Marla  Del  Collins’
Dragonfly  Dynamics:
New  Thinking  for New  Times
A  Two-Part  Seminar

Thursday, February 16, 7 PM
and
Thursday, March 16, 7 PM

(After 6:30 Annual NYSGS Meeting)
Albert Ellis Institute, 45 East 65^th St.
N Y S G S  Members Free
Non-members  $5

Increasing concerns about the future of human kind, the environment and current affairs have us all wondering how we can attain personal and collective happiness in a rapidly changing world.  One thing is certain – we cannot solve today’s problems with the same thinking that caused them in the first place.  What we need is a new vision for new times.  NYSGS is honored to present two seminars introducing Dragonfly Dynamics – a unique and fully developed integration of principles and strategies developed by Dr. Marla Del Collins that links General Semantics with other “dynamical systems of interpretation” to create a broad, holistic view, as if, metaphorically speaking, giving us the ability to see through the multifaceted eyes of the keenest sighted creature on earth – the dragonfly.

Two lively, interactive and thought-provoking seminars will be presented, February 16^th (Part I) and March 16^th (Part II).  All you need to bring is your imagination, enthusiasm and curiosity as we journey from simple to complex, Aristotelian to post-Aristotelian, caterpillar to

butterfly, “I” the individual to “We” the world.

Marla Del Collins holds a PhD in Arts and Humanities in Education from the Department of Culture and Communication, New York University.  Dr. Neil Postman, renowned author and educator, chaired her dissertation committee.  He said of her “I have come to know her as a brilliant scholar; and I might add, those of us who have worked with her, or who have seen her work, know her to be a person of charm and sensitivity.”

She has successfully applied Dragonfly Dynamics to human communication conundrums around the world – Asia, the Middle East, Europe, South America.  Marla is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Long Island University.  Her book, Dragonfly Tales, a Primer for Grownups in the 21^st Century, will be completed this Spring, 2006.  Her most recent article, “Transcending Dualistic Thinking in Conflict Resolution,” was published in Harvard University Law School’s Negotiation Journal, April, 2005, with an anticipated reprinting in ETC:, A Review of General Semantics.

Some  Thoughts on  Democracy
Martin  Levinson
Vice President, N Y S G S

Published in Queens Press, 12/21
and The New York Sun, 1/6-8

The word “democracy” is frequently in the news these days.  But that word is not so easily defined.  Historically, the term “democracy” has a checkered past going back to the Greek city-states.  The Greeks defined democracy differently than we do now.  One example: the citizens of Athens, the “demos,” consisted of a privileged class that excluded women, slaves, farmers, and those who worked by the sweat of their brow. 

The Romans did not particularly care for “democracy” in its suggestion of direct participation of the people.  They used the word “republic” to describe a method of having senators, who were not indifferent to the “vox populi,” elect consuls. 

The term “democracy” languished for many centuries but was revived in the 1600s when questions concerning the nature and foundation of the state assumed renewed importance. 

Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan (1651), wrote that democracy in any

form would eventually lead to anarchy.  John Locke disagreed.  In Two Treatises on Government (1689, 1690), Locke condemned hereditary power and advanced an idea that has attached itself to the word “democracy” to this day – the notion that “the beginning of politic society depends upon the consent of the individuals to join into and make one society.”

In the eighteenth century, Locke’s thoughts on what might be called a “democratic polity” were debated in Europe.  Voltaire preferred an “enlightened monarchy.”  Diderot favored a “constitutional monarchy.

When the discussion about democracy transferred from Europe to America, the word was not accorded the respect we have for it today.  Our nation’s founders were divided over its meaning. 

The word “democracy” does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or the federal Constitution.  Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, said   “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists;” he did not say, “We are all democrats.”

Alexander Hamilton and John Adams used the term in a pejorative sense.  The Founders preferred a Roman conception of republicanism to the Greek “democracy.”  (In America’s beginnings, citizens did not directly vote for president, vice-president, or members of the Senate.  It should also be remembered that blacks and women did not receive full suffrage rights when the Constitution was adopted.)

In the twentieth century, despots such as Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin used the word “democracy” to praise the tyrannies they headed. 

Today, other dictators use the term to describe their regimes.  But, for those of us in the developed world, the word “democracy” has taken on a more or less settled meaning.  Its key aspect is the freely given consent of the governed to abide by the laws and policies of those agencies whose activities control the life of a community. 

How that consent is given expression and by whom is usually defined by a constitution, which is subject to amendment.  To ensure that those who have given consent have done so without duress and in a considered manner, freedom of thought and speech must be given the widest latitude. 

President Bush believes that “democracy,” in the way we use that term, can move the Iraqi people to have happier and more productive lives.  Maybe it can.  But maybe people who have been conditioned to accept orders from authorities such as clerics have a different conception of democracy. 

Maybe they believe, like America’s founding fathers and the citizens of ancient Athens, that it is within proper democratic bounds to restrict the rights of women and other groups.  Only time will tell which definition of democracy will prevail.