I don't know why Jay wastes so much energy on his scientocracy scheme which
just ain't never gonna happen.
Unfortunately, I agree, dieoff could happen. So Jay's scheme is much like
announcing on the Titanic that there will be a forum on improving vessel
designs. In the circumstances, it would be much more practical to work with
what you've got.
So far as I know, democracy is working passably well in some countries such
as the Scandinavian nations and the Netherlands. So maybe Jay's notion of
democracy is limited to what's found in the USA--and I'll admit that what we
have in Canada is only modestly better and has been deteriorating.
It is a cheap copout to claim that politicians by their very nature are
liars. I have met a certain number who, I believed, were public-spirited
people trying to make a difference in their community.
So why doesn't the political process work better in Canada and the USA and
many other countries? I believe a large part of the answer is that we allow
corporations to fund political parties and their election campaigns. The
people at the top in a party end up not wanting to rock the boat for their
so-generous donors. In some nations a great part of the election campaign is
financed out of public funds, so that elected officials will not be
beholden.
I know it won't be easy to bring about a change like this. But it's
possible. An 89-year old grandmother is walking coast-to-coast in the USA to
promote a petition for campaign finance reform. One posting on this list
mentioned that George Soros is bankrolling some efforts in that direction.
It could happen that our democracy could become ... more democratic. Ranting
at people that they have to set up a scientocracy is asking for the
impossible to happen.
Victor Milne
FIGHT THE BASTARDS! An anti-neoconservative website
at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/pat-vic/
LONESOME ACRES RIDING STABLE
at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/
-----Original Message-----
From: Jay Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: February 24, 1999 11:51 AM
Subject: Democracy is the opiate of the masses.
>>Jan:
>>
>>I know one thing for certain: it's not you and people who harbour such
>>ideas, going to save the world, you just make things more difficult for
>
>Jan has political ambitions and provides a good study of the political
>character. We notice at once that the political character can not actually
>admit the Titanic is indeed sinking, because that would put him in the
>untenable position of having to supply a solution -- which he obviously
>can't do.
>
>The democratic process is best thought of as "government by popularity
>contest". And since, as Lord Russell (and many others) have pointed
>out, the certainty of a lie is more popular than the uncertainty of the
>truth, the democratic process selects for the best liars.
>
>In our society, the political character must excel at lies -- excel at
>doubletalk and "doublethink" -- in order to win his popularity contest:
>
> "His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To
> know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while
> telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two
> opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and
> believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate
> morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was
> impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to
> forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back
> into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then
> promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same
> process to the process itself - that was the ultimate subtlety:
> consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to
> become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.
> Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of
> doublethink." -- George Orwell, 1984
>
>In our society, the function of the political character is to not to
>actually solve problems -- our Founding Fathers reserved "problem
>solving" for the moneyed-class.
>
>Madison even went so far as to boast that "the true distinction" between
>ancient regimes and the proposed experiment in government "lies in the
total
>exclusion of the people in their collective capacity."
>http://dieoff.com/page168.htm ]
>
>In our society, the function of the political character is to simply
>reassure and calm the common herd animals with soothing,
>meaningless sounds.
>
>To paraphrase Marx: "Democracy is the opiate of the masses."
>
>Jay
>
>
>
>
