Holistic Democracy
By Wade Lee Hudson
a digital book
constantly updated
For 60 years, my colleagues and I organized egalitarian, supportive communities. Now, I sum up what I’ve learned.
As I peeled away the layers of my motivations for writing this book, I repeatedly asked myself, “Why do I want to do that?” and concluded:
I feel morally obligated to encourage compassionate action, help empower individuals and communities, nurture deep respect for everyone’s essential equality, support the right to self-determination, and strengthen justice and democracy throughout society.
So, on this website, I present resources to clarify what humanity is facing and what we can do about it.
The modern world foments ruthless competition, suppresses cooperation, and advances selfishness. Individuals, organizations, businesses, and nations compete relentlessly to gain more power, money, and respect — by any means necessary.
Politicians, for instance, take extraordinary measures, including waging war, to stay in office, and nations inflame conflicts between foreign forces to enhance their power (divide and conquer).
These problems are interconnected. They reproduce and reinforce each other.
Society integrates our multiple systems into a single self-perpetuating social system that encourages everyone to climb social ladders, look down on, exploit, and dominate those below, and submit to those above.
Various problems such as climate change, unrestrained capitalism, and autocratic politicians are symptoms of this underlying root cause, the Top-Down System.
This reality calls for replacing this system with a Bottom-Up System dedicated to serving humanity, the environment, and life itself (day by day, in countless ways, face-to-face, person-to-person) and maximizing democratic control in every arena.
Society could ensure that everyone has enough to live comfortably within caring communities. This security would free everyone to pursue their dreams, care for their families, and engage in other creative and rewarding recreational activities.
Humanity will never fully achieve this ideal. Nevertheless, guided by pragmatic idealism focused on winnable objectives, practical steps can move in this direction. This ideal can serve as our North Star. Step by step, steadily moving in this direction, compassion-minded people can minimize problems and pioneer new solutions.
Improvements in each arena can strengthen each other in a positive upward spiral. This growth can lead to the emergence of a society that looks and feels fundamentally different. New structures can organize activities to nurture compassionate action, mutual support, self-determination, individual liberty, community empowerment, and true justice.
Successful efforts can demonstrate models for others to adopt, adapt, and scale up. Each success can generate unforeseen ripple effects and open up new achievable objectives.
Regardless of who wins elections, each nation needs an effective independent force to hold elected officials accountable and push for policy improvements — a movement similar to yet more powerful than the union, civil rights, and women’s movements — a movement of movements whose members, beyond politics, work to transform the whole society into a compassionate community dedicated to relieving suffering, promoting justice, and spreading joy.
A network of small teams whose members build trust, affirm core principles, and support each other with self-improvement could be the foundation for this movement.
United behind a shared commitment that our primary problem is the Top-Down System and the solution is a Bottom-Up System, this movement could mobilize enough people to persuade their government to improve lives with new policies while engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, including strikes, when necessary.
Unfortunately, however, ego-driven power struggles, arrogance, judgmental criticisms, scapegoating opponents and allies, and other personal weaknesses produce lingering resentment, divide people, and weaken organizations.
James Baldwin declared, “I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous, and people are not yet willing to pay it.”
All of us are victims of society’s programming, but we have the power to create alternative futures. If political and social activists face these realities, confess personal mistakes, and resolve to avoid them, they can overcome divisive habits and enhance their power. Movement members could support each other with self-improvement and cultivate a sense of belonging to a large, global community.
This digital book, rooted in a unique worldview, promotes the development of this movement. It integrates the personal and the political and affirms self-development as an inherently worthy goal and a way to nurture fundamental social transformation.
As such, it aims to fill a void. I know no activist organization whose members set aside time to support their self-improvement.
I welcome the opportunity to discuss these ideas with you and others. I will dialogue with an open mind. My learning is an ongoing process.