Democracy

In a recent news bulletin it was mentioned that a bomb went of at an election meeting in Iraq. In the byline it said that 30 people are killed every day in Iraq. The number of casualties of the 9/11 attack are estimated to 2,996 people. Divide that by 30 and you get a hundred days. Iraq was invaded the 19th of March 2003. So. What is democracy? It is the gift that we in the west gave to Iraq and Afghanistan. Is it a way of governing a country that gives the power into the hands of the people? Perhaps the liberation from despotic leaders (and establishment of easier to handle regimes) in some very geo-political significant countries? When we speak of democracy, are we talking about the same thing when we talk about democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq or when we talk about it is the western countries?

What is it not

I own a book named "What is democracy?" it is (more or less) a 240 page long essay with some sentences that in themselves are real brain twisters. For obvious reasons I haven't read the complete book. Being as that is, I'd rather discuss what democracy is not. From my standpoint:

Democracy is not a system where the people of a country vote in an informed manner based on their own position and needs and hence attain a government that will look after the interests that are closest at heart to the majority of the voters.

Now, why on earth would it be that? Well, the reason why I mention it is because this seems to be the somewhat fuzzy idea most people have about democracy. Now, why wouldn't it be like that? First of all. Humans are not rational beings. Psychological experiments have proven again and again that by placing people in specific situations you can make them internalize values, or act in a manner that would seem contradictory to the values you (and the victim) thought he had. The biggest such experiment perhaps being Nazi-germany. The brain is much better at trying to argue for why the choices you make are rational than to indeed make rational choices. This is why political advertisement is a good idea for politicians. And a horrible idea for what we could call democratic "ideals". There is one famous add put in by the republicans that just had the text "democRATS", with RATS being written in red color. Informing the citizen? No. Affecting the citizen? Yes. It has been said that the party backed by Ruport Murdoch has won the british election since a long time back. I can't find a source confirming this, but it would make sense.

Failed States

What is said to divide the so called failed states (countries that apply the democratic principle but that we in general acknowledge aren't working very well anyway) are the institutions. If a country has strong democratic institutions the democracy will function well even when not so democratic forces gets elected. Of course, many of wests former colonies, as well as newly created countries where we, or the people themselves, have overthrown inconvenient leaders, have not had time to form strong institutions that are independent enough to withstand undemocratic forces. If I look at my own country, Sweden, one such institution would be the parlament (riksdagen). As part of the democratic process the proceedings from riksdagen are made available both online or through TV-broadcasting during the working hours. Riksdagen is the institution that among other things voted yes to the FRA-law, allowing an institution directly tied to the government, with no public control organ and hence no transparency, to spy on all swedish citizens. This voting process was performed in the beginning of the summer when usually no interesting things happen in the government. The prime minister was not even present for the vote and there didn't seem to be much will to raise an open debate about this, from the democratic ideal, rather important question. Now, many members of the parlament opposed the idea of the FRA-law, why not.. If you opposed the Soviet union spying on their citizens, why wouldn't you oppose your own country doing the same thing? In practice though? Many of the people that opposed the law, still voted for it when the vote was performed. Only two or three people actually voted according to their own integrity and not according to the demands put forward by their party. So, if riksdagen can pass such a law? Completely bypassing the democratic ideals, would this mean that it is also a failed institution? I would say yes. Still, we won't call Sweden a failed state, because people aren't being killed daily by political motivated violence. In truth, in between having a job, a family, a house to take care of and some spare time, very very few people actually engage in society as political entities. And when you look at the democratic ideal, it assumes that all or most members of a country are political entities.
As a by-note here I would encourage anyone to look at the proceedings from riksdagen, if you do you will quickly realize that it is more or less a theatre. No one will change his standpoint or even acknowledge if good arguments are put forward by the other side. Usually just a core message more often than not rooted in a catchy slogan is hammered through in the debates.

Good Old Churchill

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

you might recognize the above quote from Churchill. It is the one we can comfort us with to think that there is no problem. When criticism of democracy arrises it might sometimes feel uncomfortable, we might acknowledge that there are some shortcomings. Maybe we watched one or two of those hearings from the parlament and realized that being led by those people doesn't really make you feel safe. Then you can use Churchill's quote and draw the conclusion that there is no other solution. In fact you might think that there really isn't any problem either. Of course the government must be allowed to put surveillance on everyone without transparency. How would we otherwise be able to protect ourselves from becoming a totalitarian regime? I believe that Churchills quote really puts little to no faith in humanity. To really think that with all the creativity that exists in us. With all our ability to cooperate and create great things. It wouldn't be possible to create a human centered way of governing a country. A way that wouldn't need beggars in the streets, or that wouldn't make the amount of subscribed drugs to continue to sky rocket. Even the native americans have been quoted surprised by seeing begging children in the streets of the western cities. According to the quote this was something they didn't have, and couldn't imagine since they cherished their children. And now we are talking more than a hundred years ago (!). We have never been able to produce as much as we can now. Yet still we are, according to the reporters, in a global crisis. How did that happen?

Focus

What profit will a person have if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?

People who know me,  even people that have just happened to have been around me know that I have a special relationship to cell phones in general and smart phones in particular. Being smart, these phones don't like me. I figure it is because they've realized I don't like them. Now, this blog post is not going to be about mobiles, but they will serve as a good starting point to another weak point of the modern society. Lets call it the big distraction.

When you think of history it is easy to imagine that things have remained relatively unaltered for a long time. General statements like "there have always been crisis around, and it has always been solved" or "the pendulum always turns in society" serve as soothing mental pictures depicting a society where perhaps the surface changes, but where people remain people and the semantic core remains the same.
Now, lets jump 15 years back in time, and we'll be back in my school days. People had started having mobile phones at school. The ones with the Nokia could even play snake and there was a rumor that if you filled the whole screen, you would win the newest model. SMS was starting its revolution, but still it was limited how much things you did with your phone. Quite unlike the App frenzy of today.

Now, I see it as relatively undisputed that the usage of cell phones among young kids and the society as a whole has increased immensely compared to 15 - 20 years ago. People would probably agree with me on that. I would also say that this usage affects people. Not only social patterns but people in both a mental and physiological sense. Why do I think so? Well there is this study, but there have also been experiments conducted that I can't find online now, where students have been forbidden to use the cell phone in school. The result? The students felt less stressed and more focused. Just like you can train your muzzles to be strong, your ability to focus is also something that you can either strengthen or neglect. The ever growing flora of electronic devices, all of them screaming for peoples attention is making peoples ability to focus weaker.

Or seen from another angle. Today there exists a billion dollar industry involving engineers as well as sociologists whose only aim is to make you pay more attention to specific apps or web pages. The company King for example produces online games and games for phones and tablets. They employ not only software developers but also many statisticians and sociologists that analyze the big data to find out how they can make people stay longer in the game and click more. Did you ever stop using facebook for a while? Notice all the sudden e-mails you start getting, reminding you that facebook exists? For your convenience? Most likely it is proven that sending these e-mails will make the chance higher that you start using facebook again, even though you by your free will stopped using it. Did you know that the color of the links at google are engineered to maximize the likelihood of you clicking them? Many colors have been tested and the current color proved to be the most efficient. The point is, the average citizens usage of electronic devices not only stems from his/her needs, but also in big part from a multi billion industry that engineers how to affect you into using the devices more.

So the smart phone and the tablet are the Virus? Remove them and people retain their focus? Unfortunately - not likely. Travelled with a train or a bus with a TV with constant commercials on? Ever sit in restaurant with a TV in it? Ever see the commercial signs in the city where the picture changes ever so often? Watched any series lately? Any general TV? Listened to any pod casts? Could you imagine that say 80 or 90 years ago non of this existed. What did people focus on? Perhaps they had time to think? I remember studying for an exam in my engineering class. There was an assignments from an old exam. These exams will always have six questions, where number one is the easiest and number six the most difficult. The assignment was number three from it's old exam. Still it was by far more tricky and difficult than the last assignment was on the actual exam we got. It might be that school results still are OK, but after studying old text books it seems obvious that the way we study the subjects today is with a lot less depth than the way they used to study them. The technological society is a mentally lax society.

Planned Obsolescence

There is really no point to strike around the bush. Planned obsolescence is the natural consequence of the rules that have been set up for our society. It is the reason why garbage piles heap up in 3rd world continents, at a safe distance from our own view. It is the pump that makes the blood circulate through our economy. Without it, the global society would dry up and wither. With it the global garbage piles up and pollutes. A documentary on the subject can be seen here:

The documentary highlights two different version of planned obsolescence. The cynic would argue that one is much more harmless, perhaps even innocent than the other. I would say that both are as bad. In one case planned obsolescence means that a company would design their product in such a way that it will break within a pretty short timespan, hence forcing the consumer to buy a new product. A good example is a cell phone or an ipad that typically don't have a physical lifespan longer than three to five years (you could compare that with my old Amiga computer at home that still starts). Because the product breaks the consumer will buy a new one, hence upholding the revenue stream for the company. The more innocent kind of planned obsolescence is (once again) typically explained with the cell phone. It is when the producer don't create a physically weak product, but instead they create a product so tied to together with fashion that even though the product is not broke, the consumer will want to buy the newest model instead. Even though the newest model most often don't contribute very much in terms of new functions that the consumer actually needs.
Now, in one case the consumer is tricked, because he is buying something that up front is bad quality, in the other case he is not tricked, he is simply convinced into "upgrading" his product (throw away his old model and buy a new one). In either case, the result for the planet is the same. Huge piles of waste build up.
Why is this a problem related to the modern society? Consumerism is an ideology that grew up out of necessity as the means of production quickly grew more efficient than the need of consumption. The economy, that is built to always grow, needed people to work, but what is the point to work when you are producing something that no one needs to buy? You simply need to create the demand. Advertisement is one way of creating demand (and it is of course tied to the second form of planned obsolescence) but for some commercial products, coolness simply isn't a factor. The main case that is used in the light bulb conspiracy is that of... the light bulb. The producers of this simply product realized at one point in time that if light bulbs didn't break, the demand for new light bulbs would soon diminish. So also the need for the light bulb factories. By tweaking the light bulbs slightly they managed to give them a good trade of lifetime, and this way keep society's demand on their product.
Nothing in modern society is more central than the economy. Every breath taken by politicians is used to enforce the vitality of the "economy". Governing a country is pretty much about making the math add up, and keeping the pump running. If it stops, mass unemployment could be the consequence. This way, most political decisions taken by any government in almost any country in the world is taken to upholding the economy. Everything from arranging child care so that mothers and fathers can work instead of spending time with their children to privatizing the social system so that revenue becomes the chief interest of any factor of society. If a politician would ever speak about the environment, you can feel pretty certain that the positive decisions he might be willing to take for creating a more sustainable society most likely are leveled out or reversed by the many negative ones he is ready to take for the economy. When for example focusing on global warming and emission of green house gases, the global pollution in recent years have only decreased when there has been a global recession.