Democracy and Conflict

One of the most interesting classes I took as an undergraduate was Democracy with Professor Hartwig Stein. In the class we learned about the true nature of the philosophy upon which our society is governed.

The following abstract represents one interesting feature of democracy that I find useful to remember during my social and professional interactions.

...Democracy by its very nature invites conflict. In a functioning democracy authority is derived from that conflict by engaging in communication and answering criticism to the satisfaction of the majority. Thereafter power is transferred to trusted representatives in proportion to higher levels of responsibility to adequately respond to new challenges or criticism from the group. Failure to actively engage critics, or to satisfy the majority can result in sudden loss of individual power, authority and reputation. From this, we can see that in order to thrive in democratic culture, we need to master new skills and develop new attitudes in order to effectively participate in these changes....

It's clear that the author believes advocacy is a critical skill in our era.

What other skills and attitudes do you think we need to master to be effective agents of change in our lives? What changes would you advocate?