The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 40

Globality is not a dream, a political goal, a Utopian project, but a necessity resulting from this new scale.

Book Five

The Interactive Future: Individual, Community, and Society in the Age of the Web

Collapse and catastrophe as opposed to hope and unprecedented possibilities- these are the party lines in the heated discussions centered on the dynamics of ongoing changes in which the whole world is involved. Paul Virilio is quite expressive in his formulation of the problem: "An accompanying evil...is the end of writing, as it unfolds through image technology, cinema/film, and television screen. [...] We don't read anymore, we hardly write each other, since we can call each other on the phone. Next, we will no longer speak! I'd really like to say: this will indeed be the silence of the lambs!" No less powerful in their a.s.sertions are those who see chances for social renewal in interactions not embodied in the rules of literacy. The electronic forum of the European Commission, involved in Project Information Society, lists Ten Bones of Contention from which I chose the following: "The system we are stuck with and frantically trying to fix comes from another time and an entirely different set of circ.u.mstances. It is changing ma.s.sively in front of our noses and needs to be completely rethought and radically overhauled." The statement is less expressive than Virilio's, but no less intolerant.

As discussions continue to bring up extremely important aspects of the conflict marking this time of discontinuity, the billions of people populating our world today const.i.tute themselves through a broad variety of practical experiences. A list of these experiences-from primitive patterns of hunting and gathering food to eye movement command of remote systems and applications driven by voice recognition in the world of nanotechnological synthesis-would only augment the confusion. Given this broad pragmatic spectrum, no one could seriously project the future as one of virtual communities, or of an electronic democracy, without sounding overly naive or directly stupid. We know how far we have come, but we do not really know where we are.

In advancing a comprehensive pragmatic perspective, I chose to undertake an elaboration well beyond the short-breathed argumentation peculiar to this moment in time. The advantage of this approach deserves to be shared. Endorsing one perspective or another, such as the California Ideology-defined by its critics as "global orthodoxy concerning the relation between society, technology, and politics"-or alternatives-the so-called European model, or the transactional structure, or neo- Marxian solutions, to name a few-is not an option. Indeed, the argument of this book is that answers cannot result from infatuation with technology, cultural self-replication, models based on biological mechanisms, unfocused bionomic elaborations, or incessant criticism of capitalism. Affirmations of a deep nature, above and beyond the rhetoric of intellectual controversy and political discourse, must originate from those affirmative actions through which our ident.i.ty as individuals, communities, and society are established. The metaphor of the interactive future is the expression of a simple thesis: At the global scale, human interaction, as the concrete form of engaging infinitely diverse cognitive resources, is the last available resource on which the future of the species can depend.

Transcending literacy

Transcending literacy takes place in the practical experiences of the pragmatics of high efficiency corresponding to the global scale of humankind. This scale affects the const.i.tution of human communities and the interaction between individuals and community. As has already been mentioned, Bedouins in the Sahara Desert and Indians in the Andes Mountains are no less hooked up to television than people living in technologically highly developed countries. More important, the ident.i.ties of peoples in less developed societies on the global map of economic and political interdependencies are already subject to the most advanced processing techniques. In the ledgers of the global economy, their existence is meticulously entered with respect to what they can contribute and through what they need and can afford. People const.i.tuting virtual communities, in Silicon Valley, j.a.pan, France, Israel, and any other place on this globe, are subject to integration in the global scale through different means and methods.

The expansion of non-literacy based human practical experiences of self- const.i.tution raises legitimate concern regarding the social status of the individual and the nature of community interdependencies. Children, for example, are subjected to more images than language. They have the tendency to perceive time as a continuous present and expect gratification to be as instantaneous as it appears on television, or as easy to achieve as connecting to exciting Web sites. They wind up experts in interactive games and in controlling extremely fast processes.

Disconnected from culture and tradition, they are extremely adaptable to new circ.u.mstances and in a hurry to ascertain their version of independence. s.e.x, drugs, rap music, and members.h.i.+p in cults or gangs are part of their contradictory profile. These adolescents are the pilots of the Nintendo wars, but also the future explorers of outer s.p.a.ce, the physicists, biologists, and geneticists who create new materials and subject machines of breathtaking complexity to tasks in which every millionth of a second is essential to the outcome. They are also the future artists and record-breaking athletes; they are computer programmers and designers of the future. And they will be the service providers in an economy where change, predicated by the need to swiftly match outcome to ever-increasing demand, cannot be met by means burdened by the inertia and heavy-handedness of literacy.

As data make clear, such individuals are bound to be less involved in community life and less committed to the ethics of the past. Moral absolutes and concern for others do not play a major role in their lives, which are shaped by practical experiences tending towards self-sufficiency, sometimes confused with independence. In view of all these characteristics, which reflect the decreasing role of literacy-based human experiences, the question often asked is how will the relation between the community and extremely efficient individuals, const.i.tuted in relatively insular experience, be shaped?

Moreover, what will the status of community be? In this respect, it is important to know what forces are at work, and to what extent our own awareness can become a factor in the process.

In our day, many people and organizations deplore the state of urban life (in the USA and around the world), high unemployment, the feeling of disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt that individuals, and sometimes whole communities, have. Immigrants of all the countries they landed in; guest workers in the European Community; the young generation in Asia, Africa, and the countries that once made up the Eastern Block; the minorities in the USA; the unemployed around the world-each of these groups faces problems reflecting the relation between them as a different ent.i.ty and the society as a whole. Immigrants are not necessarily welcome, and when accepted, they are expected to integrate. Guest workers are required to work at tasks with which citizens of the host country do not want to dirty their hands.

The young generation is expected to follow in their parents'

footsteps. One minority group will have problems with another, and with society at large, in which they are supposed to integrate. The unemployed are expected to earn their benefits and eventually to accept whatever job is available. Literacy implied expectations of h.o.m.ogeneity. Immigrants were taught the language of their new homeland so they could become like any other citizen. Guest workers, defined by their status in the labor market, were expected to gradually become unnecessary and to peacefully return to their native countries. Young people, processed through education, and the unemployed, after being offered some short retraining, would be absorbed in the machine called national economy.

In respect to community, the historic sequence can be summarized as follows: individuals loosely connected to their peers; individuals const.i.tuting viable ent.i.ties for survival; transfer of individual attributes (self-determination, choice) to the community; integration in centralized community; distribution of tasks; decentralization. Each step is defined by the extent of an individual's optimal performance: from very high individual performance, essential to survival, to distributed responsibility, until society takes over individual responsibility. Liberal democracy celebrates the paradox of socialized individualism. In this respect, it ends the age of political battles (and, as we hear, the age of history), but opens the age of increased access to abundance. Commercial democracy is neither the result of political action nor the expression of any ideology. Within its sphere of action, the boundaries between the individual and the very unsettled community represent the territory of conflict. Moral individualism succeeds or fails within a framework of adversarial human relations. Since moral individualism is actually the underpinning of liberalism-"Do what's best for yourself"-the liberty it advances is that of compet.i.tive access to abundance. Socialized individualism accepts the state only as purveyor of rights and possibilities (when the Hegelian notion of the priority of the state over the individual is accepted de facto), not as moral instance.

The transition to a pragmatics in which individual performance becomes marginal, in view of the many coordinating mechanisms ensuring redundancies that obliterate personal partic.i.p.ation, is definitive of this process. The relative significance of malfunctions-breakdown in the legal and social system, for example-as instances of self-awareness and new beginnings, prompted by the need to remedy past practices, is different in each of the stages mentioned. So is the possibility of change and renewal. Creativity in current pragmatics is less and less an issue of the individual and more the result of orchestrated efforts in a large network of interactions. The underlying structure of the civilization of illiteracy supports a pragmatics of heterogeneity, distributed tasks, and networking.

Human practical experiences of self-const.i.tution no longer generate uniformity, but diversity. There is no promise of permanency, even less of stable hierarchies and centralism. We face new problems. Their formulation in literate form is deceptive; their challenge in the context of illiteracy, in which they emerge, is unprecedented. This is what prompts concerns about the civilization of illiteracy.

Being in language

The two aspects of human self-const.i.tution through language-individual and community (society)-derive from the basic issue of social interrelations.h.i.+ps. One's language is not independent of the language of the society, despite the fact that, in a given society, people identify themselves through noticeable peculiarities in the way they speak, write, read, and carry on dialogue. Elements pertaining to language are integrated in the human's biological structure. Still, language does not emerge, as the senses do, but is progressively acquired. The process of language acquisition is at the same time a process of projecting human abilities related to language's emerging characteristics. Regardless of the level of language acquired, language overwrites the senses. It projects integrated human beings-a unity of nature and language-p.r.o.ne to identify themselves in the culture that they continuously shape.

While nature is a relatively stable system of reference, culture changes as humans change in the process of their various activities. To be within a language, as all human beings are, and in a community means to partic.i.p.ate in processes of individual integration and social coordination. Individual language use and social use of language are not identical.

Individuals const.i.tute themselves differently than communities do. That in each community there are elements common to the individuals const.i.tuting it only says that the sum total of individual practical experiences of language is different from the language characteristic of the social experience. The difference between the language of the individual and the language of a community is indicative of social relations.h.i.+ps. A more general thesis deserves to be entertained: The nature and variety of human interactions, within and without practical experiences of self-const.i.tution in language, describe the complexity of the pragmatic framework. These interactions are part of the continuous process of identification as individuals and groups in the course of ascertaining their ident.i.ty as a particular species.

Acknowledged forms of relations.h.i.+ps in work, family life, magic, ritual, myth, religion, art, science, or education are evinced through their respective patterns. Such patterns, circ.u.mscribed by human self-const.i.tution in the natural and cultural context, are significant only retroactively. They testify to the human being's social condition and express what part of nature and what part of culture is involved in this condition. The primordial significance of these two phenomena lies in the expression of practical experiences followed, not preceded, by cognition. Active partic.i.p.ation of individuals in practical experiences of language acknowledges their need to identify themselves in the patterns of interrelation mentioned. People do not get involved with other people because either party may be nice. Involvement is part of the continuous definition of the individual in contexts of conflict and cooperation, of acknowledging similarity and difference. Any dynamics, in biology or in culture, is due to differences.

People take language for granted and never question its conventions. As a natural, inherited (in Chomsky's view) attribute, rather like the human senses, language is not reinvented each time practical experiences of const.i.tution through language take place. Neither is its usefulness questioned-as happens with artifacts (tools in particular)-each time our practical experience reaches the limits of language. The breakdown of an artifact-i.e., its inappropriateness to the task at hand-suggests the possible experience of crafting another.

The breakdown of language points to limits in the human experience, not in its accessories. Malfunctioning of language points to the biological endowment and the ways this is projected in reality through everything people do. This is not true in respect to other, less natural, sign systems: symbols, artificial languages, meta-languages.

What changes from one scale of humankind, i.e., from one situation of matching needs to means for satisfying them, to another is the coefficient of the linear equation, not the linearity as such. A small group of people can survive by combining hunting, fruit gathering, and farming. The effort to satisfy a relatively bigger group increases only in proportion to the size of the group. In the known moments when a critical ma.s.s, or threshold, was reached (language acquisition, agriculture, writing, industrial production, and now the post-industrial), the expectation of higher efficiency corresponding to each scale of human experiences triggered changes in the pragmatic framework. The awareness of language's failure derives from practical experiences for which new languages become necessary.

Miscommunication is an instance of language not suitable to the experience. Lack of communication points to limitations of the humans involved in an activity. Miscommunication makes people question (themselves, others) about what went wrong, why, and what, if anything, can be done to avoid practical consequences affecting the efficiency of their activity. Other forms of language malfunction can affect people as individuals or as members of a community in ways different from those peculiar to communication. The failure of political systems, ideologies, religion(s), markets, ethics, or family is expressed in the breakdown of patterns of human relations. We keep alive the language of those political systems, ideologies, religions, and markets even after noticing their failure, not by accident or through oversight but because all those languages are us, as we const.i.tute ourselves as partic.i.p.ants in a political process, subjects of ideological indoctrination, religious believers, commodities in the market, family members, and ethical citizens.

The inefficiency of these experiences reflects our own inefficiency, more difficult to overcome than poor spelling, etymological ignorance, or phonetic deafness.

The wall behind the Wall

An appropriate example of the solidarity between language experience and the individual const.i.tuted in language is provided by the breakdown of the East European block, and even more pointedly by the breakdown of the Soviet Union. n.o.body really suspected that once the infamous Berlin Wall came down, the people who lived to the east of it, trained and educated in and for a pragmatic framework whose underlying structure was reflected in their high degree of literacy, would remain captive to it as their legal, social, and economic conditions changed.

Despite the common language- German is the language through which national unity was ascertained-East Germans are prisoners of the structural characteristics of the society projected on them through literacy: centralism, clear-cut distinctions, determinism, strong hierarchical structures, and limited choice.

The invisible but powerful inner conditioning of the East Germans' literacy-categorically superior to that of their Western brothers and sisters-is not adequate to the new pragmatics attained in West Germany and raises obstacles to East Germany's integration in a dynamic society. The illiterate pragmatics of high efficiency, a.s.sociated with high expectations that seem to outpace actual performance, was foisted on East Germans by the well intentioned, though politically opportunistic, government from across a border that should never have existed.

Things are not different in other parts of the world-Korea, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Croatia, Serbia, etc., where the rhythms of pragmatic developments and social, political, economic, national, and cultural developments are totally desynchronized. The best poetry was written in East Europe; most of the books ever written were read by its people.

It is impossible to ignore that the best theater in the world, the most elaborate cinematography, the best choirs and dance ensembles, and even the highest level of mathematical theory, physics, and biology became possible in a context of restriction, oppression, and disregard of individuals and their creativity. It is also impossible not to finally realize that the strength built on literacy-based structures was deceiving and self-deceiving.

In the not-too-distant past, the people of these countries read books, attended concerts and operas, and visited museums. Now, if they are not in misery, they are as obsessed with indulging in everything they could not have before, even if this means giving up their spiritual achievements. Consumption is the new language, even before a basis for efficient practical experiences is put in place, and sometimes instead of it. The old relation between the language of the individual and the language of society displayed patterns of deception and cowardice. The new emergent relation expresses patterns of expectation well beyond the efficiency achieved, or hoped for, in this integrated world of extreme compet.i.tive impact. The wall behind the Wall is embodied in extremely resistant patterns of human interaction originating in the context of literacy- based pragmatics. With this example in mind, it is critical to question whether there are alternatives to the means of expression people use and to the social program they are committed to-democracy. The experience of language today is very different from that of the time when the Jacobins a.s.serted a notion of democracy as the general will (1798), under the a.s.sumption of a literate background shared by all people.

The message is the medium

Language is a form of social memory. When saying something or listening to some utterance, we a.s.sume a uniform use of words and of higher level linguistic ent.i.ties. As stored testimony to similar practical experiences, language, stabilized in literacy, became a medium for averaging them. The patterns of human relations captured in language make people aware, in retrospect, of the relevance of these patterns to human efficiency. So it seems that we const.i.tute ourselves as our own observations about how we interact. These observations are identified as cognition, because it is through interaction that we know each other and know how, what, and when our immediate and less immediate needs are satisfied. The paradigm of literacy a.s.serts that human self-const.i.tution takes place in language, moreover that it could effectively happen only in language, expressed in written forms and made available through reading. Indeed, knowledge was derived from praxis implying human interaction that integrated language-based exchanges of information. This knowledge shaped political, ideological, religious, and economic experiences, as well as efforts to improve the technology used, and even broaden the scientific perspective. The dimension of future is intrinsic to life, from where it extends to language and literacy, as it extends to artifacts, work, and pragmatic expectations.

The practical experience of language, as any other semiotic practical experience, embodies agreements regarding the nature and condition of whatever is const.i.tuted in language, human ident.i.ty included. The projection of the biological and cultural characteristics on the world of our life and action establishes elements of reference. The ability to see, hear, and smell, and the ability to use tools are acknowledged as humans interact.

Ability and performance differ widely. Self-evaluation and evaluation by others in the process of defining and achieving goals of common interest are quite distinct. Language mediates, hence it makes commitments part of the experience. When these are not carried through, language can become a subst.i.tute medium for confrontation.

Experiences of agreement and experiences of confrontation are part of the patterns of interrelations.h.i.+p that define how the language of individuals and the language of the community are related. Socialization of language leads to paradoxical situations: humans self-const.i.tuted in the language experience perceive their own language as though confrontation is not among themselves, but among their languages. Only a few years ago, we heard about how much Americans and Russians liked each other, although the language of politics and ideology was one of conflict. Now we hear how Ossies (East Germans) and Wessies (West Germans) have strong feelings about each other (one side is described as lazy, the other as arrogant; one side as cultivated, the other as ignoramuses; some as honest, the others as corrupt) although the language they both share is the same (though not quite). Iranians and Arabs, Armenians and Georgians, and Serbs and Croats could add to this subject more than we want to know about the language of prejudice.

Shortly before Malthus issued his equation of population growth in relation to the growth of subsistence means, Rousseau stated a law of the inverse proportion between size of population and political freedom. Rousseau ascertained that the strength of those exercising power over others increases as the number of those subjected to power increases. The inverse proportion has to do with the influence each individual has in the political process-the more people, the weaker each voice. Scale is critical, but so is understanding the relation between the underlying structure of the pragmatics that defines the role of language and how this role is carried out. Practical experiences of power concentration are supported by literacy, whose implicit structure and expectation is centralism and representation.

Literacy generates instances of conflict as well as inst.i.tutions that regulate the nature of agreements and disagreements.

Bureaucracy, the expression of these inst.i.tutions, is the offspring of the incestuous relation between literacy and democracy.

A new scale of humankind, for which literacy-based practical experiences are not adequate, and within which democracy-the power of the people-can no longer be exercised (as Rousseau pointed out), poses many challenges. Among them: What, if anything, should replace literacy? What could replace democracy?

How do we free ourselves from the choking grip of bureaucracy?

Even before attempting an answer, the notion that the cultural experience of literacy and the social experience of democracy have reached their potential and are due for replacements has to be understood.

In a different vein, the understanding that literacy partic.i.p.ates in power, of which people become aware in a given cultural and social context, triggers another reaction: means of expression and communication different from those originating under the aegis of literacy partic.i.p.ate in pragmatic processes that result in access to power. It is not what a political leader says, but how. Powerful images, sophisticated directing, and inspired stage design or selection of backdrops become the message itself.

This is why "The message is the medium," a not irreverent reversal of McLuhan's famous formula, phrases the altered nature of the relation between language and the world. Interactions in the networked world exemplify this rephrasing even better. The redefined relations.h.i.+p between the many languages of our new practical experiences and reality is expressed in the means and values of the civilization of illiteracy.

Written into the pompous architecture of Mitterand's palaces and monuments in Paris, and into the "new" Berlin reflecting the medieval notion of centralized power-to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars-the message of literacy is turned into the medium of brick-and-mortar. In an age of task distribution and decentralization, the appropriate alternative is virtual environments and an advanced infrastructure for access to cognition. "The message is the medium" translates into the requirement of overcoming infatuation with the past, never mind trying to reinvent it. The statement demands that we create alternative media that support the empowerment of individuals, not the further consolidation of power structures that were relevant in the past but which prevent the unfolding of the future.

From democracy to media-ocracy

Democracy is a domain of expectations. Humans const.i.tute themselves as members of a democracy to the extent that their practical experiences acknowledge equality, freedom, and self-determination. The concept of democracy has varied enormously over time. In ancient societies, it acknowledged equality of the demos, and that free men-not slaves, not women-were ent.i.tled to vote. Subject to many emanc.i.p.ations, democracy denotes the right of people to elect their government (based on the general will set forth by the Jacobins, as mentioned above). How this self- government actually works-through direct or indirect representation, in forms of government based on the division of power between the executive and legislative, or under monarchies-is itself a matter of practical experiences pertinent to democracy. The democracy of human misery and neglect is quite different from the democracy of affluence. Equal access to work, education, health care, and art, and equal access to drugs, murder, joblessness, ignorance, and disease are far from being similar. A small town-meeting in Vermont or one in a Swiss canton, effectively governing life in town, is quite different from the forms of political self-governance in countries where the central power effectively overrides any self-governance. The same can be said of the overriding power of other factors-the economy, for instance.

Democracy is a major form of social and political experience. The power of the majority, expressed in votes, is only one of its possible manifestations. When only a minority of the population votes, the so-called majority ceases to be representative, no matter what the formal rules say. We live by democratic practices of delusion, and multiply, enthusiastically, their effect through the literate discourse of democracy. As a domain of expectations, mirroring hope implicit in literacy, democracy conjures meaning only if it is paralleled by democratic partic.i.p.ation in social and political experiences. When one of the two terms of this critical equation diminishes-as is the case with partic.i.p.ation-democracy diminishes in the same proportion.

There are many reasons for decreasing partic.i.p.ation. In countries where effective democracy was replaced by democratic demagoguery, changes, such as those brought about by revolutions, revolts, and reforms, initially mobilize the people, almost to the last citizen. We are still observing a phenomenon symptomatic of democracy in East Europe and the republics of the former Soviet Union. From the almost unanimous enthusiasm over renewal, leading to formal conditions for democracy, individual partic.i.p.ation in government is slowly diminis.h.i.+ng. What are the causes of this phenomenon, which is paralleled by diminis.h.i.+ng interest in religion, art, and solidarity?

Many answers are given, and even more hypotheses are advanced: psychological fatigue, lack of democratic tradition, egotism, desire to catch up with affluent societies. From the perspective of the relations.h.i.+ps characteristic of an individual's literate language and literacy programs of societies claiming to be democratic, the answer should be sought in the conflict between literacy-based values and the expectations of efficiency characteristic of the new scale of humankind.

Efficiency made possible by a pragmatics emanc.i.p.ated from the structural characteristics reified in literacy converted democracy into commercial democracy. People can buy and sell whatever they want. Their equality is one of access to the market of affluence; their freedom is sealed in the mutually acknowledged right to plenty. Democratization, which people believe is taking place all over the world, is a process of absorbing newer and newer groups of people into prosperity, into the superficial culture of entertainment (including sports compet.i.tion), and into a government that guarantees the right to wealth and consumption.

This description can easily become suspect of moralizing instead of tight a.n.a.lysis. Literacy embodies certain expectations from democratic inst.i.tutions. Like other inst.i.tutions, this type is also subjected to the test of efficiency. When the inst.i.tutions of democracy fail this test, they are, in the language of democracy, diverted to consolidating not democracy, as a practical experience of the people, but the inst.i.tution.

Bureaucracies are generated as a diversion of democracy from its social and political focus in an incestuous love with the language in which its principles are enunciated. Mediation insinuates itself between the people and the inst.i.tutions of democracy.

Media generalize the role of the literate system of checks and balances and, as ma.s.s-media, becomes a partic.i.p.ant in the equation of power. Taking full advantage of means that characterize the civilization of illiteracy-the power of images, instantaneous access to events, the power of networking, communicative resources of new technologies-the media play a double role: representative of the people and representative of power. Since their own domain of experiences is representation, the media depend on the efficiency of the practical experiences of people's self-const.i.tution in productive activities. Ma.s.s media activity is carried not by its own motivations, but by those of the market, whose locus it becomes. Consequently, the equation of democracy becomes the equation of compet.i.tion and economic success. The media select and endorse causes and personalities appropriate to the process of marketing democracy.

Instead of government, and the responsibilities a.s.sociated with it, democracy becomes the people's right to buy, among other things, their government and the luxury of transferring their democratic responsibilities to its inst.i.tutions.

Media bas.h.i.+ng is a favorite sport of politicians whenever things don't work the way they expect. It is also practiced by the public, especially in times of economic uncertainty or during political developments that seem out of control (wars, violent ma.s.s demonstrations, elections). Bas.h.i.+ng or not, criticism of the media reflects the fact that media expanded their partic.i.p.ation in power. The practical experience of public relations, an outgrowth of media partic.i.p.ation in power, uses the methods of the media to promote causes and personalities as products best suited for a certain need: support hungry children, elect a sheriff, endorse a tax hike or reduction, etc., etc. The domains of competence and ability are effectively disconnected from the domain of representation. Literacy-based methods of establis.h.i.+ng hierarchies and influencing choices are enforced by new technologies for reaching targets, even in the most saturated contexts of information dissemination. Advisers committed only to the success of their endeavors use the discriminating tools of the market in order to adapt the message to all those who care to play the muddled game of democracy.

Information brokerage, feedback strategies, symbolic social engineering, ma.s.s media, psychology, and event design form an eclectic practical experience. Calling it by a certain name-media-ocracy-is probably tendentious. But the shoe seems to fit. From all we know, the effort of this activity does not go towards promoting excellence or persuading communities that democracy entails quality and defending self-government from corruption. It rather focuses on what it takes to convince that mediocrity adequately reflects the quest for equality, and is the most people can expect if they are not dedicated to the exercise of their rights. The literate and illiterate means used to defend democracy, and the entire political system built on the democratic premise, make it only more evident that democracy, an offspring of language-based practical experiences, is far from being the eternal and universal answer, the climax of history. Indeed, the scale of humankind renders impossible partic.i.p.ation in power through the definition of ideals and goals, as well as awareness of the consequences of human actions. Alternative forms of partic.i.p.ating in democracy need to be found in the characteristics of the pragmatics corresponding to the new scale. Such alternatives have to embody the distributed nature of work, better understanding of the connection (or lack thereof) between the individual and the community, awareness of change as the only permanence, and strategies of co-evolution, regarding equally all other people and the nature to which humans still belong. Democracy is the offspring of human experiences based on the postulate of sameness. The alternatives derive from the dynamics of difference.