Democracy
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Back to Hartmann. He talked about challenges to received wisdom, one being the culture's predominant view of nature (we confuse the breeding function of hierarchy within animal groups -- think alpha male/alpha female -- with a generally nonexistent social function -- leadership). Hartmann discussed studies done by Dr Larissa Conradt and biology professor Tim Roper (University of Sussex), studies of red deer populations. Red deer herds do have alpha males, but the research demonstrated that herd decisions were not made top-down by the alpha, but were made democratically. We're not talking voting booths, naturally: When three different watering holes were available to a grazing herd, the herd chose one over the other two based on this form of observable democracy -- at the point when 51% of the herd was facing in the direction of a certain watering hole, the herd moved together to the watering hole in that direction. The alpha male? He was somewhere in the back of the group. Similar studies in different animal groups have revealed similar results for democratic decision-making within animal populations. On a media page at the web site of the University of Sussex, we learn this about the research of Conradt and Roper:
Their model, reported in the journal Nature today (9 January <2003>), suggests that a social group in which all members contribute to a decision will be better equipped to survive than one where despotism reigns - even when the despot is the most experienced group member.
Despot seems a pretty strong word when associated with red deer, or queen bees, but when it comes to humans we don't have such a hard time seeing despotism in our leadership, or at least top-down leadership gone bad.
As for the current political environment in the US, Hartmann predicts that we'll have another stolen election in November and another one after that in 2008. He makes some strong cries for US citizens to wake up, smell the coffee, and show up at the polls despite the situation. We have to show up, he says, to help drive a wedge into the denial that many of our brothers and sisters are still living in about the Bushocracy. It's pretty easy, apparently, to ignore the realities of black-box voting irregularities, and Republican Party hijinx, but it might be harder to ignore a huge herd of visible voters whose presence continues to be underrepresented in the vote counts.
For lasting change, Hartmann says we have to take back democracy, starting by showing up and getting involved in the Democratic party at the local level.
http://www.goddessmystic.com/2006_10_01_archive.shtmlpnorman