Active citizenship is, I believe, a fine ideal. There are many wonderful opportunities for people to contribute as volunteers in society but community development can be a vicious nasty place. My experience is that bullying is the norm. If you disagree or try to express a different point of view to ‘the consensus’ (which is decided by one or two individuals) you will be punished, treated as a trouble maker. The choices you have are conform, engage in endless conflict or vote with your feet. Personally I’ve chosen to vote with my feet. I’ve never found anything resembling community in my neighbourhood outside of schools and churches. What I’ve found is endless struggles for power and control by people with no integrity and no morals. Communities are not in chaos because people are not active citizens - people are not active citizens because communities are in chaos. It’s a vicious cycle. There’s no point in telling people to be nice. The culture needs to change.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 13th, 2006 at 6:15 am and is filed under What should the role of the State be in Active Citizens, How can The Wheel facilitate Active Citizenship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.