The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government by Eric Liu, Nick Hanauer Read Free Book Online Page B

because, at bottom, courtesy is about subordinating the self, even if momentarily. It breeds trust, and trust is everything in civic life.
    Trust in trust. Trust is foremost among the social virtues that make healthy societies. Alas, we note its absence more readily than its presence. When market actors behave in ways that erode the trust that citizens have in one another—as Wall Street banks did in peddling financial time bombs during the housing boom—they send a signal that “dumb money” deserves its fate. When the state acts in ways that erode the trust that citizens have in one another—by codifying a presumption of deceptiveness, as the CEO affirmations do, or by requiring teachers to teach certain pages of a text on certain days—it is not just responding to a depletion of trust; it’s contributing to it. By contrast, every act of great citizenship adds to the social stocks of trust. Designing experiences where people come to know each other, where they can expect to encounter one another repeatedly, and where the quality of life is increased for all if each individual thinks of himself as a steward—or trustee—of the experience: this is what life is like, say, in a neighborhood library branch, and we believe great citizens behave as if every space they are in is a public library.
    Trust, in short, is the DNA to be found in all the other habits of citizenship. It is what fuels the fractal impact of small acts of leadership. It is what empowers supercarriers to infect others. It is what makes weak ties useful. It is why we need to preserve a human scale for citizenship. And it is why courtesy counts.

The Power of One
     
    We recognize that there are latent dangers in the networked ethics we advocate. One is what might be called “hivemind,” the tendency for individuals to lose their voice and identity in the midst of the collective. The other is simple bullying, the fear the Framers had in mind when they drafted the Constitution, that majorities might create great waves of opinion that swamp minorities.
    As to the first fear, we are no champions of group-driven dehumanization. But citizenship of the kind we describe is the opposite of dehumanizing conformity. When any one person can be an agent of contagion, and can set off cascades of new thought or action, that is a truly empowering situation. Yes, that one person needs to have some savvy about how complex systems tip, and not everyone has that. But the fact is that in our story of citizenship, the individual has even more power than she does in the more atomized, solipsistic account of citizenship—and far more than in some collectivist dystopia. The corollary to always being influenced by others (which we are) is always being able to influence others—a power we dramatically underutilize.
    As to the second fear, of majoritarian bullying, what we value is cooperation, and there is a crucial distinction between cooperation and conformity. Cooperation presumes difference—and derives its moral value from the fact that joint action is undertaken out of difference rather than out of sameness. That said, we do believe it’s perfectly appropriate for majorities to squeeze out anti-social behavior. The trick is being clear about what constitutes anti- and pro-social behavior. By anti-social we do not mean “deviant” and “unlike others,” as communism or homosexuality were once tagged. We mean behavior that is pathologically selfish, that breaks down group trust and cooperation in pursuit of egotism.

How You Behave
     
    When one person behaves like it’s OK to litter, others do as well, and the behavior of littering goes viral. Or take another example. You’re at the park enjoying a picnic with family and friends and a boom box. Another group at a nearby table turns up their music. Now you feel you’ve got to turn up your music so that it isn’t drowned out. Then the other group feels the same, and turns up their music.
    In the study of sound