Natural Democracy

          At this point, my colleagues and I were encouraged to hope that natural democracy could be a process for society to reach whatever goals it chooses.

           The next step we decided to take was to run another experiment in Vermont. We noted that there was still a ways to go toward a full expression of natural democracy. For example, state governments were not necessarily ready to cooperate effectively with local governments, even when a local government had the experience to exercise the principles of natural governance as Lexington did. .
 
     The uses of natural governance at the state level are visible when comparing the goals for partnerships between Vermont state government and local communities with typical state-local relationships:

 
          "democracy in America finds itself at a critical juncture.  Voters are
          acquiring more and more influence while paying less and less attention to
          public affairs.  This is a trend that bodes no good for the country.  Most of
          the things Americans like least about politics and government are linked to
          public apathy and alienation.  Conversely, few of the reforms that would
          help make government function better will come about without more active
          and informed citizen participation. No easy remedies or institutional fixes
          will cure our discontents as long as so many citizens look upon the State
          merely as an entity to supply them with services in return for paying taxes."

          Bok emphasizes two worrisome trends involving serious paradoxes: Americans want to gain more power over their government but are devoting less time to exerting a constructive influence.  Their dissatisfaction with government is growing as their participation in the political process is declining.

          The Vermont partnership challenges this trend.    The characteristics and goals in the right hand column are beacons guiding community and state leaders.  Success is measured by both progress toward them and achievement of them.

          The most useful tools for reaching our great goals and for catalyzing natural governance at state, national, and global levels, were described in Chapter 2 as the design components of natural democracy.  A major emphasis of that chapter is creating in governance the conditions that induce our genes to trigger balanced and expanding reciprocity.
 
          To induce reciprocity by helping each community define the outcomes the citizens want, the Vermont Agency of Human Services is using a tool which will measure the lifelong well-being of people in that community. The outcomes hold up a mirror in front of each citizen of the community.  Examples of community outcomes are: children succeeding in school, youth choosing healthy behaviors, young people successfully transitioning to adulthood, and families living in safe and supportive neighborhoods.  The outcomes help the people in the community see how they look to each other and the world.  They then decide if this is the way they want to look or if they want to change.

       The Agency, under Secretary Jane Kitchel, has recently instituted a policy that restructures the power sharing, resource distribution, and authority ranges between State and Town.  It is engaging Vermont communities in a conscious process to create the conditions for communities which allow them to use natural democratic processes to address issues of social justice and community well-being. (Ref: Building New and Effective Relationships with Vermont Communities, AHS Policy Cluster 6)

          The Agency of Human Services and the Department of Education have collaborated in collecting and providing that information to the communities.  The information has also been made available to the Legislature and the University of Vermont.  The Community Profiles become the basis for building Regional Partnerships between the education and government sectors and the communities in defining the outcomes, measuring the progress, and setting outcome goals.
 
         Leaders in this partnership also use information about human nature that shows which epigenetic rules are causing problems.  A committee of the Vermont Legislature studied the early causes of what become societal problems such as stealing and murder.  The causes included inadequate parental guidance of children.  The committee was provided with information about the rules.  An example is the "no integrated assessment" rule which was standing in the way of teaching self-piloting to children and young adults.  This insight provided additional legislative support for the policy change to the reparative justice system which has proven to be effective in healing breaches in reciprocity.

          Importantly, in this partnership women are moving aggressively to use their unique talents to make the world better.

OTHER  TOOLS  WHICH  WERE  HELPFUL  IN  THIS  TEST

          Other tools for building new partnerships include other evolution-based characteristics of  human behavior and emotions.  Fundamental to understanding the effect of evolution on all of us is the recognition of the different talents of the genders.  It is the synergism between women's and men's special attributes that gives much of the power to the process of natural governance.   Women have many exceptional faculties in their deep evolutionary history: emotional sensitivity, empathy, a broad contextual view of any issue, a penchant for long-term planning, a gift for networking and negotiating and an impulse to nurture, for example.  Men also have many natural talents that proved to be helpful: a talent for solving complex problems, an ability to focus their attention and a gift for controlling many of their emotions.  (Ref: THE FIRST SEX, Harriet Fisher, 1999. This reference will be moved to the Notes section of the appendix.)
 
          The special characteristics that women bring to natural democracy were evident in 1987 when Governor Madeleine Kunin set up the Community Control/House Arrest Advisory Committee to study the feasibility of  house arrest and community control as alternatives to incarceration.  She felt that building more prisons wasn't really addressing the problem of crime and that there needed to be a more fundamental approach.  She encouraged the Department of Corrections to draft legislation relating to alternatives to incarceration which became law in June, 1990.  This legislation provided the opportunity for the normally adversarial "sides" in the criminal justice process to tailor a sentence to the criminal and the crime.  She realized that prisons were overcrowded with offenders  who could be effectively punished by alternatives less costly and more rehabilitative than incarceration.  Using the life-enhancing epigenetic rules, including the conditions which encourage reciprocity as guides, the legislation was designed to permit more direct community involvement in making offenders accountable, getting offenders to contract to acknowledge their crimes, repair damage, return value to the community, take responsibility for personal change, and provide restitution to victims.  The legislation called for community-based rehabilitation programs for offenders who do not pose a substantial risk of harm to the public.

          When Dr. Howard Dean became Governor of Vermont, his reputation as a caring leader moved him swiftly to the chair of the National Governors' Association in 1995.  He made Families and Social Justice the theme of the year's work.   He focused attention on the question, "What helps children develop into caring, competent adults and what blocks them?"

          The governors worked for the year to identify factors preventing children's development and what to do about it.  When the governors came to Burlington, Vermont, for their annual meeting, they had a vision of what the attainment of these goals would look like: cohesive families that are dependable under stress, with at least one adult who is consistently nurturing and loving, living in a supportive and caring community which has a  sense of hope for a bright future.  The governors recognized that these goals were based on the fundamental component in human nature that motivates parents to take care of their children.  They acknowledged women's unique qualities in the partnership between mothers and fathers.  Louree Holly, a Wisconsin mother who was invited to give testimony, said, "We mothers do know how to discipline our kids.  We focus them on working hard to get high grades.  We love them for that as only a mother can."
 
         They identified persistent roadblocks that stood in the way of achieving their vision: our youngest citizens are suffering the most (child abuse, domestic violence); economic and social conditions are making parenting difficult; women's special, natural attributes to nurture are being smothered by these conditions; and parents have abandoned their responsibilities.  Highly fragmented and crisis-oriented governments make the individual and family failures worse. Large bureaucracies and distant policy makers have supplanted local decisions about ways to help children.

           During that year, Vermont's Secretary of Human Services, Cornelius ("Con") Hogan, had helped Governor Dean and several other governors to prepare for the annual meeting.  Con and his people had developed several programs that were removing the roadblocks to achieve the vision.  The governors meeting provided the opportunity for Vermont to present the results of those programs.  

WHY  VERMONT  WAS  ABLE  TO  HELP  OTHER  STATES  TAKE  HUMAN  NATURE  INTO  ACCOUNT
 
           I had worked with Con and his staff in taking human nature into account.  We had already taken the step of understanding the problems the governors were articulating in human nature terms. A question we used to focus our understanding was, "How was automatic control of our genes creating the obstacles to families and communities that the governors later identified?  Answering that question in Vermont had told us how to move into a precise steering mode for solving problems by natural governance.

          We were mindful of the list of human nature's tendencies, especially those unique to women.  Included were the tendencies described in Chapter 2 and in the Appendix: reciprocity, no integrated assessment, two-part classification, anxiety in the presence of strangers, and special nurturing by women.  We then looked at each obstacle to see which tendencies were in control as contributing causes.  Not surprisingly, the common trap was often the tendency not to make integrated assessments.  Parents, especially men, were not realizing how much divorce was causing children to suffer.  I listened as a divorced prison inmate described to a legislative committee how he felt about not taking responsibility for his children.  He felt no guilt or unfulfilled obligation about having left his family.

          The public was unaware that simply requiring child support money diminishes opportunities for reciprocity.  People paid their taxes to support welfare, but failed to understand that this expenditure was no substitute for the reciprocity that would make many welfare payments unnecessary.  Lack of reciprocity was perpetuating the need for higher taxes to support welfare.  On the other side of the equation, a typical welfare mother, overburdened and harassed by single-parent family obligations, does not have time to do more than struggle on while resenting the lack of sharing in family tasks on the part of the father of her children.  She certainly did not have the information she would have needed to make an integrated assessment of all the breaches in reciprocity that had led to her resentment.

          What if taxpayers and welfare mothers together were to evaluate their real obligations to each other and the consequences of not meeting them?  Who else should be present if they were to do that?  Is there anything in Vermont's experience with the reparative board system that would give a clue to a way to bring about that evaluation of obligations?  We've seen that taxpayers on the reparative boards help the offenders and the victims make integrated assessments.

                 As Con and we continued to think about the underlying human nature causes for the obstacles, we noticed conditions, tendencies, and emotions which helped us to understand, in a more fundamental way, what was really going on.  Many taxpayers had a us/them attitude toward welfare.  Here was the two-part classification tendency at work: "We work hard to take care of our children. They should take care of themselves and their families."  A feature necessary for the reciprocity tendency to function was lacking. Taxpayers were not experiencing any return on their investment, and felt they were giving more than they were getting back. Reciprocity requires the opposite situation in order for it to be a life-enhancing, ongoing tendency.   We asked ourselves this question: how could the system be designed to meet that requirement?

          We also noticed the human tendency to obey arbitrary authority, specifically the "authority" of the bureaucratic welfare system.  The system had become a despot, and blind obedience to it was undermining personal responsibility for preventing the conditions that made welfare necessary.  These conditions included the husband leaving the marriage without taking full responsibility for adequate support of the family he left behind, and then being charged with child support without being allowed to participate in the family.

          We looked at the impact of this and other related tendencies.  Men have an innate desire to participate in full partnership with their mate in raising a young child -- survival of their genes.  This tendency is at odds with the strong, unconscious desire to increase their reproductive success by mating with other women.  In modern societies, this second tendency is apt to win out in cases where men do not stay with their original mate during the child raising, or they leave a few years after the first child is born.  The pattern of divorce in several countries, including the United States, shows this second tendency controlling in many marriages.  Women, for different reasons, but still tied to reproductive success, also have inherited an unconscious natural tendency to be somewhat adventurous in seeking out other mates, unless inhibited sufficiently by the bounds of culture.   We found that these male and female tendencies appeared to be upsetting the balance of reciprocity in marriage, and obviously they were having a negative effect on the lives of many children.  The imbalance of reciprocity was probably contributing  to emotional maltreatment of children, to impaired psychological growth; to sexual abuse, molestation, exploitation and to neglect and abandonment.   All are breaches in reciprocity.

          These insights about human nature gave us clues about how to reform the welfare system.  The new Secretary of Human Services, Jane B. Kitchel, worked with Con and understands the reasons for the adverse consequences of automatic control by the genes. Jane and her colleagues are moving rapidly to redesign systems to help repair the breaches in reciprocity.  Conditions that induce reciprocity are being designed into the delivery of human services: home visits to parents with children from birth to school age, childbirth preparation classes, and education in parenting, for example.  Volunteers, as well as Agency of Human Services staff, are involved in these activities.  The goal is to foster a  positive relationship between family, school, and community and encourage nurturing and responsibility from the beginning of parenthood..  Through involvement of the whole community, including business people, reciprocity is becoming visible and increasing.  It is also showing up as volunteers provide respite care so welfare mothers can acquire the skills for self-sufficiency, and help to remove barriers and disincentives that discourage them from working.

          The healing of breaches in reciprocity and removal of barriers to work is resulting in cost savings.  First under Con's leadership, then under Jane's, Vermont's total welfare budget has been reduced 19 percent in four years, from $65 million to $54 million.  Child-support collection is up nearly 200 percent, resulting in over $90 million of additional support for children and families since 1990.  A 30-percent decrease in pregnancies for young women aged 15-17 has resulted in a saving of $5 million over the past six years.

ADDRESSING  FUNDAMENTAL  CAUSES  OF  HUMAN SERVICES PROBLEMS
 
          The successes of the reparative justice system encouraged the Vermont legislature to think about its application in other agencies of state government.  It appointed a  Joint Committee on Design of Future Corrections Policy.  The membership on this committee consisted of the chairs of major standing committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives.  Working together over three years, they came to realize that corrections policy was intimately involved with welfare policy.

          The committee visited all of the state prisons and interviewed several inmates about their life history that had led to their incarceration.  Most stories disclosed several breaches in reciprocity in the early years. Child abuse, neglect, desertion by fathers and parental alcoholism were present.

          These interviews helped the committee to take a longer view of corrections policy.  The members were ready to support Con Hogan when he proposed a lifetime perspective for the entire Human Services Agency. During  the period, Con set up the system for providing each community with measures of outcomes related to the lifelong well being of people in that community.  In addition to the ones already mentioned, examples include providing statistics about newborns and young thriving children, children well prepared to attend school, and children living in stable families.

          Secretary Hogan collaborated with the then Commissioner of Education Mark Hull in helping communities compile this information.   They also made the data available to the legislature and to the University of Vermont.  It became the basis for a partnership among the education and government sectors and the communities for use in solving societal problems and in making progress in improving quality of life.

          This partnership resulted in such quality of life changes as a doubling of  parent-community leadership training, early prenatal care well above the national average,  a doubling of child care programs, increases in scholastic achievement test scores, a drop in young teen age pregnancy rates, reductions in child abuse and neglect, more parents talking with children about school, more of the elderly and people with disabilities living with dignity and independence in settings they prefer, and significant growth of the successful reparative program in the criminal justice system.  There have been positive trends in establishing paternities, and consequent collection of child support from absent parents.  Immunizations of young children are up.  The number and percentages of low income children eating good breakfasts at school are up.

          My role in the above was to provide information about human nature as a guide to the decisions.   I  identified which epigenetic rules were controlling the problems, and which policy changes would be likely to induce the most effective reciprocity.  The outcome data gave each community visibility on the breaches in reciprocity that were causing the problems.

           Led by Con, his deputy Cheryl Mitchell, and Jane Kitchel, who at that time was commissioner of social welfare, the Agency increased the use of the life-enhancing tendencies.  Integrated assessment is helping communities find and implement more opportunities for reciprocity.  Two-part classification is being reduced as people recognize their shared interests.  Deception is being lessened by the openness of  the activities.  Their fundamental strategy is based on their understanding of these tendencies which will help people move from automatic control by these tendencies to conscious control of the ways these and other tendencies are influencing their lives.

          The bureaucratic welfare system is being replaced by real people, neighbors in the community.  The City of Barre is an example of the value of using this information about human nature. Con and his colleagues provided the city council, the mayor, and elected school officials with information on breaches in reciprocity: the teen pregnancy rate and substance abuse rates were high, as was physical abuse in families.  This was information that thoughtful people in Barre could not ignore.  As a result, the community has addressed its fundamental values: Who are we?  What do we believe in?  What is important to us?  How can we make our values real and live them in a way such that our children will  imitate us?

          The mayor and the entire community questioned why their young people had need to numb their minds with drugs. Energized by this questioning the voters in Barre passed a bond to increase the  size of the city's library.  The voters have initiated a program on Lifelong Learning and Literacy with the objective of developing positive relationships among family, school and community from the beginning of parenthood.

STILL  A  LONG  WAY  TO  GO

          My colleagues in the Agency of Human Services and I combined the insights from the Lexington test with what we'd learned from involving the public in governance in Vermont.  The combination seemed to tell us we should try to further broaden public participation in addressing social problems.   The reparative boards are a step in that direction by creating a more direct link between state government and the decision-making process.  But what still seems to be lacking is using this information by communities in their town meetings.  In the Lexington test, we had that link. We not only had a broad range of local and regional public issues on the agenda, but we had at least one national issue -- public policy on funding for research to extend the healthy middle years of life.  In Vermont at present, the local town meeting decision-making is generally limited to such local items as school budgets, road repair, and waste disposal.

          What might happen if Vermont learned what the Lexington test had demonstrated by bringing regional, state, national, and global issues into its town meetings?  Suppose, for example, that town meetings took on some of the policy issues in the welfare system.   How many of the breaches in reciprocity that we've identified in that system could be productively addressed on the local decision-making agendas?  How about the breach that the governors addressed: large bureaucracies and distant policy makers have supplanted local decision-making?  Who isn't being included in the decision chain?  Who should be in the decision chain?  What reciprocities are being breached because they are not presently included?

          There are reciprocity-inducing features in both the Lexington test and the Vermont initiative.  Putting the two together gives clues to help develop a vision of natural democracy.

          It seemed likely to me that progress toward that vision would be limited until human nature is more consciously taken into account by everybody, not just the leaders, not just leaders like Con Hogan, Jane Kitchel, John Gorczyk, and others like them.
 
THE  FEASIBILITY  OF  NATURAL  DEMOCRACY

          If we combine the results of the three tests, the results could stand democracy on
its head.  (As a reminder, we've used the understanding of our genes to reduce crime, to guide the development of technology for use in education, and to guide community governance.) If people at the community level were to take human nature into account, they would become the core of democracy just as Lexingtonians did.  The act of switching from unconscious control by the epigenetic rules and the genes to conscious control of the epigenetic rules and the genes is the basic transformation needed to make natural democracy effective at every level of governance.

          The core components of natural democracy at the community level are listed below:

• Participants educated in understanding human nature 
• Total community involved in face to face dialogue 
• Comprehensive agenda including longer range goals 
• Required information instantly available 
• Links with state, national, and global governances
  

          The last item, linkages, will have the most effect in revolutionizing democracy.  But these linkages will be feasible and effective only to the extent that all core components necessary for reciprocity are present. For example, participants at the local level who have links with state, national, and global governances are more likely to understand the advantages and feasibility of making progress toward great goals.  It will work the other way as well.  Great goals will inspire developing and sustaining the community's links with state, national, and global governances.

WORKING  TOWARD  NATURAL  GOVERNANCE

          Con Hogan and his people had initiated ways of developing these links well before the National Governors' Association 1985 annual meeting.  Twelve regional partnerships have evolved from those links.  The largest one is called the Champlain Initiative, named after the lake which forms the Western boader of the region. 0  Burlington, Vermont's most populous city and a large IBM plant are located in the region.  More than three hundred individuals from all backgrounds have collaborated to create a vision of what this partnership could become over the next two decades. Participants in the Initiative include private citizens, businesses, government, and non-profit organizations.  Together they have constructed a plan for investment of human and financial resources to assure the physical, economic, social, cultural and environmental viability of the region.  Their goals are "building self-worth, pride, self-esteem in individuals and communities; opening for the community a broader range of choices in their lives, along with the freedom and security to make those choices; encouraging personal growth and ensuring the opportunity for each person to reach his or her potential; fostering personal responsibility to care for the larger community beyond their individual lives."

          Jane Kitchel's Agency of Human Services provides the statewide coordination of these regional partnerships.  (Ref: The Social Well-Being of Vermonters, February 2001. This reference will be inserted in the Notes section of the Appendix.)  The conditions that induce reciprocity have been built into the regional governance processes.  For example, the people in the Champlain Initiative say they are committed to honesty and trust which is insurance against cheating that would destroy reciprocity.  Close proximity and  frequent opportunities for exchange of favors are built in by their commitment to "come together for the long term,"

          The regional partnerships are provided with measurements of how well they are doing in improving the well-being of Vermont's people.  In 1994 the partners agreed to move toward an outcomes-based approach.  Measurements of progress in improving well-being include: how well families, youth, and individuals are engaged in their community's decisions and activities; how well children are prepared to start school; how well children succeed in school; children living in stable and supported families; youth choosing healthy behaviors; youth successfully transitioning to adulthood; elders and people with disabilities live with dignity and independence; and families living in safe and supportive communities.

          The record shows many heartening signs: continuing success in giving a healthy start to infants and young children, growing economic resources for many families, decline in teen age pregnancies, progress in discouraging the fatal mix of driving and alcohol.  Trouble spots are evident, too. For example, wages for many Vermonters are inadequate to meet basic needs.  Jane Kitchel's February 2001 report optmistically summarizes progress: "Vermonters have much to feel proud of -- and, we can do better!".

          Suppose that people throughout the United States and the world were to learn how to take human nature into account.  John Gorczyk is spreading the word.   His is not a cry for reform based on any philosophical or ideological biases.  He is promoting instead an integration of the understanding of human nature with government, management, economics, and the marketplace. Gorczyk is changing his organization from being the Department of Corrections to becoming the "Department of Cooperation".

          Communities are learning to think of dealing with crime as an opportunity to teach young people the personal advantages of expanding reciprocity and natural democracy.  The DOC has catalyzed the formation of Justice Centers which put this teaching into practice. Community leaders from all walks of life are cooperating to bring the full strength of their communities to the task of catalyzing natural democracy.  As the participants become better informed about natural democracy and human nature, their chances for sustained success will be substantially enhanced.

          Suppose, then, that people around the country get excited about how they can take human nature into account. Suppose they develop ways of building into their own governance systems all of the conditions that encourage reciprocity.

          Suppose they find ways of using technology to help create those systems.  Industry has an opportunity here.  You've seen the Polaroid example where we developed ways of using instant photography to both teach reciprocity and encourage its spread in schools and neighborhoods.  Our schools can prepare caring teachers and sharing students to be  bridges to their homes and communities, and prepare young people for governance by human nature and for subsequent participation in natural democracy.  We can export the caring from the classrooms into the communities, creating oases of love.
 
          The next logical step for Vermont, and other states as well, is to try out the Lexington model of expanded town meeting, with its policy-development connections to state and federal levels.    More discussions of desired outcomes should find their way into local meetings.  Opportunities for healing breaches in reciprocity will become increasingly visible. Costs and benefits will be calculated.  The benefits will be shown to outweigh the costs, as is generally the case in reciprocal exchanges.  Responsibility for achieving the benefits will be accepted as it was in Lexington.  Pride in successful outcomes will be shared.  If we allow it, natural governance will become ongoing as surely as our human nature is ongoing.  We will have successfully designed our governance to build in the opportunities to do what, by our nature, we want to do to our mutual advantage.  Notice how significant the epigenetic rules will be; every behavior in this natural governance process will be guided by them.   We will be in control of that guidance process by being conscious of the rules and the influence of our genes at every step.  They will give us the power to predict which policy options will produce the most rapid expansion of reciprocity and remove the remaining obstacles.
          We in Vermont have shown how natural democracy is being put to work in areas of governance beyond crime reduction.
          We've shown how technology can be applied to help create the conditions that induce reciprocity and make natural governance feasible.
          We've gauged the effectiveness of the tools  of natural governance in the larger scope of natural democracy.
          We've encouraged citizens to be politically engaged in helping their government improve its performance, as Derek Bok strongly advocates.
          We've refuted the belief that one can be ignorant of how the mind works, and still participate fully and effectively in the democratic process.
          It has become obvious to us that taking human nature into account allows us to gain the advantages of natural democracy.  We need a more full understanding of our evolutionary past to see where we'll want to go in the future and how to get there.

          We described these tests with three goals in mind: to discover ways of moving humanity from its childhood to its adulthood; taking over control of our lives from the unconscious influence of the epigenetic rules and the genes; and creating the conditions in our lives that induce reciprocity.

          We've defined a governance process by which all three of these goals can be met.

           Suppose people all over the United States take advantage of ways to form a continuous chain of reciprocal relationships, starting at the family level and continuing through to the community, state, national, and international levels.  Democracy will become the collective venture that Derek Bok envisions.1  Together we will have created governance that fully and consciously takes human nature into account, -- natural democracy.

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1 Derek Bok (2001) The Trouble With Government.  Harvard University Press   ( This footnote will be incorporated in the Notes section of the Appendix.)