Two Cheers for Democracy

Not surprisingly, recent events (political, pandemical, political-pandemical, alchemical-conspiratorial, and whatever else you care to mention – it really has been one of those years, hasn't it?) have given rise to a lot of thinking out loud, soul-searching, and speculation about the rules by which we play the game of "society". For example, who determines what these rules are, on what basis, and how far is anyone obliged to follow them? In the mood for yet more baseless speculation? Read on.

Probably the most important set of rules, of course, is "the law". Most of us, I imagine, regard "the law" as a complex and essentially arcane game, truly understood by only a minority of nerdish professional devotees, but one which we can all play in an amateurish way according to our own innate sense of right and wrong, whilst accepting that penalties will be incurred if certain arbitrarily-drawn lines are crossed. For example, in the full knowledge that our conduct may be "illegal"– like, technically – who actually obeys the 70 mph speed limit on a British motorway? No-one. Of course, should a police car appear – or even a harmless Highway Maintenance vehicle, doing its convincing cop-car impression – everyone immediately slows down to 70 or, more likely, 68-ish (and is there anything more calculated to cause an accident than being followed by a patrol car, causing you to divide your attention between the rear-view mirror and the speedometer, rather than concentrating on the road ahead?). Look out, it's the law! As soon as it's gone, of course, everyone heaves a sigh of relief and puts the pedal to the metal once more.

This casual relationship with legality is why one of the great but necessary social unfairnesses has, since ancient times, been ignorantia juris non excusat i.e. that claiming ignorance of the law won't cut it in court. Sadly, if it turns out that just doing my thing is illegal, however harmless or necessary it seems to me, why then, Sir, nemo censetur ignorare legem [1], as the Roman rozzers used to say: we have to assume that you are aware of section 3, para 2 of the relevant legislation, as revised in 1973 and again in 1996 – unlikely as that is and preposterous as it may seem to you – or else where would we be? Lying on the ground riddled with bullets by some other scofflaw with a different set of priorities, that's where. Setting aside the fact that in many countries the scofflaw in question might be employed as a law enforcer, perhaps the very one who has just pulled you over in your car. Look out, it's the law!

Now, I have never studied political theory – I have never so much as opened a book on the subject – but it seems to me (and is doubtless a platitude in political-theoretical circles) that, paradoxically, egalitarian democracy is essentially a religious, and quite likely a Christian idea; or more properly, a Protestant, non-conformist, dissenting church idea, as filtered through the Enlightenment. That is, that no matter how unequal the distribution of attributes, talents and wealth may be in reality, at bottom everyone is born equal in the sight of God and, suitably educated, socialised, and house-trained, is in no need of any priests or police telling us what to do, thank you very much. Everyone? Yes, mate, everyone: even you, you tinfoil-hatted lunatic with your crazy conspiracy theories, and also you, madam, shoving poison-pen letters through your neighbours' letterboxes at night (yes, everyone knows it's you). This conviction – and it is surely more a matter of faith than demonstrable fact – reads directly across into the idea of a "democracy", where more or less everybody in, say, the UK – no matter how stupid, lazy, selfish, wrong-headed, ill-informed, or downright evil they may be (assuming, that is, they're neither a member of the House of Lords nor a serving prisoner, by no means mutually-exclusive categories) – has the right to register to cast their single vote. With the understanding that we all only have that right now after a couple of centuries of agitation by and on behalf of those formerly excluded from that right, generally motivated by this underlying conviction in a base-line equality.

But where do our ideas of "right and wrong", equality, and fairness come from? I don't recall any of that stuff ever being taught at school, and any childish wrong-doing was usually countered by an appeal to some pre-installed but clearly under-developed sense of justice or, in more urgent cases, a summary beating; never once a lecture on Human Rights. Virtually none of us in western, Christian-heritage societies now goes to church [2], so any vestige of belief in an all-seeing eye in the sky keeping a tally of our deeds and misdeeds, with thought-police stationed in every parish, has faded. You might as well say we are all equal in the sight of Bruce Springsteen. Religion? Job done! You can take down that rickety old scaffolding now, the democratic edifice is complete.

There's quite a difference, though, between, people doing the right thing (a) out of some putative instinct, (b) because it's generally agreed to be the right thing and anyway it's what the law requires, and (c) because to do otherwise is to risk eternal damnation. In previous centuries the latter scary bedtime story has surely had a useful damping effect on the excesses of the kind of idiot we've been seeing on the news so often recently, but nothing has really taken its place. In fact it is undeniably true that these same idiots are now the ones ranting about the size of Jesus's gun-rack. So it's not unimportant to ask about that middle way, the way of consensus: where and how do ideas of equality and of what is right and what is wrong – or possibly negotiable by bribe, blind eye, or benefit of clergy [3] – get "generally agreed" upon today, and by whom? AFAIK there is no approved course of study for Platonic philosopher-kings, where the form of the good gets taught (although some people, I'm sure, think PPE at Oxford is precisely that [4]). And what if I dislike or disagree with the consensus? Or if I'm a complete headcase, susceptible to any mad idea that blows my way? There does seem to be a dangerous quantity of untethered artillery rolling about on the deck lately; it must be somebody's job to tie it down or push it overboard, surely?

It will come as no surprise that I have no real answers here. I doubt whether anybody does; a lot seems to rest on that idea that concepts of equality and justice are somehow innate in the human brain, and that "people of goodwill" will always outvote the nutters. Well, hmm, lots of luck with that. So is the democratic house in danger of falling down, or the ship of state in danger of sinking? I had never previously thought so, but that is beginning to seem complacent: I have listened to enough fervently-believed mass lunacy recently – whether it be the conviction that Covid-19 is spread by 5G transmission masts, or that anti-Covid vaccinations can edit your DNA and probably insert microchips that will render you into an unwilling slave of Microsoft (no need: aren't we already?), never mind far-out stuff like Trump being the instrument of God's will in bringing about the End Times – that I am seriously wondering whether there is an urgent need to remove the right to vote from some people, or at the very least institute some sort of "qualified voter test". But who will decide the criteria and the standards to be met? From where I stand, there is only one sensible answer: Me.

Now, I am a man in whom a residual spiritual impulse – doubtless an alien microchip implanted in me as a child along with my measles inoculation – is in a constant wrestling match with a deep skepticism. As skepticism knows all the dirty tricks, it usually wins. However, the struggle doesn't strike me as pointless. G.K. Chesterton's words are truer today than ever: "When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything." Today, once you step outside the tightly-guarded compound of rationality, with positivist science secure in its innermost bunker, you are surrounded by the babble of crystal healers, aromatherapists, conspiracy-theorists, and a thousand other cynical snake-oil merchants trying to monetize credulity.

Artists – and I'm still hesitant to place myself in that company – almost by definition, are particularly susceptible to hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo (not to mention artsy-fartsy shilly-shallying, or topsy-turvy razzle-dazzle); if they're not buying it, then they're busy selling it. I was browsing through a collection of "inspirational" extracts from well-known artists, writers, and songwriters, and was struck by some common threads. There was much of the usual nonsense about following your dream, which is just annoying; more usefully there was a minority insisting on the value of actually getting down to hard labour, such as this from Chuck Close: "Inspiration is for amateurs – the rest of us just show up and get to work". But there was another thread, of which this is exemplary:

If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery — isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.
Charles Bukowski, Factotum

Sounds great, doesn't it? It's the romance of the outsider, shot through with righteous self-justification and a strong undercurrent of messianic self-pity: "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not." (Isaiah 53:3).  We've surely all been privileged to have such moments, alone with the gods in our ecstatic shining nights, lying in the gutter gazing up at the oddly wobbly stars. No? Well, if you haven't, you have my profound sympathy. But this is such pernicious bullshit as a creed: anyone seeking to lead a life led at that pitch of self-absorption who is not also blessed with considerable talent and/or a trust-fund is, as guys like Bukowski well know, likely to die alone, cold and hungry, a burned-out, rejected and resentful never-was. The flaming fire must cool, be transmuted into some more permanent medium, and end up as meaningful work: words on a page, paint on a canvas, whatever. Listen to Chuck Close, people. Those laughing gods won't write your book or paint your pictures for you, but it will amuse them to steal them from you, like rolling a drunk. Or it would, if they existed anywhere outside your own fevered imagination.

As with all such histrionic talk, religion and fringe politics included, under further, more intensely skeptical interrogation – fetch... the comfy chair, Cardinal Fang! – it generally emerges that we're actually talking figuratively here; you don't really need to lose your mind to write poetry, silly! Are you mad? And, what? You actually went and stormed the Capitol? That's not at all what I meant when I said, "let's storm the Capitol"! And, please, let's not get into the "72 virgins" thing. So, fine, it's all metaphors, but there's nothing metaphorical about dying alone, cold and hungry, a burned-out, rejected and resentful never-was, or going to jail for sedition or terrorist acts. Why even pretend to urge such craziness on gullible fools?

Faced with increasingly frequent outbreaks of extremity in public behaviour following the mass consumption of metaphors, sometimes nudging 11 on the Bukowski Scale, it seems the only antidote the political caste have on the shelf, apart from repressive policing measures, is the comparatively pallid vision of someone like E.M. Forster, a sort of English rice pudding to mollify the fiery Bukowskian habanero pepper, a C of E-style compromise to counter the radical ravings of street-corner Pentacostals:

I believe in aristocracy, though – if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.

E.M. Forster, "What I Believe"

An aristocrat? Who, me? Jolly kind of you to say so, Eddie, old chap! If nothing else, I certainly do know how to take a joke; I've had lots of practice. I'm not so sure about the mob outside banging on the windows, though.

In 2021 it's hard not to laugh at Forster's faith in a plucky-but-sensitive freemasonry of goodwill (let's assume he could take a joke, too). But this is actually the essence of a certain brand of establishment thinking, which in its more active form is expressed by Edmund Burke's famous formulation: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". But so much depends on your definitions of "good" and "evil", though, doesn't it? Not to mention "men". And the tragically comical thing is that this is exactly what the politicians and the movers and shakers thought was their bulwark against the crazy whims of the unwashed mob: government by an in-crowd aristocracy or chumocracy, lightly got up as democracy for the sake of appearances but actually noocracy, i.e. rule by the aforementioned, self-styled philosopher-kings, whose elevated conventional wisdom always seems to coincide handily with the interests of those whose spectacularly disproportionate inequality with the vast majority is never – and, it seems, must never be – in question. Which is exactly what the mob – not so unwashed these days [5]  – is so fucking angry about, isn't it? That old joke has worn thin.

I have always liked the venerable anarchist slogan: "Whoever you vote for, the government still gets in" (a.k.a. "Don't vote: it only encourages them"). It's hardly a program for action, though, and these days I do always vote, if only with a certain gloomy prescience, and recognise that, electorally, encouraging the like-minded to sulk in their tents is not a winning strategy; but the slogan still has a certain wake-up effect, like a Zen koan. For, as St. Paul very nearly put it, there is neither Labour nor Tory, there is neither Lib Dem nor SNP, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Parliament. But, by some mysterious alchemy, it seems the energy of popular discontent with the political status quo has largely swung over to the extreme right, and has even been hijacked and turned inside-out on social media, ending up with an array of truly alarming absurdities like "we are ruled by alien lizards and Satan-worshipping paedophiles". Wait, what? Are you kidding? Ah, these are those metaphors again, aren't they? But apparently not.

So Two Cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three.

E.M. Forster, "What I Believe"

No occasion and no time, either, Eddie. Look out, here they come... This is getting serious. I know it's a 20 mph zone and the law is the law but I'm getting out of here, fast!

1. "Nobody is considered to be ignorant of the law".

2. Yes, yes, America is different... As so clearly demonstrated in recent times. But from here one gets the impression that most church-going Americans are mainly trying to hit Jesus up for a cash windfall to spend while waiting for The Rapture.

3. It used to be the case that you could avoid the death penalty by claiming to be a priest, proof of which was reciting the first verse of Psalm 51 in Latin, the so-called "neck verse". All together now: "Miserere mei, Deus..."

4. Not "personal protective equipment", but "Philosophy, Politics, and Economics". Notice BTW the absence of the so-called "Oxford comma" in the linked website.

5. Did you see the analysis of exactly who stormed the US Capitol? "Political scientists at the University of Chicago who studied the profiles of arrestees and published their conclusions in the Atlantic found that many were middle-class and middle-aged – with an average age of 40. Almost 90% of them had no known links with militant groups. Some 40% were business owners or with white-collar jobs, and they came from relatively lucrative backgrounds as 'CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants'" (Guardian, 6th Feb 2021).