We in the West have lived with this thing called ‘democracy’ for a
good few centuries now. It has been an important experiment, but one
which has, in the end, succeeded in swallowing its own tail rather than
leading society to a better place. Now its time is up and we have the
task of putting something genuinely better in its place.
The most well known definition of democracy – but by no means the
first – is enshrined in the Gettysburg Address of November 1863. It
proclaims democracy as ‘government of the people, by the people, for the
people’ which – maybe for good reason – laid a strong emphasis on
‘people’.
But here also lay its weakness; people (it turned out) had other
ambitions that this form of self rule was ill equipped to address. Nor
did they particularly want to be responsible for deciding and managing
the intricacies of the experiment that they had signed-up to. ‘The
majority’, that is.
And it is this word ‘majority’ which encapsulates the failure of
democracy, because, as some of us will have noticed, ‘the majority’ have
never yet been possessed of the vision and wisdom necessary to move
society towards a meritorious goal.
