Is Democracy Obsolete?

The topic was suggested and chosen coincidentally right around the time of a change of head of state in Spain.  That in itself is a bit of a sticking point for citizens of the country, but not really the focus of the discussion beyond some minor digressions.  The Source was inspired some time ago by the Eurovision contest, in which she witnessed the style of voting that went on and decided that this kind of "democracy" is not only undemocratic, but a sign that what we consider to be a fair and open manner of governing ourselves is anything but.

There are two ways of interpreting the focus of the term, political and social.  Socially, democracy can be understood as the people participating actively in their own governance, not only by voting but also by running for elected positions and assuming positions of authority and responsibility in the community.  When we call something "obsolete", we are relegating it to the past, and this type of participation in our own governance is really a thing of the past.  Why?  For two reasons.  First, development and advancement of communications is such that we have created a truly global community.  We can speak to almost anybody, almost anywhere, almost anytime.  Sure, there are a few populations out of the range of cell towers and internet access, but they are exceptions these days.  Even if we do not speak directly to people, we trade information through television, radio, and print media still today, with news traveling much faster than it did even half a century ago.  Second, as technology has advanced, so have the number of discoveries and amount of data related to previous knowledge.  It is simply impossible today to know a great deal about everything.  We can, of course, know something about a large number of topics, but this knowledge is superficial and sometimes even trivial.  To be an expert, one must invest a large amount of time and effort.  Community leaders must be experts in something, or at least have a support group of experts directing their decisions, a group which must be chosen by the community it serves to be democratic under the strict definition.  The global community encompasses numbers of people so large that this style of democratic governance is not feasible.  We are aware that the activities of one community have effects in surrounding communities, and even communities geographically separated by great distances.  Everybody has a stake in everything.  Trying to participate actively in all such governance as affects our lives is impossible.  The representative democracy, on the other hand, is more manageable.  We vote for levels of representatives to promote our interests while we focus our attention on other things, mostly the living of our lives and, hopefully, enjoying the fruits of our representatives' labor.  This understanding of "democracy" does not seem to be completely obsolete, although some might argue that modern and future connectivity should give us more options in participation and less need for physical representatives.

The resident Generalist began by saying democracy is, in fact, subjective.  There are many models and methods of applying the theory, for different peoples and times.  The problems he sees inherent in the idea are that the capacity each person has for understanding the world and passing judgement on it is weak and limited, and also the homogeneity of the system is "unnatural".  Although we like the idea of everyone being equal, in many cases we do not care to believe it in practice.  Looking at the history of his country, he wondered if the Spanish people really understood democracy, since their attempts at republics had been disasters.  The parliamentary monarchy in place today is still young and experiencing its first transition, so time has yet to tell how resistant it is.

The Thinker postulated that democracy cannot be obsolete, simply because it has never existed in the real world.  It is a collection of ideals and values which modern societies often pay homage to, but just as often do not put into practice in reality.  Even in the most representative of governments, he argued, there is always a group with the real power of decision that is not beholden to the people, a cabal that runs things from the shadows to escape scrutiny and responsibility for their actions.

The Organizer, as a good Englishman, made a number of references to the Magna Carta as an important point for defining democracy.  In response to the Thinker, he admitted that democracy as it has existed has always been in a distinctly non-ideal form.  His opinion on modern democracy, even as a "bad" attempt at implementation, was that the separation of powers is a necessity, as introduced in the aforementioned Magna Carta; no one person or body can have all the power or the majority of the power in a democratic system.  He also insisted that modern political parties are in fact the opposite of the democratic ideal, in that they promote the collection of power into an elite group and remove it from the individual, who then has to join the party to enjoy any share of social and political power and influence.  Later on he spoke of economic freedom as being the real need in today's modern societies, and the great enabler of democratic institutions.  People who are not disadvantaged economically are free to participate in society and government to the same extent as any "elite".  While there are obviously problems of application of the system, for the Organizer it is obviously the best system available today, considering that even dictators copy elements of democracy to give themselves legitimacy.

The Generalist then gave his repeated view that as much as we discover, we know nothing.  He believes people in democratic societies live better, but even then we are under strict control by governments, if not some other authority.  Information on everything is available, but facts are difficult to come by because of control and corruption of information.  What does this mean for the democratically minded?  It highlights the difficulty of implementing true democracy.  As the Writer said before, there is always a group or an elite doing its best to limit the power of the society at large and augment its own.  In this age of information, it is simple enough to feed tainted information to the public and allow them to make their own decisions, which the authority hopes will work in its own favor.  We feel like we are freer today, but the sheer amount of information can be seen as a stronger cage than ever.

While the discussion was for the most part focused and only occasionally bogged down in side issues like monarchy and police presence at demonstrations, I found one participant to be bothersome.  He has had trouble in the past with keeping his speeches to a reasonable amount of time, and when told by other members of his failing, reacted with troubling anger and immaturity, specifically insisting that he was the most interesting person in the room and was always bored by everybody else.  In other meetings there have been whiny and ragey outbursts, which do nothing to make him appear any more respectable.  This time, fortunately, the problem was just the matter of several 20 minute "contributions" made in a droning, barely intelligible English, and followed by a snide and transparently false "apology".  The unfortunate fact in a free society is that we can only encourage him to be more careful about the length of his presentations and put more effort into making his points with clarity, but we cannot rely on a (non-existent) protector of the meeting to force or demand that he, and everyone, meet the expectations of the other participants.  Even if the majority did voice disapproval of his use of time, he seems to be the type to make even longer speeches just out of spite.  If only he could be voted off the island.