one cell, the fertilized
human ovum. We have epithelial cells to separate our inside from our
outside, we have marrow cells for bone and blood, we have secretory cells,
we have liver cells ... and we have brain cells, wherein resides the
entire cultural world we define with art and music and knowledge, the
self-defined world to which we respond.
Inside the human body, dozens of cell types, intermingling as tissues and
organs, calmly provide their specialized services (structural, functional
and behavioral) in the interest of the living human whole. The low level
and overriding call of the genomic program is "All for One, One for
All" in establishing a perfectly natural cellular democracy.
It is when this natural biological democracy is compromised by external
insult, e.g., chemical mutagens (which cause mutational defects in the
cellular genome) that we are in certain trouble. Mutational defects lead,
in turn, to the aberrant cellular behaviors beneath the human neoplastic
diseases, e.g., the carcinomas, sarcomas, atheromas and
hereditary/congenital defects. All of these typically-fatal diseases are
the result of external disruptions of the natural biological democracy
that makes higher life possible.
In other words, the individual cell is to the human body as the individual
human is to the human whole, i.e., humankind. Given that the hardwired
biological democracy inherent in the cellular genomic program can
coordinate the efforts of 1014 cells, it
is entirely justifiable for humans to have faith that they can coordinate
the efforts of only 6 x 109 people under
a global Democracy. It is entirely a function of those values we choose to
honor in action, the dialectic human values of Science and Democracy or
the values and vengeful, self-righteous attitudes of Old Testament Roman
religion (the latter historically driving imperialism, colonialism and
capitalism).
How appropriate that the best arguments for a global human democracy come
not only from nascent Christian and Jeffersonian political philosophy, but
also from human biology and the glorious biological democracy upon which
the cultural world resides and depends.
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Dr. Gerry Lower lives in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills
of South Dakota. Feel free to explore his book, "Jefferson's
Eyes" (a Deist view of Bush World), at www.jeffersonseyes.com. He can
be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
