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7.3 Democratic ObligationsVersion 1.2 March 2018Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â (Previous Version)
This Chapter focuses on the guidelines we can choose to better manage society as a whole, and social organizations and even personal relationships within it, through democratic principles, practices and procedures. The history of the development of democracy is presented in Part 3 (History). Here we may summarize key aspects of that history only to provide the context for the value choices we make, but we should not revisit history in detail. As discussed in Chapter 7.1, on politics in general, we support economic and political structures because they align with our core values from philosophy, and the effecting values we obtain from science and history, which lead to greater human fulfilment. We learn from science that people are fallible and from history that power corrupts. Science and history help us to devise strategies to minimize the risks inherent in democracy, so we can envisage better governance structures than we currently have and ways to move towards these, without being dogmatic, revolutionary or too idealistic. Modern democracies are coming to be dominated by commercial interests and cashed up lobby groups, such as big business, religious groups and America’s National Rifle Association. Many citizens feel disenfranchised, or worried about minorities and immigration, or turned off by the partisan way politics is conducted. We need strategies to counter these anti-democratic trends. An often overlooked advantage of democratic systems is that it provides models for behaviour in our daily lives and community interactions. Democracy, based on responsibility and equality, opposes sexism and racism. Most voluntary organizations benefit from being open and transparent and taking into account a diverse range of opinions, and we need to foster these. We plan to look at how democracy can bring the best outcomes under the following headings:
After going through these topics, our current conclusions, as stated in the overview, are as follows: Democratic government promotes human happiness and well-being by supporting freedom of expression in a secular, pluralist society, legal equality, the rule of law, accountability, and exhilarating diversity, and it must be spread to all countries and all attempts to improperly exploit or diminish democracy must be resisted.  more                                                                            Statement 37 The following pages explain how we justify these conclusions.
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