Is Democracy still a good thing? Does it work?

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Mendalla

Happy headbanging ape!!
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In another thread, @BetteTheRed commented:

Agreed. There is no indication, anywhere, that a majority of the "voting public" (those deemed by the "polity" to be qualified to determine "political best interests") ever behave sensibly, in anybody but their own self-interests, etc.

So if the voting public can't be trusted to behave sensibly and consider things other than self-interest, why are we letting them make these decisions? Plato essentially argued that we leave things like medicine to specialists, so why not governance. Having a well-educated public should help, but we still seem to end up with loud, well-organized minorities, often following some populist leader, carrying the day. Trump is the extreme example, but Andrew Scheer kind of slides in as lesser one. Scheer became Conservative leader largely because he was so-con enough to keep that bunch happy but not vocally so-con enough to offend others. IOW, the so-cons really determined the outcome, even if he wasn't their perfect choice.

Is there a solution to populism and demagoguery that doesn't involve nerfing democracy? Has democracy as we know it run its course? Should there be a minimum standard of education or something to vote (and, by extension, to be a "full citizen")?

I'm not arguing for or against anything here, just seeing if there's interest in having a discussion of this topic.
 
Interesting topic.

I don't think IQ is the dividing scale on which we decide "a vote". But I'm not sure that land ownership or EQ are any better.

Banning "advertising" of all sorts might produce some interesting results.
 
Education is a big piece. It should be free to become wide spread. Also- the media. I haven’t found a tradition of really trying to provide knowledge to the broad audience in the media. Germany has much more of that, documentaries, more factual background explanations in the news, even the traditional Sunday crime story often deals with a current problem in society ( i.e. the victim was a refugee, the detectives discover a connection to the refugees past and connection to political groups in the refugees home country. They slip in knowledge about that country and the political structures. )
 
Education could certainly assist in filtering through the protocol of propaganda ... thus roasting of celebrities --- D' AN Martin (weasel of another shade). This may be the counterpart of the Oreo Syndrome ... white exteriors and dark inherencies?

In any physical activity ... a sense of relation and reaction. Only in the metaphysical realm can action go on without reaction in some cases. his may require an extensive expansion ... until your cognizant space implodes ... tis a pitiful depression caused by gross corrupt demands to be greater than need be ...

Some alien info and familiarity is helpful ... to no ends ... a loose cognizance? May identify a bode-sol connect and coupling that is contrary to enforced intercourse and literary exchange of limited nature (mortal, moral, morrells) and all such delicacies attached to the white oak (Al Ba Kirkei)! This connected to 7 brilliant settlements in a holy zone ... quite pagan and often overrun my industrial militancy!

It is the basis of one legend out in the explicit condition of humanity ... physical aggression! Attempts to control what is free Eire? It carries a significant wisdom attached to the under stood. Schitz end of the pole ... may explain why it's ain't Vincent in the image ... just his work with the dark carolinians ... brute empires connected to the Scream? Back to Skellig Michael ... a booty of myth!

No I can't explain it either due to vast gaps ... salts and homeopathic dilution theory? Thus the peculiar rain ... the some salts have little taste ... like Ca, Mg, K, Na, silicate ... the m'n 've clay ... so cast as to go learn something ... a decent rational state! You can almost see the wheels cranking inside as they go round! --- Ezekiel! The exponent goes on ...
 
On the education part: I think there is more than just conveying knowledge here. A good 100 level philosophy course in high school that taught them how to approach things like logical fallacies in media stories and social media and generally how to approach things from a standpoint of reasoning rather than reacting would be a good thing. I'd make it mandatory, too.
 
On the education part: I think there is more than just conveying knowledge here. A good 100 level philosophy course in high school that taught them how to approach things like logical fallacies in media stories and social media and generally how to approach things from a standpoint of reasoning rather than reacting would be a good thing. I'd make it mandatory, too.

Yet, I was directed by some surprising sources of authority ... "don't think, we'll tell your what!"

Thus I diverge from the steerage ... and if I could I would say what I think and feel clearly ... but I would be condemned! If I didn't laugh at the crap we're taught ... I'd cray a sad song!

Maybe it is a pseudo form ... like parallel universe?
 
Yet, I was directed by some surprising sources of authority ... "don't think, we'll tell your what!"

It's an attitude that really has to stop, both the authorities demanding to think for people and people expecting the authorities to think for them.
 
I'm not sure that more education would help. The worst and most arrogant people in this world, like Trump, are graduates of higher education. almost all of our provinces have pretty good education systems. But that hasn't helped. The U.S. government has a very high proportion of the very intelligent and educated. It still has Supreme Court composed of backward thinkers. And it still has a congress of corrupt figures.

We really, over much of the world, have to deal with VERY corrupt news media. But I can't find a solution to that.

Nor has Christianity been much help. Since 1492 and even earlier, the Christian world has had a horrible record of murder, abuse, destruction, plundering.... The (Christian) British Empire was perhaps the most murderous in human history, with a horrible record of murder, deliberate starvation of millions, plundering of nation into poverty for a total of more than 400,000 million killed, and millions more, like China, crushed into slavery. Germany's Hitler was a Christian. So were all his murderers. The Fervently Christian U.S. has a record of mass murder and plundering and horrible abuse going back to the Pilgrim Fathers.

In all these years, the Christian churches have ignored all that Christianity represents. That's why today, many Christians oppose abortion - but have had no qualms about bombing and/or starving millions of babies and children in Afghanistan, Korea, Yemen, and much of the rest of the world.

I don't think our churches will ever become Christian in any real sense. I mean, they haven't done it in two thousand years. (I don't say any of the above to be provocative. It's reality.)
 
There are intelligent people without lots of paid for formal education - maybe they didn't have the same opportunities - who are capable of self educating and critical thinking.

My dad told me in high school that I wasn't necessarily there to memorize information but to learn (and everyone learns differently. I learn best when I'm curious) how learn and to think critically. He felt that was the most important skill.
 
I certainly agree with Kimmio.
But we also have to face up to a terrible reality.
For almost two thousand years Christians of all intellectual levels have been distinguished by mass murder.
The U.S., with British and Canadian help, has been murdering all over the world.
I don't know, really, what the cause of this is - but it's been a characteristic of other religions, too.
We pretty well all have long histories of greed and violence.

We can't be allowed in schools to think critically. If we did, our super rich would come crashing down on the schools - and would pay off their political puppets for all this rational thinking. I taught elementary and high school for six years. I know what happens to teachers who try to tell the truth.
 
re Paradox 3

I don't think another social philosophy would ever become successful.
The churches could, I suppose, attempt to create such a thing - but my guess is that no church would be successful in doing such a change.
From the little I know of it, I suspect our earliest humans did have some, at least, philosophy of behaviour. And my experience with Canada's aboriginal people suggest they might still have some of that.

But, alas, I don't feel that I have any handle on this.
 
With input-output systems for contemplation ... a processor is needed ... it may be seized or locked up in a different way that the physical lockdown by isolated information ...

It time past this has a broad sense to it like one interpretation of the animus as the male spirit in the female ... sometimes interpreted as the sol of soles ... the singularity of all singularities and thus by far isolated from humanity by a protocol of "we don't wish to know!" The Ace of all spades ... send a club to knock me out of this non processing community! Always expect exceptions to the protocol ...
 
"Democracy" is a political organization that has nothing to do with truth and fact. A "court of law in a democracy" is composed of a judge and frequently prosecution that work for the government that happens to be in power in the jurisdiction in which the trial occurs. In many cases this same government has influenced on the jurors throughout their lives via propaganda, education in government run schools, and culture. This is hardly an environment in which to discern truth of things. Truth needs to remain independent of not only faith, but political manipulation as well. A court of law in a democracy doesn't necessarily provide this.

 
Democracy is thus a dream ... like that black man indicated ... a hope for future events ... futurism? Imagine fulfilling that! Wild abstracts the absolutes can't digest due to the nothing attributes allowing no truths in reality! It is the power earth runs on to boost wealth in small areas ... no commonwealths as they are only virtual ... not real!
 
"We are a society of altruists, but we are governed by psychopaths." ~George Monbiot

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