On Living Democracy

By Teodros Kiros (Ph.D)

The rightly admired writer and thinker, Frances Moore Lappe writes with characteristic moral sharpness, “ Living Democracy-democracy as a way of life, no longer something done to us or for us but what we ourselves create.” (Getting A Grip, p, 22)

I would like to make this definition my own, and go further.

A long line of brilliant writers, and Rousseau, as their main leader, had long argued that Democracy, and all its features, are internalized by doing. One does not become a democrat by simply reading about it.  Of course reading helps, and no body says it is easy. Indeed, it is the first, but only the first foundational step.  But doing, a rather difficult undertaking, when realized, helps more. That is why, democracy is learned by doing. When democracy is correctly practiced, it becomes the lifeblood of living; of living our short lives well, as well as possible. 

The features of democracy are freedom, dissent, tolerance, justice and fairness. These features are both moral and political. As moral terms they function as lodestars of action. They provide us with value frames and standards of appropriate conduct when we share space with other persons.

As political terms they are modalities of organizing political space either through direct democracy or representative democracy depending on the ideals and political cultures of nation states.

When measured by the yardstick of Living Democracy, as an ideal political form that encourages free thinking, dissent, tolerance, justice and equality, the Ethiopia of Meles Zenawi and his docile cohorts, is not living democracy but living tyranny.

By tyranny I understand a political form without freedom, dissent, tolerance, justice and equality, and in which things are pushed down our throats, as docile subjects.

The tyranny of EPRDF is the perfect opposite of Living Democracy, and I am so sad that we were just told with a characteristic arrogance that we are going to live this tyranny for another five years, at least.

The next article will examine the relationship between Living Democracy and the New Ethiopianity, which I have been writing about for the last five years. Δ

Teodros Kiros