I mean, there has never, not once, been a democracy that has survived. They all turn into authoritarian constructs, which then disintegrate because *big shocker* authoritarians (whatever they call themselves) are always self-serving. Human societies tend to move from egalitarianism toward hierarchy, socially, politically, and economically. From diversity to homogeneity. From enough to excess to artificial privation.
Happens every time, again, regardless of how the grouping is styled or how it thinks of itself. The subjugation and exploitation of the individual in the name of the whole for the benefit of those doing the subjugating. And it doesn’t break because of universal justice or the human spirit or god or any nonsense like that. It breaks because it’s a flawed construct from the start. It doesn’t work because it can’t work. Because its only goal is selective comfort at another’s expense.
It ends up with one getting fitted for a throne while another is kicked to the curb, and the people in between sorted, rewarded and punished, based on their proximity and usefulness to either of these. I don’t think it’s an imperative of polities, but rather of human polities. Humans crave adoration, or at least nearness to that which is adored, and they loathe what is different, because in the wild what is different kills you while your band keeps you safe.
And it’s because humans don’t control those most out of control. You just thought of someone you hate when I said that, but I’m talking about those with the most power and excessive appetites. Two ingredients make up a failing society. A bad person or a group of bad people with practical power, and a group of people who lack the intelligence to see them for what they are, who surrender what agency they have to the system created by the maladjusted.
This is why systems based on rule by popularity, enforced or coerced, always fail. Because popularity is not a key component of a healthy, functional society in and of itself. It is why the stories of societies always end in either collapse or violent transformation, why the continuum always moves from openness and fairness to consolidation and hierarchy and ruin, and not in the other direction. Never in the other direction. The entropy of the collective soul.
Humans, collectively, and for the most part individually, simply lack the breadth of consciousness to surpass their evolved biological baggage. It’s why they made up gods. It’s why they make up laws. It’s why they have so many stories about virtue and righteousness, told and appreciated alike by liars. It’s why all of these constructs inevitably fail.
I don’t think there is a traditional way out, or a different way forward. I think if ‘the species’ or ‘the future’ or ‘morality’ or ‘justice’ are things people actually care about, then all of this is too important to leave to chance or popularity or strength of the moment.
Best find and/or create the best leaders, based on criteria that are not arbitrary or subjective or imaginary, and devote every available resource to bringing the rest up as close to that level as individually possible. That’s the only purpose that matters, at the sociopolitical level. The rest is either gratification or fantasy. And it has to be done without culling the fight out of everyone and turning them all into insects.
Or kill each other to death like always, until the planet burns everyone alive. It really doesn’t matter. The universe don’t care either way. The only question is: how much suffering is everyone willing to put up with while it all goes down the toilet? 💫