UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Democracy is often framed as a battle between political candidates or parties that have opposing viewpoints and are trying to win over voters.
However, according to Penn State Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Jeremy David Engels, there’s another way to think about democracy — as a system of self governance that everyone shares and has a stake in preserving and protecting. It’s up to all of us, he said, to contribute to a healthy democracy by utilizing the principles of mindfulness, including paying attention, slowing down, listening carefully and pausing judgment.
Engels further articulates this viewpoint in the book “On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World,” out now from Parallax Press, founded by renowned Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.
The book blends Engels’s prior work studying democratic theory and history with his experience in meditation and Buddhism, particularly the concepts of mindfulness and interdependence. Engels defined mindfulness as “being aware of what is happening right here and right now,” and interconnectedness as the realization that life is not a zero-sum game. In other words, when one person or group suffers less, everyone suffers less in the long run.
Engels discussed the concept of mindful democracy and why it’s important to consider during the 250th anniversary of America’s founding in this Q&A and a recent episode of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s Democracy Works podcast.
Q: How do you define mindfulness?
Engels: Mindfulness is often framed as being stress relief or self care. That is important and I don't want to dismiss it. But in Buddhist and Zen Buddhist traditions, it's deeper than that. Mindfulness practice is a practice that aims at enlightenment and liberation. Those are really, really big words, but mindfulness practice is about slowing down. Our minds are so busy and we're so captured by the attention economy. Mindfulness is about slowing that down and then beginning to look deeply at things.
Q: What role does mindfulness play in democracy?
Engels: Mindfulness shows us how profoundly interconnected we are. Waking up to interconnectedness is an essential step to all of this, because political war divides us. We have lots of easy platitudes for what brings us together, and that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about waking up to the realization that if you suffer less, I will suffer less because you will be less likely to inflict your suffering on me. And if we suffer less, everyone will suffer less because we will be less likely to inflict our suffering on others. Waking up to that realization that actually your well being is connected to my well being, I think is central to this.
Q: How is this mindset different from the current political landscape?
Engels: When you read the news, a lot of the coverage will talk about whether something is good for Republicans or Democrats and who is winning the partisan conflict. And to me, it symbolizes the way that we've come as a culture to think about democracy as a political battle between two parties during election season, which is interminable now. We’ve also come to see people who disagree with us as political enemies, and from a Zen Buddhist perspective, one of the problems is that we've come to mistake labels for people. We've come to think that you are a Republican or you are a Democrat or you are a liberal, you're a conservative ... but we’re not. We’re all human beings.
And so the practice of democracy, I argue, is how we care for each other and the life that we share, and that's practice. It's something that we can get better at by doing it, but it's difficult to do that if we're so stuck on these labels that come with political conflict.
Q: Does everyone need to buy into this idea for mindful democracy to be successful?
Engels: One of the things that we need to do is that we need to remember, or maybe relearn, how to talk to each other as human beings. We're embodied beings. We have bodies. We have needs. Everyone wants to live a meaningful life, everyone hurts, everyone wants to be happy. There are just basic things that we share. I think if we remember how to talk to other people as human beings, as opposed to labels, it will go a long way.
Q: What can individuals do to contribute to a mindful democracy?
Engels: One thing that we can do is participate in moving symbolic public acts that brighten collective awareness. This could include creating new holidays that commemorate important local historical moments when people cared for each other in spite of their differences and celebrating community heroes who defend the spirit of democracy.
You could have an “interdependence night” at your local sporting event, stage a teach-in, a vigil or a multi-faith prayer and public worship service where people can learn from each other and bond in the practice of loving kindness and compassion. You could develop free public libraries where people can access censored or under appreciated works about interdependence and democracy. There are more examples in the book, but the sky’s the limit when it comes to ways that we can recognize and celebrate our interdependence.