The last paper I wrote for college was for my senior seminar class. I majored in political science, and because my chosen field is so swamped in mediocrity and the mere hagiography of the status quo (but in much prettier words), I spent a semester learning about, what else?, democracy!!!! I voted for fascist political thought, but no. Democracy, yet again. Sure, the United States is a democracy (save that argument for any comments), and we are IN the United States, sooooo why should political science students in America study anything else. All that is to get me to this, my final paper. In the paper we were given the task of making a policy recommendation to a new country, Sensempsci (no idea), in the form of a certain variety of democracy (non-democracies are so 20th century), and so, in a fit of contrarianism I proceeded to argue the common man as far out of the democratic picture as I could:
I propose that in order to ensure the most successful democracy possible, the state of Sensempsci adopt the representative model of democracy. While I believe the other models have merit, representative democracy is the only model that has the integrity to withstand the constant pressures of both domestic and international politics, and this is precisely because it excludes the average person from the policymaking process. Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, in their empirical research, found that “stronger political involvement will not make people more trusting, more tolerant, more other-regarding, or more supportive of government.”
Instead, their research points to a number of prohibitive factors that come about when people are made to participate in government. Empirical studies show that people will intentionally avoid conflict, in many cases even withdrawing from the situation entirely, and that when forming groups (keep in mind Putnam’s social capital here), people will generally tend toward homogeneity in their group selections, i.e. people will either choose groups that agree with them to begin with, or will form groups to share those ideas with like-minded others. Furthermore, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse’s synthesis of prior research on the topic concludes that “deliberation in real-world settings tends to disempower the timid, quiet, and uneducated relative to the loquacious, extroverted, and well schooled.”
Deliberation by the general public enforces, not erodes, natural inequalities for the precise reason that some people are better at communicating and developing their opinions than others. Since people will already avoid conflict and seek homogeneity in their group selections, deliberative bodies would result in those who are at all afraid of conflict or unskilled at debate to simply withdraw from the process, leading to the organic creation of an elite class of decision-makers. Representative democracy circumvents this problem by simply allowing the people to choose who composes the elite class in the first place. In doing so, the people are still able have a say in government, but the discursive necessity of a legitimate democracy is ensured through the provision of well-educated, well-informed statesmen.
As I was going through some of my old writing to try and find something, ANYTHING, to use as a writing sample for graduate school, I came across this series of paragraphs. In principle, I'm still proud of it. I was proud of it when I wrote it because I thought it an interesting use of the empirical studies that had been crammed down our throats all the semester, and I'm proud of it now because it seems to be, at the least, an admirable effort at actually trying to create something at the end of my college career, rather than simply regurgitating what I knew was expected (democracy is great, sure, but the best democracy is the one that lets plumber joe have his say whenever he wants!).
In theory, I still really agree with what I wrote. I think the democratic spirit tends toward mediocrity, laziness of thought. In a lot of ways it allows the worst in human nature to become the status quo. Now, this is not to say that democracy causes terrorism (though, you can argue that it does, but maybe that should be another post), but that democracy causes a gradual lowering of standards. In an entirely too pop culture-y example, look at the differences between Myspace and Facebook. Myspace, BASTION of everything that is wrong the vast majority of American society, is a relatively un-regulated, egalitarian enterprise. Anyone can get an account, all of the myspace designs and applications and themes and wallpapers and whatever else derive from a readily accessible, and FREE, suite of applications that either originate within, or build directly on, the foundations of the website. This is the democratic spirit at work, everyone has equal access to all the resources, anyone can join and make their profile as pretty or appalling as the next person. And what happens? They shit ALLLLLLL over it. Every horrible band you never wanted to hear from the last 5 years? Thanks myspace. The ubiquity of the scene kid thing? Thanks myspace. That one bisexual chick who had a reality show on one of those former music channels? THANKS FOR THAT ONE TOO.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, we have facebook at its inception: mildly regulated (no html, no themes, no wallpapers), to acquire membership to had to not only be a college student (verified through account creation process), but you had to attend a school that facebook deemed important enough to be allowed as a network on facebook. What did we get? A deeply useful tool for social networking. Facebook was the vehicle for so many events at my school, it helped me get to know the people who went there, it allowed me to periodically stalk whoever the latest gossip was about, and it allowed students to plan a lot more parties than the school would have liked, many times without them ever knowing. Now, I'm not arguing that facebook is some purely noble enterprise with only the best intentions. No doubt facebook was the medium through which many random hookups were arranged, but by God, it worked! It was fast, efficient, and effective. It did EXACTLY what it said it was going to, and it did it well.
However, that was all in the past. Now we turn to the present and see what facebook is coming. Without more than a few clicks you can easily begin to see the similarities between facebook and myspace. Now don't get me wrong, neither facebook nor myspace are important in the slightest, they aren't. Really. However, as cultural material they serve as a unique example of what the truly democratic spirit can do. With facebook we have exclusivity and (limited) authority leading to a well-functioning, truly innovative platform for social interaction. With myspace, we have something that (to be fair) was innovative in its time, though due more to the fact that it was new and flashy, and less to any true progression of the medium, but eventually ended up resembling an online Golgotha. AND YET, with the existence of both entities within the realm of social network, both representing different democratic experiments, what do we find? Facebook can't compete. Myspace continued to win and facebook has had to open its doors to everyone, allowed for more customization, but most importantly, it's allowed itself to be manipulated by the masses.
Culture tends downward, we see that everywhere. It most certainly has its moments, but culture, and democracy, tends in the direction of the herd. Society meanders along, oblivious to its many shortcomings, until something is forced into the public consciousness that reminds the people of just how lazy they've become. The true energy of social change in America is reactive, not progressive. How can we assuage the guilt we feel upon realizing JUST how passive and weak-minded we've become? How do we brush away the shame we're forced to contend with when something reminds us how rarely we ever do anything worth mentioning, how the moments when we truly hold ourselves accountable as individuals and are, as a result, PROUD of what we uncover are SO few and far between? We gentrify. We grab hold of those jarring reminders and we, in our one TRUE democratic action, decide as a people to nullify that which might finally force us to stop and look at ourselves for what we've become. In short, we invent reality television.
