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Essay: Representation as a living political idea

“In the grand discovery of modern times, the system of representation, the solution of all the difficulties, both speculative and practical, will perhaps be found. If it cannot, we seem to be forced upon the extraordinary conclusion, that good Government is impossible.” (1)
(Utilitarian Philosopher James Mill)

In his 'Essay On Government', the Utilitarian philosopher James Mill, salutes representation as 'the grand discovery of modern times'. Andrew Heywood (2) states that representative democracy is a ‘limited and indirect form of democracy that is based on the selection of those who will rule on behalf of the people’. The defining characteristics of limited and indirect clearly shows the nature of representative democracy that recognizes the impossibility of all citizens being involved in every decision making process, and the necessity of the election of representatives of the people to government. Thus, representation can be seen as a necessity of modern politics.

If so, how is it possible to prevent the representatives from themselves following their interest at the expense of the interests of the community? Do considerations of scale, expertise and knowledge of political matters make representation inevitable in any large-scale political community and does this then open up the danger of a gap between representatives and represented? Would representative democracy give way to oligarchy and elitism? Can a representative system realize freedom as it promises? In fact, representation is one of the most problematic concepts in the interpretations of democratic theory. This raises the question of whether the concept of representation is a living political idea.




On Representation

In his book of 'The Prince', the Italian political philosopher, Machiavelli argues in favour of a strong leader to govern a nation according to his own decisions and observations by using the example of a disease in society stating as
"(…) by recognising from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to a prudent ruler), they can be cured quickly; but when they are not recognized and are left to grow to the extent that everyone recognizes them, there is no longer any cure." (3)

For Machiavelli, 'necessity' is the most concept for him and he uses it to determine military might in foreign policy as well as strong leaders in governments. In his book of the Discourses, Machiavelli states the twofold role virtuous individuals play in political culture. The first function of virtuous men is to inspire and beget virtue in others, and citizen virtue as well as military virtue is vital in protecting the republic from internal as well as external dangers, thus individual leadership is necessary in some particular affairs. The second function of virtuous men is to prevent corruption. All peoples tend to become corrupt in time due to the gradual loss of fear and respect for the law, thus a founding father figure is needed to perform “excessive and notable” executions to refresh people’s memories. (4)

Similarly, in his writings of The Utility of the union as a safeguard against domestic faction and insurrection, American Philosopher, James Madison argues in favour of the role of leaders. He states that public views could be refined and enlarged through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. (5) He also believes that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves. For Madison, the representative government could overcome the excesses of pure democracy because elected few are likely to be competent and have a capability for the interests of the people and the government ought to be led by the best men.

To the contrary, in his book of 'The Social Contract and Discourses', Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues that representation and sovereignty are mutually incompatible because sovereignty cannot be delegated and represented. In his view, sovereignty lies essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation, then the deputies of the people are not and cannot be its representatives (6). On his line of thought, the election of representatives puts an end to the liberty of the people.

Alternatively, the eighteenth-century philosopher and politician Edmund Burke rejects the idea of representative as a delegate, that constrained to keep strictly to the views of those whom they represent and advocates the opposite idea of the role of the parliamentary representative. In his classical speech to the electors of Bristol, Burke strongly opposed the idea that representatives are bound by instructions or a mandate from their constituents. In his view, authoritative instructions, which the Member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though the contrary to to the clearest conviction of his judgement and conscience; are things unknown to the laws of the land and which arise from a fundamental Mistake of the whole order and tenour of the Constitution.(7) Therefore, he advocates that parliamentary representatives must decide on issues in accordance with their own judgements, after hearing the debates in the representative arena.

For James Mill, representation was the grand discovery of modern times and a necessity of modern politics. However, he observes the problems that could give rise from the idea of representation and the possible conflicts of interests if representatives themselves follow their private interests at the expense of community interests. Mill, thus, highlight the solution that lay in the institution of checks and controls over the representatives that allow them to hold office only for limited periods. In his 'Essay on Government ' (8), he clearly stakes out the principles of accountability of representatives to be represented and the need for institutions to put this principles into practice.

In Considerations on Representative Government (9) , John Stuart Mill also argues in favour of the concept of 'representation' by highlighting the weaknesses of the ancient Greek idea of the polis. According to Mill, there are obvious geographical and physical limits to the place and time of open meeting as well as the problems posed by coordination and regulation in a densely populated country. Therefore, the notion of self-government of government by open meeting and any form of classical or direct democracy could not be sustained in modern society. He then recommends a representative democratic system along with freedom of speech, the press and assembly, that has distinct advantages of providing the mechanism whereby central powers can be watched and controlled as well as establishing a forum (parliament) to act as a watchdog of liberty and centre of reason and debate through electoral competition, leadership qualities with intellect for the maximum benefit at all.

For John Mill, the 'ideally best polity' in modern conditions comprises a representative democratic system in which 'people exercise through deputies periodically elected by themselves the ultimate controlling power (10). He believes that representative democracy could combine accountability with professionalism and expertise and both democracy and skilled governments are the conditions that complement each other. He argues in favour of skilled governments and political leadership. However, in his book of Liberty, he also argues in favour of the use of a utilitarianist doctrine in a democracy in which a political leader’s action is right only insofar as it is useful or directly benefits the majority. (11)

The debates on representation involves not only the above antithesis between direct democracy and indirect democracy, the gaps between representatives and represented, the roles of representatives and the principles of accountability of representatives to be represented; but also the problems of what is to represent and the problems of inclusion and exclusion. In her book of 'The Concept of Representation', the American Philosopher Hannah Pitkin argues that a representative government must not merely be in control, not merely promote public interest, but must also be responsive to the people. (12) On her lines of thought, the people must not be passive objects of manipulation, nor would it be enough for a government to be responsive to public opinion only on occasions when it is possible. Instead, there must be a constant condition of responsiveness, of potential readiness to respond and some forms of institutional arrangements for government responsiveness. She also argues that the notion of representative government seems to incorporate both a very general, abstract, metaphorical idea (13) -that the people of a nation are present in the action of its government in complex ways- and some fairly concrete, practical, and historically traditional institutions intended to secure such an outcome.

However, Pitkin also asserts that there could be some tensions between the practice of representation and the democratic principles of accountability and control that were similarly highlighted by elite theorists like Robert Michels. In his 'iron law of oligarchy', Michels points out that popular sovereignty could never be achieved, and the masses, elevated by democratic theory to the highest role, in reality could only give way to oligarchy. On his lines of thought, social revolution would not affect any real modification of the internal structure of the mass, as the majority of human beings, in a condition of eternal tutelage, are predestined by tragic necessity to submit to the dominion of a small minority, and must be content to constitute the pedestal of an oligarchy (14). These views raise the debates about what it is to represent in terms of the democratic theory.

The contemporary debates on representation also involves the problem of inclusion and exclusion. In his book of In Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, Robert Dahl distinguished political regimes by two axes - the degree of political competition and the degree of political participation. For Dahl, the axis of political competition was rooted from monopolistic regimes in which power is concentrated in the hands of a narrow elite to pluralist regimes in which power is dispersed among groups and institutions while the axis of political participation was referred by the proportion of the population that is entitled to participate in a more or less equal plane (15). The higher the proportion of the population that plays a part in decision making the more inclusion of the regime type and the lower that proportion, the more exclusionary the regime type.

In contrast, Anne Phillips argues that the defining characteristics of representative democracy, as Robert Dahl has clarified, are grounded in the heterogeneity of the societies that gave it birth and it was the diversity of citizenry that made the earlier practices of Athenian democracy so inappropriate to the modern world (16). She, then, suggests the need for a 'politics of presence' which could give voice to a number of groups excluded or oppressed or marginalized by the individualist representation of liberal democracy. In her views, demands for political presence have often arisen out of the politics of social movements, which reflect differences in social class such as the 'representation of labour' and inequalities such as the civil rights movement, women's movements and autonomous organizations that speak for oppressed or disadvantaged groups. By putting the role of social movements on the agenda, she challenged the traditional modes and ideas of representation in liberal democracy that might not be adequate to ensure reflections of different groups, identities and minorities. By drawing on the historical accounts of how the conceptions of 'representation' has developed over time, the idea of 'representation' could be said to be a living political idea. It, then, raised the question of the livingness of 'representation' in politics.

Interpretations of living political ideas on the development of representation

Kenneth Shepsle regards ideas as purely interest-oriented vehicles or instruments used by politicians to further their own ideas . In his view, political actors only recur to ideas to justify things which have been decided on interest grounds long before Institutions and incentives are the really decisive explanatory variables . He makes clear in summarizing his position: “My own view on the force of ideas is to see them as one of the hooks on which politicians hang their objectives and by which they further their interests.” (17) Similarly, Stephen Krasner put forwards ideas as the servants of the interests that play a purely subordinate and instrumental role. In his views, ideas have not made possible alternatives that did not previously exist (18) and they have been one among several instruments that actors have invoked to promote their own, usually mundane, interests.

Alternatively, Tompson, Huysmans and Reokhovnik does not view ideas as purely interest-oriented instruments used by politicians. In their views, ideas are political when they are used to mobilize people behind some sort of political action; when used in political debates, when they have consequences for a wider society; when they are about the nature and limits of politics as well as part of a general vision of how the world should be organized. (19) However, not all ideas are politically alive.

Ideas live in politics only when they inspired and informed different world views that could mobilize people politically. Moreover, they must keep being drawn on, i.e., recycled in political arguments over time, whether being changed, adapted or re-appropriated in Politics. Furthermore, ideas could rarely be dead once institutionalized in political institutions like parliaments and less obvious political institutions like the family, the Church, the law, the prisons and even in medicine and public health matters. However, living political ideas could have significant political implications and possible socio-economic consequences as sometimes people live ideas to their perils or to their limits. Nevertheless, as Raia Proljovnik (20) states, ideas circulate in both political theory and in practice. These different interpretations of the livingness of political ideas might be applied to the development of representation.

Machiavelli's ideas on representation in favour of strong leaders in governments are kept alive because they have been used to justify power politics with a focus on pragmatic evaluation of what will keep politicians in power. Machiavelli has become famous as a sinister and ruthless politician because of the philosophy he expressed in The Prince since then. On the other hand, Machiavelli’s concepts formed the basis of nineteenth-century liberalism, a political philosophy that advocates change for the good of the state and its citizens. His ideas on representation regarding the preference for republican than monarchical governments have a profound influence on the political developments in Europe during the 19th century. His ideas not only circulate in political theory, but also in practice.

Similarly, Madison's ideas on representation are recycled in political debates on representative governments, principles of popular sovereignty, common goods, constitutional matters and so on. His ideas are always implicitly or explicitly played out in political debates and institutional practices. He is taken to stand for the ideas of separations of power and controlling majority's faction effects and the controversies they generate. His ideas were also criticized by anti-federalists and modern philosophers. In his book of 'Explaining America', Garry Wills asserts the role of minorities by criticizing Madison: "Minorities can make use of dispersed and staggered governmental machinery to clog, delay, slow down, hamper, and obstruct the majority. But these weapons for delay are given to the minority irrespective of its factious or non-factious character; and they can be used against the majority irrespective of its factious or non-factious character. What Madison prevents is not faction, but action. What he protects is not the common good but delay as such." (21) Thus, it is obvious that Madison's political ideas are alive as inspirations and have consequences for the society as a whole.

On the other hand, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's remarks on the frictions between the government and the people still represents as living political ideas. The demand that all citizens should participate in popular assemblies is unique to Rousseau in the modern world. His critics on representation are still alive in both political theory and political practice and his alternative concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity have inspired different views that mobilized people politically. In fact, "Liberty, equality, fraternity" was to be the motto of the 'French Revolution', which drew a great deal of inspiration from his ideas. Likewise, James Mill's ideas on representation regarding the principles of accountability and institutional requirements were taken seriously in debates in good governance and being institutionalized in political institutions and international organizations.

In a modern era, John Stuart Mill's ideas on proportional representation, in which “the champions of unpopular doctrines would not put forth their arguments merely in books and periodicals, read only by their own side; instead the opposing ranks would meet face to face to hand with proportional representation, and there would be a fair comparison of their intellectual strength, in the presence of the country” (22) , are still alive and being interpreted, adapted, and re-appropriated in politics. They have been firmly institutionalized into constitutions and governance structures in modern politics as well as being alive in political debates. Some scholars like Burns and Ryan (23) argue that Mill's consistent viewpoints throughout his political writings were not strictly democratic. Others like Robson and Bobbio (24) believe that he was. On their lines of arguments, it is clear that Mill's ideas have been adapted in current debates on electoral reforms, democratic forms of governance as well as contemporary social and political thoughts.

The ideas on representation inspired by Hanna Pitkin have also helped shaping the next generations of empirical research into the practice of American Democracy. Hanna Pitkin made the radical move of de-centering political representation from the intentions and acts of individual subjects and, so, breaking with the assumption that a political representative, like a lawyer, delegate or trustee, stands in a “one-to-one, person-to-person relationship” to a principal. As Lisa Disch points out, her argument have had the paradoxical effect of encouraging empirical and normative researchers to persist in thinking about political representation in the very terms that Pitkin set out to revise: as a one-on-one relationship between a representative and a constituency (25) . Obviously, her ideas live in politics as people rework them to revise the concept of 'political representation' and have consequences that go well beyond the defined responsibilities of the governments.

On the other hand, the ideas examined by Anne Phillips on the problems of representation of the poor such as the integration of the issues of class into a presence of politics, have inspired politicians and political theorists to articulate how this integration of class and a politics of presence is to be done. Her ideas inspired some political theorists to argue for the necessity descriptive representatives to be selected based on their relationship to citizens who have been unjustly excluded and marginalized by democratic politics (26) , whereas, some to emphasize empirical research on the benefits of having descriptive representatives.

Conclusion

Due to the paradoxical nature of conceptions, political ideas contain different and conflicting views as well as multiple and competing dimensions. Not all political ideas are alive. Ideas live in politics only when they inspired and keep being recycled in political arguments over time, whether being changed, adapted or re-appropriated in Politics. Ideas could also rarely be dead once institutionalized in both political institutions and non-political institutions. Moreover, living political ideas could have significant political implications and possible socio-economic consequences as people sometimes live ideas to their perils or to their limits. Furthermore, ideas are alive when they circulate in both political theory and in practice. In terms of these interpretations of living political ideas to the development of the concept of 'representation', representation can be said to be a living political idea indeed.

Khin Ma Ma Myo (2010)


End Notes

(1) Mill, J. (2004) 'Essay on Government' in Blaug, R. & Schwarzmantel, J. (eds.) Democracy: A Reader, Edinburgh,Edinburgh University Press, p. 154, Originally written 1819-1823
(2) Heywood, A. (2002) Politics, 2nd edition, New York, Palgrave Macmillan
(3) Machiavelli, N. (1987[1532]) 'The Prince' in Bondanella, J. & Musa, M. (eds) The Italian Renaissance Reader, New York, Penguin Books
(4) Machiavelli, N.(1983) The Discourses, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
(5) Madison, J. (1987[1788]) 'The utility of the union as a safeguard against domestic faction and insurrection', The Federalist Papers, No. 10, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, p. 126
(6) Rousseau, J. (1968) The Social Contract and Discourses, Everyman's Library, Dent, London, Book III, Chaoter XV, pp. 78, Originally written 1762
. (7) Burke, E. (1996) 'Speech at the Conclusion of the Poll, 3 November 1774', in Elofson, W. and Woods, J. (eds), The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. III: Party, Parliament and the American War (1774-80), Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 68-70
.(8) Mill, J. (1992) 'Essay on Government', in Ball, T. (ed.) Political Writings, sections VI-VII, pp. 21-24, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Originally written in 1819-1823
. (9) Mill, J.S. (1951) 'Considerations on Representative Government' in Acton, H. (ed.) Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, Dent, London, p. 175- 195, Originally written in 1861
. (10) Mill (1951) p. 228
. (11) Mill, J.S. (1982) On Liberty, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
. (12) Pitkin, H. (1967) 'The Concept of Representation', University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, pp. 232
. (13) Pitkin (1967) pp.236
. (14) Michels, R. (1962) 'Political Parties: A sociological study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, Free Press, London, pp. 356
. (15) Dahl, R. (1971) Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
. (16) Phillips, A. (1995) The Politics of Presence, Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 5
. (17) Shepsle, K. (1985) 'Comment on Derthick and Quirk', in Noll, R. (ed.) Regulatory Policy and the Social Science, Berkeley, University of California Press, pp. 235
. (18) Krasner, S. (1993) 'Westphalia and All That', in Goldstein, J. and Koehane, R. (eds.) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change, Ithaca, Cornell University Press
. (19) Thompson, G.; Huysmans, J. & Rrokhovnik, R. (2008) 'What makes ideas political?', audio transcripts, courses on Living Political Ideas, Open University
. (20) Thompson, G.; Huysmans, J. & Rrokhovnik, R. (2008) 'How do political ideas live?', audio transcripts, courses on Living Political Ideas, Open University
. (21) Wills, G. (1982) Explaining America, New York, Penguin Books, pp. 195
. (22) Mill, J.S. (1951) "Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority Only." in Acton, H. (ed.) Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, Dent, London, p. 175- 195, Originally written in 1861
. (23) Burns, J. (1968) “J.S. Mill and Democracy, 1829-61” in Schneewind (ed) Mill: A collection of Cirtical Essays, pp.328, Ryan (2007) 'Bureaucracy, Democracy, Liberty: Some Unanswered Questions in Mill's Politics', in Urbinati and Zakaris (eds.) J.S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.158
.(24) Robson (1968) The Improvement of Mankind: The Social and Political Thought of John Stuart Mill, London, Routledge, pp. 224, Bobbio, N. (2005) Liberalism and Democracy, London, Verso, pp.57
. (25) Disch, L. (2007) 'Representation “Do’s and Don’ts”: Hanna Pitkin’s The Concept of Representation', Online, http://www.univ-paris8.fr/scpo/lisadisch.pdf (assessed on 8/6/2010)
. (26) Dovi, Suzanne. 2002. “Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Or Will Just Any Woman, Black, or Latino Do?” American Political Science Review 96: 745-754.

Bibliography

Burns, J. (1968) “J.S. Mill and Democracy, 1829-61” in Schneewind (ed) Mill: A collection of Cirtical Essays, pp.328

Burke, E. (1996) 'Speech at the Conclusion of the Poll, 3 November 1774', in Elofson, W. and Woods, J. (eds), The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. III: Party, Parliament and the American War (1774-80), Clarendon Press, Oxford

Dahl, R. (1971) Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press

Dovi, Suzanne( 2002) “Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Or Will Just Any Woman, Black, or Latino Do?” American Political Science Review 96: 745-754.

Disch, L. (2007) 'Representation “Do’s and Don’ts”: Hanna Pitkin’s The Concept of Representation', Online, http://www.univ-paris8.fr/scpo/lisadisch.pdf (assessed on 8/6/2010)

Heywood, A. (2002) Politics, 2nd edition, New York, Palgrave Macmillan

Krasner, S. (1993) 'Westphalia and All That', in Goldstein, J. and Koehane, R. (eds.) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change, Ithaca, Cornell University Press

Machiavelli, N. (1987[1532]) 'The Prince' in Bondanella, J. & Musa, M. (eds) The Italian Renaissance Reader, New York, Penguin Books

Machiavelli, N.(1983) The Discourses, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books

Madison, J. (1987[1788]) 'The utility of the union as a safeguard against domestic faction and insurrection', The Federalist Papers, No. 10, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books

Michels, R. (1962) 'Political Parties: A sociological study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, Free Press, London

Mill, J. (1992) 'Essay on Government', in Ball, T. (ed.) Political Writings, sections VI-VII, pp. 21-24, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Originally written in 1819-1823

Mill, J. (2004) 'Essay on Government' in Blaug, R. & Schwarzmantel, J. (eds.) Democracy: A Reader, Edinburgh,Edinburgh University Press, p. 154, Originally written 1819-1823

Mill, J.S. (1951) 'Considerations on Representative Government' in Acton, H. (ed.) Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, Dent, London, p. 175- 195, Originally written in 1861

Mill, J.S. (1982) On Liberty, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books

Pitkin, H. (1967) 'The Concept of Representation', University of California Press, Berkeley, CA

Phillips, A. (1995) The Politics of Presence, Clarendon Press, Oxford

Rousseau, J. (1968) The Social Contract and Discourses, Everyman's Library, Dent, London, Book III, Chaoter XV, pp. 78, Originally written 1762

Ryan (2007) 'Bureaucracy, Democracy, Liberty: Some Unanswered Questions in Mill's Politics', in Urbinati and Zakaris (eds.) J.S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Shepsle, K. (1985) 'Comment on Derthick and Quirk', in Noll, R. (ed.) Regulatory Policy and the Social Science, Berkeley, University of California Press

Thompson, G.; Huysmans, J. & Rrokhovnik, R. (2008) 'What makes ideas political?', audio transcripts, courses on Living Political Ideas, Open University

Thompson, G.; Huysmans, J. & Rrokhovnik, R. (2008) 'How do political ideas live?', audio transcripts, courses on Living Political Ideas, Open University

Wills, G. (1982) Explaining America, New York, Penguin Books

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Civic Education အေၾကာင္း တေစ့တေစာင္း

၂၀ ရာစုေႏွာင္းပိုင္း ကာလမွာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသီအိုရီတခုျဖစ္တဲ့ Civic Education အေၾကာင္းကို ပညာရွင္ေတြရဲ႕ စိတ္၀င္စားတစား ေလ့လာမွဳေတြ တစတစ က်ယ္ျပန္႕လာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံသားေကာင္းျဖစ္ဖို႕ဆိုတာ လုပ္ယူရတာ ျဖစ္တယ္။ ေမြးကတည္းက ျဖစ္လာတာ မဟုတ္ဘူး ဆိုတာကို လူအမ်ားက ပိုျပီး လက္ခံလာခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ ဖြံ႕ျဖိဳးတိုးတက္တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအေဆာက္အအံု တခု ျဖစ္ထြန္းလာဖို႕အတြက္ သင့္ေလ်ာ္တဲ့ အသိပညာ၊ အတတ္ပညာနဲ႕ စာရိတၱျမင့္မားတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြ လိုအပ္တယ္ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ကို ႏိုင္ငံေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားက တညီတညြတ္တည္း လက္ခံလာၾကပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အသိပညာ၊ အတတ္ပညာနဲ႕ စာရိတၱျမင့္မားတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြ မ်ားျပားလာေအာင္ ဘယ္လို လုပ္မလဲ ဆိုတာက ေမးစရာ ျဖစ္လာပါေတာ့တယ္။ စာသင္ေက်ာင္းေတြ၊ တကၠသိုလ္ ပညာေရးေတြနဲ႕တင္ မလံုေလာက္ဘူးဆိုတာကိုလဲ သိျမင္လာၾကပါတယ္။



Civic Education ဆိုရာ၀ယ္Civics ဆိုတာ ႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အလမ္းနဲ႕ တာ၀န္ေတြကို ေလ့လာျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ Civic Education ဆိုတာကေတာ့ ဒီလိုႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အလမ္းနဲ႕ တာ၀န္ေတြ၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအင္စတီက်ဴးရွင္းေတြနဲ႕ ျပည္သူ႕ေရးရာ မူ၀ါဒေတြကို လူအမ်ားသိရွိလာေအာင္ ပညာေပးျခင္းပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အဓိပၸာယ္ဖြင့္ဆိုခ်က္ မူကြဲေတြ အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးရွိေပမယ့္ " ဘံုအက်ိဳးစီးပြားရရွိေရးအတြက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ရန္၊ အမ်ားျပည္သူအား အစိုးရႏွင့္ အျခားအဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ားမွ abuse လုပ္ျခင္းႏွင့္ တိုက္ခိုက္ျခင္းကို ကာကြယ္ေပးရန္၊ ျပည္သူ႕ေရးရာကိစၥရပ္မ်ားကို ေ၀ဖန္ဆန္းစစ္ႏိုင္ေသာ အသိဥာဏ္ပညာမ်ားကို ျဖန္႕ျဖဴးေပးရန္၊ အသိပညာဗဟုသုတမ်ားကို ကိုယ္ပိုင္အက်ိဳးစီးပြားႏွင့္ အမ်ားျပည္သူအက်ိဳးစီးပြားအတြက္ အသံုးျပဳရန္ ဟူေသာ ရည္မွန္းခ်က္ မရွိပါက မည္သည့္ civic potential မွ ျပည့္စံုမည္ မဟုတ္ေပ။ ႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အလမ္းႏွင့္ တာ၀န္မ်ားဆိုင္ရာ အသိပညာ၊ အရည္အခ်င္း၊ အျမင္ႏွင့္ တန္ဖိုးထားမွဳမ်ားသည္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးရာကိစၥရပ္မ်ားတြင္ ႏိုင္ငံသားမ်ားအားလံုး တာ၀န္သိစြာျဖင့္ ထိထိေရာက္ေရာက္ ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္ျခင္းကို ျဖစ္တည္လာေစသည္။ သို႕ျဖစ္ရာ အဆိုပါ အရည္အေသြးမ်ား ျမင့္မားလာေစရန္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ေရးသည္ civic education ၏ mission ျဖစ္သည္" ဆိုတဲ့ mission အေပၚမွာပဲ အေျခခံထားတာေတြ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ႏိုင္ငံသားတေယာက္ဟာ ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ vision ကို သိျမင္နားလည္ရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အမ်ိဳးသားအက်ိဳးစီးပြားကို နားလည္ျပီး ကာကြယ္ေစာင့္ေရွာက္တတ္ရပါမယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္အစိုးရ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူမ်ားရဲ႕ မူ၀ါဒေတြကို ဆန္းစစ္ေ၀ဖန္ႏိုင္စြမ္း ရွိရပါမယ္။ အမ်ားျပည္သူရဲ႕ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားနဲ႕ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အက်ိဳးစီးပြား ယွဥ္တြဲလာတဲ့အခါမွာ အမ်ားျပည္သူအက်ိဳးစီးပြားကို ဦးစားေပးလိုတဲ့ civic virtue ရွိရပါမယ္။ ဥပမာ- ဖြ႕ံျဖိဳးဆဲႏိုင္ငံအမ်ားစုရဲ႕ ဖြံ႕ျဖိဳးတိုးတက္ေရးကို ေႏွာင့္ေႏွးေစတဲ့ လာဘ္စားမွဳ ျပႆနာဟာ civic virtue မရွိတဲ့ ျပႆနာပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္ရဲ႕ civic virtue ဆိုတာမွာ Civic dispositions ( ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္ ထြန္းကားရွင္သန္ေရးကို ေဆာင္ရြက္လိုေသာ ႏိုင္ငံသားအျမင္၊ အေလ့အထႏွင့္ စိတ္ထားမ်ား ရွိျခင္း) နဲ႕ Civic commitments (ဒီမိ္ုကေရစီစနစ္၏ အေျခခံ တန္ဖိုးမ်ားႏွင့္ စည္းမ်ဥ္းမ်ားအေပၚတြင္ အေလးေပးအာရံုစိုက္မွဳ) ဆိုတာေတြ ပါ၀င္ပါတယ္။

Civic Education ဆိုတာက ဒီလို civic virtue ကို ျမွင့္တင္ေပးျပီး ထိေရာက္တဲ့ civic participation ျဖစ္လာေအာင္ ပညာေပးျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ civic participation ဆိုတာက ျပည္သူ႕ေရးရာ မူ၀ါဒေတြကို ဆန္းစစ္ေ၀ဖန္မွဳေတြတင္ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ျပည္သူ႕ေရးရာ၊ အမ်ားျပည္သူအက်ိဳးစီးပြားစတာေတြနဲ႕ ပတ္သက္ျပီး အသိပညာ ဗဟုသုတရွိျခင္း၊ ခံယူခ်က္ရွိျခင္း၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားမ်ားနဲ႕ အစိုးရအဖြဲ႕အစည္းအေပၚ reflective enquiry ျပဳလုပ္မွဳ စတာေတြ ပါ၀င္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံသားတေယာက္ဟာ စည္းကမ္းမဲ့ လမ္းေပၚမွာ အမွိဳက္လႊင့္ပစ္တာဟာ civic virtue မရွိလို႕ပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဌာနဆိုင္ရာ၀န္ထမ္းတေယာက္ကို လာဘ္ေပးတာကလဲ civic participation မွာ အားနည္းေနျခင္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြရဲ႕ civic virtue ကို ျမွင့္တင္ေပးျပီး၊ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္အနာဂတ္လမ္းခရီးမွာ ပူးေပါင္းပါ၀င္လာဖို႕အတြက္ civic education ကို စနစ္တက် ျပဳလုပ္ရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီေနရာမွာ civic education ကို ဘယ္လိုအေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္မလဲ ဆိုတာေတြနဲ႕ ပတ္သက္ျပီး အျမင္ကြဲလြဲမွုေလးေတြ ရွိပါတယ္။

Civic Education ဆိုင္ရာ အျမင္ကြဲျပားမွဳမ်ား

ဒီေနရာမွာလဲ ပေလတိုနဲ႕ အရစ္တိုတယ္တို႕ေတြ Civic Education ဆိုတာနဲ႕ ပတ္သက္ျပီး ေျပာခဲ့စဥ္ကာလ ကတည္းက အစျပဳ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာခဲ့တဲ့ အျငင္းပြားမွဳေတြ၊ အျမင္မတူညီမွဳေတြက ရွိပါေသးတယ္။ ျပည္သူလူထုကို ႏိုင္ငံသားနဲ႕ ပတ္သက္တဲ့ ပညာေပးမွဳေတြဟာ ဘယ္လိုႏိုင္ငံေရး အေဆာက္အအံုဆိုတာေပၚမွာ မူတည္ပါတယ္။ ဥပမာ- ဒီမိုကေရစီ စနစ္ထြန္းကားတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံတႏိုင္ငံမွာ ဒီမိုကေရစီ မဆန္တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအေတြးအေခၚေတြ၊ ျပဳမူလုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္ေတြကို လက္ခံျခင္း မရွိတဲ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြ ရွိဖို႕ လိုအပ္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြဟာ ဒီမိုကေရစီနဲ႕ လိုက္ေလ်ာညီေထြရွိတဲ့ အသိပညာ၊ အရည္အခ်င္းနဲ႕ စာရိတၱေတြ ရွိလာဖို႕ ၾကိဳးပမ္းႏိုင္မွသာ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းမွဳကေန ဒီမိုကေရစီ အျမစ္တြယ္ရွင္သန္ခိုင္မာမွဳ ရွိလာေအာင္ ျပဳလုပ္ႏိုင္မွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ဒီမိုကေရစီႏိုင္ငံသားေတြ ေပၚထြန္းလာေစေရး ဆိုတာမွာကလဲ ဘယ္လို ဒီမိုကေရစီ သေဘာတရားေတြနဲ႕ တိုင္းျပည္ကို တည္ေဆာက္မွာလဲ ဆိုတာကို မူတည္လာျပန္ပါတယ္။

ႏိုင္ငံေရးပညာရွင္ March နဲ႕ Olsen ဆိုခဲ့ဖူးသလိုပဲ ဒီမိုကေရစီ သေဘာတရားေရးရာ ျငင္းခုန္မွဳေတြ ျဖစ္တဲ့ ကိုယ္စားျပဳမွဳနဲ႕ တိုက္ရိုက္ပါ၀င္ပတ္သက္မွဳအၾကားက ခ်ိန္ခြင္လွ်ာ၊ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အက်ိဳးစီးပြားနဲ႕ အမ်ားျပည္သူ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားအၾကားက ခ်ိန္ခြင္လွ်ာ၊ အခြင့္အေရးနဲ႕ တာ၀န္ယူမွဳအၾကားက ခ်ိန္ခြင္လွ်ာ၊ လြတ္လပ္မွဳနဲ႕ တန္းတူညီမွ်မွဳအၾကားက ခ်ိန္ခြင္လွ်ာ၊ ညီညြတ္မွဳနဲ႕ ကြဲျပားျခားနားမွဳအၾကားက ခ်ိန္ခြင္လွ်ာ စတဲ့ ခ်ိန္ခြင္လွ်ာေတြကို ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္အစိုးရေတြအေနနဲ႕၊ မူ၀ါဒခ်မွတ္သူေတြအေနနဲ႕ ဘယ္လိုထိန္းညွိမလဲ ဆိုတဲ့ အခ်က္ေပၚမွာ မူတည္သြားတတ္ျပန္ပါတယ္။ ဒီလို သေဘာတရားေရးရာ ကြဲျပားျခားနားမွဳေတြဟာ democratic civic education ကို ဘယ္လို အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္သလဲ ဆိုတဲ့အေပၚမွာ ရိုက္ခတ္လာပါတယ္။ စာသင္ခန္းအေျချပဳ ပညာေရးနဲ႕ လူ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္းအေျချပဳ လူထုပညာေပး လုပ္ငန္းေတြကို အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္တဲ့ ပံုသ႑ာန္ေတြဟာ ဒီလိုသေဘာတရားေရးရာ ကြဲျပားျခားနားမွဳေပၚမူတည္ျပီး အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳး ကြဲျပားလာပါတယ္။

ဒါေပမယ့္ စာသင္ခန္းအေျချပဳနည္းလမ္းျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊ လူ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္းအေျချပဳ လူထုပညာေပး နည္းလမ္းျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊ ဘယ္လိုသ႑ာန္ေတြပဲသံုးသံုး အဓိကေတာ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြအေနနဲ႕ ေခတ္၊ စနစ္နဲ႕ ေလ်ာ္ညီတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြမွာ ရွိရမယ့္ အရည္အခ်င္းေတြ၊ အေတြးအေခၚေတြ၊ ျပဳမူေဆာင္ရြက္မွဳေတြ၊ ကၽြမ္းက်င္မွဳေတြ ရွိလာဖို႕ကသာ အေရးၾကီးဆံုးျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီေနရာမွာလဲ အရည္အေသြးျပည့္၀တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားေကာင္းတေယာက္ျဖစ္လာဖို႕အတြက္ ဘယ္အတိုင္းအတာအထိ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသုတနဲ႕ civic knowledge ေတြ လိုအပ္သလဲ ဆိုတာက ေမးစရာ ျဖစ္လာျပန္ပါတယ္။

ပညာရွင္တခ်ိဳ႕ကေတာ့ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ႏိုင္ငံသားေကာင္းျဖစ္ဖို႕အတြက္ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဳစနစ္ (democratic governance) ကို နားလည္ရမယ္၊ ျပည္သူ႕ေရးရာ မူ၀ါဒေတြကို ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ သိနားလည္ရမယ္လို႕ သတ္မွတ္ၾကပါတယ္။ ပညာရွင္တခ်ိဳ႕ကေတာ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြဟာ ျပည္သူ႕ေရးရာ မူ၀ါဒေတြကို အေသးစိတ္သိကၽြမ္းနားလည္စရာ မလိုအပ္ေပမယ့္ အေျခခံနားလည္မွဳနဲ႕ ဆန္းစစ္ေ၀ဖန္ ႏိုင္မွဳေတာ့ ရွိဖို႕ လိုအပ္တယ္လို႕ ယူဆၾကပါတယ္။ ဘယ္လိုပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ႏိုင္ငံတႏိုင္ငံမွာ တည္ျငိမ္တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဳစနစ္တခု ေပၚထြက္လာဖို႕မွာ လူထုရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအျမင္ဟာ အဓိကက်တာေၾကာင့္ reasonable judgement ကို ျပဳလုပ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြ အမ်ားအျပား ေပၚထြက္လာဖို႕ အေရးၾကီးေၾကာင္း ပညာရွင္ အမ်ားစုက လက္ခံထားၾကပါတယ္။

ႏိုင္ငံေရး ပညာရွင္တဦးျဖစ္တဲ့ Samuel Popkin ကေတာ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအသိပညာဗဟုသုတ အားနည္းတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြဟာ ဒီမိုကေရစီမူ၀ါဒေတြရဲ႕ အေပးအယူ debates ေတြ၊ ျပည္သူ႕ေရးရာ မူ၀ါဒအားနည္းခ်က္ေတြကို ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ ခြဲျခား ဆန္းစစ္မွဳေတြ မျပဳလုပ္ႏိုင္ပဲ ျဖစ္စဥ္ေတြ၊ အေၾကာင္းအရာေတြ၊ မူ၀ါဒေတြထက္ လူပုဂၢိဳလ္ေပၚမွာ မူတည္ျပီး ေရြးခ်ယ္မွဳေတြ လုပ္ေလ့ရွိၾကတယ္လို႕ ဆိုထားပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္လဲ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအသိပညာ သင္းကြပ္ခံထားရတဲ့ အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ ႏိုင္ငံေတြနဲ႕ အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ကေန ဒီမိုကေရစီ အသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းဆဲ ႏိုင္ငံေတြမွာ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေရးကိုးကြယ္မွဳေပၚ အေျချပဳတဲ့ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေရြးခ်ယ္မွဳေတြ၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအေၾကာင္းအရာထက္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးဇာတ္ေကာင္ကို အသားေပးမွဳေတြ၊ မင္းေလာင္းေမွ်ာ္မွဳေတြ၊ တကိုယ္ေတာ္ ဟီးရိုး၀ါဒကို ေထာက္ခံအားေပးမွဳေတြ ထြက္ေပၚေနတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေတြဟာ ဒီမိုကေရစီစနစ္ အျမစ္တြယ္ခိုင္မာရွင္သန္ေရးအတြက္ အတားအဆီး၊ အေႏွာင့္အယွက္ေတြပါပဲ။

Civic Education, Political Education ေတြ နဲ႕ ပတ္သက္ျပီး ဘယ္ေလာက္အတိုင္းအထိ ႏိုင္ငံသားတိုင္း သိထားသင့္သလဲ ဆိုတာကို အျငင္းပြားေနၾကဆဲ ျဖစ္ေပမယ့္ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြဟာ မူ၀ါဒေရးရာေတြမွာ ကၽြမ္းက်င္ပညာရွင္ျဖစ္စရာ မလိုဘူး ဆိုတာကိုေတာ့ လူအမ်ားက လက္ခံထားၾကပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးရာနဲ႕ပတ္သက္ျပီး reasonable civic judgement ကို လုပ္ႏိုင္မယ့္ အေျခခံ ဗဟုသုတနဲ႕ အရည္အခ်င္းကိုေတာ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားတိုင္း ပိုင္ဆိုင္ထားသင့္တယ္ ဆိုတာကိုလဲ လက္ခံလာၾကျပီး၊ သင့္ေလ်ာ္မယ့္ civic education နဲ႕ civics assessment စတာေတြကို ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္အစိုးရေတြက အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္လာၾကပါတယ္။

ႏိုင္ငံသားေကာင္းဆိုတာ ေမြးကတည္းက ျဖစ္လာတာမဟုတ္ပဲ လုပ္ယူရတာျဖစ္တယ္ ဆိုတဲ့ အဆိုကို လက္ခံလာၾကတာနဲ႕အမွ် ႏိုင္ငံတႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ အနာဂတ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ လူငယ္ေတြကို political socialization လုပ္ရာမွာ လိုအပ္မယ့္ civic education ရဲ႕ အခန္းက႑ကိုလဲ ထည့္သြင္းစဥ္းစားလာၾကပါတယ္။ ဒီေနရာမွာ အေျခခံပညာေရးအဆင့္အတန္း ျမင့္မားမွဳဟာ လူေတြရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံေရးဗဟုသုတ ရယူႏိုင္မွဳနဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံေရးမွာ ပါ၀င္ပတ္သက္မွဳ သ႑ာန္ကို အက်ိဳးသက္ေရာက္မွဳ ရွိတာေၾကာင့္ အေျခခံပညာေရး အဆင့္အတန္းျမင့္မားေရးကလဲ က႑တခုအေနနဲ႕ ပါ၀င္လာပါေတာ့တယ္။ ပညာေရး အင္စတီက်ဴးရွင္းေတြ မဟုတ္တဲ့ မိသားစု၊ လူမ်ိဳးစု၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအဖြဲ႕အစည္း၊ လူမွဳေရးအဖြဲ႕အစည္း၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးျဖစ္ရပ္ေတြကေန civic formation ေပၚကို သက္ေရာက္မွဳေတြကိုလဲ ထည့္သြင္း စဥ္းစားလာၾကပါတယ္။ Mass Media ေတြကတဆင့္ လူငယ္ေတြကို civic knowledge, political knowledge ေတြ ျဖန္႕ျဖဴးေပးႏိုင္မယ့္ နည္းလမ္းေတြကိုလဲ တီထြင္အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖာ္လာၾကပါတယ္။ စာသင္ခန္းေတြ၊ သင္တန္းေတြနဲ႕ class-room based education ကို ပိုျပီးဦးစားေပးသင့္သလား၊ community-based experiences ေတြကို ဦးစားေပး အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္သင့္သလား ဆိုတာကိုေတာ့ ပညာရွင္ေတြ၊ မူ၀ါဒခ်မွတ္သူေတြၾကားမွာ အျမင္ကြဲလြဲမွဳေတြ ရွိေနဆဲပါပဲ။ ဘယ္လိုပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ civic education ကို စနစ္တက်အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ႏိုင္ျပီး civic knowledge ေတြ လူငယ္ေတြအၾကား၊ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြအၾကားမွာ ပ်ံ႕ႏွံ႕သြားဖို႕က အေရးၾကီးဆံုးပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

civic knowledge ၏ အေရးပါမွဳ

civic knowledge ရဲ႕ အေရးပါပံုနဲ႕ ပတ္သက္ျပီး ႏိုင္ငံေရးပညာရွင္ေတြက သုေတသနျပဳ ေလ့လာဆန္းစစ္ခ်က္ေတြ လုပ္ခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ ေလ့လာဆန္းစစ္ခ်က္ေတြအရ civic knowledge ရွိျခင္းအားျဖင့္ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြဟာ သူတို႕ရဲ႕ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အက်ိဳးစီးပြားကို သိျမင္လာၾကပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အလမ္းေတြကို ပိုျပီး သိျမင္လာၾကပါတယ္။ အခြင့္အလမ္းေတြကို သိျမင္လာတာနဲ႕အမွ် ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္က ခ်မွတ္ထားတဲ့ မူ၀ါဒေတြရဲ႕ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အက်ိဳးစီးပြားေတြအေပၚ သက္ေရာက္မွဳေတြကို ေတြ႕ျမင္လာၾကပါတယ္။ Delli နဲ႕ Keeter တို႕ရဲ႕ ေလ့လာဆန္းစစ္ခ်က္မ်ားအရ ႏိုင္ငံေရးဗဟုသုတဟာ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အက်ိဳးစီးပြားကို သိျမင္နားလည္ခြင့္ကို ေပးစြမ္းႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီကေနတဆင့္ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အက်ိဳးစီးပြားနဲ႕ ျပည္သူ႕ေရးရာကိစၥရပ္ေတြကို ဆက္စပ္ေပးပါတယ္။ ဒီလို ဆက္စပ္ေပးရာကေနတဆင့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးကို သိျမင္နားလည္တဲ့ ျပည္သူလူထုဟာ အစိုးရတရပ္ရဲ႕ လုပ္ငန္းေဆာင္တာေတြ၊ မူ၀ါဒေတြကို အကဲျဖတ္ဆန္းစစ္ႏိုင္လာပါတယ္။ ဒီမိုကေရစီနည္းလမ္းတက် ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေတြမွာဆိုရင္ ဘယ္လိုပါတီနဲ႕ ဘယ္လိုအမတ္ေလာင္းဟာ သူတို႕ရဲ႕ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားကို အေကာင္းဆံုးအေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ေပးႏိုင္မလဲ ဆိုတာကို တြက္ခ်က္ေရြးခ်ယ္ႏိုင္လာပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ civic knowledge ဟာ စနစ္တခု ထြန္းကားေရးကို ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ေပးႏိုင္ပါတယ္။

civic knowledge နဲ႕ ပတ္သက္တဲ့ ေနာက္ထပ္အက်ိဳးေက်းဇူးတခုကေတာ့ ျပည္သူ႕ေရးရာနဲ႕ ပတ္သက္တဲ့ ကိစၥရပ္ေတြ၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးရာေတြမွာ အခ်ိန္ကာလနဲ႕ အညီ လိုက္ေလ်ာညီေထြရွိတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအျမင္ေတြ ရွိေနေစတာပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ျပည္သူလူထုရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအေတြးအေခၚ၊ အသိပညာေတြကို ေလ့လာတဲ့ ပညာရွင္ေတြက ႏိုင္ငံေရးဗဟုသုတနဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအျမင္ တည္ျငိမ္မွဳ အၾကားမွာ သိသာထင္ရွားတဲ့ ဆက္ႏြယ္မွဳေတြ ခိုင္ခိုင္မာမာရွိေၾကာင္း ေလ့လာေတြ႕ရွိခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။

civic knowledge နဲ႕ ပတ္သက္တဲ့ ေနာက္ထပ္အက်ိဳးေက်းဇူးတခုကေတာ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြဟာ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္မွာ ျဖစ္ေပၚေနတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ေျပာင္းလဲမွဳအေျခအေနေတြကို ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ ခြဲျခားသိျမင္ႏိုင္ျခင္းပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံေရးျဖစ္စဥ္ေျပာင္းလဲမွဳကို မသိျမင္တဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားတေယာက္ဟာ အခ်ိန္အခါ၊ အေျခအေနနဲ႕ အညီ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာတဲ့ ေျပာင္းလဲမွဳေတြထဲမွာ ဘယ္လို တုန္႕ျပန္ေဆာင္ရြက္ရမယ္ဆိုတာကို နားမလည္ႏိုင္ပါဘူး။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးျဖစ္စဥ္ ေျပာင္းလဲမွဳေတြနဲ႕အတူ ထြက္ေပၚလာတတ္တဲ့ အေတြးအေခၚ ရွဳပ္ေထြးမွဳေတြအၾကားမွာ နေ၀တိမ္ေတာင္နဲ႕ မ်က္စိလည္ေနတတ္ပါတယ္။ အမွန္နဲ႕အမွား၊ အႏိုင္နဲ႕အရွံဳးေတြကို မခြဲျခားတတ္ေတာ့ဘူး ျဖစ္ေနတတ္ပါတယ္။ အားကစားပြဲတခုကို ကစားနည္း (rule of game) နားမလည္ပဲ ေဘးကေန ထိုင္ၾကည့္ေနရသလိုပါပဲ။ ဥပမာ- ေဘာလံုးကစားနည္းကို နားမလည္ပဲ ေဘာလံုးပြဲထိုင္ၾကည့္တဲ့အခါ အနီ၀တ္ထဲ ေဘာလံုးေရာက္လိုက္၊ အျဖဴ၀တ္ထဲ ေဘာလံုးေရာက္လိုက္ ျဖစ္ေနတာေတြ လိုက္ၾကည့္ရင္း အနီ၀တ္က ကန္တဲ့ ဂိုးလဲ အားေပး၊ အျဖဴ၀တ္က ကန္တဲ့ ဂိုးလဲ လက္ခုပ္ထတီးနဲ႕ ေဘာလံုးဆိုတာ ဂိုးတိုင္ထဲ ေရာက္သြားရင္ ျပီးတာပဲဆိုတာမ်ိဳးေတြ ျဖစ္ေနတတ္တာပါ။

civic knowledge မရွိသူေတြဟာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးေခါင္းေဆာင္ေရြးခ်ယ္တဲ့အခါမွာ အမ်ားျပည္သူအက်ိဳးစီးပြား၊ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အက်ိဳးစီးပြားကို ေဆာင္က်ဥ္းေပးႏိုင္မယ့္ မူ၀ါဒေရးရာ ခ်မွတ္ေပးႏိုင္မွဳနဲ႕ ေရြးခ်ယ္ဆံုးျဖတ္ႏိုင္မွဳ မရွိပဲ လူေတြရဲ႕ ရုပ္လကၡဏာ၊ လူအမ်ားၾကား ေရပန္းစားမွဳ အစရွိတဲ့ ဥပေဒျပဳေရး၊ မူ၀ါဒေရးဆြဲခ်မွတ္ အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ေရး အရည္အခ်င္းေတြနဲ႕ မဆိုင္တဲ့ အခ်က္ေတြကို ထည့္သြင္းစဥ္းစားေလ့ရွိ ၾကေၾကာင္း ပညာရွင္ေတြက ေလ့လာေတြ႕ရွိခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ အာရွ၊ အာဖရိက ႏိုင္ငံေတြက ျပည္သူလူထုေတြဟာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအသိပညာ ဗဟုသုတေတြ အားနည္းတာေၾကာင့္ တိုင္းျပည္ကို အမွန္တကယ္ အက်ိဳးျပဳႏိုင္မယ့္ ႏိုင္ငံေရးသမားေတြကို မွန္မွန္ကန္ကန္ ေရြးခ်ယ္ႏိုင္မွဳမွာ အားေပ်ာ့ျပီး ဒီမိုကေရစီ ေနာက္ျပန္ဆြဲမွဳျပႆနာေတြ၊ စစ္အာဏာသိမ္းမွဳ ျပႆနာေတြ၊ ဒီမိုကေရစီ ရွင္သန္ထြန္းကားေရး ေႏွာင့္ေႏွးမွဳ ျပႆနာေတြကို ရင္ဆိုင္ၾကရတာျဖစ္ေၾကာင့္ ေလ့လာသံုးသပ္သူေတြက ဆိုခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။

civic knowledge နဲ႕ ပတ္သက္တဲ့ ေနာက္ထပ္အက်ိဳးေက်းဇူးတခုကေတာ့ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြဟာ ျပည္သူ႕ေရးရာ ကိစၥရပ္ေတြမွာ တက္တက္ၾကြၾကြ စိတ္၀င္စားလာျပီး ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ရဲ႕ ခ်မွတ္ထားတဲ့ vision နဲ႕ objectives ေတြကို ပူးေပါင္းပါ၀င္ အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္လာၾကတာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူေတြနဲ႕ ႏို္င္ငံသားေတြအၾကားမွာ အျပန္အလွန္ေလးစားမွဳနဲ႕ ယံုၾကည္မွဳေတြ တိုးပြားလာတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အစိုးရနဲ႕ ျပည္သူအၾကားမွာ ညီညြတ္မွဳ ရွိလာေစျပီး၊ ျပည္သူလူထုရဲ႕ အစိုးရလုပ္ငန္းေဆာင္တာေတြအေပၚ လ်စ္လ်ဴရွဳမွဳေတြ ေလ်ာ့နည္းလာေစႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ လ်စ္လ်ဴရွဳမွဳဟာ ေၾကာက္ရြံ႕စိုးထိတ္မွဳရဲ႕ ဖခင္ျဖစ္ျပီး၊ အသိဥာဏ္ဗဟုသုတဟာ ယံုၾကည္မွဳရဲ႕ မိခင္ျဖစ္တယ္လို႕ ပညာရွင္ေတြက ဆိုထားခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ political debates ေတြ ျပင္းထန္ေနတဲ့အခ်ိန္ေတြ၊ ေတာ္လွန္ေရးကာလေတြမွာ ႏိုင္ငံေရး ဗဟုသုတ အားနည္းသူေတြဟာ political issues ေတြရဲ႕ အမွားနဲ႕ အမွန္ကိစၥေတြကို ခြဲျခားသံုးသပ္မွဳ မျပဳလုပ္ႏိုင္ေတာ့ပဲ ဘက္ႏွစ္ဘက္က characters ေတြရဲ႕ အားနည္းခ်က္ေတြကိုပဲ ၾကည့္လာတတ္ၾကပါတယ္။ အဲဒီကေနတဆင့္ `ဘယ္သူမွ အျဖဴထည္မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ျဖဴစင္တဲ့ သူရဲေကာင္း (white knights) ေတြ ဆိုတာ မရွိပါဘူး ဆိုတဲ့ အျမင္ေတြ ၀င္လာျပီး plague on both your houses ဆိုတဲ့ ရပ္တည္ခ်က္ေတြကို ကိုင္စြဲလာတတ္ၾကပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံေရးနားလည္သူေတြအတြက္က ႏို္င္ငံေရး တိုက္ပြဲေတြ၊ debates ေတြကို ၾကက္ေတာင္ကစားပြဲလို ျမင္ေပမယ့္ နားမလည္သူေတြအတြက္ကေတာ့ ဒါဟာ မုန္႕လုပြဲပါပဲ။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ civic knowledge ေတြ လူထုအၾကားမွာ ပ်ံ႕ႏွံ႕လာဖို႕က အလြန္အေရးၾကီးပါတယ္။

civic knowledge ရဲ႕ ေနာက္ထပ္အက်ိဳးေက်းဇူးတခုကေတာ့ လြတ္လပ္စြာ ကြဲျပားျခင္းကို နားလည္လက္ခံလာေစမွဳပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အလမ္းနဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံသားလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ကို နားလည္သူေတြဟာ ကြဲျပားျခားနားတဲ့ လူမ်ိဳးစုေတြအၾကား အျပန္အလွန္ယံုၾကည္မွဳနဲ႕ နားလည္မွဳကို တည္ေဆာက္ႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံသားအခြင့္အလမ္းနဲ႕ လူမ်ိဳးေရးအခြင့္အလမ္းေတြကို ကြဲကြဲျပားျပား သိျမင္နားလည္ျပီး အျငင္းပြားမွုေတြကို ကြင္းကြင္းကြက္ကြက္ ေျဖရွင္းႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံသားအားလံုးရဲ႕ ပညာေရးအဆင့္အတန္း တိုးတက္ျမင့္မားလာတာနဲ႕အမွ် အသိပညာနဲ႕ နားလည္ႏိုင္စြမ္း တိုးျမင့္လာမွဳေတြဟာ social centrality အဆင့္အတန္းေတြအတြက္ ေနရာလုမွဳေတြကေန ထြက္ေပၚလာတဲ့ ဆိုးက်ိဳးေတြကို ေက်ာ္လႊားေပးေစႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ civic knowledge ဟာ ႏိုင္ငံေရးျဖစ္စဥ္ေတြကို ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ သိျမင္နားလည္ျပီး rational manner နဲ႕ ျပဳမူေဆာင္ရြက္တတ္လာေအာင္ တြန္းအားေပးပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ civic knowledge ဟာ ႏိုင္ငံတႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းမွာ မွီတင္းေနထိုင္တဲ့ ျပည္သူလူထုရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအျမင္၊ အေတြးအေခၚ၊ အယူအဆ၊ ျပဳမူေဆာင္ရြက္မွဳေတြကို အက်ိဳးသက္ေရာက္မွဳရွိေစတယ္ဆိုတာ ထင္ရွားလွပါတယ္။

နိဂံုး

နိဂံုးခ်ဳပ္ဆိုရရင္ civic education ဆိုတာ တိုင္းျပည္တခုရဲ႕ လူအဖြဲ႕အစည္း အဆင့္အတန္းျမင့္မားေရး၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရး တည္ျငိမ္မွဳရွိေရး၊ ႏိုင္ငံတႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ ဖြံ႕ျဖိဳးတိုးတက္ေရးေတြအတြက္ မရွိမျဖစ္ လိုအပ္ခ်က္ တခုပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္မတို႕ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အပါအ၀င္ အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ ထြန္းကားတဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံေတြနဲ႕ ဒီမိုကေရစီ စနစ္အသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းဆဲ ႏိုင္ငံအမ်ားစုေတြရဲ႕ ဖြံ႕ျဖိဳးတိုးတက္ေရးကို ေႏွာင့္ေႏွးေနေစတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းရင္းေတြထဲမွာ ႏိုင္ငံသားေတြရဲ႕ ႏိုင္ငံေရးအသိပညာနဲ႕ အေတြးအျမင္ အားနည္းမွဳေတြကလဲ အေၾကာင္းရင္းတခုအေနနဲ႕ ပါ၀င္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံသားတေယာက္ဟာ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အက်ိဳးစီးပြားအတြက္ မိမိတို႕ရဲ႕ ရပိုင္ခြင့္ အခြင့္အလမ္းေတြနဲ႕ တိုင္းျပည္တခုလံုးရဲ႕ အမ်ိဳးသားအက်ိဳးစီးပြားကို သိျမင္ျခင္း မရွိတဲ့အခါ ကိုယ္ပိုင္အက်ိဳးစီးပြားနဲ႕ အမ်ိဳးသားအက်ိဳးစီးပြားအၾကားက ခ်ိန္ခြင္လွ်ာကိုလဲ ဘယ္လိုမွ ထိန္းညွိႏိုင္မွာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ဒါေတြဟာ လူတဦးခ်င္းရဲ႕ ကိုယ့္ၾကမၼာကိုယ္ဖန္တီးခြင့္ေတြ ဆံုးရွံဳးျခင္း ျဖစ္ေစသလို ႏိုင္ငံတႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ အနာဂတ္ကိုပါ ဆုတ္ယုတ္ပ်က္စီးေစႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္လဲ ႏိုင္ငံအမ်ားစုမွာ သက္ဆိုင္ရာအစိုးရေတြက ဦးေဆာင္ျပီး civic education ဆိုင္ရာ မူ၀ါဒေတြကို ခ်မွတ္အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ေနၾကပါတယ္။ အစိုးရေတြက အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ျခင္း မရွိတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေတြမွာလဲ ျပည္သူမွ ျပည္သူသို႕ အသိပညာျပန္လည္ျဖန္႕ျဖဴးေပးျခင္း နည္းလမ္းကို အသံုးျပဳျပီး သက္ဆိုင္ရာ လူ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြအတြင္းမွာ လူထုပညာေပးျခင္းေတြ ျပဳလုပ္ေနၾကပါေၾကာင္း တင္ျပလိုက္ရပါတယ္။

(ျမန္မာ့လူ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္းအတြင္း civic knowledge မ်ား ထြန္းကားလာေစရန္ ရည္သန္လ်က္)

ခင္မမမ်ိဳး (၃၊ ၆၊ ၂၀၁၀)




ရည္ညႊန္းကိုးကား။ ။

Campbell, D. E. (2000) Making Democratic Education Work: Schools, Social Capital and Civic Education, Program on Education and Policy, Harvard University

Elkin, S.K., Soltan K.E., eds (1999) Citizen Competence and Democratic Institutions, University Park, The Pennsylvania University

Hildreth R.W. (2000) Theorizing Citizenship and Evaluating Public Achievement, Political Science and Politics, 33, pp.627-632

Popkin S.L, Dimock M.A. (2000) 'Knowledge, Trust and International Attitudes' in Lupia, A,; McCubbins, M; Poplin S.L (eds) In Elements of Reason: Understanding and expanding the Limits of Political Rationality, Cambridge University Press

Zaller J. R. (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, Cambridge University Press

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အျမင္

`ေလစိမ္းေတြ တိုက္ေနျပီ အိမ္ထဲ၀င္ေတာ့` ဆိုတဲ့ အသံတခုရဲ႕ အဆံုးမွာ အိမ္ထဲေျပး၀င္သြားတဲ့ သံုးႏွစ္အရြယ္ကေလးငယ္ရဲ႕`ေလ`ဆိုတာကို ျမင္တဲ့အျမင္။

`သမီးေလးအတြက္ ေလပူေဖာင္း`ဆိုတဲ့ အသံတခုရဲ႕ အဆံုးမွာ လက္ထဲ ေရာက္လာတဲ့ ေလပူေဖာင္းေလး နိမ့္တုံျမင့္တံု ျဖစ္ေနတာကို ၾကည့္ျပီးေပ်ာ္ေနတဲ့ ငါးႏွစ္အရြယ္ကေလးငယ္ရဲ႕ `ေလ`ဆိုတာကို ျမင္တဲ့အျမင္။

ေက်ာက္သင္ပုန္းေပၚက ေလထုသိပ္သည္းဆနဲ႕ ေလဖိအားဆိုင္ရာ ေဖာ္ျမဴလာေတြကို လိုက္လံမွတ္သားေနတဲ့ အသက္ဆယ့္ေလးႏွစ္အရြယ္ ေက်ာင္းသူတေယာက္ရဲ႕ `ေလ`ဆိုတာကို ျမင္တဲ့အျမင္။

ေလထုစြမ္းအင္ ထုတ္လုပ္ေရး စီမံကိန္းလုပ္ငန္းခြင္ထဲက wind turbine ေတြအနီးမွာ ရပ္ေနတဲ့ အင္ဂ်င္နီယာတေယာက္ရဲ႕ `ေလ`ဆိုတာကို ျမင္တဲ့အျမင္။

ေလထုစြမ္းအင္နဲ႕ သက္ဆိုင္တဲ့ ေဘာဂေဗဒ ေလ့လာဆန္းစစ္ခ်က္ေတြကို တကၠသိုလ္ရံုးခန္းထဲမွာ ငုတ္တုပ္ထိုင္လုပ္ေနတဲ့ ပညာရွင္တေယာက္ရဲ႕ `ေလ`ဆိုတာကို ျမင္တဲ့အျမင္။



အႏုျမဴစြမ္းအင္နဲ႕ ေလထုစြမ္းအင္ဆိုင္ရာ မူ၀ါဒပရိုပိုဆာေတြကိုင္ရင္း ျပင္းခုန္ေဆြးေႏြးေနၾကတဲ့ ပါလီမန္ထဲက အမတ္မင္းေတြရဲ႕ `ေလ`ဆိုတာကို ျမင္တဲ့အျမင္။

`ပူလိုက္တာကြာ ေလေအးေအးေလးတိုက္ရင္ ေကာင္းမွာပဲ`ဆိုတဲ့ အပူပိုင္းေဒသက လူတေယာက္ရဲ႕ `ေလ`ဆိုတာကို ျမင္တဲ့အျမင္။
`ေလေတြကလဲ တိုက္လိုက္တာဟယ္။ သစ္ပင္ေတြလဲရင္ေတာ့ ဒုကၡပါပဲ`ဆိုတဲ့ ေလတိုက္ႏွဳန္းျမင့္မားရာ ေဒသက လူတေယာက္ရဲ႕ `ေလ`ဆိုတာကို ျမင္တဲ့အျမင္။

ေလေပါက္မပါတဲ့ အလံုပိတ္ကားထဲမွာ ပိတ္မိေနတဲ့ လူတေယာက္ရဲ႕ `ေလ`ဆိုတာကို ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ေတာင့္တမွဳ။

ေလမုန္တိုင္းဒဏ္ကို အလူးအလဲ ခံေနရတဲ့ လူတေယာက္ရဲ႕ `ေလ`တိုက္ႏွဳန္းေတြ ေလ်ာ့နည္းေစလိုမွဳ။

တကယ္ေတာ့ လူတိုင္း၊ လူတိုင္းမွာ အသက္အရြယ္အရ၊ ပညာအရည္အခ်င္းအရ၊ အေတြးအေခၚ အဆင့္အတန္းအရ၊ ရွဳျမင္တဲ့ ရွဳေထာင့္မ်ိဳးစံုအရ မတူညီတဲ့ အျမင္ေတြ ဆိုတာ ရွိၾကစျမဲပါ။

ေလာကၾကီးဆိုတာ မတူညီတဲ့အျမင္၊ မတူညီတဲ့ အေတြးအေခၚ၊ မတူညီတဲ့ လိုအင္ဆႏၵ၊ မတူညီတဲ့ အသက္အရြယ္၊ မတူညီတဲ့ ပညာအဆင့္အတန္း၊ မတူညီတဲ့ အသက္ေမြး၀မ္းေက်ာင္း အစရွိတဲ့ မတူညီကြဲျပားမွဳေတြနဲ႕ ဖြဲ႕စည္းတည္ေဆာက္ထားတာပါ။

ဒီလို ကြဲျပားမွဳေတြအၾကားမွာ `ငါနဲ႕မတူ၊ ငါ့ရန္သူ`ဆိုတဲ့ စကားပံုကို လက္စြဲျပီး ကိုယ္ေတြးသလို မေတြးရင္ ေတြ႕သမွ်လူနဲ႕ျငင္းခုန္၊ ကိုယ့္အျမင္နဲ႕ ထပ္တူမက်သူေတြကို စြပ္စြဲရန္ေတြ႕၊ တဘက္လူေတြရဲ႕ ကိုယ္ေရးကိုယ္တာေတြကို အပုပ္ခ်ရင္း ေ၀ေလေလနဲ႕ အခ်ိန္မျဖဳန္းသင့္ၾကပါ။ ဆိုလိုရင္းနဲ႕ စိတ္ထားအရင္းခံကို မျမင္ပဲ ငါေထာက္ခံတဲ့ ကိစၥကို သူမေထာက္ခံတာနဲ႕၊ ငါမေထာက္ခံတဲ့ ကိစၥကို သူေထာက္ခံတာနဲ႕ ပုဂိၢဳလ္ေရးအရ ဆဲဆို စြပ္စြဲပုတ္ခတ္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ စိတ္ဓာတ္မ်ိဳးေတြဟာ လူ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္း ရွင္သန္ရပ္တည္မွဳမွာ အဓိကက်တဲ့ `မတူညီမွဳေတြအၾကားမွာ အတူတကြ ယွဥ္တြဲေနထိုင္မွဳ` ကို ထိခိုက္ေစပါတယ္။

လူ႕အဖြဲ႕အစည္းတခုရဲ႕ ျမင့္မားတိုးတက္မွဳကို ေႏွာင့္ေႏွးထိခိုက္ေစတဲ့ ေနာက္ထပ္ အေတြးအေခၚတခုကေတာ့ လက္ေတြ႕လုပ္ငန္းတာ၀န္ ထမ္းေဆာင္ေနသူမ်ားရဲ႕ သေဘာတရားေရးရာ ေလ့လာသူမ်ားကို အဆိုးျမင္အေတြးအေခၚပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ သေဘာတရားေတြ၊ သီအိုရီေတြဆိုတာကလဲ ေလ့လာသူေတြက ထင္ရာျမင္ရာ ေတြးျပီး ေရးခ်င္ရာ ေရးေနၾကတာ မဟုတ္ပါ။ ေလ့လာသုေတသနျပဳျပီးမွ ေရးသားၾကတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီမွာမွ အေတြးအေခၚအရ၊ အျမင္အရ၊ ေျပာင္းလဲမွဳအေျခအေနေတြအရ မတူညီတဲ့ ရွဳေထာင့္ေတြေပၚ မူတည္ျပီး ေဖာက္ထြက္ေတြးေတာရင္း သေဘာတရားအသစ္ေတြပါ ထပ္မံ ေပါက္ဖြားလာတာေတြလဲ ရွိတတ္ပါတယ္။ ကမၻာ့သမိုင္းသစ္ကို ေသြးနဲ႕ ေရးထားခဲ့တဲ့ အရင္းရွင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးၾကီးရဲ႕ အျမဳေတဟာ လန္ဒန္မွာ စာေတြထိုင္ဖတ္၊ ထိုင္ေရးေနခဲ့တဲ့ Karl Marx ရဲ႕ ကြန္ျမဴနစ္ေၾကညာစာတမ္းနဲ႕ အရင္းက်မ္းေၾကာင့္လို႕ ဆိုရင္ ဘယ္သူမွ မျငင္းႏိုင္ပါဘူး။ ဒီလိုပါပဲ။ လီနင္ဆိုတဲ့ ေတာ္လွန္ေရးေခါင္းေဆာင္ ရွိရံုနဲ႕လဲ ေတာ္လွန္ေရး ၾကီးဟာ ျပီးျပည့္စံုခဲ့တာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ လူထုရဲ႕ စိတ္ႏွလံုးကို ႏွိဳးဆြေပးႏိုင္မယ့္ စာေရးဆရာ ေဂၚကီကလဲ သူ႕ေနရာနဲ႕သူ တာ၀န္ေက်ခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ Karl Marx တို႕၊ ေဂၚကီတို႕ကလဲ ေတာ္လွန္ေရးေခါင္းေဆာင္ေနရာကို မေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့သလို လီနင္ကလဲ မဆီမဆိုင္ Karl Marx ကို လက္ေတြ႕မပါတဲ့ သေဘာတရားေရးသမားၾကီးလို႕ ေျပာေနခဲ့တာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ သေဘာတရားထဲက သူလိုအပ္မယ္ထင္တဲ့ လက္ေတြ႕လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ေတြကို သူ႕ဘာသာသူ ေရြးခ်ယ္ထုတ္ႏွဳတ္ျပီး ခ်မွတ္သြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ကိုယ္လုပ္ႏိုင္တာ ကိုယ္လုပ္ခဲ့ၾကတာပါပဲ။

ဘယ္လိုပဲ ျဖစ္ျဖစ္ သေဘာတရားမပါတဲ့ လက္ေတြ႕နဲ႕ လက္ေတြ႕မပါတဲ့ သေဘာတရားႏွစ္မ်ိဳးစလံုးဟာ ေအာင္ပြဲနဲ႕ လြဲတတ္တယ္ ဆိုတာကေတာ့ အေသအခ်ာပါပဲ။

ဒါေၾကာင့္ သေဘာတရားနဲ႕ လက္ေတြ႕ကို စနစ္တက် ေပါင္းစပ္ဖို႕ လိုအပ္လွပါတယ္။ ဒီေနရာမွာလဲ သေဘာတရားတိုင္းဟာ လက္ေတြ႕နဲ႕ နီးစပ္ခ်င္မွ နီးစပ္မွာပါ။ အခ်ိန္ကာလ၊ ေနရာေဒသနဲ႕ မကိုက္ညီတာေတြလဲ ရွိတတ္စျမဲပါ။ လက္ေတြ႕နဲ႕ ကိုက္ညီမယ့္ လုပ္နည္းလုပ္ဟန္ေတြကို ေရြးခ်ယ္ ထုတ္ႏွုတ္ အသံုးျပဳတတ္ဖို႕က လက္ေတြ႕သမားဆိုသူမ်ားအတြက္ အလြန္ အေရးၾကီးပါတယ္။

ဒီလိုမဟုတ္ပဲ စာေတြ႕၊ လက္ေတြ႕ဆိုျပီး ခြဲျခားဆက္ဆံေနၾကလို႕ကေတာ့ အခ်င္းခ်င္း အျငင္းပြားရင္း တစ္နဲ႕ တစ္ေပါင္းျပီး ႏွစ္ျဖစ္ရမယ့္အစား တစ္နဲ႕ တစ္ ဆန္႕က်င္ဘက္ေတြ႕႔ျပီး သုညျဖစ္သြားတာပဲ အဖတ္တင္က်န္ရစ္မွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

မတူညီကြဲျပားတဲ့ အျမင္ေတြ၊ ခံယူခ်က္ေတြကို တခုတည္းျဖစ္ေအာင္ အတင္းအၾကပ္ လိုက္လံစည္းရံုးတာ၊ အုပ္စုဖြဲ႕ျပီး သင္းကြဲကို လိုက္လံတိုက္ခိုက္တာေတြဟာ အရည္မရ၊ အဖတ္မရ အလုပ္ေတြပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ မတူညီမွဳထဲကေန ဘံုအက်ိဳးစီးပြားကို ရွာေဖြ ေဖာ္ထုတ္ျခင္း၊ အေပးအယူျပဳ ညွိႏွိဳင္းျခင္း၊ ကိုယ့္တာ၀န္ ကိုယ္ေက်ျပြန္ျခင္း တို႕နဲ႕သာ တိုးတက္တဲ့ လူ႕ေဘာင္သစ္၊ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္သစ္ကို တည္ေဆာက္ႏိုင္မွာ ျဖစ္ပါေၾကာင္း။

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