Published on Tuesday, November 8, 2005 by iNoodle.com

by Sean M. Madden

Last week, I asked whether the American and British people (and perhaps other concerned world citizens) would demand—not wish, hope or plead for, but demand—that our ransacked, just-barely ostensible, and corporatized democracies be exchanged for true democracies built upon solid foundations of truth, law and mutual respect, so that democracy itself may live.

I should have added liberty to this tripartite list as it is too important to be merely implied within mutual respect. By mutual respect I mean respect for one another, as individuals, first, and, secondly, as individuals which collectively compose groups of all sorts, for example, familial, political, religious, ethnic and cultural groups as well as nation-states. Of course, mutual respect for each other necessitates that we must respect ourselves.

I should also have taken greater care to prioritize these foundations of a true democracy. I shall do so now, in what I think is the proper order: truth, mutual respect, liberty and law, in that each of the latter, done well, requires the former.

I initially thought that mutual respect would provide for the liberty of individuals and groups. However, the concept of liberty or freedom is so integral to our whole being, at the level of the individual and the group, that it warrants its own corner of the democratic foundation. Truth is primary in the above prioritization; yet, inherent in truth is the mutual recognition that we individuals do not exist alone, that we must respect, if we are to live wholly and peacefully with, one another. Such respect for others is a necessary first step toward achieving our own liberty. In this way, we may see liberty as a right earned via respect for others. Law seems best applied as a means to legislate where mutual respect is endangered.

While truth, mutual respect, liberty and law are individually and collectively enormous topics for thought and discussion, I shall herein begin to explore the fundamental need for us to learn to respect ourselves and others, and that a crucial step toward our doing so is to begin to become more aware of—so that we may then move beyond—linguistic dichotomizations which serve only to separate us from ourselves and others.

A critical reader may all too easily point to my own dichotomizations, my own either-or polarizations. Inherent within our Indo-European family of languages is a logic centered on the principle, or law, of contradiction, which Aristotle summarizes within his Metaphysics (1006a) as follows: “ ... it is impossible [for something] to be and not be at the same time.” In terms of language, we are forced into a situation whereby we name and describe things by way of making distinctions. So long as we operate within the realm of language, describing things in relation to either the existence or non-existence of something, such either-or distinctions are unavoidable. Our job as critical readers is to challenge such distinctions, to test their validity, to consider alternative categorizations, to view proffered dichotomizations through a finer, less divisive lens.

Our present political landscape has been dichotomized by those who seek to divide us into opposing camps as a means to then conquer. They attempt to colonize our minds by placing either-or limits on our thoughts and our speech. We must, if we are not self-respecting, be either with or against them. They tell us we are liberal or conservative; apparently no other political possibility exists: we are either Democratic or Republican, Labour or Tory. We are radical, we are reactionary. We are on the right, we are on the left. We are right, they are wrong. They are terrorists, we are warriors for peace. They abhor, we are a beacon of, freedom and democracy. We are rational, they are fanatical. We are good, they are evil.

This is the language of division, of contention, of intolerance. A world in which only two possibilities exist does not allow sufficient room for thought. Thus its present application by anti-democratic forces presently lodged in our respective government's highest offices to attempt to usurp truth as a means to power and profits by precluding thought itself. If we do not stop to validate their dichotomies, to analyze their words as well as their intentions—and to check these against actions and outcomes—such dichotomies are apt to be blindly accepted as the outer boundaries of possible thought. Finer distinctions shall no longer come to mind.

We must regain our naturally occurring gradations of mind, thought and speech as a means to liberate ourselves from false dichotomies meant to divide not only ourselves from each other, but our very selves, by short-circuiting the means by which we think. Thinking in terms of dichotomies is like being handed a multiple-choice test which offers only two choices: a or b, with the assumption that the right answer must be one or the other. In other words, the examiner does not want an essay written in response which would facilitate mindful analysis, a consideration of unspecified possibilities.

Politically charged statements like, "You are either with us or against us"—which are disturbingly similar to the Newspeak maxims contained within George Orwell’s 1984, which having reread a couple of weeks ago I most heartily recommend to all inquiring minds—are designed to preclude thought. We mustn’t equivocate, we mustn’t allow for shades of grey, or hues, to disrupt the politicians’ and their propagandists’ black-and-white. No, a full-spectrum or an array of possibilities must fit into either a or b.

No!

We are none of us black nor white, in thought or skin color, nor should our range of options be allowed to be so defined—confined to opposites extremes—by those who wish to conquer our minds, our thoughts, our speech as a means to artificially divide us within ourselves and from one another.

In truth, we exist in hues.

Let us, therefore, begin to respect, wholly, ourselves and our fellow human beings. I believe if we were to begin to respect ourselves, each other, and the full-spectrum of possibilities of thought that such respect would, likewise, begin to extend to the world which we all share, to its unique and fragile conditions which sustain our own lives and the lives of myriad other species on this precious planet.

Let us reject the dangerous, false dichotomies with which our corrupt “leaders” are attempting to pollute—by limiting—our minds, our thoughts and our speech. Let us, then, reject en masse the polluting politicians themselves—at the ballot box or in the streets—and demand, and actively engage in, true democracies built upon solid foundations of truth, mutual respect, liberty and law.

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Sean M. Madden is a 39-year-old American writer-educator living in East Sussex, England. In August 2005, he earned an M.A. in Eastern Classics at the Graduate Institute at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In December 2003, Mr. Madden completed an M.A. in Liberal Arts at the original St. John's campus in Annapolis, Maryland. Before attending the Graduate Institute, he was a community activist living in Northampton, Massachusetts. His professional experience also includes work as an entrepreneur, management consultant, senior financial/marketing analyst and community volunteer.