Can an illiterate, uneducated person living on $2 a day with no financial resources in a village chronically devastated by malaria be expected to have the personal energy to fight for human rights? Do they have to wait for outside intervention? Do they know there is an outside? An outside beyond the God they believe brings them disease and death because that’s the way life is?

In a sociocracy, they would be able to participate in governance at the local level to control local resources and create jobs. The national economy would  be based on providing for all—for just compensation for labor, for education, for health care, for emergency support. All  the things that wealthier nations take for granted. All the citizens would be ensured of making the decisions that most affect their lives—their homes, their work, and their children.

While many reject democracy because it has become associated with dominance of the majority, democracy is still the best and most admired form of governance. Its values of freedom and equality represent a vision universally admired.  As in Angola and even in the United States, those values are not always expressed, but the values are there. It’s a base to work from and an  ideal to achieve.

Sociocracy & Democracy

For several years, I’ve been torn between writing about sociocracy and about democratic values, struggling to choose between them on two blogs, Sociocracy and A Deeper Democracy. In my mind they are joined but how could I join the different readers—those committed to sociocracy and those suspicious of another movement calling itself “new.” Especially one with a new foreign sounding name.

The best I’ve done so far to merge them is to describe sociocracy as a deeper democracy. But I was still attempting to maintain a blog on democracy.

The Value of Retaining “Democracy”

Democracy is still growing. It is still the ideal around the world. Every year, democratic forms of government are adopted by the largest number of countries reforming their governments. It isn’t time to claim to have a new governance method to overthrow it.  The problem with the democratic vision is not the ideals but the implementation.

Could majority rule be replaced by another standard to achieve the ideals of democracy? What other governance structure would be more effective at guaranteeing freedom and equality for all?

Sociocratic Democracy

In writing the post on Transparency International and Corruption, I was searching for a word to describe a governance system that would still be a democracy but benefit from sociocratic practices.

“Sociocratic democracy”emerged from my keyboard to describe what I have previously referred to as “a deeper democracy.” One that works. One that is based on knowledge and good research. One that is fully inclusive and fair. One that builds harmonious and resilient communities and nations. It was a nice moment.

And Sociocracy.info and A Deeper Democracy will soon become SociocraticDemocracy.org, “Democracy as It Might Be.”