Challenges and Solutions to Democratic Social Governance

About democracy – why it fails and what it takes to make it work

I do not use the term “democracy” in the traditional sense of the word. True democracy demands extended personal and social awareness – intelligence, empathy and compassion. This essay explores the root cause of the failure of democracy as a method for collective social governance. Knowing the root cause of the failure makes the cure for those problems self evident.

Democracy seems like a great system of governance to promote peace, freedom and collective prosperity. It seems to most people that democracy should be a fail-safe system. “Democracy is the best system we have been able to create – in comparison to any other form governance Some of the most brilliant minds throughout history have pooled their resources to create constitutional frameworks that were thought to be more or less fail-safe regarding human rights, checks and balances to assure that any fledgling democracy continues to stay the way it was intended.

Somehow democracy always seems to decay into some mutation of its intention. Freedom, peace and prosperity gets hijacked somewhere along the way.

In this article, I propose to submit the key to understanding how and why democracy always fails to reach and maintain its intended goal over time. If you are able to grasp the concept that I am trying to promote you just might discover a concept that has the potential for changing your life for the better – forever. You will be able to transcend the confusion of endless political discussions and worthless remedies that that never can or will be able to provide lasting solutions to the problems that plague us all.

Democracy defined

In order to create clarity it is necessary to attach a collective meaning to the words we use to define our concepts. The Webster’s dictionary was created to give specific meanings to the words used in the Constitution of the United States of America. The idea was to lock down the understanding of what words really mean. It will be necessary to return to this concept in order to focus on the issues as they are brought into focus.

This is what Webster has to say about “Democracy”: That form of government in which the supreme power rests with the people, ruling themselves either directly, as in the New England town meetings, or indirectly, through representatives aptly expressed By Abraham Lincoln’s phrase “of the people, by the people, for the people”. The modern concept of democracy assumes the political equality of all individuals, the right to private freedom and to petition authority for redress of grievances; a country so governed.

Systems thinking and problem solving

Having a practical education in systems thinking approaches is a great advantage when working with complex matters such as human psychology and human social structures at any level. The complexity of the issues involved is daunting. It has taken me years of analysis to discover what is known as the “root” cause of the problems of human governance and social structures. The advantages of applying this approach are enormous because when the “root cause” of a systems dysfunction is discovered, solutions become immediately obvious. The beauty of it all is that one solution fixes the majority of surface structure symptoms that plague the system at all levels. It may take a while to arrive at the solution, but when it is found, the rest is a downhill ride.

My greatest task is to communicate what the solution is. And convince the reader that the solution is not only real but also practical to realize.

Democracy is a framework for social governance. When working with frames, it is useful to consider the concept of “nesting” – frames within frames – somewhat like the concept of Russian dolls that fit inside each other. Reality is truly a convoluted concept and it is necessary to reach a higher level of perception when dealing with issues such as “democracy” and social structures. This concept is totally in line with more modern concepts of the universe as being represented as a fractal structure.

It coincides completely with the study of human reality – as we can all observe with the right perspective that, “People come out of people in an endless stream of creation” - just to make the concept perfectly obvious.

The outer framework that defines each and every modern civilized society

As a point of reference, I find it useful to create to different distinctions that can be found in all societies throughout history. The link between these two is the idea of how society understands the concept of “competition”.

Again, for the sake of clarity I refer to the Webster’s dictionary so we are all on the same “page” as what it means to “compete” or to adhere to “competition” as a necessary, useful and/or desirable condition.

Compete: To seek or strive for the same thing as another: to carry on a contest or rivalry for a common object: to compete with a person for a thing.

Competition: The act of competing; mutual contest or striving for the same object. Rivalry: a trial of skill proposed as a test of superiority or comparative fitness. In a competition the persons strive to attain a common end, and may have the most friendly feelings towards each other, in rivalry there is rather the desire of one to supplant or get before another and usually a certain hostility.

Competition is a condition that must work together with some level of cooperation. Two or more parts of a cooperative system enter into an agreement to compete, either by free will or by force. It is useful to understand that cooperation is also a condition that will create a “competitive advantage” in any competition.

I find it useful to define competition as the act of serving the will of self at the expense of another. In such a way it must be understood that competition creates only one “winner” while all the other participants are “losers”. Mathematically speaking it is true that competition creates 99.9999% losers at some level, in comparison to the single winner, or winning “team”.

In contrast to the act of competition, we have “Competition free cooperation”. This is defined as the agreement to serve a common goal. The difference between these two concepts is that the last does not create “losers”. Everybody is a “winner” when everybody works together without competition – at a higher and lower scale or scope.

In anthropology, as defined from a “civilized” perspective – the civilized society is based on some level of competition, usually at least for leadership, power, knowledge authority, resources, and last but not least “money” - all of which are deemed to be limited in scope. “Un-civilized” groups of people, have a greater affinity towards competition free cooperation – as a necessity of survival, a choice that often involves not only cooperation between humans, but also between animals, plants and nature itself at many levels.

In nature, and amongst humans, we have endless variations of these two aspects between competition and cooperation without competition. This is a framework that is much larger and more encompassing than any political or social organizational principle. It is this framework that is the crux to understanding why and how democracy works and how and why it fails to work as intended.

Darwin and the theory of competition as useful, natural and desirable

Darwin’s theory of natural evolution is exactly what it says it is – a “theory”. His observations and understandings have been carried throughout the scientific academy as, “Survival of the Fittest” – being interpreted as meaning “Survival of the Strongest”.

It is interesting to note that although Darwin did not necessarily wish to promote the idea that competition was necessary, natural and desirable for promoting survival – or realization of highest “self potential” – it did fit with the general paradigm for human civilizations – at least those that like to call themselves “civilized”. History shows us that “civilized” societies always have been thought to be superior to those that prefer to invoke collective cooperation. They were no match for the power of civilized weaponry in combination with the philosophy of domination to which these adhere.

It is a popular assumption that today’s the “civilized” cultures adherence to competition is recognized by science as a “proven” matter of fact – that competition makes things better, and generally more improved. Most people are taught at an early age that competition is a “fact of life” that cannot be avoided. It is actually sought after, refined, and desired as something that brings the “best” out of products and people.

These assumptions are so prevailing in our modern society that it is difficult to avoid competition at any level of human experience. It is generally assumed by both scientific and religious belief systems that humanity was designed/created to compete, either by natural design/accident – or by “God” himself. The competitive “spirit” flourishes to this day amongst the major religious theological belief systems where each seems to understand that “God” is on their “side” of the competitive game of life.

Those societies that adhere to the philosophy of competition as being desirable and necessary experience competition internally and individually through competition between thinking and feeling, rational and “irrational” processes, through different belief systems that compete between each other at a personal level and even the body functions – such as being “right handed” or “left”, right and wrong.

At the social level of interaction we have competition for “love”, attention, power, authority, gender, time, sexuality, dominance, knowledge, food, resources of all kinds, politics, and of course “money”. At an even more abstract level we compete between ourselves and “nature” at all levels – for the sake of comfort and survival.

In the competitive society we even compete for the sake of entertainment. We play games and compete in all manners of sports. The difference between competition for entertainment and in other aspects of life is the level of “free-will” involved. Where there is free will involved we compete for excitement and entertainment. We can always choose to quite the game when we become tired of competition. It’s an activity that we engage in when we have a surplus of activity. This is not so with the other aspects of competition.

The dynamics between “democracy” and “competition”

Democracy, in its truest sense of the word, is a system of social organization that is inherently based on mutual cooperation. It respects the freedom of informed free will, human rights and the truthfulness of information in a free flow in order to promote intelligent choices to be made. Democracy promotes intelligence in education and even the application of natural talent or “passion” as a matter of personal choice within the boundaries of “civil law” which promotes freedom of choice in the framework of responsibility to “do no harm” to others – person, property or environment.

When competition enters into the equation we will always be able to observe the erosion of these principles due to the fact that having the “competitive advantage” means exerting some sort of action that promotes the agenda of an individual or group at the expense of other individuals or groups of individuals.

The business of making “money” or “earning” a living through earning money is always based on the idea of limited resources. There is never enough for everybody it seems. The system of monetary exchange is designed around the concept of “Money As Debit” – also known as MAD - Economy. The concept of central banking, “fiat” money systems and interest on loans creates an automatic form of scarcity in all forms of political and social organization – be it Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Marxism or Fascism. This kind of system, even democratic governance will always create a pyramidal social structure where the “rich” rule the poor through domination, manipulation, and repression.

Even though democratic social structures have well-defined “rules” of engagement, these rules will always have a tendency to be used to promote the competitive advantage – which of course even creates what we call “criminal” behavior, which is defined by “not following the rules of the game” – a definite competitive advantage.

So… if you ever wondered why democratic principles defined by even the best of Constitutions and “Bills of Rights” seem to fail, sooner or later – you now know that the root cause is “competition”. The more competition and the “greater the stakes” the more anti social behavior it promotes.

What does modern science have to say about competition?

It has been a natural question to ask scientific researchers at all levels of activity – “What is the optimal level of competition that will promote maximum efficiency within any biological or human system”? At the level of engineering the question is always asked in the science of fluid dynamics – the science of “flow”. The question has been asked concerning the human learning process, production processes and all social interactions you could imagine.

You might find the it strange but it is a matter of fact that the optimal level of competition to promote self-actualization or self-realization in any system is “0”, Null, Zero, None at all.

Instead of having to research tedious scientific research papers, you might prefer to consider the fact that any biological living entity is composed of up to trillions of different individual cells – each operating as independent and self sufficient entities with different functions, talents, jobs to do, colors and shapes – but all within the framework of competition free cooperation under a single agenda which can be understood as “vitality”.

The mental and physical health of any living organism is regulated by the quality of this collective cooperation. Competition at any level is always considered as “pain”, “disease”, friction, dysfunction or even death of the organism.

As we consider the environment, we find that any and all organisms are dependent on cooperation within the environment in which they exist. The greater the cooperation between the organism and different factors in the environment, the more sustainable the vitality of the organism involved. This cooperation with the environment is enhanced through bio-diversity while it is degraded through “monocultures”. Both of these conditions exist in nature. Every human being is created through the act of competition where millions of sperm cells compete to get to the female egg first. After that, competition is avoided at all costs. This is why the human immune system exists – to get rid of external environmental competitive elements that do not serve the collective agenda of the organism. It takes a lot of different cells to make a human body function as it does in the name of vitality.

How to make democracy work and why we have no other choice if we are to survive ourselves

Our human society has come to the point of no return as far as competition is concerned. The theory of competition as necessary, unavoidable and desirable within the framework of personal, social and environmental relationships has brought us to the brink of terrible pain, suffering and ultimate self-extinction. If we don’t kill each other through weapons of mass destruction, we will do it through poverty, disease and chronic fatigue. There can be no “winners” with this game – no matter how powerful or technological any part of our collective society has become. The only “Winner” would have to be the “last man standing” all alone on a planet that no longer can support life.

The present situation is so precarious that immediate intervention is necessary in order to survive ourselves. It is therefore necessary to put out an immediate call for an end to all competition – as quickly as humanly possible. The “spirit” of competition has poisoned our souls, our bodies, our food, animals, plants and planet. It’s time to put an end to the confusion and stupidity of our assumptions that seem to demand more and more competition.

By cleaning up our “act” and our Earth, we can reach a level of human potential that most people have never even imagined. Competition in the field of science, military technology and energy has led us to withhold technological advances that could take us to the stars in a short period of time, if we had the desire to do so. It is high time to offer the “Holy Cow” of humanity. We can do so without killing a single human being. The motto is clear.

Kill the competition – save humanity.

I rest my case.

For the love of humanity,

Mike Cechanowicz

Norway

16.05.2012