Auer Human Nature vs. Democracy

A case for ethics and evidence in politics
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-3-7528-2799-6
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 500 Seiten

Modern liberal democracy is praised in a universalistic Western view as the best political system and a quasi-prerequisite for full acceptance by the community of traditional hegemonial States. However, democracy is fully developed in only less than five percent of States globally, and in decline in most Western countries. In this book, democracy is presented as a political system in danger due to its intrinsic flaws and tendency to self-destruction. The major flaw is that 'human nature' is not adequately considered in democracy's conception: its citizens, 'We, the people', as individuals and as crowds, are liberated into a dangerous ideology prioritizing 'freedom from society' over 'membership in society' and thereby causing decline in libertinism, hedonism and polarization in divided and finally broken societies. Proposals to resolve the rapidly growing crisis include education of citizens into the ethics of reciprocal altruism, grounded in evidence from biological sciences and humanities, professionalization of politics, and a fundamental change of politics towards evidence-based decision-making, thus ending politicking, politicians' personality affairs, and the cold war of political parties, the representative of class warfare in the sheep-skin of 'interest-group pluralism'. The author uses his background in human biology and psychology to discuss the relevance of philosophical and politological issues around democracy raised in past and recent literature, and to highlight the prospects of using scientific knowledge for evidence-based socialization of the "human factor".

The author uses his background in human biology and psychology to discuss the relevance of philosophical and politological issues around democracy raised in past and recent literature, and to highlight the prospects of using scientific knowledge for evidence-based socialization of the "human factor

Autoren/Hrsg.

Auer, L. M.

Leseproben

Foreword to the original edition
"Democrats who do not see the difference between
a friendly and a hostile criticism of democracy are
themselves imbued with the totalitarian spirit"1 Karl Popper In an increasing number of countries worldwide, many people see democracy as the only acceptable political system, for a modern society. The Western world consisting of liberal democratic countries proclaims its values as a universal system, overriding all other civilizations and cultures (I explain in N1 how I attempt to differentiate between the two expressions across the cultural areas which use them differently). The media vehemently praises and defends liberal democracy as the core of our "common good". In doing so, it often attacks the people of its own countries by demonizing the right-wing parties, voted for in a democratic process: some 20% of voters in the Netherlands (PVV), 34% in France (FN), 26% in Austria (FPOE), 12.6% in the UK (UKIP) and Germany (AfD). Liberal politicians across the Western sphere ignore their peoples' anxieties and turn for their part to populistic demonization, creating a new wave of anti-populism populism, instead of taking this development as urgent advice to renovate democracy. Even those voters believed to be complacent and disinterested start waking up, irritated and confused; a political era described as "democracy of not wanting to know" 2 seems to have come to an end rapidly. Many politically interested and active individuals and groups are increasingly frustrated with their politicians' inactivity. Some wish to progress to true democracy, others to its future, whilst others want to "Occupy" it and make it "real", in the same way that Norwegian and British groups stand up for "real democracy" or plan to derail neo-liberalism and fight against "corporatocracy".N2 Thus, democrats start fighting their own political system and dividing their countries. What has gone wrong? In this book, I will argue that democracy was destined to go wrong in the first place due to many inherent flaws and defects in its political construct. My criticism is not new: democracy has been demonized and mocked ever since its existence and first description in history, starting with Socrates, who ridiculed not democracy per se, but its democratic leaders. Similarly, Plato did not have a high opinion of democratic politicians: He wanted democracy altogether replaced by a wise king as a leader.380 Since its very early days, the idea of the people ruling themselves' was a contradiction in itself because it ignored the conflict taking place between individuals and social classes in the real world. Modern democracy was initially characterised by republics that did not want to be democracies, as seen in the early days of the United States of America, the revolutions and slaughter which took place in France, the murder of old and new leaders, and regression into old regimes or dictatorships, as seen in other European countries. In our era, after a seemingly stable episode in the post-WW II Western countries, there is increasing unrest and uncertainty about democracy, as reflected by critical publications on a political system in need of repair, or altogether obsolete: Among political scientists, A.C. Grayling, in his "Democracy and its Crisis", writes that in "two of its leading examples in today's world, the United States and the United Kingdom, representative democracy has been made to fail. Notice these words: "made to fail ... by a combination of causes, all of them deliberate";11 and Jason Brennan calls democracy "a flawed tool",3 and according to . Mounk 4 Donald Trump's election is "the most significant manifestation of democracy's crisis". Several more recent authors put their abgesang into the title of their books – I listed them on p. ?. However, none of the recent authors commented in detail on the most important far-reaching (not a commonly used phrase in English, could be replaced with far-reaching cause of the dilemma: the increasing discrepancies between political and philosophical ideology on the one side, and human nature on the other, – both the individual as such, and its behavior in tribes and crowds. Knowledge about the human factor' has been extensively investigated during the past 120 years by biologists, human ethologists, psychologists and sociologists, but the most fundamental facts have been widely ignored in politics - except for the purpose of exploitation. Therefore, I have made them one of the main topics in this book. Besides, evolutionary factors of individual behavior, tribalism and crowd phenomena are of the same interest as the political activity which uses them: "populism" is one intriguing example. I will show that present democracy is virtually built on contradicting rules and institutions – I call them "a priori flaws" -, as well as being built on paradoxes, both of which, if not changed, guarantee its early decay and disappearance into chaos. The most dangerous development is, however, the desperate neo-liberalists' increasingly populist aggression against their secessionist co-citizens, creating an anti-populist populism, instead of seeking common interests. I did not spend 10 years writing this book, like John Keane,5 and certainly not the 35 years reported from Nahum Capen,6 however, I did spend a lifetime on human nature, its physiology, pathology and psychology, and I researched these political issues and their history for about 3 years. A deeper look into the fundamental ideas, hypotheses and ideologies about democracy revealed an alarmingly large number of further flaws it is riddled with. Since they help to explain the present dissatisfaction with the malfunctions of the political systems in the Western world of liberal democracies, I made these many flaws the second focus of the discussion about the present situation. I considered their analysis essential for the preparation of the third chapter, which includes a discussion of the various proposals for improvement of the present political situation, resulting from the comparison of knowledge of science and philosophy. I hope to have made this final part the most interesting and challenging one of the book. My major motivation for this work has been a feeling of getting dragged towards the maelstrom of a vortex, which appears to be seizing the ongoingly polarized and divided countries that dominate the daily news. Initially, it motivated me to address the responsibilities we have to our descendants. The pace of events, however, has started to accelerate at a rate which makes the written words reality as I write them and forces me to make amendments and additions, while being dragged into that increasingly dark area. The politics of the last weeks and months, which have appeared hectic and hysterical in some regions – whilst alarmingly silent in others – show that: It's time to act now Considering the behavior and reactions of the protagonists, those involved in politics and the media, I have to ask myself, in view of this book: who I am addressing when criticizing those politicians and their parties and strategies whilst at the same time talking about the urgent need for a change in politics? If we want to achieve a peaceful change, decided but patient, then reassessment is required by all of us, dear reader, and I really mean ALL of us, in order to reverse the politicians' attempt to square the circle. It is a call to come to our senses regarding our true situation and its causes, a call on all citizens and officials of all countries whose democratic system is in danger of breaking apart. The call is about a change in views with respect to one decisive circumstance: a democratic State can only exist according to the extent of which its citizens actively contribute to its livelihood. The time has come where it is more important to think of the survival of the community than of one's own advancement, and to consider the others' interests on the same level as one's own. Today's liberal democracies are on the verge of collapsing, undermined and hollowed out from the inside, because too many of us have taken too much for ourselves and contributed too little. Only a change in our basic attitudes will be able to restabilize the political and social imbalance, which is about to spiral out of control. "Equal rights for All" is a grossly simplified circumscription of what needs to happen now, in a time where "equal rights" means "equal duties". Nothing in the world concerning orderly social life happens by itself, effectively, everything has to be done: the most important action necessary to rectify the current situation would be to show consideration for "the others" in one's State, and to consider that all have interests, not only one's own clan or company, and that this clash of interests, instead of fair agreements, is about to bring both the State and the environment to a collapse. History teaches us, that we make a big mistake when continuing on a 'business-as-usual' basis, which we use to reassure ourselves that our daily life is more or less normal anyway. Most of the major changes in social systems have happened explosively until now, to everybody's surprise – and we all know, that our understanding of it will come too late once the explosion starts. Self-evidently this call also addresses professionals in politics and media, who are themselves citizens, as we all are. For them, it can only mean to forego partisan and personal interests and to truly focus on the common good as their primary duty. Moreover, the call reminds them to stop their mutual...