Democrazy

Has the thousands of years old idea of democracy ever worked? How can it be defined? The actual word comes from the Greek demos meaning people and kratein meaning to rule. In Antoine Furetière Dictionnaire universel, published in 1690, democracy is defined like this:

“Form of government in which the people have all authority.”

Now do I even need to say that if this is what democracy is then there has been little of it since the dawn of civilized society. When was the last time You felt that you had authority over the decisions made by your ‘leaders’? That is if I assume you are one of those people who would like to have a say in things. A problem with society is that many of its citizen care little what their ‘leaders’ do as long as they’re not directly, or greatly, effected. Contentment is the root of all evil. To quote Adolf Hitler:

“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.”

The problem with democracy is that the disagreeing individual has to conform to whatever decision is made by the agreeing majority. The individual’s freedom and existence is therefore, at the end of the day, irrelevant. And what if the majority lacks reason? What if they are brainwashed, smitten with self-interest or plain stupid? There can’t surely be any democracy before every single participant embrace reason?

You ask how can it be democratic if everyone has to conform to reason? The answer to that is another question. How can reason not be reasonable?

© deviadah