The audience for this sort of verbose Facebook posting has its concerns focused on Pakistan and its getting its act together.

I’m of the mind that there are no silver bullets in the architecture of governance as regards managing human energy, intelligence, and the myriad cultures and societies that come of both, but many things may work in a good direction, and democracy provides a great gauge of the character of the people (in place and time) and a responsiveness to that character that can be progressive in terms of “Qualities of Living” across a constituency.  Even so, with Germany’s stunningly regressive election of Hitler in mind and so many contemporary “President for Life” in offices worldwide, the People can turn themselves into Lemmings too and from there find themselves captives again to one sort of autocratic nut case or another.

Verbatim From The Awesome Conversation (FTAC):

Democracies only give voters a chance to change the personalities representing them (which leads to the arch saw: “In a democracy, people get the government they deserve”). The participatory format is not the quality of the government created, but it is progressive and responsive by way of the expressed character, needs, and wants of the culture represented.

Power and the powerful ferry a built-in issue with information that is exacerbated by conflict: how much can and should a government or leader share with “the little people”? Add beneath that the slush and sociology of everyday lobbying in other sectors. Constituents of the open societies get some fight-back from a slew of organizations and professionals who for many reasons investigate every inch of the political machinery in sight and then some.

While political candidates play up access and transparency in the process of selling themselves and their programs to voters, the truth is even the most open societies — perhaps the most open societies — are loaded with closed doors. The private side floats on a sea of proprietary information and relationships somewhat nailed down by confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements with associates and staff; the government at the higher levels may similarly share out information for the lay constituent but sewing up the more specialized details and issues in their own circles; and, of course, at the highest levels, a few words in a closed room, bureaucratic back-channels . . . there’s plenty for imagination.

In the U.S., we can vote presidents out of office after their first term, and the system retires them after two terms, but we cannot see but in small fragments the full weight of continuing relationships and prior agreements bearing down on those who assume office or rise to chair critical committees. In essence, for example, the public can “see Libya”, the end of the Qaddafi era, the advent of a proto-democratic society, but it cannot see the CIA, illicit arms deals, the complete social layout of revolutionary militia, etc. — all those items the province of established, specialized, institutionalized government.

In God we may trust, but for government we want as honest, unfettered, and skeptical and dogged a press and research community as can be funded out of private pockets in the general interest.

A dark space by cultural measures may be so either because of the boundaries, limitations, and qualities of the language attending the experience of living within the cultural mind or by way of the qualities of information available and accessible (!) to a culture.  Consciousness of states-of-affairs may involve not only having good data — cogent, valid, reliable — at hand but also having a honed abstract, imaginative, and value-oriented processing facility within the mind, and that too may have a cultural complement.