Democracy: It Works, Bitches

No one like criticism. Being told exactly when and how and why you screwed up is unpleasant at best. Given that criticism doesn't always come couched in the nicest language (I'm looking at YOU, restaurant critics!), it's a double whammy of bad news in poor taste. Nevertheless, criticism is a necessary medicine. All those red scribblings of "awk" and "runon" and "this sentence no verb" helped improve your formal writing. You might not have thought so at the time, but "Keep your eye on the ball" is actually pretty darn helpful. "I've encountered better food in my vegetable crisper after a month abroad." probably isn't very helpful.

Criticism is a valuable tool. No one is perfect, and we can only correct our mistakes if we know about them. Some mistakes, like a stubbed toe, are obvious even if the solution is not. Others, such as an engrossed photographer about to trip and fall in the wedding cake, are obvious only to outsiders. Finally, there are the large and difficult problems of the real world, where even the existence of the problem is a question to be discussed.

Robert Heinlein, curmudgeonly cynic that he was, had this to say of governments:

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.

Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?

There's absolutely noting wrong with autocracy, provided the autocrat is good and wise, that he listens to his expert counselors, that he makes his decisions with it in mind that all prosper and not merely himself, and that he never makes mistakes. I've heard rumors that such a person can play the sweetest music on a clarinet when he farts, too. When the king makes a mistake, who will tell him so? When The Man has the authority to silence dissent and criticism, only his conscience will prevent him from doing so. A brief survey of history will show you that few have scrupled not to silence critics in the harshest fashions.

Autocracy does not work of the simple reason that there is no guaranteed method for correcting errors. An autocrat can, and usually will, wrap himself in a comforting cocoon of silence, content in the knowledge that he, at least, is comfortable and prosperous. When things finally get bad enough, the only correction available is bloody rebellion, which does not come with any guarantee of improvement, or even success. There's a reason vast income disparity leads to failed states; those in power insulate themselves first from criticism, then from redress, both with violence.

A million are indeed wiser than one, especially if the one is chosen at random. The voices of millions of people smooth out the bumps and marginalize the crazies. This is the first bit of error correction. If you can convince a majority of the people that you've got a good plan, you have a pretty good plan. It won't be perfect, and a lot of people will agree with you, but it'll still be a decent plan. This if the first error-correcting process of democracy. Politicians and political facts have to be placed before the court of public opinion, thoroughly debated, and then voted upon. Unfortunately, it also silences the upper end of the bell curve, the true visionaries whose radical notions aren't whackadoo, but powerfully transformative, which is why a wise society keeps systems in place to allow for the recognition of brilliance and talent, fostering it and its ideas.

Elections aren't the only time that people speak. Criticism continues from all levels of society throughout the year. Whether it's a janitor snarking at the TV while drinking a pint after work or a CEO snarking at a Senator while sharing a snifter on a private jet, the fact is that everyone speaks, and these voices are usually heard. We have a free press, freedom of association, and the freedom to tell our glorious leaders where to stick it. This means we live in a very noisy, very opinionated world. It's better than the alternative. Unless a leader deliberately cultivates an atmosphere of respectful silence and makes it a point to shut out his detractors (I'm looking at you, 43), he cannot help but hear criticism and, hopefully, find some wisdom there.

Consider North Korea. No elections, no speech, what have you; that's all terrible and painfully obvious. But what happens when Kim Jong-Il dies? His youngest son, Kim Jong-Eun is being groomed as heir apparent, but will he come to power without difficulty? There are older sons and military leaders galore who may wish to contest the succession. Even if Jong-Eun wins, how will North Korea fare during the struggle? One of the great benefits of democracy, often overlooked, is the regular and peaceful transfer of power, even between opponents. This, too, is a process of error correction. If things are good, more of the same isn't necessarily a problem, but when they've gone sour, you can bet fresh blood is going to be wanted. And for hundreds of years, that's what has happened. Isn't that nice? Shit yes.

Democracy isn't perfect. A million jackasses won't spontaneously generate wisdom, and no matter how wise, a million plumbers aren't actually qualified to generate foreign policy. The fact is that a limited democracy, often a republic, is actually better. People can easily be aroused to high dudgeon for just long enough to get someone into power, to their detriment. People can often be persuaded to vote against their own interests if it means hurting someone they hate. There need to be limits on democracy, because specialization is a simple necessity of civilization, and that includes people who have specialized in ruling. We need to have an excess of trained rulers so we can keep swapping them out when they go bad, like spark plugs, but we need a professional ruling class trained in the minutiae of government and policy. That's why I deplore the current vogue of ballot measures whereby demagogues inflame the passions of the mass so as to limit and attack the rights of the minority in direct contravention of the American vision. Tyranny of the majority is just as terrible and fickle thing as any tyranny of the minority. By virtue of sheer numbers, the majority can shout down its critics.

It's possible to make profound arguments for any system of government couched in the language of "The Rights of Man" and "Duty, Authority, Peace" and "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" etc, but I support a democratic republic on pragmatic grounds. It works. When the machine starts to wobble, we all step in and give it a kick. I've heard America described as "a fifty-seven Chevy, veering to the left and lurching to the right". Hey, it keeps running, right? We've flirted with the notion a few times (Alien and Sedition Act, fucking Jackson and his Trail of Tears), but the system hasn't ever actually broken down.

I leave you with a final Heinlein quote, though the sentiment is surely not original to him.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

A Little on Objectivism

I've read Atlas Shrugged more than once. I've also read The Fountainhead and The Virtue of Selfishness. For a few years in high school I was an unabashed Randite (read: obnoxious, loud-mouthed asshole).

The simple fact is that Objectivism, for all of its many flaws, is deeply appealing because it presents a simple, black and white view of the world. Whereas Granny Weatherwax says "Ain't no shades of gray. Just white that's got grubby.", Rand said that white a little tarnished is no different from black. Go 100% or go home.

She peppers her fiction with dramatic archetypes. Just from Atlas Shrugged you have the ideal man (Galt) four flavors of the nearly ideal man (Rearden, Frisco, the pirate, and the philosophy teacher), the ideal woman (Dagny, whose ideal nature is demonstrated by the fact that, intelligent and hard working, she also wants to be dominated by her men) several men who deliberately invert the ideal (Dagny's brother and a few politicians), and several people who believe in the ideal but fail to live up to it (the scientist who taught Galt, the woman who married Dagny's brother).

And the thing is that Objectivism really does believe that people should not merely strive for that ideal, but actively embody it, and that anyone who fails to do so is morally wrong. At the end of the day, Objectivism was a cult (http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html)and Atlas was its bible. Rand was its Jesus and Nathaniel Branden its Saint Peter. When Branden was excommunicated, the cult fell apart because, as thorough and author as she was, Rand was neither a reader, nor a leader, nor a thinker. Occasionally, someone will still get sucked into it, but it hasn't been what it was in the 60s.

As for the stated beliefs of Objectivism:

Metaphysics - I agree that existence exists (that is to say, there exists an external and separate reality from each of us) and that each of us is a conscious, moral agent. I disagree that everything has a specific nature or identity. Yes, as Sartre said, "Nothing can exist only partly" (which is what I believe this part of the Objectivist metaphysics is trying to say), but beyond the existence of an object or thing, it is outside actors who imbue objects with use or identity beyond the mere fact of their existence. In other words, A is A, but it's not just A.

Epistemology - Rand was an empiricist (she called it reason but that's a woefully inadequate description, as actual philosophers disagree on the utility of reason and on how it works), arguing that all knowledge is fact-based, built on a study of reality with which we connect through our senses. She argued that we have no in-built knowledge or ideas. I don't fully agree, because we have a number of built-in shortcuts for dealing with the world; we innately seek and assign agency where none need exist. How often have you gotten angry with an inanimate object for not working right? Even as infants, we assign such; show an infant a moving image of two objects, one following the other, and it will register surprise if the one stops following. Children tell that inanimate objects have purpose, assigning agency to the world around us; rocks are for animals to scratch themselves, clouds are for raining. These are just a few demonstrations that the human brain doesn't sift through our perceptions in a logical, step by step basis. We take short cuts and make quick assumptions. For the most part this helps us out (you don't really need to analyze a tiger, buddy, just leave it alone), but for complex issues it can get us in trouble.

Ethics - I agree with Rand that there is no objective or external source of goodness (the platonic ideal) nor is goodness some sort of natural function (the Aristotelian philosophy that influenced Catholic doctrine via Thomas Aquinas), but rather a function of human behavior. Rand argued that moral good is that which sustains life, moral evil is that which hinders it, and above all both are informed by rational choices about objective reality. I disagree, in that moral behavior arises from biology. We have in our brains two separate decision-making processes for moral behavior, an empathic core (don't kick the baby!) and a utilitarian core (kill the one to save the ten, it's just sense) and our moral decisions come after a tug of war between the two. We are certainly not a rational animal, as Rand would have it, but a rationalizing animal, using our logical faculties not to make decisions but to justify them after the fact.

Our moral and ethical nature is not built around the survival of the individual, but around the survival of the individual within the context of the survival of the group, and not just the group as a collection of individuals, but the group as an entity in itself which will continue to exist after all of the current members have died off. This "collectivism", as Rand would have called it, is anathema to Objectivist philosophy, but is paramount to the human condition. Unfortunately for Rand, the Kantian ethic "do only that which you can will as a universal rule" doesn't actually work. Very nearly everything you subject to that slippery slope argument falls into a black pit of reductio ad absurdum and cannot possibly be construed as a moral good. Boundless self-sacrifice by everyone would lead to everything falling apart in a way that boundless selfishness would not, but you wouldn't want to live in a world of sociopaths any more than you would a world of nothing but sacrifice. Moderation in all things (even moderation, bitches!).

Politics - I really disagree with Rand. The individual is not the be all and end all of human existence (which makes the Republican love affair with Rand hilarious) and individual efforts not the only method of achievement. She honestly felt we could get by with private police and fire protection, which is farcical on its face. There was a private fire company in Rome. They showed up, got the owner to sell cheap, then put out the fire. The fact is that cooperation for mutual benefit is, on its face, a perfectly valid method for achieving success. She accepts this in the private sector for corporations, but weirdly denies it in politics. Why is it that a cartel by the name of OPEC is in some way a good and moral agent, but a cartel by the name of government some sort of villain?

Evolving Beyond Religion

The Bible says, "Thou Shalt Not Kill".

Actually, it's "Thou Shalt Not Murder". And the act of murder can only be committed on human beings. And that really only applies to your fellow X. Heathens are fair game.

That was the interpretation for thousands of years. The law said that if you threw a stone into a crowd of heathens and accidentally killed one of your fellow faithful, then it wasn't murder because your clear intent was to kill a heathen.

In ancient pre-history, we lived in small family groups of a few dozen to a few hundred. As our populations grew, we encountered, who knows how many times, the Stranger Problem; how can you live with the constant fear of the stranger without killing him? In order for civilization to exist, this problem had to be overcome. The earliest forms were probably the discovery of distant kinship, as small groups living near each other probably had tenuous blood connections due to the outbreeding necessary to prevent serious genetic difficulties. Also available, particularly at trading confluences, was honorary kinship, the sacred guest rights. But those are cumbersome and were replaced by religion, by civilization, eventually by nationality, and in due time the rule of law. In some places.

Why is it that in times past, the most horrific acts of cruel barbarity were commonplace wherever two people got together to kill a third? And why is it that in much of the world, these acts are becoming much more rare? Indeed, why is it that a mere five thousand years after the Bible began being written, a modern reader can look at it in astonished horror that these things were considered just and moral?

Because we're still evolving. For a few million years, we evolved to live in small family bands, and it shows. I used to scoff at the notion that small towns were just nicer and safer and all that, thinking it was provincialism at its worst*. It turns out that small towns are safer, nicer, more polite. And that's because everyone knows one another. First, there's social pressure to be nice; when word gets around (and it *will*) your life becomes that much harder if you're a jerk. Of course, the sword swings both ways, the social pressure requires you to conform in all things, not merely in social niceties; Garrison Keillor, of A Prairie Home Companion once said that moving to New York from his small home town was a huge relief because he could finally relax and just be himself away from prying eyes. Another aspect of city vs town life is the presence of strangers; being surrounded by strangers raises your stress levels, making you more unhappy and quicker to anger. Whereas the townsman is open and friendly, the city dweller maintains a personal shield of privacy, ignoring others as much as possible. City dweller, when's the last time you started a conversation with the person sitting next to you on the bus/subway?

Strangers used to represent an entirely potent threat; a stranger was someone who, at the least, might kill you and take all your stuff just because. After a few thousand years, that reflexive fear hasn't gone away.

But I suspect it's starting to, because I don't believe we could have spent 500 generations living with the constant presence of strangers in cities of tens of thousands, and now tens of millions of people without weeding out those people who simply could not abide strangers, without selecting for people who are more tolerant of strangers, more willing to live and let live. Where once it took a great deal of effort to live with strangers, where it was once the case that civilization only managed to independently arise in a very few places, where once we had to invent an omnipresent and angry skybeard to keep us from murdering one another, we can now walk down the street in relative safety.

The world is by no means a perfectly safe place, but it is not what once it was. We have spent thousands of years and hundreds of generations learning, in our bones, how to cope with a civilized world. The changing and advancing of the zeitgeist such that slavery has vanished and racism is waning could be explained by happenstance, by random cultural shift, or it could be that evolution is shifting us away from the paranoid, family-bound apes that we were into an open, embracing humanity ready to live in a global society.

I believe that we developed religion as a desperate necessity to allow us to build our cities, and I look forward to the day when we realize that, like xenophobia, it is a tool that was once useful but which is no longer necessary.


* In the sense that where I live is awesome and everywhere else sucks, not in the sense of a naive misunderstanding of the way the world works.