The new state : $b Group organization the solution of popular governmentFollett, Mary Parker
Science
The new state : $b Group organization the solution of popular government
Follett, Mary Parker
Democracy; Political participation; Social psychology; State, The
Already the change has begun. I have said that we are beginning to
recognize this power—there are many indications that we are beginning to
live this power. We are no longer willing to leave human affairs to
“natural” control: we do not want war because it is “natural” to fight;
we do not want a haphazard population at the dictates of “nature.” We no
longer believe that sickness and poverty are sent by God; people are
being taught that they need not be sick, that it is largely in their own
hands, their own collective hands (social hygiene etc.). Modern charity
is not aimed at relieving individual poverty, but at freeing the
individual from the particular enslavement which has produced his
poverty, in freeing society from the causes which produce poverty at
all.[33]
Our once-honored blind forces are more and more losing their mastery
over us. We are at this moment, however, in a difficult transition
period. We are “freer” than ever before; the trouble is we do not know
what to do with this freedom. It is easy to live the moral, the
“social,” life when it consists in following a path carefully marked out
for us, but the task given us to-day is to revalue all the world values,
to steer straight on and on into the unknown—a gallant forth-faring
indeed. But conscious evolution, the endless process of a perfect
coördinating, demands vital people. War is the easy way: we take to war
because we have not enough vitality for the far more difficult job of
agreeing. So also that kind of religion which consists of contemplation
of other-worldliness is the easy way, and we take to that when we have
not enough vitality deliberately to direct our life and construct our
world. It takes more spiritual energy to express the group spirit than
the particularist spirit. This is its glory as well as its difficulty.
We have to be higher order of beings to do it—we become higher order of
beings by doing it. And so the progress goes on forever: it means life
forever in the making, and the creative responsibility of every man.
Conscious evolution is the key to that larger view of democracy which we
are embracing to-day. The key? Every man sharing in the creative process
_is_ democracy; this is our politics and our religion. People are always
inquiring into their relation to God. God is the moving force of the
world, the ever-continuing creating where men are the co-creators.
“_Chaque homme fait dieu, un peu, avec sa vie_,” as one of the most
illumined of the younger French poets says.[34] Man and God are
correlates of that mighty movement which is Humanity self-creating. God
is the perpetual Call to our self-fulfilling. We, by sharing in the
life-process which binds all together in an active, working unity are
all the time sharing in the making of the Universe. This thought calls
forth everything heroic that is in us; every power of which we are
capable must be gathered to this glorious destiny. This is the True
Democracy.[35]
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Footnote 30:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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