There is a famous Churchill quote to the effect that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. The previous post has attracted some comments worth having a look at which I want to explore here.
I understand Churchill's frustration with democracy. The recently completed Australian federal election left a bitter aftertaste. A lot of negative campaigning and precious little vision - both sides calculating that many Australians don't want vision at the moment. We have professional politicians heading up huge political machines (though the Liberals now aren't as well-oiled as they have been in the past) claiming to control things they manifestly cannot. This year, politicians tied with car salesmen (but were below sex workers) in terms of trustworthiness. Which saddens me*. The relationship between citizens and their representatives should be a barometer for the health of society as a whole.
Our democratic structures are flawed, imperfect things - riven with compromise. There's a lesson here for the 2.0 mob. We crave the revolutionary moment of "democracy" - breaking the gates on collaboration, innovation, information. And yet what we are left to live with is far messier and ambiguous than that. A world that displays back to us our own conflicted natures.
*Are we voters complicit in this rusting of trust? We can't always admit what we want (e.g. economic growth at the expense of, say, social justice or sustainability) so our pollies reflect our own hypocrisy.
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another insightful post matt...
have you read the work on civil disobedience by hendy david thoreau? if not... i would strongly reccommend reading it... it speaks volumes about the issues are are discussing as well... the wiki article on civil disobedience
i quote two sentences from that page:
Governments are typically more harmful than helpful and therefore cannot be justified. Democracy is no cure for this, as majorities simply by virtue of being majorities do not also gain the virtues of wisdom and justice.
The judgment of an individual’s conscience is not necessarily or even likely inferior to the decisions of a political body or majority, and so “[i]t is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.… Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.”
i cast my mind back to the days when people loved their leaders (or such are the myths anyway)... the days of kings and queens, when people believed that the king and queen were god's gifts to the earth and they ruled with justice and benevolence... i wonder if the political systems needs a "politics 2.0" (to use a cleache) makeover...
for example... at the early stages of the internet, qutie early on, we had VRML (virtual reality markup language)... this is early 90's stuff... it died a quick death... but what do we have now... virtual reality, but with a twist... with the angle of the community (eg. secondlife, etc) and it looks like we might be progressing to something that could be very practical in the future...
so, now with politics... perhaps some of the old ways were not so bad... but they need a new twist... possibly could work with democracy as well? but we need something that shifts the paradigm...
as we stand today... most people will be disappointed... labour did not get majority vote... the libs got a bit, the national's got a bit, the greens got a bit and labour got a bit... but labour and the greens put together got more than the libs and national put together... so the majority of the population did not vote for the government in power (and that's always been true i think)... and by the nature of the term and expectations, oppositions oppose... they don't work for a common vision... they ridicule each other, and try to find differences for the sake of finding them... howard did not care about education... kevin seems to care about it as an end in itself (which i actually love, but that's another matter)... so who is pleased... not most of the people... some say there is only value in jobs and education is a waste of time... others say, education is pure and should be pursued artistically... if only the two stoogers could get together and say... the vision over the next 20 years is an educated employed population... then they could work together on stuff... rather than have to find differences all the time... and we could vote for a vision, albeit the paths might be slightly different - but that would not be the focus!!!
of course a very legitimate question comes to mind... who is going to "keep the bastards honest" ... that's a good question that i have no answers for... power corrupts...
that government is better that govern's less, and that is best that govern's not at all...
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