Amerika

Democracy is based on the concept of equality, or giving everyone a voice. The only way it accomplishes this goal is by narrowing the population of those to whom it gives a voice to those who already agree with democracy.

Parents practice this old sleight-of-hand as well. “You’ll find the answer when you’re ready,” they say. What they mean is that when you accept the direction they want you to take, the answer they have suggested will be waiting for you. It’s a crude but effective manipulation.

Another example is co-workers deciding where to go for lunch. “Look, we gotta pick a restaurant, but I want those of you who don’t like Chinese or Mexican food to be quiet, or we’ll never make a decision.” You trim your audience to those who will make the type of decision you want them to make.

With that in mind, let’s look at those that democracy does not give a voice:

• Nature. Not human? Not an individual? No voice for you. Compounding this problem is your refusal to communicate in human languages, especially your refusal to dress up in a suit and spend a few dozen days in front of some committee or another arguing your point.

  On a practical level, it’s hard to find an accurate spokesperson for nature because upon being appointed, that person would immediately be inundated in ten-million-dollar sellout “opportunities” from various industries, liberal groups and environmental groups. The industries would want exceptions, the liberal groups would want the wealth transfer agenda added to any environmental platform, and environmental groups would see the writing on the wall and realize their own doom if these problems were ever solved.

  In result: no one speaks up for nature, even though we have plenty of people who are aware how much unbroken spaces, vast natural preserves, clean water and trash-free woods are needed. In fact, if we set aside enough land, we’d have to do nothing else from an environmental perspective — nature given enough strength will re-balance our unbalanced acts. But until some tree dresses up in a silk suit and presents a 277 page fact finding mission to Congress, this won’t get acted upon.

• Society as a whole. This takes on two levels:
  • Socialized cost. Our politicians are great at addressing political action groups and representatives of specific groups, industries or ideological standpoints, but they’re terrible for standing up for society as a whole. It doesn’t have a voice and is not considered in part because that requires time-consciousness, which offends our sense of convenience and immortality. As a result, you never hear someone saying, “I guess we should legalize this questionable activity you endorse, but what about the cost to society as a whole — will it steer us off direction, introduce doubt to our social consensus, or even incur a huge socialized cost to clean up the ensuing mess?”
  • Individual choice. In a democratic society, there is no means for an individual to choose anything but an increasing spread of democratization; you cannot choose to say NO to any behaviors of the community as a whole. For example, what is the option to live in an alcohol-free city, which would have fewer homicides and car crashes? Or to live in a chaste city, where the divorce rate would be lower? Or to live within an ethnically-homogenous population, or in a population that has values beyond convenience and hedonism? These rights are not given to anyone because they require we address society as a whole, even if on the level of a local community.
• Future generations. Time and long-term consequences make for unpopular politics. They remind us that in a generation, we may not be here, or at the very least, we’ll be really different (older) people. But we see to be maniacal about denying future generations a voice. How do they feel about this pollution? — who cares, we want SUVs and cheap plastic toys now. How about nuclear proliferation? Rampant debt? Infrastructure collapse? A less cohesive society? It’s their problem and they’ll figure it out, we think. No wonder parents are so neurotic in this time. They realize they’re passing on disasters to their kids, and leaving them even less prepared to deal with it. This kind of neurosis makes it easier to buy iPods and Xbox 360s as consolation gifts, since the kids are going to inherit a far less stable society. Already we’ve watched the Baby Boomers inherit a prosperous first-world nation, and turn it over to their kids as an unstable nation with a booming third-world inside of it, and problems too numerous to count. But the unborn and underage don’t vote and can’t be bought, so they’re useless, politically speaking.

Our schools and government pamphlets excel in teaching us partial truths, or subsets of the truth that make everything simple enough to be tested with multiple-choice questions. The simple “truth” we tell is that democracy makes us all equal, and gives us all a voice. The more obvious reality is that democracy benefits the individual, especially those at the lowest common denominator point of values, and actually denies voices to many of the most important parts of our lives.

Yet the problem with democracy is that it sees the world only in terms of individual humans, and in its mania to have none rise above the rest, is reluctant to delegate power to those who speak for anything broader than the area within the four walls of their homes. For nature, or culture, to have a voice, we must have a leader, and that upsets our democratic fashion sensibilities.

We ran to democracy out of fear of other systems, notably monarchism and fascism. But as the years pass, we see that democracy has even more dire problems deep within it — it’s just that they take years to pass, and when they do emerge, are full-blown catastrophes instead of the minor setback of having a single bad leader. Our future political systems will in turn attempt to correct the flaws of democracy.

Tags: crowdisn, democracy, entropy