Look in your pockets (and purse, if you have that) and answer for yourself the following question: Exactly how many civilizational peaces do you have? Now check the outer world – yes, the whole world – and count the peaces there too. How many? (I already have a hint regarding your answers: a jagged red line appeared below “peaces” as I finished typing the word.) Peace is, and always will be, uncountable. And this is a profound and lamentable misfortune: peace will therefore be generally discounted, taken for granted and underappreciated. Though, ironically, offering the world the most resplendent future, peace is like darkness: it is defined more by what is absent than by anything else. Peace is then, in many practical political respects, tantamount a cipher. And the profounder Zero is the emptiness of awareness. And we may experience peace, but we don’t really see it; in the experience of peace we may see smiles, blooming flowers, or sunshine, etc., and our simple impression is overwhelmed by a profusion of photons. The pensive mind may observe and appreciate peace in the same time and place where the pedestrian eye squints at the brightness of a physical sun.
The foregoing is not a political principle so much as it is an elementary observation.
Nonetheless, we look for principles, concepts and observations that might help us better our understanding of extant circumstances, historical causal relationships, human psychology and behavior in an effort to glean some morsels of political insight.
How much of our political misfortunes and errancy is attributable to our own selfishness? Even scholars are often counted among the cynics of the world, sometimes remarking that “people are selfish” and that “people can be expected to behave selfishly.” And much research in behaviorism over the past thirty years has corroborated such assertions.
Alas, inasmuch as peace is counted a nonentity and selfishness is pervasive, the modern world can expect quite a lot of human-agency human suffering.
Sometimes that which is veritably selfish is also prideful and obstinate. Early in Albert Einstein’s career as a scientist and before he was famous, in yet another failed attempt to impress a professor and gain employment, he (Einstein) wrote to a professor and pointed out two significant errors in a published paper the latter had recently authored. In a reply letter, the professor told Einstein that he did not accept the (transpicuously articulated) disproofs. The other’s prideful recalcitrance brought forth the cynical ire of Einstein, a person later regarded as the twentieth century’s most eminent personage: “Little by little, one becomes a misanthrope,” he remarked in disgust, in a letter to his wife. The prideful insecurity that resided in the grey matter space between one person’s ears had the effect of bringing forth, between the other person’s ears, an increase in the opinion that people were not to be trusted.
And sometimes an ilk of selfish or arrogant self-righteousness arrives consequent to the inflexibility of a political creed. In the hours after the June 12th 2016 terrorist mass murder incident in Orlando Florida, the Republican candidate for president was again on the social media site Twitter, and he was being congratulated by one of his minions on the terrorist attack itself, apparently congratulated on being virulent (if not intelligent and informed) on the subject of terrorism. The genial Republican thanked the twit… umm… er – the ‘Twitter admirer’ for his congratulations, but then caught himself; even he, unthoughtful and insensate, realized the utter inappropriateness of getting a pat on the back in association with an horrific tragedy.
Examine that fan of the political aspirant. His intense gratification at the apparent vindication of his political views led him to reflexively extend congratulations where none were due.
The Republican’s puerile supporter was simply following his political creed, and in the following of that creed, he was obeying laws more irresistible than those created by any legislature.
In our addled efforts to make sense of geopolitical relations, considerations, developments and devices, we seldom resort to the framing of metaphors got from one of the applied sciences. Yet, there is a physical law so conspicuous and universal that we consider it as much common sense as commonplace physics: gravity.
We can see and measure gravity in the physical realm. But is there any metric with which anyone can precisely measure the inclination of a human being toward or away from one appeal, agenda, movement or policy and against another unlike? The despairing truth is, we have only coarse, ungainly statistics garnered from opinion surveys, demographic studies, public documents, consumer data, citizen records, school records, bank and financial records, organization membership records, and voting records, etc., and these do not afford much clarity on one’s cogitative processes, so as to tender anything revelatory or even modestly conciliatory about such processes among an aggregation of persons similarly disposed.
Still, we must admit to a kind of quasi-gravity in politics: people inevitably indulge an ideological-interpretive process that is itself tendentious; and people will believe more with what already agrees with their existing ideational want than that which is “logical”, objective, and/or ostensible. We believe in a predictable fashion. And one cannot be expected to, regardless of realities, readily and consciously gainsay oneself! And unfortunately, in this we are like hungry dogs, our clever snouts in pursuit of carrion. Fashioning our own personal, self-assuring, echo chamber political worldview, we are rarely ever disappointed.
On June 23, 2016, voters in the United Kingdom voted on a referendum concerning whether the UK would remain in the European Union or separate entirely from the political confederation. Many pundits and scholars contended that a ‘leave’ vote would have severe economic repercussions, but typically qualified the statement by speculating that Britain would almost certainly vote to remain in the EU.
The British awoke to a startling reality on June 24th: the result of the referendum dictated that Britain would fully separate itself from the complexities and entanglements of the European Union. Securities markets around the world tumbled precipitously for three or four days (and the Associated Press reported that the “two day” – Friday and Monday – economic decline worldwide marked the most substantial two-day loss in history).
Why did UK voters cast their lot in such an imprudent way? There is, of course, always the fanciful, simplistic notion that surely we can right our own ship if we can only gain the uncompromised captaincy of it.
But captains and captaincies are not all of a single stamp; and captaincies are as varied and distinctive as human beings themselves are, and does anyone need to be apprised of how vastly unalike and incommensurable that is? A captain is only as good and competent as his/her genes, expertise, wisdom and maturity, etc.
When you get your captain from democratic processes, you gain the imprimatur of legitimacy; that is, the ruler and the ruled exist in a kind of mutuality, an agreement of fealty.
That’s good. But that cannot be all that rights the ship.
All democracies are in a sort of race with themselves. When the responsibility for governance falls on the whole of the population (or at least a substantial swath of its adult population), there is a need for the voters to be very well informed, as competent rule is got from competent voters and competent voters are informed voters. Democracy is in an endless race to educate its constituents because peoples of democracies are, by essential and practical effect, guides and leaders of their own government and fate.
Significantly, in the British referendum, about 65 percent of the voters categorized as “poor” cast a ‘leave’ vote. And this was certainly enough to sway the aggregated vote the way it did, approximately 52 percent voting “leave”. But what are “the poor?” Inasmuch as a voter is really economically poor, he or she is more likely to vote in a very narrowly self-interested way: no, not for nebulous “civilized values,” or “decency”; no, not for the nation or even the community, but only for the self. And this is not pointed out here for the purposes of disparagement, but a simple cause-effect acknowledgement. In the minds of the very poor, the idea of having a government that might push for or raise – by legislation – one’s wage just one pound per hour weighs heavily, more heavily than perhaps any other single issue. Think about it: one votes, in such a desperately sad case, for a bit more money, and this lustrous goal outshines all else, and the voter casts his or her lot not with anything respectful or civilizational, or for more widely coherent values at all; that one pound sits like a golden god on a throne. (And we cannot and must not scapegoat them for this. The fault and the consequence surely falls on the whole of society!)
Additionally, irrespective of other characterizations, it is beyond dispute that the unenlightened and undereducated are overrepresented among the “poor” demographic. This is the unsettling truth of democracy in this instance: the least informed persons, being so very numerous, outvoted the most informed persons and beguiled and misguided the UK in its least informed, most shortsighted and foolish direction.
Self-described progressives recoil at such words that, for some, seem elitist – strongly suggestive of the view that the poor are a disdainful lot and not to be respected alongside other aggregations. However, it is very relevant to ask whether we give full consideration to the political wants of the two year-old toddler. Do we hate and exercise prejudice against the toddler in discounting his or her views? Probably not. Not really. We do not in any way disparage the toddler in discounting his or her political claims and wants. We understand and love the child, but do not follow the child as if she were an eminent sage. It is imprudent to behave as if wisdom were to somehow proceed from inauspicious quarters. And it needs to be observed and pointed out that, if a particular group is factually poorly informed, that lack is itself a bad thing. And we need to acknowledge this frankly. The poor may be less informed in various ways, but this must not be construed as a deliberate and classist disparagement of them, a suggestion that they should have their voting rights somehow curtailed; I hold not the slightest view of this kind! I rather suggest that the poor be helped to gain a better education, as this is better for them as individuals, and it is better for all of society. We cannot even consider anything less than their full participation in democratic government! We must help the less-informed from all socioeconomic classes become better informed citizens. And it is necessary that we always remember that real freedom will always include the freedom to maintain one’s ignorances; ours is only to make information available, and to disseminate information. A free press, itself not beholden to corporate business interests nor organizational nor ideological restrictions, is consistent with this salubrious-democratic effort.
Recall the cipher and its implications? The European Union was originally an economic confederation. But it grew over decades to be much more than that. It grew to promote human rights, humanitarianism and coherent diplomacy and cooperation worldwide. But surely it is relevant to ask herein how many “human rights, humanitarianism and diplomacies” each poorly informed and economically pressured UK voter held in his or her wallet when he or she ventured to the polls on referendum day. The Zero faction won the day and lost the future; carrion got, civilization was not.
Is the democratic West beginning an historically unprecedented fragmentation and political decline? This question remains to be answered. But it is obvious that we who believe that democracy is, despite its shortcomings, a beacon of hope and the best political construction we have available to us, are charged with a colossally important task: we are racing to educate ourselves before we destroy ourselves. And sometimes, as the results of the UK referendum demonstrates, we do not appear to be gaining in that race.