A couple of articles from today’s The Conversation including this one by Mark Rolfe http://theconversation.edu.au/forget-politicians-be-a-dictator-for-a-day-and-get-the-job-done-4363?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+November+23+2011&utm_content=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+November+23+2011+CID_c9708df829560bd59ad5cb5d09ad6bd8&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Forget+politicians+-+be+a+dictator+for+a+day+and+get+the+job+done prompted me to put fingers-to-keyboard.
Mark speaks about some alternatives to democracy and explores the possibilities of benevolent dictators as potential options in times of crisis. While I agree with some of the arguments the author appears to miss the point that popular political leadership in representative democracies is bestowed on people that are seen (by the majority) as coming from a level above the majority worldview on the human development spiral/ continuum. Too far above and you can’t gain trust as you cannot speak the right language even if spruiking policies they might find attractive.
As Richard Mochelle correctly points out we need a new model (a civil governance participative democracy based on addressing real-whole-system priorities – Priocracy?). This is because leadership should enable what is necessary at a whole system governance level. For example it is necessary despite where the political leadership resides to equitably and ecologically-sustainably govern finite systems within system limits and thresholds. Consequently despite who governs whether it be someone that is truly a transformative thinker in their own right or merely an actor-memoriser that has the ear of the people as they read from the script in the right language and with the right inflection and emphasis governance leadership must be informed by capable and mature individuals that understand whole systems and able to adjust to real world complex system dynamics (not just political winds) to do what is necessary to apprehend underlying causative factors not just pander to the ill-informed wants of the majority.
We commonly hear flattering and self-serving comments from politicians that “the electorate is smarter than that” and the counterpoint from concerned commentators that “the electorate has been dumbed down” – the reality is somewhere between these two as the electorate is all of us with all our different knowledges intelligences worldviews and understandings – informed or not we each have only one vote (unless you have the money to buy policies that suit…).
Jason Brennan questions whether we all should have one vote. He is the author of “The Ethics of Voting”. This article http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-need/are-bad-voters-like-drunk-drivers-new-book-says-they-are-and-that-they-should-stay-home-on-election-day/8609 says:
Brennan restricts his book specifically to a discussion of the moral permissibility of voting — whether you’re acting unethically if you vote based not on a rational assessment of the facts but for emotional or ideological reasons.
So take out the emotional and ideological voters and that leaves those basing their votes on a rational assessment of the facts… but where would you find someone in possession of the facts in Australia? And who controls ‘the facts’ the ‘language’ to sway the voting public in a popular media dominated by staged political sound-bites instantaneous communication opinion cycles vested interest advertising for profit and current affairs programs more interested in who is wearing what?
This article defends Noam Chomsky for saying something similar http://theconversation.edu.au/chomsky-linguistics-politics-and-a-response-to-an-unfair-allegation-4391?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+November+23+2011&utm_content=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+November+23+2011+CID_c9708df829560bd59ad5cb5d09ad6bd8&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Chomsky+linguistics+politics+and+a+response+to+an+unfair+allegation:
“…Chomsky writes in the tradition of George Orwell about terms like “free enterprise” and “free world” which are designed “to insinuate somehow that the system of control and domination and aggression to which those with power were committed were in fact a kind of freedom.”
Similarly “the national interest” is used as a term of propaganda “designed often very consciously in order to try to block thought and understanding.”
Chomsky reveals the way that the use of terms such as “defense” mystifies our own aggression as in Vietnam. He writes “These are ways in which our intellects are dulled and our capacity for thought is destroyed and our possibility for meaningful political action is undermined by very effective systems of indoctrination and thought control that involve as all such systems do abuse of language.”
Unfortunately our current democracy is based on the pretence of the possibility of and necessity for perpetual economic growth to maintain political control of the means to continue meeting the wishes of the voting majority. Each person has been armed with one vote to spend in selecting from a set of false expectations deliberately overstated by politicians and lobbyists based on incomplete information inaccurate worldviews unfounded assumptions spontaneous opinion cycles and all informed and manipulated by propaganda peddled by powerful vested interests! At best such a system can only ever play ‘catch-up’ in reacting to the increasingly desperate systemic situations that will arise as bigger systems issues as yet un-mentioned in the mainstream compound at rates greater than our informed collective ‘democracy-empowered’ reactions.
As Brennan put it misinformed choices at the ballot box have harmful consequences for society and we’re all forced to live with those consequences. So we need to reconsider what voting is and who should do it.
Of course deciding whether you are qualified to vote is a tricky thing. Because we tend to view facts and evidence through the prism of our political ideology we’re unlikely to be swayed by the argument that we shouldn’t vote because our beliefs are “unfounded” or that they’re “contradicted by evidence.” We view the evidence however we want to view it. Some voters even seem to pride themselves on their ignorance.
I do not pride myself on my ignorance. I pride myself on trying to understand the information I am exposed to in a systems context and on trying to tease out issues with others of unlike minds – if I am wrong please alert me so that I might redress my ‘ignorance’. Ignorance is defined as ‘lack of knowledge’ ‘unawareness of something often of something important’. I suggest that ignore-ance can also be defined as the unwillingness to accept or integrate the knowledge being made available especially when it challenges your worldview; and once challenged to engage in personal reflection on the implications of the knowledge at your disposal on your worldview and the need for a more integrative perspective.
I am not being ‘elitist’ here just recognising as many including me have observed that if humanity are all at different points along a wide spectrum measuring capability and maturity – statistically the ‘majority’ will be less capable and mature than those at the front of the bell-curve that put a real effort into thinking about these issues in an integrative systems context. I guess in this regard I’m with Plato! (although Mark Rolfe seems to simplify Plato’s argument and discount it – perhaps an understandable bias against narrow ‘experts’).
In this context our current democracy is at best a ‘management tool’ for desperately trying to maintain existing power and order within a system currently accepted by the majority. Given all the forces againstinformed choice our current democracy is not the ‘leadership tool’ needed to dynamically guide us as we accelerate blindfolded through rapidly changing global landscapes that most have never imagined and many wish to remain ignorant of.
As Mark Rolfe says in the first article
“…do we really think corporate leaders such as Monti always get things right? Should we really trust a person from Goldman Sachs a global investment bank that helped get us where we are today? “
Picking Monti as someone to govern Italy that through having helped develop and maintain the current European economic model and might therefore have been complicit in its systemic demise is possibly not a good move… I think I can hear Plato rolling in his grave…