Community Conversations - John Dewey Excerpt

…We now have to re-create by deliberate and determined endeavor the kind of democracy which in its origin one hundred and fifty years ago was largely the product of a fortunate combination of men and circumstances. We have lived a long time upon the heritage that came to us from the happy conjunction of men and events in anearlier day. The present state of the world is more than a reminder that we have now to put forth every energy of our own to prove worthy of our heritage…..

[For] a long period we acted as if our democracy were something that perpetuated itself automatically… We acted as if democracy were something that took place mainly at Washington and Albany—or some other state capital—under the impetus of what happened when men and women went to the polls once a year or so—which is a somewhat extreme way of saying that we have had the habit of thinking of democracy as a kind of political mechanism that will work as long as citizens were reasonably faithful in performing political duties.

Of late years we have heard more and more frequently that this is not enough; that democracy is a way of life…

Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature… as that nature is exhibited in every human being irrespective of race, color, sex, birth and family, of material or cultural wealth.This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in the attitudes that human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations of daily life…

Democracy is a way of personal life controlled not merely by faith in human nature in general but by faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgment and action if proper conditions are furnished. I have been  accused more than once and from opposed quarters of an undue, a utopian, faith in the possibilities of intelligence and in education as a correlate of intelligence. At all events, I did not invent this faith. I acquired it from my surroundings as far as those surroundings were animated by the democratic spirit [that of] consultation, of conference, of persuasion, of discussion, in the formation of public opinion, which in the long run is self-corrective…

Finally…democracy as a way of life is controlled by personal faith in personal day-by-day working together with others. Democracy is the belief that even when needs and ends or consequences are different for each individual, the habit of amicable cooperation—which may include, as in sport, rivalry and competition—is itself apriceless addition to life…. A genuinely democratic faith in peace is faith in the possibility of conducting disputes,controversies and conflicts as cooperative undertakings in which both parties learn by giving the other a chance to express itself, instead of having one party conquer by forceful suppression of the other… To cooperate by giving differences a chance to show themselves because of the belief that the expression of difference is not only a right of the other persons but is a means of enriching one’s own life-experience, is inherent in the democratic personal way of life…

[The] task of democracy is forever that of creation of a freer and more humane experience in which all share andto which all contribute.