Are we bad for democracy, or is democracy bad for us?

The aim of this essay is to provoke some thoughts on the nature of democracy. It was inpired by an article entitled Are we good enough for democracy? by Jonathan Wolff.



Wolff evaluates one possible way of refuting an argument against democracy, made by Plato in The Republic. Plato says that we should at least expect just and efficient legislation from a government, and he goes on to argue that democracy is not part of the answer to this requirement; that we will not be able to achieve it in a democracy. One of the premises of the argument is that the people aren't experts, and Wolff evaluates if it's reasonable to assume that the people as a whole holds government expertise, instead of relying on the individuals making up the people to be experts.

Although I reach a conclusion that is similar to Wolff's, I attempt a direct grasp of the problem, without intermittent reference to the history of philosophy for certainty. Unlike Wolff, I'm also not attempting a conclusion that is beyond any doubt whatsoever from a logical standpoint. Naturally, I don't discard logic, but my aim is much humbler, namely to reach a reasonable conclusion given what we know about democracy and human nature. And although my aim is humbler, I actually get to go somewhere with my argument, although the reader may judge for himself whether that is so. Wolff only concludes that Plato's argument wasn't invalid by the course of his attempt to make it so. My aim is not to prove Plato wrong, but to approach democracy here and now with scrutiny.



Let us start with the question put by Wolff: Are we good enough for democracy? This perspective provides a good starting point, because answering it properly entails a realization of what democracy demands of us, for it to work properly, as well as an estimation of whether the average individual meets the requirements. The short answer that I propose is:

No, we are not good enough for democracy.

Elaborating on it will provide a baseline for the essay as a whole, and a ground on which we may turn the tables to scrutinize democracy itself.



Most people are unable to form their own opinion without relying on one authority or another, and many people are also not decided one way or the other out of principal considerations of any kind, that they may have been brought up to honour, or - in a few cases - they reached on their own. That's why we can see that a huge segment of voters in democracies worldwide - usually big enough to determine the end result of an election - is made up of people who let themselves be swayed one way in one election, in another way in the next election, and back to where they were first swayed, then back to the "opposite" again, and so on.

If on top of this you add the everyday aspect of democracy, where acting on your conviction is important, you get an even worse equation. The same psychological principles are at work here as well. People who can't form their own opinions won't have a conviction to act on, so most of their behaviour is conditioned by environmental stimuli in the most rewarding direction from a short-term perspective.

For example, if - in a given situation - treating foreigners better than your kin makes someone look like a great guy to most people, then that's what he or she will be most inclined to do. Environmental stimuli of this kind always play a part in social situations, but they are amplified to be so much more important in democracies. Noone in particular is responsible for the latest fashion of politically correct behaviour, because it is a product of democracy itself. Not to mention, that in democracy as we know it, the state spends enormous amounts of tax money on making us think and do this and that. Almost nothing is simply left to be up to the individual, and yet the people always get what it deserves, according to the logic of democracy.



Wherever there is room for someone to gain or lose in status, there is status play, and so democracy is status play. Status play is a game over temporary social status, and not over effective government. Moreover, a person who enjoys a high status - as a result of the status play known as democracy - is able to do things that are contrary to the interests of the common man, because his or her position allows it, both in a de facto sense and in a psychological sense. Again, according to the logic of democracy, the people deserves it, because the high ranking status of the tyrant is warranted by the procedures of democracy.

So, we have acknowledged that too many people are unable to form their own opinion, without relying on one authority or another. I would even say that's what the case is with a majority of people, whether they are decided upon something they were brought up to believe in or not. This also means that people are generally unable to issue an appropriate critique of any authority. In a democracy, there will always be another high status candidate, who is ready to exploit any public disappointment with current government, for his or her own purposes. There is always a chance that a good government will be elected in a democracy, but the chance is small, and the chance of having a good government over a longer period of time is small to the point of being ridiculous.

In democracy, most people become bandwagons, not for a higher purpose that embraces their own purposes and is greater than their own purposes, but for the purposes of any successful streber in the status play of democracy. Society itself should be the higher purpose of government, but the idea of society, in democracy as we know it, is at best obscure.



I think we need to counter the current status of democracy as an unquestionable deity. Putting democracy into question is not necessarily the same thing as giving way to tyrants who disregard the people altogether. Rather, it is the image of democracy as we know it - as government that flows from the people - that I think we need to question and refute.

The question put forward by Wolff is interesting for its perspective: Is Plato right in concluding that democracy is irrational, or can we make a case for it, that the people as a whole have the skills that are needed for ruling? What has happened, and keeps on happening, in many democratic regimes, points to it that the people doesn't have these skills. Low participation, voters being swayed by short-sighted propaganda and distrust against politicians and democratic systems alike all point to it that it couldn't really be. It would be the most lucky coincidence, if indeed the people as a whole had ruling skills by some obscure course of chance. Such a chance doesn't have a prospect of lasting over time, and is altogether unlikely from the perspectives that I have drawn on in this essay.

If democracy is, according to the meaning of the word, something that depends on our support for its existence, we should ask ourselves if democracy is good for us. What may be the alternatives to the failed and false democracy that is now the general rule? Democracy is fed to us as the myth of folk government. But the people didn't really instate it anywhere, to the best of my knowledge. At the very least, we shall feel free to criticise democracy, as it is fed to us, for not quite - or at all - being democracy. But we don't have to stop there. We don't even have to settle for an exclusively non-parliamentary strategy, just because democracy isn't what it's supposed to be. There may be many pathways from here, even though they aren't the subject matter of this essay.