{"id":28387,"date":"2023-09-11T19:47:47","date_gmt":"2023-09-12T02:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=28387"},"modified":"2023-09-11T19:47:48","modified_gmt":"2023-09-12T02:47:48","slug":"is-democracy-committing-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/09\/11\/is-democracy-committing-suicide\/","title":{"rendered":"IS DEMOCRACY COMMITTING SUICIDE?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Does Democracy Fail Every Time Human Beings Try It? And Is it Failing Again Today?<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"umair<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>umair haque<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published in <\/a>Eudaimonia and Co<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sep 2, 2023 (eand.co)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Image Credit: Maddie McGarvey<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a tiny question. Is the age of democracy drawing to a close? Now, before you accuse me of exaggerating, or baiting you, let me assure you \u2014 it\u2019s a question I mean to ask, and I think we should all be asking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We tend to think of democracy as something like a grand, permanent turning point in history. Before, there was not democracy, and then \u2014 bang! \u2014 our forefathers and mothers discovered, or created, this wonderful and noble thing, and, like the internet or antibiotics, it was here to stay forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it? The truth is subtler. Feudalism lasted millennia. Tribalism, millennia before that. Empire, another millennia. And so maybe democracy is not something like a permanent turning point. Perhaps it was just an experiment \u2014 which has failed. Just as it has so many times before in history. Athens. Rome. The French Revolution \u2014 Napoleon\u2019s coronation just 15 years later. Has democracy ever lasted, when you think about it? In fact, every single time in history democracy has been tried \u2014 people seem incapable of it (and discussing why is the point of this essay), hence soon enough, within a few centuries, if that long, it collapses right back into tyranny, war, and strife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are we being arrogant when we suppose that pattern won\u2019t repeat itself in our time? Why should we think we are above it? Perhaps what we are learning today, all over again, is that enough people are simply incapable of the demands of democracy \u2014 no matter how hard the rest of us, who are usually a minority, try to educate, civilize, or liberate them, as equals, citizens, and peers. Perhaps enough of us will always reject those principles, which are altogether too noble and idealistic, for those of supremacy, superiority, violence, and power. Perhaps enough of us can only ever see others as rivals, subjects, and possessions to be had \u2014 and themselves as victims and martyrs, who deserve to be chieftains and rulers. Perhaps no good goes unpunished \u2014 and of all these, democracy is the greatest of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(First, a caveat. I\u2019m not saying \u201cdemocracy\u2019s going to die!!\u201d Not at all. What I am suggesting is that we should consider the idea, at this point, that democracy isn\u2019t something like a permanent phase change \u2014 solid turning to liquid, forevermore \u2014 but maybe something more like a verdict upon ourselves \u2014 on which the jury\u2019s out.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s unearth that for a second. When did this age of democracy really begin? Was it in 1776 \u2014 when America became the world\u2019s first constitutional democracy \u2014 or was it in 1971, when America finally ended segregation? Was it in 1789, with the French Revolution, which culminated in a dictatorship \u2014 or in the 1940s, when colonialism was dismantled? Perhaps you see my point. Democracy is a thing which has always struggled to grow and evolve and become a truer version of itself. We have never really had anything resembling a \u201creal\u201d democracy, to any reasoning person, until very, very recently in history \u2014 so recently, in fact, that it\u2019s scarcely the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So democracy is a living, breathing thing. Does that mean it can \u201cdie\u201d? In fact, it means something much more striking. For that reason, democracy has a strange and unique power. The power to destroy itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many other things have the power to destroy themselves? Not many. A hammer, axe, mountain can\u2019t. Even many living things can\u2019t, like trees and microbes. There are very, very few things in existence with the power to destroy themselves. Only, if we think about, things with intent can commit suicide. And unfortunately for us, democracy is just such a thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that brings me to why I think the age of democracy might be drawing to a close. It seems to me \u2014 and it should seem to you, if you reflect upon it \u2014 that more and more people today appear incapable of democracy. They are using democracy only to destroy itself. Democracy isn\u2019t \u201cdying\u201d, as the headlines go \u2014 it is committing suicide.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me give you a statistic that might surprise you (or not, depending). Trump is still neck and neck with Biden in the polls. Even after <\/em>being indicted. Despite the obvious harm to themselves and their own, the job losses, the kleptocracy, the corruption, the fascism, and so on. But that is hardly the only example. In Sweden, a party with Nazi \u201croots\u201d (LOL) came to power \u2014 and then immediately dissolved the Environment Ministry. The far right is in power in Italy, where lesbian parents are being stripped of their parental status on birth certificates. Then there\u2019s Hungary, Poland, Turkey, India, China, and so on. I could go on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you see what I mean? Many people \u2014 more and more people, in fact, every day \u2014 are incapable of democracy. Not mentally incapable, as in they can\u2019t \u201chandle it.\u201d But incapable in another, truer way. To be capable of democracy is first of all to understand why one should want it. But today people do not. They prefer authoritarians and tyrants and demagogues, for the sake of self-preservation, over the preservation of democracy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, at this juncture, the kind of person I am describing will object, and cry: \u201cbut what you are talking about is<\/em> democracy in action! You fool, you are talking about the exercise of<\/em> democracy! It is the voice of the people! The vox populi has spoken!\u201d Ah, but that\u2019s not what democracy is at all. That\u2019s mere majoritarianism. A democracy is something much more powerful than that. What is it, really? It is first and foremost a set of rights. That give us powers, and therefore liberate us. Those rights are inalienable for a reason \u2014 because when they are excised, removed, shattered, and destroyed, a democracy is undone. And yet a democracy can do just that, if it is foolish enough, and in that way, destroy itself. And that is precisely what the world is doing now. It is taking rights and powers away from people. Which ones? All kinds. I already mentioned Italy\u2019s targeting of gay parents. In America, women have been stripped of bodily autonomy. Again, the examples are endless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is really being destroyed today are the fundamentals of democracy itself. They consist of three things. Equality, personhood, and freedom.<\/strong> Not just for you, or the chosen few. For everyone, or no one at all. Those are the qualities which rights really grant us. And yet those are the three things which more and more people wish to deny others, to take apart, to destroy. But when those things are destroyed, a democracy is no longer a democracy at all. It is something else entirely. What, precisely?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We see democracies around the globe degenerating in a now familiar, almost funny, pattern, because it is so predictable. First comes plutocracy. Then oligarchy. Then kleptocracy. And finally authoritarianism and fascism and theocracy, various flavors of tyranny and ruin. That is the pattern, the sequence, of how a democracy implodes and collapses. It doesn\u2019t die \u2014 it commits suicide, one slash of the razor blade at a time. Who is the world\u2019s finest exemplar of that precise pattern today? Sadly, America. It has raced through these five stages in the space of a few decades. And now it is hovering around the bottom. Yet more and more nations seem hell-bent on following America down into the abyss, where democracy goes to commit suicide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is that? Well, it is primarily because people have lost faith in democracy\u2019s promise \u2014 to ever improve their lives. <\/strong>That is the social contract offered by a democracy \u2014 and the truth is it is a fragile one. It is the same one Athens and Rome promised, too. But because it is a very, very difficult thing to deliver \u2014 perpetual prosperity, abundance, and plenty \u2014 democracy is also a vulnerable thing, historically scarce, easily broken, tending not to last. Rome couldn\u2019t deliver it \u2014 bang! Emperors rose, as living standards fell for the enraged plebes. Athens couldn\u2019t deliver it \u2014 wham! Citizens turned to tyrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here we are again, we are in just such a juncture of history. In America, incomes have been flat for half a century. Hence, today, living standards are cratering \u2014 everything from longevity to mortality to happiness to suicide is going in the wrong direction, ruinously fast. In Europe, incomes have been flat for the last two decades or so \u2014 hence, it\u2019s not as badly in decline as America, but it\u2019s not that far behind, either: people are using democracy to destroy itself, there, too. And so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Then there\u2019s technology, too. It seems as if we\u2019re replacing democracy with algorithms now. And who needs democracy when you have algorithms managing every aspect of your life for easy, simple pleasure, always a tap away \u2014 even if it\u2019s the cheap thrill of hate, spite, and ruin? But that is what algorithms do now: they manage all of us. They manage our information \u2014 Twitter, Google. They manage our sociality \u2014 Facebook, WhatsApp. They manage our feelings, our self-worth, our esteem \u2014 Instagram and Tinder. They manage our entertainment \u2014 Netflix. They manage our consumption and finances and jobs \u2014 Amazon, Uber, credit ratings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But algorithms are not the idols we have made them out to be. They are just sets of preferences aggregated by someone else\u2019s preference. And yet they are a cheap, easy substitute for democracy, precisely because they give us the feeling of self-governance and self-directedness, without the work and trouble necessary to really accomplish it. They replace selfless virtue with egoistic self-absorption, thinking with immediate gratification, reflection with reaction, contemplation with resentment, and, perhaps worst of all, ideas with numbers. But I digress. The point is simple. Algorithms are replacing the structures, institutions, and norms of genuinely democratic societies, with something more like a kind of soft, hidden authoritarianism.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet that is precisely what people seem to want today. When more and more people use democracy to destroy itself, what are they really doing? They are not \u201cacting democratically\u201d, but precisely the opposite. They are saying that democracy is too much of a struggle and a challenge, too much work and effort, too dangerous and threatening. It\u2019s not that they can\u2019t be bothered with it \u2014 it is that they genuinely do not want it. <\/strong>Let me put that more sharply, so you understand what I really mean. In today\u2019s extremist movements, people are revoking their consent to the foundational principles of democracy \u2014 equality, personhood, and freedom, as shared, universal goods, which are inalienable and inherent in all people. In that way, today, we differ from Rome and Athens \u2014 because they never developed those principles, or consent to them, nearly so far as we have today. What a shame, then, to regress, yet again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is to be done about all this, then \u2014 democracy committing suicide, as it has so many times before? Perhaps history, as ever, is our guide. Perhaps democracy is a failed experiment, every time in history that it has been tried, for a very good reason. People are simply not capable of it \u2014 enough of them, at any rate. People simply do not have the courage, wisdom, or strength necessary to really make this noble experiment last \u2014 they turn on it savagely the moment that it\u2019s promise seems to waver for even a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps, then, if the world goes on as it is, for much longer, the best you and I can hope for is protection and safety from such people. People who want to remove and excise away our personhood and equality and freedom \u2014 with genuine harm and viciousness and violence. And maybe that can only be found in systems where such foolish people do not have the power to corrupt and corrode the principles inside democracy in the first place \u2014 for those of us who desire equality, freedom, and personhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the best we can hope for \u2014 ever \u2014 is a kind of rule of the wise and courageous and just over the foolish and ignorant and violent \u2014 which is to say, a benevolent sort of aristocracy, of a Platonic or Socratic kind. I should hope otherwise. But there is something inside me which says that one of the great lessons of this age might just be that whenever human beings attempt democracy, we are learning all over again \u2014 history and the devil hold hands and laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Umair
September 2023<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does Democracy Fail Every Time Human Beings Try It? And Is it Failing Again Today? umair haque Published in Eudaimonia and Co Sep 2, 2023 (eand.co) Here\u2019s a tiny question. Is the age of democracy drawing to a close? Now, before you accuse me of exaggerating, or baiting you, let me… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[118],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28387"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28388,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28387\/revisions\/28388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}