I recently mused that the dominance and popularity of the Catholic Church offered an insight into how the Nazis may have eventually presented, had they won WW2, winners becoming patrician in the rear view mirror of history regardless of what they needed to do to win. As if that wasn’t enough to stymie any future chance of me running for elected office again, let me have a pop at voters (including myself) and democracy itself.
The Guardian recently ran a piece suggesting voters are driving our basket case politics (from a British perspective, but you may have a local equivalent). The timbre of that article was that we, the electorate, have become credulous and uppity, forgetting our place in the democratic process, demanding contradiction, such as great change in order to stay the same. And that politicians are running scared, falling over their feet in order to deliver chips with custard, because the customer is always right even when driven by false facts and undeliverable promises.
Democracy of the one person one vote model should be able to cope with selfishness. Indeed, it seems predicated on it. If, as an altruist, I vote for what’s better for others, and those others vote for themselves, where’s my stake? I’ve given it away. Better we all vote for what’s best for us then we get what’s best for the majority. The politicians’ task is then to make sure the losers don’t get left behind too much. Democracy should work.
My suggestion is that democracy is failing as it completely ignores a significant group with a great deal of skin in the game.
Future voters.
Yes, for all those wondering what this political ramble was doing on a science fiction blog, my pitch is that we, as a species, through our science and technology, are now able to influence the future by what we do here and now to such an extent that our ‘what do we do for the next handful of years’ model of democracy no longer fits.
It’s well established that delayed gratification is a sign of intelligence. But in a wise, not just intelligent species, shouldn’t it come as standard? You don’t need to turn many pages of the history book to find examples of jam today and a can kicked down the road into tomorrow. Look at privatisation, whether Britain’s “family silver” or Chicago’s on-street parking.
Combine that with our ability to create cans bigger than any generation before, that can be kicked further. We have touched, modified, or, at the very least, polluted practically every corner of our small blue marble. Almost everything we build or process we set running is there for generations. America still suffers the aftershocks of slavery. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years. Nuff’ said.
I’m not even sure whether I’m making the case for future generations or just future me as our species appears hard wired not to give too big a damn about ourselves in years to come. If we struggle to make sacrifices now to help ourselves later, what chance is there of making sacrifices now to help others later?
Winston Churchill is quoted as saying democracy is the worst form of government except for all others. Agreed. But what I’m saying is that it’s getting worse all the time.
Anyone got any good news?
My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms
Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.
2084. The world remains at war.
In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.
The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.
Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.
Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.
24 0s & a 2
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).
