seeking a sustainable political system

I posted a while ago on the problem of living in the city as compared to living in the country, and the challenge of finding a sustainable way to live that's somewhere in between the two--small enough to have sufficient natural resources (like land for food) while big enough to provide a good amount of human resources (such as educational and cultural opportunities). But the whole question of how big a city (or town, if you prefer) should be leads naturally into the question of politics.

I am indebted to the anonymous commenter on my earlier post who brought this up, and referenced Aristotle's thoughts on the subject of the ideal size of the polis. Aristotle said that a city should have between five hundred and a thousand households and all be visible from a single hilltop. My commenter goes on to explain:

When the polis gets any larger, its citizens lose the opportunity to really influence public debates in the assembly, and drop into a kind of sub-human state of not really having a big enough share of responsibility for the community to make them thrive.

And I can't help but wonder: is it possible that this is happening today in our own nation-state?

When I brought this up in conversation with a friend the other day, we got into a heated argument about the value of American politics. My friend insisted that anyone who doesn't have an influence over the political decisions of their community or this country are only in that position because they choose to be, and anyone who wants to influence political change in this country can, simply by deciding they want to. I realize that there are people who have done it--housewives turned Congresswomen because they got fed up with the system and decided to do something about it. But I maintain that the difficulty of doing this is far greater than it ought to be in a country that insists on thinking of itself as a democracy, and a place where the individual voice matters.

Without dipping into controversial waters deep enough to even mention anything like Florida recounts or Ohio voters, I can't help but question a system in which it even matters to me, a Georgia native, what happened in an election in Ohio. Why should someone in California--or in Washington, for that matter--tell me how to live? What business is it of someone six hundred miles away whether I drink unpastuerized milk or buy a chicken that was killed by the farmer who raised it? What business is it of mine what someone two thousand miles away does at all?

But apart from whether I should care about politics in California, the question I really find important is whether my voice can ever be heard when it's competing with voices from California, Michigan, and North Dakota. The foundation of democracy is a system that allows individual voices to be heard, however softly. And yes, of course I can vote--I know that--but is that really the same as being heard? Choosing the lesser of several evils isn't really my idea of being heard, and I've always hated multiple-choice tests. I like to be able to stand up in a group and tell them what I think, to use my voice and my hands and my persuasive abilities to convince them what the real issues are and why I'm right. I like to give other people the chance to do the same, to argue and debate with them and question their premises, so we can both come to a better understanding and maybe even an agreement. But voting polls allow for no such debate.

I know what commenters will say to this post: if you want to debate politics (outside of a coffeeshop), then you should run for office. But my whole point is that you shouldn't have to run for office in order to have a real influence and voice in politics. You shouldn't have to make it your job in order to simply be heard on the issues that impact you most directly. Being heard, and questioned, and debated, and understood, ought to be the right of every citizen in a political body. But in order for that to be possible, the political body must of necessity be smaller than ours has become.

Numerous psychological studies have been done on the problem of individual responsibility. The bystander effect has been well documented: people are far more likely to take responsibility for a problem if they know there's no one else who could act on it. The more people who see the problem, the less likely it is that anyone will do anything about it. That's why Catherine Genovese could be murdered directly under a streetlamp in 1964 in full view of thirty-eight people without a single person calling the police until after she was dead. A similar death happened in 1995, when Deletha Word jumped off a bridge to escape a man who was beating her with a crowbar in front of 30 onlookers. These are morbid examples, perhaps, but many of the political issues of today are almost as urgent and threatening as those dramatic situations. What would you do about climate change, about the colony abandonment of honey bees, about pollution, about food, about starvation, about terrorism, about war, if you knew there was no one else who would do anything about it for you? Is it possible that our all-too-frequent failure to do anything is related to the natural human assumption that, because it affects so many people, someone else will surely take care of it?

And yet--. In my last post, I urged readers to call their congressmen regarding H.R. 3221, a national portfolio for renewable energy, and this weekend it passed--along with H.R. 2776, which redirects tax credits from oil companies to renewable energy project. In moments of triumph like this, I am excited by the American democratic system. In moments like this, I want to believe that it works, that bills like this will change something in the world and the problems I care about most. But I wonder if that's really true, or if it's just a bone to appease people like me, we closet revolutionaries sitting on the edge of our seats, waiting for an excuse to rise.

The question of personal responsibility is one thing, and the question of influence is another. I know that the sense of responsibility has declined as population has grown, and especially as communities have deteriorated. I know it because people my age don't vote. Even I didn't until recently--I can count on one hand the number of elections I've participated in during the fourteen years I've been of age. My choice to not vote was a deliberate one: a protest against the choices available more than a protest against the system. But many nonvoters are apathetic and don't believe their vote matters. Whether it's true or not, this feeling is important. It's a sense of disempowerment that becomes self-perpetuating.

And the question of influence is still unresolved. Even if we choose to be empowered, if we choose to vote, if we choose to act as though we were responsible for the problems of our age, does it make a difference? This is the question that bothers me most. The movie V for Vendetta said it better than I've heard it anywhere: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." We Americans like to think of ourselves as a free people, a proud people who will not be dominated or controlled. But I wonder: what reason have we ever given our government to be afraid of us?