the challenge of democracy

Political involvement too often ends up being the tail that wags the dog. We can become so focused on our side winning that we lose sight of the only justifiable reason to get involved with politics in the first place – to participate in a democratic process whereby collaborative solutions that serve the greater good have a chance to emerge. Attempts at persuasion are rarely successful, yet some people never tire of posting their polemics on Facebook or getting in people’s faces with flecks of spit flying from their mouths. Parties and family gatherings are ruined. Friendships are sacrificed on the altar of the all important cause.

The desire to obliterate our opponents can eclipse the advancement of what we say we are for. The current political process has become so polarized that agreeing on anything is impossible and nothing is ever accomplished. It is a climate that is ripe for trolls and other crazy-makers. Crazy-makers sow discord, create drama and distraction, make false or nonsensical claims, intimidate, and manipulate ‒ all in order to disorient people, throw them off balance, and cause them to doubt their perception, their memory, and even their sanity.

It is the nature of politics for there to be pathological participants and malignant conflicts, but our political situation seems particularly toxic. Certain segments of the electorate have influence that is disproportionate to their numbers. Hate-fueled rhetoric that would previously been isolated on the fringe has gained mainstream status, holding sway over otherwise decent human beings. Seemingly sensible citizens morph into to the modern equivalent of an angry mob with pitchforks.

Few experiences are more terrifying than being in the midst of an angry mob that is armed with the belief that they represent the majority and is emboldened by its allegedly democratic inspiration (rather than being duly constrained by a more truly democratic spirit of circumspection and respect for other points of view). The most atrocious collective decisions are frequently driven by the pursuit of what is believed at the time to be the greater good. We say we want people to be engaged and empowered. We celebrate free speech and a free press. We insist that everyone has a voice and vote. Nonetheless, no matter how necessary the basic rights and freedoms that we associate with democracy might be, they are incapable in themselves of producing wise collective decisions, a demonstration that there is more to a well-functioning democracy than “majority rules” and a reminder that a little bit of knowledge is dangerous.

The situation becomes even worse when information is manipulated, distorted, and filtered by powerful, deep-pocket enemies of a free, open, and inclusively participatory democratic process. Information available to us is never perfect to begin with, but in the skilled hands of unscrupulous demagogues who are able to massage and carefully craft what gets communicated to the public, it can be not only blatantly deceptive; it can be manipulated to provoke certain responses. Well-honed techniques of con artists – shilling, shell games, bait and switch, empty promises, playing on fears, flattering the mark, and outright lying – are all in display in the political arena.

Stupidity and cupidity can all too handily gain the upper hand and crush everything in their path. Breakdowns and roadblocks arise with frustrating frequency. That’s not surprising, given how difficult it is to have all of the pieces necessary for a wise democratic process fall into place. Even smart people who are united around a desire to do the right thing frequently not only fail to produce wise decisions; outcomes can be disastrous – thus the proverb, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” The danger is even greater when loyalty to the cause is strong, moral fervor runs deep, and passions are inflamed. The worst hatred is fueled by earnest devotion to causes and ideas that seem all important to those who believe in them. Historically, some of the most brutal wars have been fought in the name of religion.

As the popularity and persistence of urban legends and paranoid conspiracy theories illustrate, most people are far less interested in verifying what is being reported than they are in collecting factoids and seemingly plausible explanations that entertain and handily fill in some gaps in their narratives of what is going on in the world. The end result is that the process becomes a pooling of ignorance and a reinforcement of each other’s biases. When deliberation occurs in an echo chamber or in a black hole of misinformation, stupidity is multiplied. It’s garbage in, garbage out.

Democracy, in the words of Winston Churchill, is “the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”. Without the checks and balances that are central to the democratic process, there are no real protections against violations of human rights and having basic freedoms trampled upon, but there is no guarantee that decisions arrived at through an ostensibly democratic process will serve the best interests of the participants, or even that they will not conspire to give away their own freedom. Erich Fromm, in his book Escape from Freedom argues that many people fear the existential uncertainty that comes with freedom and consequently retreat into authoritarianism and conformist huddling. Fromm, as a native German, witnessed the rise of Nazism first hand. Hitler’s abridgments of democratic freedoms and assaults on human dignity were very popular with the German people.

Fortunately though, even recalcitrant and impatient participants are able to work through difficult impasses if they have sufficient reason to do so, as is convincingly illustrated by the classic film “12 Angry Men”, which interestingly was made in the 1950s, a decade otherwise famous for mindless conformity in the US. The film is a story of a jury that threads its way toward a sound decision in spite of the fact that, in the beginning, eleven of the jurors have already made up their minds to take the line of least resistance and convict an innocent kid. What makes “12 Angry Men” such a powerful and relevant film is the high stakes involved and the improbability of getting to a happy ending. With the life of a vulnerable human being hanging in the balance, the dialogue hooks our emotions. It is easy to identify with each of the characters and to understand why the jury came so close to giving him the death penalty, how much easier it clearly would have been to do so, how much better sticking to their smugly self-righteous beliefs would have felt, and how much sense their false beliefs made to them prior to the uncomfortable questions that were raised by one lone voice in their midst.

So democratic decisions actually can be guided by intelligence and wisdom that are greater than the sum of the parts. But is it realistic to expect large democratic societies to find a way to overcome, with any consistency, the stupidity and cupidity that so often afflicts our social, economic, and political lives? 17^th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes didn’t think so. He wrote that without a strong top-down authority who can enforce the social order by invoking fear and awe, we find ourselves in a perpetual state of “war of all against all”. Human nature inclines us to be not only selfish, short-sighted, and mischievous, but also to even be horrifically inhumane at times.

Nonetheless, the familiar narrative about the selfishness that is inherent in human nature is only part of the story. Wanting to do the right thing is actually not an uncommon human attribute. History has demonstrated repeatedly that ordinary people, under the right circumstances, display amazing amounts of courage, compassion, and willingness to put their own personal interests aside. To be human is to embody a paradox. When someone says “I’m only human”, they mean that they are incapable of being perfect, but when they say “it’s the human thing to do”, they’re talking about an astonishing set of qualities having to do with empathy, conscientiousness, kindness, and being responsive to need. And the many wars throughout history notwithstanding, what is most salient is the natural human talent for cooperation and intricate coordination of complex collaborative efforts.

What can the fictional situation portrayed in “12 Angry Men” teach us about real world situations? Can we extract whatever it was that enabled the jury to avert an unconscionable verdict? One takeaway point might be that the film is about the importance of critical thinking. The approach used by the twelfth juror (played by Henry Fonda) was circumspect and probing. He asked reasonable questions rather than resorting to frothy or poignant pleading. He calmly urged his fellow jurors to take a step back and reconsider what they were about to do. The initial problem wasn’t that the jurors were uncaring. None of them argued that not caring was in itself the right thing to do. The jury’s deliberation raised complex questions about what it means to care, reframed their task, and shifted them into an alternative perspective. The jurors were, one by one, able to overcome blindness and numbness, gain a sense of proportionality, grasp the big picture, appreciate deeper moral implications, become concerned about actual consequences, and examine their priorities.

It is said that you can’t fix stupid, but people, in general, are not as stupid as they often seem to be. Contrary to all appearances, the kind of stupidity that can’t be fixed is not the problem. While there are plenty of obvious examples of stupid people doing stupid things and while even smart people have blind spots and biases, what gets us into the most trouble is not so much a failure on the part of individuals to think critically. The main problem we face is with the group dynamics in the process by which decisions get made. We need to learn how to find our way out of the collective blindness and irresponsibility that sets in as the result of tunnel vision, mob psychology, and demagoguery. In other words, the challenge that is in front us now is greater than the need for individuals to be better informed, to be better thinkers, and to make better choices. Our challenge is being able to foster an environment in which a truly democratic process is what people actually want. That involves swimming against the current. There is too much at stake to do otherwise.

Our problem is not a lack of ideas to choose from or a lack of talent. What we have trouble with is getting the ideas out of the heads of those who hold them and translating those ideas into actual action. While there is no shortage of astonishingly smart people, there frequently is a shortage of people who are willing to perform the crucial civic duty that was modeled by the twelfth juror in “12 Angry Men” – speaking up. That is perfectly understandable. It’s a great nuisance to go out on a limb and risk being greeted with responses ranging from being ridiculed to being subjected to the old human custom of killing the messenger. As in the Hans Christian Anderson folktale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, everybody is reticent to articulate the obvious. But there is another aspect to the problem that is even more difficult.  Even when individuals are willing to stand up and enter the fray, insistently challenging the status quo, their observations, insights, and questions fall on deaf ears, fail to generate any interest, and eventually die of neglect. It is a difficult problem because there is no silver bullet, and there are many obstacles. Therein is the crux of the matter under consideration here.

How can we bring about a more intelligent political process? What do we need to do that we are not already doing? There is no absence of efforts to elevate public discourse. The signal-to-noise ratio might be poor at times, but amidst the mindless (and sometimes hysterical) murmuring there is a tremendous amount of outright brilliance and remarkable resourcefulness. And while many of the ideas in the mix might be unrealistic or would lead to greater problems than the ones they are meant to solve, that is a necessary feature of the process. The main rule of brainstorming is to give even the most far out ideas a chance. Seemingly stupid ideas turn out to not be stupid after all. In fact, most real breakthroughs started out as ideas that seemed ridiculously unrealistic when they were first introduced, ran contrary to the best thinking of almost everyone in the discussion, and provoked fear and hostility because of how radically the ideas threatened status quo understandings.

That critical thinking can be so painfully lacking in public discourse is an obvious culprit. It is easy to be so caught up in emotionalism and self-absorbed nonsense that we fail to notice our false assumptions and flawed reasoning and forget to pay attention to the actual consequences of our choices. If more people made intelligent, evidence-based choices in the voting booth and in every area of their lives, we could easily solve many of our most troubling social problems. That is not to say people are stupid; they just lack the confidence, independence, and fortitude to question what seems obvious to everybody, so too often a herd mentality sets in. The rampant stupidity of smart people who have fallen under the spell of a herd mentality is well documented.

The most important argument for public education has always been that an effective democracy depends on an informed citizenry, but what that involves is not just knowing facts. It has been said that education is what remains after you have forgotten everything you learned in school. The critical thinking skills and intellectual maturity that remain after everything else is forgotten enable citizens to:

• Evaluate source material and discern the real from the deceptively plausible
• Assess arguments based on their merit rather than kneejerk, ad hominem prejudices
• Reach beyond the party line
• Recognize our own biases
• Compare notes with others, connect the dots, infer subtle and hidden details, and grasp the big picture
• See through the cover-ups and the manufactured narratives
• Hold politicians, ourselves, and each other accountable
• Adopt attitudes and practices that facilitate a deliberative collective decision-making process
• Nurture an environment in which insight can grow and complex problems can be patiently addressed by working together
• Listen
• Be OK with having our beliefs challenged

Being a responsible citizen is hard work; it’s even harder when we add in the responsibility for teaching each new generation to ask tough questions and to act on the inconvenient belief that democracy is worth the trouble. It is easier to make education solely about job training and to program children to be docile and obedient worker bees. Building indispensible skills and habits that support democracy (like questioning authority, fostering innovative ideas, daring to be creative, listening to opposing views, being open to surprise, resolving conflicts, and working together) is not even on most people’s radar, and the trend is understandably not favorable, given the uphill nature of the battle. The sentiment that has driven education reforms in recent decades has mostly led away from rather than toward the encouragement of the kind of critical thinking that equips citizens to participate in a robust democratic process. The whole question of why an educated citizenry is essential for democracy is swept under the rug.

Actually reaching viable solutions is complicated by many layers of difficulties. It’s like peeling an onion. Before we can get to the heart of the matter, we have to come to terms with challenges like moral ambiguity and the fact that we each have radically different starting points and wildly divergent guiding values and tastes. Even if we could even the playing field and include those who are systematically marginalized, even if more of us would diligently pursue objectivity and resist confirmation bias, even if we had a robust political culture with vital traditions upholding free speech and free press, even if undistorted information was readily available, even if what was most in the forefront were ideas based on an examination and well-reasoned analysis of the best evidence, even if creative approaches to problem-solving was the norm, and even if we were committed to work together, we would still be faced with honest conflicts around life’s thorniest questions.

There are no right answers to the most central ethical dilemmas human beings face. Life is full of hard choices and a lot of gray area. Ethics usually comes down to a question of priorities rather than whether we want to do the right thing. For example, if I encounter someone who is in distress, do I stop to help her? There is no universally applicable correct response. My decision will be informed by a number of factors. What is the context? Is the person a close friend or member of my family? Or is she a stranger or an adversary? How much trouble would helping her be? How risky does it feel? Most of us like to see ourselves as basically good people, but preserving our positive self image often comes at the expense of a coherent ethical rationale. How do we reconcile our lofty stated values with our actual choices? What is the ethical justification for caring more about whether our own children have braces than we care about whether another child has enough to eat or has a safe place to live?  Most people have an intuitive sense about that, but few can articulate it in a way that doesn’t sound like a rationalization for selfishness.

We can’t be expected to solve all the problems associated with insatiable human need, but does that mean that we don’t do anything at all and that we just block out any evidence of moral ambiguity or anything that would disturb our tidy little worldview? Few of us would want to be the kind of people who are completely indifferent or to live in a world where systemic injustice goes unchallenged and where huge numbers of human beings are deprived of any opportunity to achieve a decent human existence. But whom do we choose to help? How do we ration our compassion? We need to find a way to practice some sort of triage, focusing our efforts where we can actually do some good, but knowing how to do that is hardly easy or clear. We are not only plagued with “compassion fatigue”; we are also bombarded by too much information to process and too many images to make sense of. We suffer from sensory overload. There is a limit to what we can we can absorb and assimilate. Like the jurors in “12 Angry Men”, we have too much else going on in our lives to be bothered by the far reaching implications of just going with the flow. In the end, being intelligent, caring individuals is not enough to prevent collective stupidity and cruelty. All of us routinely default to plausible though untrue assumptions and fail to explore new information that challenges our worldview. 

What we are talking about is not just an unfortunate state of affairs whose less than ideal ramifications operate mostly in some abstract realm; it’s a real life situation with tragic consequences – missed opportunities, wasted talent, crushed spirits, empty lives, destructive animosity, and a lot of actual suffering. It’s a vicious circle that perpetuates an environment in which the people with whom we could arrive at solutions not aren’t our allies; they become our enemies. The remedy requires a certain amount of critical thinking, but that is well within reach of the vast majority of people. It starts off simply with the ability to step back and make room for a public conversation in which it is OK to introduce discomfirming information into the discussion and which is open to the possibility that our minds might be changed. It demands that we really listen to each other, especially those we tend to dismiss, either because we disagree with them philosophically or because they lack social standing.

Clearly, the solution would necessarily involve improved critical thinking skills. We need to foster qualities like honesty, the ability to recognize our own biases, commitment to maintaining a well lit place where information comes from reliable sources and is subject to verification, open-mindedness, and the habit of stepping back to gain perspective. In addition to critical thinking though, we obviously also need personal qualities like compassion, willingness, and courage, and at the collective level, we need a cultural transformation. We need a critical mass of people who:

• are motivated to pursue their best understanding of the greater good
• possess sufficient critical thinking skills
• are accurately informed to a reasonable degree
• honestly and responsibly assess, interpret, and integrate available information
• have the courage and commitment to speak up
• are open to and respectful with regard to other points of view
• contribute in a way that builds up a well designed, effective model of governance
• participate in a democratic division of labor whereby power is held accountable through a process of checks and balances
• are somewhat patient with and trusting of an inclusive process of deliberation
• are willing to compromise, put their differences behind them, move forward, and work together in good faith