Can Democracy secure the future?
The pressing question of current American political times is asked repeatedly: "Why can't the two parties compromise and let this country move on?" The underlying assumption, since the inception of our Constitutional government, is that our form of democracy is the best way to secure a prosperous and peaceful solution for mankind on this planet.
To some extent his has proven true in many areas of human endeavors. After all, it gave slaves freedom, women the right to vote, the end of segregation, child protection laws, and the list goes on, including the current push to gain equal rights for gays. But these are all issues of justice, fairness, and social tolerance. None of these issues were genocidal to human survival on our planet. Human societies had survived and prospered (at least for many) for centuries with all these injustices riveted in place.
BUT, and this is where current times hit the wall: a majority is not always right. When it comes to justice for more and more diverse populations, there WAS time to bring a majority around to support more justice for particular groups. Furthermore, the injustices could be corrected at any point in time. Once corrected, the changes usually held and the progress tended to be permanent.
Most of the crucial issues of our times are of a different nature. Almost all of them pertain to survival of life on this planet as we currently know it. Human overpopulation, climate change, dwindling natural resources, health care costs, pollution, food supplies, soil erosion, massive species extinctions, and so on are both different in nature and time sensitive. All of these problems are solvable given majority support but none of them can be solved overnight. It took many, many decades to create these problems and it takes many, many decades to reverse these problems. All these problems are due to human activities.
And therein lies a problem never before faced in human history. As long as a MAJORITY of the people do not give high priority to responsible human reproduction, climate change, health care issues, pollution, soil erosions, massive species extinction, then no serious actions---the kind which require real sacrifice and discipline----can be taken. How can compromise occur on these kind of issues? There is no compromise like "Well, let's half way survive".
Furthermore, since all of these are global issues, how can any one, or group of countries, solve any of these problems on their own? Bluntly put, there is a hefty financial and personal cost to addressing any of these issues. Even more bluntly: to wait until the human suffering from these issues is globally bad enough to do anything, is too late. None of these global issues can be solved overnight. For example, by the time there is a majority consensus globally that climate change is unbearable, it is too late. It took decades and centuries for the climate to change and it would take decades and centuries to reverse the process. If anyone seriously thinks human population on this planet can double, without severe consequences, as it has in my lifetime, they are dead from the neck up. It doesn't make much difference where all this population growth occurs on the planet since the pressure on food, water, natural resources, pollution, etc. will be there no matter where the increases are occurring.
To be more specific, if anyone thinks democracy is the answer to a country like Haiti, they are incredulously dense. There is nothing left in Haiti. Unrestricted human activities have seen to that--- the trees are gone, the topsoil subsequently washed into the ocean, there are no industries to speak of, no ability to grow enough food, literally little space left and what is left is worthless space. They are essentially doomed. This is no isolated irrelevant disaster---it is a forerunner of what is coming down the pike for every other country on our planet (democracies are not exempt and are part of the problem). There are simply some problems which cannot wait for any majority to come around and act, because the time for action is now, or maybe already past, and any actions in the future will be too little, too late.
Even when a majority kind of senses there are real global problems like climate change, which will demand sacrifice---financial and otherwise---the battle then commences to see which political party can amass a majority who will then impose the financial consequences on the support base of the other party. When a state needs more revenue for whatever, there is never any discussion of how to spread the sacrifice around to everyone, but the battle is over which groups are going to pay and which groups will be spared any sacrifice. So far the wealthy are winning this battle, in part because members of Congress are wealthy themselves. Of course for the wealthy to amass even more wealth---more piles of THINGS---the money has to come from somewhere. It can't come from the poor because they don't have anything to give, and thus it must come from the middle class and that will just throw more of them into the poor category.
Add to this a Congress that functions in such a way that a minority can prevent anything from being done at all. They can block any program, many Presidential appointments---knowing that if nothing is allowed to change, things will get worse, and if they get worse enough, then the people will get angry and if they get angry enough, perhaps they will vote for the minority party. It is a modern case of Nero, only in this case while Congress fiddles, the planet burns.
Have a good day. But hurry up, before a good day becomes unattainable.
