Is Democracy self-destructive?
Something that has always called my attention with respect to democracy is its unintentional self-destructive capacity, which although undesired, is often effective.
Kennedy said that democracy is the superior form of government, because it is based on a respect for man as a reasonable being, perhaps his very strong point is his greatest weakness. Man can be a rational being, but not for everything and not all the time.
I believe that man, rather than being a purely rational subject, is quite emotional, and only responds to reason when it is in tune with his emotion. Reason applies to man as long as it is not against his most intimate interests.
When we go to an election we do not choose between the best political program, or the best ideas, we choose the best leader, the person we see most capable of running the country.
Multiple Intelligences
Howard Gardner, a psychologist and professor at Harvard University, developed the hypothesis of multiple intelligences, which dictates that intelligence is not a unitary set that groups different specific capacities, but a network of autonomous, relatively interrelated sets.
Gardner argues that there is a wide range of cognitive abilities, but that there are only very weak correlations among them. For example, the theory postulates that a child who learns to multiply easily is not necessarily more intelligent than a child who has more difficulty on this task. The child who takes more time to master multiplication may best learn to multiply through a different approach, may excel in a field outside mathematics, or may be looking at and understanding the multiplication process at a fundamentally deeper level.
Source
In this way, and to simplify it, a footballer and a mathematician, for example, can be equally intelligent, but in totally different fields. Despite there being several strong detractors of this theory, I adhere partially, and don't believe in a classification of universal intelligence that can classify us all as equals, why we are not.
What does all this have to do with democracy?
Well, just as intelligence can occur in different fields, I believe that people can rationalize correctly in different fields, that is, a person can not know the information necessary to make a correct rationalization in politics, and let themselves be guided by their emotions in the time of the elections, without that means that the person is irrational.
Hence the error in the current democracies, since in spite of effectively recognizing man as a rational being, the rationality of man depends on many factors, such as the field in question, the personal, physical, mental situation, etc.
Voters, for example, are more than just rational people, they are usually quite emotional people, and they let themselves be guided by their feelings rather than by the facts.
Self-destruction
When everything is going well in a democracy, people are happy, have options, freedoms and maybe a good life. It is easy for people at the polls to maintain the same system that is benefiting them so much.
But on the contrary, when there is a crisis in a democratic country things take a little dark, people are no longer happy, have lost comfort, and in turn, freedoms, so they are more likely to try to change the " problematic and defective system" in one more efficient. While the more critical the situation becomes, the more willing people will be to sacrifice freedoms and decisions to allow someone to take charge and solve problems, this is where history repeats itself and democracy is left aside.
By entrusting democracy to the rationality of people, they may at some point be the scarcest, and therefore, democracy itself begins to be jeopardized by popular vote.
What happens if most people vote for not having democracy?
Although it is crazy, democracy is so delicate that this happens many times, and happens when people, upset by a crisis or the system, vote for someone who is clearly anti-democratic. These people usually get the effective majority, and therefore, establish a dictatorship of the majority where the minority (and I do not speak of ethnic minorities but political) is strongly attacked.
There we can see a typical case of democratic self-destruction due to lack of rationality in people. However, emotional people are not the only ones who can destroy a democracy, rational people can easily and with more lasting effects, end a democratic system.
This happens when rational people realize the danger of indiscriminate populace voting in elections, and how all the advances can be lost by allowing "less rational" people (in politics) to have the power to choose the destiny of the whole society. In these cases, democracy is left behind and we enter into an autocracy, an aristocracy or a monarchy, it should be noted that the simple fact of being a rational person does not mean that he is right.
In both cases, democracy self-destructs, by its very nature.
Democracy is tyranny by its definition. Even a representative democracy - a republic - is still tyranny of the majority, as all political actions happens by will of the majority. As has been pointed out by countless folks across the internet, our Bill of Rights are simply amendments to the Constitution. They could be vacated if enough people wanted to get rid of them.
Ultimately this is a problem for all states, but with democracy the issue is even more insidious as your friends, family, neighbors, and people around you have the potential for becoming your masters. All democracy does is enable more people to be masters.
I think it just lets people think they are masters so they are pacified when the real political powerbrokers plunder them.
Yeah, but who are "real political powerbrokers" in this context? They're no more than ordinary people who are, perhaps, more cunning than the general population.
That's really my point. A monarchy has a monarch. You know who holds the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. In a democracy, the people holding the keys to the kingdom are, potentially, anyone. Either this sows enormous distrust of everyone by everyone else, or it creates this false sense of being jointly responsible for the masters over you, since you could be one of them one day if you want.
Either way, it makes the entire population suspect. Can't cut off the head if everyone is one, right?
I agree. The main difference is that democracy is initially idealistic, and many people will be willing not to make a tyranny of the crowd to maintain the ideals, certainly the longer the establishment is extended, the less idealistic democracy becomes, and people become more despotic and tyrannical to maintain power.
I don't see any ideal worth championing in the notion that the majority can, and should, curtail the minority in a given group.
I do not either, but the main defenders of democracy do so. And with this I go back to its beginnings, be it in ancient Greece or in the centuries passed after the liberal revolutions.
Maybe they do not define democracy as "the majority can, and should, curtail the minority in a given group", but as the way to lead the country in the direction that majority want.
Obviously, theoretical and imaginative democracy never ends up being the same as reality, but this is never expected when a monarchy is overthrown.
The problem with that assumption is that, by definition, the majority controls the minority. There's no other way to define democracy and it still be democracy. Whatever other imaginative trappings one would like to attach to it, ultimately, it functions in one, and only one, way.
This is similar to how communism isn't even good "on paper."
We agree, but we can not make those people change their way of thinking or his way of "not-thinking".
Oh, don't put communism in this, they "think" that they will make the State disappear by making it grow.
Democracy is not virtue, it is merely the political manifestation of the bandwagon fallacy.
"But everyone else is doing it!"
The central problem of democracy, as Plato astutely observed in the Republic, is that the qualification for those who are elected to leadership is mastery in getting elected, not mastery in governance. Thus, in a democracy, inevitably, demagogues rise to rule, while those most fit to govern are marginalized.
This inevitable tendency to elect the most popular over the most qualified is illustrated in the election/selection of one George W. Bush to position of her quadriannual puppet king, in the polity of United States of America. The reason for the said candidate's support was founded not in his perceived competence in governance by the electorate, but in his allure as a man with whom a voter could "share a beer." The French in their election of Macron, a man with extremely little experience in government, politics, and leadership; the US electing Obama, a man one could argue with absolutely zero experience regarding government, politics, and leadership (what is a "community organizer" anyway?) illustrate the tendency of man to elect the most unqualified when given the power to decide the political course of his society.
Even the concept of democracy itself is ludicrous. That a mob of ill-educated, over-emotional rabble would be given power to dictate the political direction of a polity ought to terrify any intelligent human being. In every sphere of human existence - economic, religious, academic, family, cultural, medical, etc. - other than political, man instinctively understand the necessity of hierarchal organization akin to monarchy. Democracy is a modern day political farce, not a system of governance.
Agree. I believe that at present there is a tendency to overestimate democracy despite its many faults. I would not say that man is instinctively exactly monarchical, since at present we are not in a, i would say that, by human instinct, governmental systems evolve quasi-cyclically, adapting to the current needs of people. So put the example of the crisis, when in a democracy you do not receive what is necessary to sustain you, then you change it.
Democracy always ends up degenerating into occlocracy.
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nope...phase change at the boundary of the monkeysphere explains it.
the rules are different inside than outside.
Definitely, I do not understand what you were trying to say.
it's a tribal thing.