Promoting choice mean taking away from the others ?!

Our nephew was visiting us and we were traveling to the Inspiration point in Corona Del Mar. Not sure if the richness of the neighborhood real estate values, that influenced or the unbelievable beauty of the pacific ocean protected by the magnificent cliff that promoted that thought .... but we landed up discussing the marriage, life partner and reincarnation.

The world has been male chauvinist. All the GODS are male, except in Hindu philosophy. All the laws built by the men were discriminatory and dictatorial to minorities. The process of freedom and democracy is to challenge them and make them inclusive.

In a way, the process of democracy has been to take the dictatorial, discriminatory, exclusive, singular,  male centric democratic laws and introduce a choice for the minorities. In other words take the choice of being controlling, away from the original small specific group of people.

Promoting choice, in any case, is challenging the resistance, challenging the foundational discriminatory beliefs which are legitimized by the notion that they are valid because they are being practiced in the democratic environment and executed by democratically elected officials.

The Temple of Democracy

Kofi Annan Foundation and One Young World conducted this third "Google hang-out" of the The Kofi Annan Dialogues. The topic was "Democracy and Elections".

Mr. Annan said the following:

"No one is born a good citizen, no one is born a good democrat, it takes participation, it takes observation and reflection and quite a bit of training to get to be a good citizen, a good democrat."

Reference: First 3 Minutes from the Video of first session
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S2WEcLFXHo

Mr. Annan asked of three things: Participation, Observation and reflection, and training.
First two, participation and observation, are integral to an individual traits. These one would achieve based on many externally influencing elements over of period of time. But the third element - Training, can actually be the most important enabler.

Training of Democracy is an essential aspect which can provide a ground for participation and provide environment to exercise observation and reflection. Unfortunately there isn't much available where one can go and train oneself or learn to participate.

September last year (2012) I took a course at Coursera titled "Securing Digital Democracy". Professor  J. Alex Halderman of University of Michigan is a delight to listen to and learn from. This course is a very fundamental to learning democracy. It touches upon the bear minimum right to vote and what it means by a fair voting system. He does this amazingly by providing a detailed historic context.

We also have Khan Academy which has an entire section for American Civics. This can serve as a good platform as well as an excellent source of required content via participation.

MOOCs and Social Media have already proven to enable increased participation, observation and in turn better learning and promotion of collective plurality and tolerance. The very core principles of Democracy.

That brings us to a thought, what if, we also have places, similar to libraries, where one can go and learn (train), participate in debates, observe the debaters and in turn train oneself to be a good citizen and better democrat (not to be confused with the American political party DNC or any such).

And may be .. just may be .. we call them "Temples of Democracy".

Collection of elating and uplifting speeches

I love TED and all similar sources of quality, informational, educational and uplifting speeches. This is a collection I prepared as my miniscule contribution for two amazing non-profits in India (Mumbai and Ahmedabad) whose missions are to provide underprivileged an opportunity to excel.

Innovations in Education:

Hole in the wall: Concept of self teaching.
An amazing successful experiment by Prof Sugata Mitra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU

The father of MOOC (Massively Open Online Courses) - Salman Khan
Let's use video to reinvent education
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTFEUsudhfs

Are we afraid of being wrong ?
An 18 min entertaining speech  by Sir Ken Robinson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Introduction of the book: The Element: 24 min Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TAqSBMZDY8

The Tinkering School: 5 Min TED.
This has spread in six major cities in US, as of June 2013.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvHViFc0ekw

Entrepreneurship:

Arunachalam Muruganantham: The first man to wear a sanitary napkin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4_MeS6SOwk

How laws and government compliment or deter innovations:
18 min Video by Lawrence Lessig
http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

US and Democracy:

Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g

Stay tuned .. for more ...