Dialectic Education - Speaking Democracy (Triadic Communication)

The problem I want to approach deals with the final arrangement of our society and the question of whether it depends to some extent on any particular way people use language in their inter-personal relationships. At the top level of social arrangement we can have the Parliamentary Democracy consisting of "Ruling by Representatives" (hereafter "RR") as a method for answering the demands coming from the people.
For a number of reasons it is clear that these answers are often not the best possible ones. I want to stress here what I consider to be one of the dominant reasons for this problem: specifically, the possibility that the people have been unable to make their voice heard at the highest levels of the political arrangement. Because of this, there will necessarily be a lack in any political decision's adherence to the people's real requirements.

Theoretically, the highest degree of adherence to meeting the real requirements of the people, is the so-called "Direct Democracy" (hereafter, "DD"). My intention is to analyze the hypothesis that the lack of adherence between the top of the social arrangement and the bottom of the people's real requirements could be the predictable result of how we, ourselves, communicate in our current daily language. Then, from such an analytic approach, we can consider what could be the changes which all of us could adopt to improve the social arrangement. These changes are in accordance with our political goal of satisfying with the utmost adherence to DD for both the "bottom-up" demands by the people and the "top-down" answers of the public administration.

Actually, human relationships are built with language.
From this basis, I am going to draw attention to some parameters of our current language which, simply because they are enacted in mediating interpersonal and social relationships, lead the social arrangement itself towards an exclusively "top-down" management, without any direct "bottom-up" participation by the people.
Language itself and how it is used, presents the dynamic which is in accord with our overall goal of effective contemporary policy making.
The starting point of my research is therefore pragmatic because it concerns the effectiveness of human communication. In this regard, I must make it clear that it is not the content of a speech-- i.e. WHAT -- that I will investigate but rather, HOW a discussion is performed and the speakers' relationships are developed through these actions.

Further I must remark that the structure of language relationships I am searching for seems to be fractal-like, and shows itself to be so both at the lowest level of the organized language relationships in the so-called "nuclear Family", right through to its' top level: the government political board. Indeed, the parameters of the language structure I will elaborate here can be recognized at any social level where human communication is performed. From the simplest chat to the most complex political debate, the structure of language itself is crucial to our relational outcomes, policies and their implementation.

According with this perspective of structural identity, now let me invite Yourself, dear Reader/Listener, to figure pragmatically the communication context which we are taking into account and which both of us are thereby now sharing in. Basically, it is made between myself and Yourself, as the official speakers-discussers who are stressing the current topic right now by either agreeing or disagreeing, and the audience, that is "the People", as the final users of what we are producing and that are obviously limited in their ability to participate responsibly and with full awareness to the collective debate. It is just this limitation that we want to change towards the utmost DD participation. Indeed, a change in the people's participatory attitude is at the very heart of our concern.

Thereby, the communication context You, I and the Audience are looking for and wish to share is "triadic". Consider it like an inverted triangle, at whose top we have the horizontal communication relationship made by at least two persons -- that is to say, ourselves, the panelists -- who perform the role of the speakers, and who can either agree or disagree. At the bottom of this inverted pyramid we have a third role, that of "the Audience", who are ultimately, in a larger sense, the People.

Seldom explicitly, but always implicitly, a question lives in any language relationship. It sounds like: "What are we speaking about? What is the subject of the discussion?".

This is the first stage where the real effectiveness of a DD communication comes in. Actually, every "Subject of Speech" (hereafter, SS) can be decided and put into discussion either Top-down by all the RR social officials who hold authority to speak within the social arrangement, or Bottom-up by the people themselves. Clearly, RR stands for SS being decided top-down, whilst DD stands for SS being decided bottom-up. At this point we ourselves, who want to get the people into expressing their real requirements directly and with full awareness, should take great care that SS is always pointed out by the people from the grassroots: bottom-up.
Of course You and I -- who, as we have conveniently admitted, are the official speakers at the top of our triadic inverted pyramid -- can also discuss whichever SS we decide upon: but we must also consider that this mode of discussion cannot become DD bottom-up merely because we are now speaking about DD topics. Conversely and in reality, it sounds RR top-down because the SS has been put into discussion only by ourselves who, as we have conveniently admitted, are the top speaking authorities in this communication context.
What I want to emphasise is that the same SS, the same discussion, the same policy planning, can be performed in two different ways: either
1. arising from a demand by the audience (DD bottom-up); or
2. arising from a demand by the official speakers (RR top-down).

In both cases, the message's digital content of information is the same: but in 1. the listener, our final user, is fully aware of what s/he wants to be given and is directly responsible for the agenda in accordance with DD. Vice versa in 2, the listener becomes accustomed to wait passively and trustingly for what the RR officials, who represent the common welfare, decide at the top level "on behalf" of those below.

Therefore, in order to perform DD, we must take great care to provide the people with the speaking-room where enabling them to express directly their own questions and requirements, and hence to be the SS for grassroots bottom-up discussion prior to subsequent decisions and policy making. Without such direct demand coming bottom-up, with bottom-up origin, no discussion can be adjudged DD -- even though its SS may even have been the WDDM Founding Statement -- because it actually repeats yet again the usual people's sharing-in mode known as the "top-down-only political arrangement" which we want to improve towards the DD grassroots bottom-up mode at any level of social communication and policy making.

At this point let's theoretically admit that we have a language context where the SS has been set bottom-up by the audience, "the People", and where those in the institutional role of the RR authority want to enact a policy with the utmost adherence to the people's requirements. Our official must know what it is that the people precisely want -- knowledge that will be as exact as possible as it comes directly bottom-up, from the people, according to the ultimate aim of any democratic policy-making. In this triadic discussion context, we perform the role of the official speakers responsible for leading the collective debate towards its DD goal. We do this by pointing out the people's requirements and decisions, bottom-up to the RR officials responsible for the implementation of those policies. Of course, we are concerned that the people's decisions should as far as possible adhere to their real wishes.
Nevertheless, and really, the people will feel we are performing once again the old social authoritarian role they had previously been accustomed to in a hierarchic communication relationship. Thereafter, all we utter or put forward to the people is consequently and unavoidably felt as the leadership's message in yet another top-down hierarchical relationship.

In other words, the hoax to get through is how to make a collective decision come bottom-up from the people, according with our DD purposes, though in a collective discussion context having been previously politically framed as top-down RR.
In fact, the people always look upwards to us, as those who speak, and we are thereby bound to perform a top-down relationship by default. How could we allow and facilitate the opinion of people -- who have always been previously accustomed to wait for top-down, authoritative suggestions from the official authorities they are looking at -- and yet emerge from this as the bottom-up policy-making officials we are?

To get through this, first of all one thing must be clear. A free choice is only possible between at least two options or two different opinions. If there were one only option-opinion, we would get what is called an Obliged choice.

Now, coming back to our triadic discussion context being formed with two speakers and one audience, this last occurrence--either free choice or obliged choice--depends on the way the (two) official speakers at the top level of the triadic relationship relate together. Plainly, as for their method of discussion, they can search either for agreement between themselves, or for the utmost comparison of opposite opinions. Consequently, we will have:

1. Our "two speakers" are able to give the audience at least two opinions. The audience will therefore be enabled to make free and direct choices and will be fully responsible for the decision. Let's call this context "dialectical".

2. Our "two speakers" lead their discussion in search for joined agreement, and obtain it. The audience will have one only option at their disposal; further, the audience will get accustomed always to trust in what the top speakers - authorities decide. And because the latter agree together, no doubt their decisions are always the best and that these also represent the best for the people.
Let's call this context authoritative, or "hierarchic".

At this point, the two language parameters I was searching for should be clear. Within public discussions as well as within daily language patterning, each one of us who wants to regulate the performance of language relationships toward DD, must take care that the speakers, namely ourselves:

- Let the initiative of the agenda always be the prerogative of the people. No suggestion should be allowed to be delivered by the "top speakers" down to the people, but wait for the people direct bottom-up pointing out what subjects - requirements have to be put on the policy makers' agenda.

- Give up any wish for consent in the discussions.
Remember that there is agreement everywhere and that there must be a top-down authority which grants it, but in the meantime, it conditions the collectivity to undergo the same agreement. Therefore put your own arguments into the debate quietly, without asking for any one's consent.

These two parameters appear not too hard to put into practice and I suppose many of us already perform discussions in this way, pay attention to it, and recognise this way as pretty effective. Nevertheless, if we really wanted to improve the quality of democracy, we would be taking steps to get the majority of people to speak in this way.

Pragmatically, the paragon of the triadic communication context we are looking at is the Family. Here, the top speakers-authorities are the two parents, and the final user, the audience, is the child. In this basic context, the final user learns, together with language, how to share in social relationships: finally, either 1. Dialectically, or 2. Hierarchically.

Once the child becomes an adult, our final user -- the People -- will bring this attitude into the societal framework: either DD bottom-up active sharing, according to 1., or RR top-down passive depending on the authority's suggestions, according to 2. Consequently, if we DD supporters really wanted our societal arrangement to have a DD grassroots bottom-up shape, we would get the Family to perform triadic communication as Dialectic Education.

Evidently, the goal which parents could be interested in in taking into account such a change in their traditional family education model, cannot be a political subject. Rather, a topic having a greater grasp on parents' hearts is "Primary Prevention of Drugs Addiction". Actually, the new language patterning, "triadic communication", which parents are expected to apply as a new family education model, sounds just the same in both cases. Really, it is common knowledge that the child -- the future adult person -- who has been trained since babyhood to make self-conscious, responsible choices and to contribute autonomous and creative proposals in accordance with the DD mind frame, looks to be less inclined to become an addict. I have been on this track for a long time, searching for logical links between the use of current language - especially its learning - and the mind frame as it builds itself in humans. Actually, when I started studying family education and language learning, my original goal was not DD or how to prevent the people from becoming addicted to top-down suggestions and advertising, but rather how to prevent them from becoming addicted to drugs -- not to speak of that "addiction to truth" which is known as "fundamentalism". It was thirty years ago, when I was a new parent, that I was mostly concerned with my children's education rather than politics. So I undertook my present research on language as a means for the Primary Prevention of drug addiction. Later I brought my results to the internet which are freely down-loadable at:

Even though those writings need some updating with reference to the further political perspective I'm speaking of now (DD), the language parameters which I stressed there, and which I am humbly pointing out to this esteemed audience, should be equally clear both in the family's language and in society's arrangement because in both cases the structure of communication sounds the same, and it is fractal-like.

Many thanks for your kind attention to this latest writing of mine, which I prepared for the 10-12 Nov. 2000 NDDIE Conference at Munich, where the policies for improving Democracy in Europe will be put forward. I hope this humble contribution will be useful and will meet with approval.

Antonio Rossin
Neurologist - Family Doctor
45010, Ca' Vendramin (RO)
Italy
www.flexible-learning.org

Last update: 06/17/03


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	by Antonio Rossin a paper to the first NDDIE Conference, Munich, Nov., 2, 2000 to George S. Sagi [**] Master of Democracy
	Introduction Background The subject of a speech From DD discussions to DD The new language pragmatics Introduction The problem I want to approach deals with the final arrangement of our society and the question of whether it depends to some extent on any particular way people use language in their inter-personal relationships. At the top level of social arrangement we can have the Parliamentary Democracy consisting of "Ruling by Representatives" (hereafter "RR") as a method for answering the demands coming from the people. For a number of reasons it is clear that these answers are often not the best possible ones. I want to stress here what I consider to be one of the dominant reasons for this problem: specifically, the possibility that the people have been unable to make their voice heard at the highest levels of the political arrangement. Because of this, there will necessarily be a lack in any political decision's adherence to the people's real requirements. Theoretically, the highest degree of adherence to meeting the real requirements of the people, is the so-called "Direct Democracy" (hereafter, "DD"). My intention is to analyze the hypothesis that the lack of adherence between the top of the social arrangement and the bottom of the people's real requirements could be the predictable result of how we, ourselves, communicate in our current daily language. Then, from such an analytic approach, we can consider what could be the changes which all of us could adopt to improve the social arrangement. These changes are in accordance with our political goal of satisfying with the utmost adherence to DD for both the "bottom-up" demands by the people and the "top-down" answers of the public administration. top page Background Actually, human relationships are built with language. From this basis, I am going to draw attention to some parameters of our current language which, simply because they are enacted in mediating interpersonal and social relationships, lead the social arrangement itself towards an exclusively "top-down" management, without any direct "bottom-up" participation by the people. Language itself and how it is used, presents the dynamic which is in accord with our overall goal of effective contemporary policy making. The starting point of my research is therefore pragmatic because it concerns the effectiveness of human communication. In this regard, I must make it clear that it is not the content of a speech-- i.e. WHAT -- that I will investigate but rather, HOW a discussion is performed and the speakers' relationships are developed through these actions. Further I must remark that the structure of language relationships I am searching for seems to be fractal-like, and shows itself to be so both at the lowest level of the organized language relationships in the so-called "nuclear Family", right through to its' top level: the government political board. Indeed, the parameters of the language structure I will elaborate here can be recognized at any social level where human communication is performed. From the simplest chat to the most complex political debate, the structure of language itself is crucial to our relational outcomes, policies and their implementation. According with this perspective of structural identity, now let me invite Yourself, dear Reader/Listener, to figure pragmatically the communication context which we are taking into account and which both of us are thereby now sharing in. Basically, it is made between myself and Yourself, as the official speakers-discussers who are stressing the current topic right now by either agreeing or disagreeing, and the audience, that is "the People", as the final users of what we are producing and that are obviously limited in their ability to participate responsibly and with full awareness to the collective debate. It is just this limitation that we want to change towards the utmost DD participation. Indeed, a change in the people's participatory attitude is at the very heart of our concern. Thereby, the communication context You, I and the Audience are looking for and wish to share is "triadic". Consider it like an inverted triangle, at whose top we have the horizontal communication relationship made by at least two persons -- that is to say, ourselves, the panelists -- who perform the role of the speakers, and who can either agree or disagree. At the bottom of this inverted pyramid we have a third role, that of "the Audience", who are ultimately, in a larger sense, the People. top page The subject of a speech Seldom explicitly, but always implicitly, a question lives in any language relationship. It sounds like: "What are we speaking about? What is the subject of the discussion?". This is the first stage where the real effectiveness of a DD communication comes in. Actually, every "Subject of Speech" (hereafter, SS) can be decided and put into discussion either Top-down by all the RR social officials who hold authority to speak within the social arrangement, or Bottom-up by the people themselves. Clearly, RR stands for SS being decided top-down, whilst DD stands for SS being decided bottom-up. At this point we ourselves, who want to get the people into expressing their real requirements directly and with full awareness, should take great care that SS is always pointed out by the people from the grassroots: bottom-up. Of course You and I -- who, as we have conveniently admitted, are the official speakers at the top of our triadic inverted pyramid -- can also discuss whichever SS we decide upon: but we must also consider that this mode of discussion cannot become DD bottom-up merely because we are now speaking about DD topics. Conversely and in reality, it sounds RR top-down because the SS has been put into discussion only by ourselves who, as we have conveniently admitted, are the top speaking authorities in this communication context. What I want to emphasise is that the same SS, the same discussion, the same policy planning, can be performed in two different ways: either 1. arising from a demand by the audience (DD bottom-up); or 2. arising from a demand by the official speakers (RR top-down). In both cases, the message's digital content of information is the same: but in 1. the listener, our final user, is fully aware of what s/he wants to be given and is directly responsible for the agenda in accordance with DD. Vice versa in 2, the listener becomes accustomed to wait passively and trustingly for what the RR officials, who represent the common welfare, decide at the top level "on behalf" of those below. Therefore, in order to perform DD, we must take great care to provide the people with the speaking-room where enabling them to express directly their own questions and requirements, and hence to be the SS for grassroots bottom-up discussion prior to subsequent decisions and policy making. Without such direct demand coming bottom-up, with bottom-up origin, no discussion can be adjudged DD -- even though its SS may even have been the WDDM Founding Statement -- because it actually repeats yet again the usual people's sharing-in mode known as the "top-down-only political arrangement" which we want to improve towards the DD grassroots bottom-up mode at any level of social communication and policy making. top page From DD discussions to DD decisions At this point let's theoretically admit that we have a language context where the SS has been set bottom-up by the audience, "the People", and where those in the institutional role of the RR authority want to enact a policy with the utmost adherence to the people's requirements. Our official must know what it is that the people precisely want -- knowledge that will be as exact as possible as it comes directly bottom-up, from the people, according to the ultimate aim of any democratic policy-making. In this triadic discussion context, we perform the role of the official speakers responsible for leading the collective debate towards its DD goal. We do this by pointing out the people's requirements and decisions, bottom-up to the RR officials responsible for the implementation of those policies. Of course, we are concerned that the people's decisions should as far as possible adhere to their real wishes. Nevertheless, and really, the people will feel we are performing once again the old social authoritarian role they had previously been accustomed to in a hierarchic communication relationship. Thereafter, all we utter or put forward to the people is consequently and unavoidably felt as the leadership's message in yet another top-down hierarchical relationship. In other words, the hoax to get through is how to make a collective decision come bottom-up from the people, according with our DD purposes, though in a collective discussion context having been previously politically framed as top-down RR. In fact, the people always look upwards to us, as those who speak, and we are thereby bound to perform a top-down relationship by default. How could we allow and facilitate the opinion of people -- who have always been previously accustomed to wait for top-down, authoritative suggestions from the official authorities they are looking at -- and yet emerge from this as the bottom-up policy-making officials we are? To get through this, first of all one thing must be clear. A free choice is only possible between at least two options or two different opinions. If there were one only option-opinion, we would get what is called an Obliged choice. top page The new language pragmatics Now, coming back to our triadic discussion context being formed with two speakers and one audience, this last occurrence--either free choice or obliged choice--depends on the way the (two) official speakers at the top level of the triadic relationship relate together. Plainly, as for their method of discussion, they can search either for agreement between themselves, or for the utmost comparison of opposite opinions. Consequently, we will have: 1. Our "two speakers" are able to give the audience at least two opinions. The audience will therefore be enabled to make free and direct choices and will be fully responsible for the decision. Let's call this context "dialectical". 2. Our "two speakers" lead their discussion in search for joined agreement, and obtain it. The audience will have one only option at their disposal; further, the audience will get accustomed always to trust in what the top speakers - authorities decide. And because the latter agree together, no doubt their decisions are always the best and that these also represent the best for the people. Let's call this context authoritative, or "hierarchic". At this point, the two language parameters I was searching for should be clear. Within public discussions as well as within daily language patterning, each one of us who wants to regulate the performance of language relationships toward DD, must take care that the speakers, namely ourselves: - Let the initiative of the agenda always be the prerogative of the people. No suggestion should be allowed to be delivered by the "top speakers" down to the people, but wait for the people direct bottom-up pointing out what subjects - requirements have to be put on the policy makers' agenda. - Give up any wish for consent in the discussions. Remember that there is agreement everywhere and that there must be a top-down authority which grants it, but in the meantime, it conditions the collectivity to undergo the same agreement. Therefore put your own arguments into the debate quietly, without asking for any one's consent. These two parameters appear not too hard to put into practice and I suppose many of us already perform discussions in this way, pay attention to it, and recognise this way as pretty effective. Nevertheless, if we really wanted to improve the quality of democracy, we would be taking steps to get the majority of people to speak in this way. Pragmatically, the paragon of the triadic communication context we are looking at is the Family. Here, the top speakers-authorities are the two parents, and the final user, the audience, is the child. In this basic context, the final user learns, together with language, how to share in social relationships: finally, either 1. Dialectically, or 2. Hierarchically. Once the child becomes an adult, our final user -- the People -- will bring this attitude into the societal framework: either DD bottom-up active sharing, according to 1., or RR top-down passive depending on the authority's suggestions, according to 2. Consequently, if we DD supporters really wanted our societal arrangement to have a DD grassroots bottom-up shape, we would get the Family to perform triadic communication as Dialectic Education. Evidently, the goal which parents could be interested in in taking into account such a change in their traditional family education model, cannot be a political subject. Rather, a topic having a greater grasp on parents' hearts is "Primary Prevention of Drugs Addiction". Actually, the new language patterning, "triadic communication", which parents are expected to apply as a new family education model, sounds just the same in both cases. Really, it is common knowledge that the child -- the future adult person -- who has been trained since babyhood to make self-conscious, responsible choices and to contribute autonomous and creative proposals in accordance with the DD mind frame, looks to be less inclined to become an addict. I have been on this track for a long time, searching for logical links between the use of current language - especially its learning - and the mind frame as it builds itself in humans. Actually, when I started studying family education and language learning, my original goal was not DD or how to prevent the people from becoming addicted to top-down suggestions and advertising, but rather how to prevent them from becoming addicted to drugs -- not to speak of that "addiction to truth" which is known as "fundamentalism". It was thirty years ago, when I was a new parent, that I was mostly concerned with my children's education rather than politics. So I undertook my present research on language as a means for the Primary Prevention of drug addiction. Later I brought my results to the internet which are freely down-loadable at: www.flexible-learning.org Even though those writings need some updating with reference to the further political perspective I'm speaking of now (DD), the language parameters which I stressed there, and which I am humbly pointing out to this esteemed audience, should be equally clear both in the family's language and in society's arrangement because in both cases the structure of communication sounds the same, and it is fractal-like. Many thanks for your kind attention to this latest writing of mine, which I prepared for the 10-12 Nov. 2000 NDDIE Conference at Munich, where the policies for improving Democracy in Europe will be put forward. I hope this humble contribution will be useful and will meet with approval. Antonio Rossin WDDM Founding Member [**] George S. Sagi's web site is at: www.mts.net/~sage2509/d-democracy/ top page Antonio Rossin Neurologist - Family Doctor 45010, Ca' Vendramin (RO) Italy www.flexible-learning.org Last update: 06/17/03