When I speak of “democracy” here, please make a distinction in your mind between what democracy once aspired to be and what it has become. Real democracy is not a political battle, and it is not something we do only on election days. It is not focused solely, or even primarily, on winning expensive political campaigns.
True democracy is how people like you and me work together across all differences and divisions to take care of ourselves, each other, and the lives we live.
True democracy is how people like you and me work together across all differences and divisions to take care of ourselves, each other, and the lives we live.
And true democracy does not work without consideration.
Democracy requires the skills we learn by practicing mindfulness: paying attention, slowing down, listening carefully, looking deeply, suspending judgment, sitting with strong emotions.
Being aware of how we avoid frustration, or at least feeling frustration due to anxiety. Practicing mindfulness, we learn how to respond to life, not just react to it.
Mindfulness is how we regain the ability to make deliberate, thoughtful decisions about how we engage with life and challenges. Reasoning is how we reclaim our agency as human beings—and this is another reason why democracy cannot function without reason.
The Unknown Basis of Democracy
Years of studying democracy as an academic, and teaching university students to become citizens and leaders of society, have convinced me that mindfulness is the foundation of public education. In my new book For a Democracy that Remembers (Parallax, 2026), I argue that in order for democracy to regain its power to transform lives and the world, we the people must learn to live more thoughtfully.
We must learn to use “rational democracy.”
Start with Attention
Comprehension begins as a learning habit attention in whatever happens at this time.
It’s hard to enjoy life, or make any kind of real change, if we can’t focus on what’s going on. Practicing mindfulness builds concentration, something that keeps many of us from paying attention to social media. Without this basic attention power, democracy does not work.
Slow down
Once we train ourselves to pay attention, the habit of mindfulness reverses slow down again looking deeply. A disturbed mind is like a lake on a windy day—the waves roar, churn the mud and make us unable to see the source of things.
By focusing and quieting the mind, it is possible to look deeply and gain a new understanding of ourselves and this life.
We like Independence. What About Independence?
A deep understanding of the practice of thinking that everything is connected in a web of cause and effect. The world is constantly changing, and it changes together in a complex dance of individuals and ensembles. Everything that exists depends infinitely on other things in order to exist; change one thing, and everything else changes, too. Nothing, and no one, is truly separate.
The man who introduced many people in North America and Europe to meditation, Thich Nhat Hanh, coined the term “interbeing” to describe this fact. Interbeing means “this is because it is.” This means that every “I” is also a “We”, all life is an example of cooperation. In the words of the great democratic poet, Walt Whitman, “I am great, I contain multitudes.”
Everything comes together. All independence is also dependent on each other.
Everything comes together. All independence is also dependent on each other.
Thinking and Rethinking vs. Them
Most of us have been programmed since childhood to see the world in terms of what I call “the enemy”: friends versus enemies.
In the process, we’ve lost track of how deeply connected we are. It is a valuable practice to be aware that it awakens us to our dependence, which may correct one of the blind spots of our culture.
It is not enough to simply understand interdependence on an intellectual level. Mindfulness opens us up to dealing with interdependence in an integrated way. Yes, we understand in our minds that our ends are tied, but we also feel it in our hearts, see it in our breath, and hear it in our words. We realize that life is not a zero-sum game where your happiness somehow diminishes mine, and that happiness is not an apple with a finite number of pieces.
Mindfulness shows us that, at our core, we are irreconcilable. This is an important realization of democracy, which requires learning to disagree—and still work together to reduce suffering—without turning enemies.
Mindfulness shows us that, at our core, we are irreconcilable. This is an important realization of democracy, which requires learning to disagree—and still work together to reduce suffering—without turning enemies.
In the real world, this logical concept of communication has profound implications for our individual and collective lives: If you suffer less, I will suffer less, because you are less likely to attribute your suffering to me. And if we suffer less, we all suffer less, because we will be less likely to cause our suffering in the world. We all benefit if there is less suffering, and more happiness, in the world: which, of course, is the basic goal of democracy.
We live in a culture that seems determined to bring us down—to ourselves and to each other. Hope is lacking. But even in times of conflict, division, and great suffering, such as this, conditions for conversion also exist.
We already have the things we need most to build a loving and compassionate world: we have each other, and we have our way of thinking.
