Mariner called a meeting with the three alter-egos a few days ago. The topic was democracy, though not so much as it is weaponized today. The open question was what situation induces democracy, or inhibits democracy? How do the gears work in the democracy engine?
To be honest, the team had difficulty addressing the topic. In the United States (US) twelve generations have lived under and believed religiously in the political philosophy of democracy. Any substantial thinking is swamped by misperception, rumor, bias and periods when democracy was ignored.
The team used the standard definition of democracy as Wikipedia sees it (links are active should the reader want to delve into specifics):
“Democracy is a form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state. Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitive elections while more expansive or maximalist definitions link democracy to guarantees of civil liberties and human rights in addition to competitive elections.
In a direct democracy, the people have the direct authority to deliberate and decide legislation. In a representative democracy, the people choose governing officials through elections to do so. The definition of “the people” and the ways authority is shared among them or delegated by them have changed over time and at varying rates in different countries. Features of democracy oftentimes include freedom of assembly, association, personal property, freedom of religion and speech, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights.”
֎ The above description pretty much is a definition of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Amos, the team member who is critical of most human behavior, said “Democracy only works in a perfect world where Earthly bounty is free and available to everyone – otherwise, democracy switches to capitalism. Frankly,” Amos continued, “humans don’t have the self-discipline to sustain a democratic reality.”
As a counterpoint, Nosey Mole, the more conservative member of the team, immediately proposed the example of the Anabaptist structure as a truer form of democracy saying that it is a one-for-all and all for one democracy with a simple community board of directors and everyone benefits equally in the gross profits of the community.
Guru, the philosophical member of the team corrected Nosey saying the Anabaptist government was a theocracy based on the Christian Bible and did not necessarily follow democratic principles. He added “Democracy only works in small locations where the citizens vote directly on the passage of issues, while in larger expanses many citizens elect one representative to represent them when voting on the issues; that is called a republic.”
Nosey countered, “Well, they don’t need Social Security!”.
Mariner, the romantic naturalist, suggested that democracy is a manifestation of the times, that it is a reaction to a given state of affairs involving population, weather, economics and geographical conditions. “For example”, he said, “the leaders of the newly independent United States suddenly inherited massive amounts of territory, had no established rule over three quarters of the continent, still remembered the authoritarianism of the European Monarchs and suddenly inherited much more wealth than the population of 2.7 million needed. Some form of democracy was their only choice.”
“The Bill of Rights is the weak spot.” Amos said. “It’s a fantasy list of good times that doesn’t mix with natural herd behavior – it’s what benefits the herd that counts, not what benefits the individual.”
Mariner broke in and said, “It’s obvious the team will have to set another meeting to continue this discussion of democracy.”
Ancient Mariner
