Keep on the Sunny Side of Life

The question of 'who we are' is fundamental to understanding democracy.

I BELIEVE I’M SPEAKING for many when I give voice to the sinking feeling that our democracy, long a standard bearer of human dignity against authoritarianism, is faltering.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have been all that surprised. History doesn’t stand still, and as the philosopher Hegel said, ‘the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.’ Thus, partly because of the complacency induced by our military successes in two World Wars, partly to the comforting illusion that fascism ‘couldn’t happen here,’ we did not go on to develop a reliable set of tools to strengthen and renew our democracy against the inevitable challenges that democracies face.  But we can’t let this one fail.  Not least because the whole world seems to have entered a new flirtation with authoritarianism.  What is to be done?

As sociologist and journalist Zeynep Tufekci recently pointed out, and we have expressed also in our film, “The Third Harmony,” protests have a legitimate but very limited usefulness.  They have done some wonderful things, like finishing off the unpopular Vietnam war by finally making it too hot for then-President Nixon to continue.  

But here (as almost always) I take my inspiration from Gandhi: if you want something permanent to be done you have to persuade, not coerce.  You have to stress constructive over merely obstructive measures.  And I believe that Gandhi also indirectly identified, the constructive way to defend and renew democracy: 

I cannot conceive a greater loss to [humans] than the loss of self-respect . . . my work will be finished if I succeed in carrying conviction to the human family that every man or woman . . . is the guardian of his or her self-respect and liberty. 

Now, the approach I favor is to go right to the underlying ideas on which democracy or its opposite are based; primarily to what I have come to see as the idea on which it is based: who are we?  What is this phenomenon called a human being?  This is no mere philosophical abstraction; it is what I call a ‘stealth’ approach because it seems abstract and irrelevant it’s actually the basic underpinning of this kind of political decision.  It’s a good time to bring this up; the ‘Freudian’ emphasis on human weakness and selfishness that held sway for a long time —far too long — in modern thought has recently been challenged, as many think, demolished among other things by discoveries of the resilience and essential unity of human nature.  

These discoveries, long overdue and most welcome, strengthen the underlying assumption behind the viability of democracy: the centrality— some would even say the sanctity —of life, hence of every individual. This is not a new idea; as the Greek philosopher Protagoras said, “[Man] is the measure of all things.”  Some use it cynically e.g., blocking abortion while ignoring gun control, not to mention militarism and war.  But we could use it honestly and consistently, to build the foundation of unity and peace.  The critical thing is to take our position as "the roof and crown of creation" (on this planet), as a call to responsibility, to stewardship.  Not to exploitation.  The word has been so organized that the rewards of stewardship far outweigh the rewards of greed and selfishness.  We just have to still the strident voice of the mass media to realize that.

More: it would help counter the tragic trend toward demoralization and suicide, which has become a growing phenomenon among so many very young people—and more generally.  It would certainly be the most effective measure against those destructive developments; indeed, I can think of no other.

There's a dark and a troubled side of life
There's a bright and a sunny side too
Tho' we meet with the darkness and strife
The sunny side we also may view

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side
Keep on the sunny side of life
It will help us ev'ry day, it will brighten all the way
If we'll keep on the sunny side of life

The storm and it's fury broke today
Crushing hopes that we cherish so dear
The clouds and storms will, in time, pass away
The sun again will shine bright and clear.

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