Can you really have ‘true democracy’ in a species that has such a strong herd mentality as humans do? True democracy depends on ‘free will’, ‘independent thought’, and ‘knowledge’. When the population in general can be so easily swayed to go along with one person’s dogma or another, willfully ignorant and politically unintelligent, what is the meaning of ‘democracy’ except that it is about ‘best at intimidating, charming, or marketing’? In a herd species, the ‘election’ is all about ‘who do you want to be the dictator?’
We have the technology to switch from representative democracy to direct democracy. There would also need to be major changes to educate everyone on the topics being voted on. That would be a huge improvement if we can keep that education less corrupted by monied interests.
That still leads to the ‘herd mentality’ problem. The impressionable voter is still too easily persuaded to vote ‘dogma/cult’ than ‘informed decision’. Human adults, unfortunately, by and large prefer someone else to make their decisions for them, and they tend to vote in alignment with the decisions made by these ‘influencers’. Look no further than the last Canadian election - the Catholic bishops in Canada (under the direction of a foreign power - the Pope) all told the Canadian Catholics how to vote (in the last weeks of the election), and it almost swayed the election to PP.
Steve Jobs famously had it absolutely dead-on when he said, about consumer input into his Apple products: ‘Consumers have absolutely no idea of what they like and want until I tell them’.
I’m saying it’s not something we should sacrifice individual influence for
We have learned that even in representative democracies the representatives often ignore the people who they are supposed to represent, and that is far more damaging.
It really comes down to: do the citizens want a collective socially responsible leadership or an individual rights dictates all leadership. Socialism or Libertarianism. You cannot have a system that continuously waffles from one to the other, like the Americans are trying to do. The problem with ‘democracy’ as it is practiced in American society is that they insist on using a two-party (socialism vs libertarianism) adversarial system that keeps battling back and forth, winner take all. In that system, the ‘election’ only determines which side gets to tyrannize the other side. No matter who wins, the other side feels threatened by ‘terrorism from the other side’s dogma’.
Can you really have ‘true democracy’ in a species that has such a strong herd mentality as humans do? True democracy depends on ‘free will’, ‘independent thought’, and ‘knowledge’. When the population in general can be so easily swayed to go along with one person’s dogma or another, willfully ignorant and politically unintelligent, what is the meaning of ‘democracy’ except that it is about ‘best at intimidating, charming, or marketing’? In a herd species, the ‘election’ is all about ‘who do you want to be the dictator?’
We have the technology to switch from representative democracy to direct democracy. There would also need to be major changes to educate everyone on the topics being voted on. That would be a huge improvement if we can keep that education less corrupted by monied interests.
A true democracy would be incredibly easy to implement.
Our government could literally just make an app that sends us everything to individually vote on instead of our reps getting to vote.
That still leads to the ‘herd mentality’ problem. The impressionable voter is still too easily persuaded to vote ‘dogma/cult’ than ‘informed decision’. Human adults, unfortunately, by and large prefer someone else to make their decisions for them, and they tend to vote in alignment with the decisions made by these ‘influencers’. Look no further than the last Canadian election - the Catholic bishops in Canada (under the direction of a foreign power - the Pope) all told the Canadian Catholics how to vote (in the last weeks of the election), and it almost swayed the election to PP.
Steve Jobs famously had it absolutely dead-on when he said, about consumer input into his Apple products: ‘Consumers have absolutely no idea of what they like and want until I tell them’.
There is no herd mentality problem, this is propaganda from those who seek to rule.
You either have tyranny of the majority or tyranny of the minority
Democracy is tyranny of the majority
It has been pretty much ascertained, even at the neurological level, that humans are a herd animal. For instance:
https://academic.oup.com/book/11486/chapter-abstract/160205905?login=false
The fact is, those who completely understand this, and have learned how to manipulate it, will be the ones who rule.
I’m saying it’s not something we should sacrifice individual influence for
We have learned that even in representative democracies the representatives often ignore the people who they are supposed to represent, and that is far more damaging.
It really comes down to: do the citizens want a collective socially responsible leadership or an individual rights dictates all leadership. Socialism or Libertarianism. You cannot have a system that continuously waffles from one to the other, like the Americans are trying to do. The problem with ‘democracy’ as it is practiced in American society is that they insist on using a two-party (socialism vs libertarianism) adversarial system that keeps battling back and forth, winner take all. In that system, the ‘election’ only determines which side gets to tyrannize the other side. No matter who wins, the other side feels threatened by ‘terrorism from the other side’s dogma’.