Consider first that there's an unspoken assumption in the Western mind that humans and only humans have 'rights'. Then, having accepted this filtering by our cultural blinders, it's effortless to accept species chauvinism, once we've deluded ourselves into believing in the unique and elevated position of our species, we automatically accept a complete division between ourselves and the rest of 'Nature'.The same blindered reasoning answers the question of what 'Democracy' really is. By this reasoning the defination of Democracy squarely stands on the shifting sands of who has 'rights' and who gets to vote. Remembering that not long ago we white guys were able to delude ourselves into believing in the argument that women and blacks weren't deserving of rights, or of a vote, now we're saying only humans have rights, only humans are stakeholders . That uniquely human mental ability of ours to draw artificial lines between ourselves and 'others' is what has allowed us to perform countless acts of butchery down through the ages. Whether between the 'us and them' of religious beliefs, or pigmentation, or plumbing, we've been able to deceive ourselves before, and we are again.
When we have the next election or the next big conference of the stakeholders convenes, who's going to speak for the flora, fauna, minerals, microbes, forces, fairies or for Gaia herself without all of whom none of us deluded humans could exist.
Leaving the more deluded path of dominion over the countless 'others' we arrive at the Pagan Paradigm. Through many eons The Goddess reined. Today we have Aboriginal Spirtualism and Buddhist ideology as examples of Paganism and Animism that are still going strong. As opposed to the Muslim/Hebrew/Christian ideologies where the supremacy of man is total and unquestioned, Buddhists and Aboriginals believe that every thing has a soul, that every thing has an equal place. Certainly the worldview of the Buddhists and Aboriginals would demand that every thing be considered a stakeholder, that in a real Democracy, every thing gets a vote.
So now, in this time when almost every political party in almost every Democracy is owned lock-stock and barrel by the corporations that support them, the time has arrived for the re-ascendancy of Paganism. Only through immersion in the Pagan Paradigm, only through living and knowing 'our-selves' as one undivided from other selves, can all the stakeholders ever form a perfect union.
by Bob Wiley
