Can Liberal Democracy Survive?

As authoritarian, repressive and nationalistic political leaders and parties proliferate and the Western democracies waver in the face of the globalization and climate change, it’s reasonable to ask if liberal democracy can survive. Indeed, globalization and its discontents – diminished prospects, resentment, and blame casting – have become a potent political force undermining mutual tolerance, optimism and willingness to compromise without which democracy falters. The non-democratic regimes – China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea – see blood in the water and seek to hasten the decline. Others – Hungary, Poland, Turkey – sense the winds and seek to entrench themselves in power through superficially democratic means.

Liberal democracy: an open society with constitutional government based on popular consent, allocation of political power through multi-party elections, separation of powers, rule of law, market economy with private property, and equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedom for all regardless of belief, self-identity, race, religion, gender or ethnicity.

Liberal democracy and evolution: Darwinian evolution works through adaption of species to their environment through natural selection, that is, through random mutations, some of which allow individual organisms to reproduce more successfully than others. In this way, a species may evolve over time into something new. Some fail to survive because of environmental changes too rapid to allow time for successful mutations to arise – the Cretaceous impact that wiped out the dinosaurs – or because they become too tied to an environment which then disappears – as happening to lemur species in Madagascar as rain forests fall victim to man.

Although we are social creatures, human nature is highly individualistic. We strive as individuals to survive and thrive in our environment. A liberal democratic society can be thought of as a species that permits the fullest range of random “mutations” as unique individuals are allowed to live and innovate as their individual nature and capabilities allow. Such a society is more likely to successfully meet the challenges of its environment and thrive than one which seeks to limit or control individual variability. Liberal democracy confers evolutionary advantage.

Globalization is an ideology: For decades, liberal democracy has been in the hands of capitalist, rent-seeking elites pushing their self-serving ideology of supra-national, borderless free trade. In the U.S., this has been at the expense of the working class and increased inequality. Those left behind by globalization make up the natural breeding ground of support for the populist, nativist politics used by rightist parties seeking to entrench themselves in power through subverting democratic practices.

But there is nothing sacrosanct about globalization. There is no reason why a polity could not decide to place limits on international capitalism within its borders. It might well value policies in support of domestic labor and domestic production even if it led to higher prices. These could be offset through creation of better paid union jobs, addressing economic inequality with higher minimum wages and perhaps guaranteed minimum incomes, higher taxes on the wealthy and big corporations and rebuilding industry and extending infrastructure green.

Building it back better: Liberal democracy’s evolutionary advantage lies in openness to random change, i.e. economic, technological, cultural and social innovation. To reach its potential, innovation needs enabling infrastructure and a population with full access to public primary and secondary education and opportunities for university and technical and vocational training. It requires mass communication and transport systems available everywhere and at every level. In the U.S., government played a large role here through providing postal services, building roads and supporting rail systems. These could be brought into the 21^st Century by bringing free broadband Internet to every home, small business, library and school. Efficient mass transport networks in cities and through small towns and rural areas would allow decentralization of economic activity without requiring more cars. The Postal Service – with its presence everywhere – provides outlets for delivering not only mail and goods at reasonable cost but also direct government services for individuals and businesses. Government spending to connect and empower small businesses and green industry and innovators would be productive even if it increased debt.

Liberal democracy has considerable advantages over control systems. If the human species – facing our self-created singularity – has a future, it will be in the hands of something like liberal democracy. Survival demands the fullest range of mutation and adaption of which humans are capable. This can be a future in which the United States plays a leading role. Our democracy can fail only at our hands.

Language, Hunting and Bezos

Language makes us human and different from all other of earth's creatures. With it, we can think, plan and act. Other animals communicate with each other through various means (bees do it through dance). But only we have words and grammars, with which we can great structures of meaning. With language comes society, culture, science, technology, and history.

But from whence comes language? Perhaps from group hunting. Social carnivores such as wolves and lions do not have language but still coordinate hunting. Between early learning – cubs practicing innate skills and watching adults – and basic vocalizations, they can surround prey and attack in unison. Some whales coordinate their approach to circle their prey and drive them into a concentration that allows a dense feeding ball. But these creatures come with their weapons built in, fangs, teeth and claws or huge mouths.

Primitive humans did not have built-in weapons or thick hides. Out on the savanna, they were easy prey for other carnivores and would be poor hunters against anything big enough to satisfy the group’s hunger. They needed to make artificial weapons and, working together, use them to kill their prey.

At some point in human evolution, some series of chance mutations increased the brain’s capacity to process and organize information sufficiently enough to move beyond simple grunts and other calls towards a structured use of vocalizations. This would have provided a huge evolutionary advantage. Humans could begin to coordinate more elaborate approaches to prey animals.

Language – as it became more elaborate – would serve many other purposes, such as passing on learning about making weapons and which plants were good to eat and where to find them. But it may have been most useful at first in hunting. Homo sapiens even hunted the huge mammoths into extinction. The first leaders in human society may have been those most capable of using language to coordinate hunting.

Language allows the possibility of free-flowing thought. With words and grammar, individuals can recall the past, examine the present, probe accumulated human experience, and imagine a future to be pursued to advantage. Throughout human history, those that do this best made the best “hunters” and captured the biggest “prey.” They drove human development by finding new ways to exploit others and the found environment. As society superseded family, they also thought of monopolizing what they “captured” to turn temporary advantage into permanent advantage. Great war leaders might seek to become kings, great inventors owners of ever expanding conglomerates. Jeff Bezos seeks to own the core exchange mechanism of 21^st Century economy.

The drive to seek and maintain profit has provided a positive dynamic in human civilization. We cannot and should not seek to prevent the hunters from seeking new prey. Bezos and Amazon clearly show the advantages of the e-approach to economic exchange and it has become very useful during the current COVID-19 crisis. Bezos has even prodded old line hunters like Walmart into more effective ways. But allowing the best hunters free reign only works for the group when they share the meat.

A number of “tech giants” have now become the focus of attention for their efforts to monopolize their hunting style and for using it mostly for their own gain. It is reasonable for the rest of us – who also do our part to maintain the social and economic order – to look to limiting their ability to seek only self-enrichment. This doesn’t mean doing away with successful hunters – even if we could – but helping them share better through truly progressive taxation, less exploitative practices and perhaps breaking up their enterprises to create room for more hunters.

The Cosmic Reset

In an early episode of the original Star Trek, aliens put Kirk on a rugged planet to duel with the captain of a rival Gorn ship. Kirk wins as the dinosaur-like Gorn was intelligent but really slow.

On Earth, dinosaurs never became intelligent. Arising 240 million years ago, they survived some 175 million years and for 135 million of those were the dominant land animal. By the time they became extinct, dinosaurs had perfected two ways of living: eating plants or eating each other. The plant eaters were excellent at converting plant matter into animal bulk and could grow very large. The carnivores were very good at using tooth and claw to eat the vegetarians. Some carnivores – such as the raptors – may have hunted in pacts and perhaps had some wolf-like intelligence. But in general, brain power doesn’t seem to have been on the dinosaurs’ primary evolutionary path.

Mammals arose just 10-15 million years after the dinosaurs. But for most of their first 160 million years, they lived underfoot as squirrel-sized, nocturnal plant eaters and insectivores. For this life style, relatively larger brains gave an evolutionary advantage. So under the feet of the dinosaurs, mammals got smart. Still, even with their brains, they could not compete with tooth and claw.

Enter the six-mile wide asteroid that found the earth 66 million years ago. That asteroid – nudged out of its distant orbit by a chance encounter with another rock or after swinging too close to Jupiter or Saturn – had travelled silently on its way for perhaps a million years to arrive just seconds before the earth moved just beyond it in its own orbit. When it hit, it set the earth on fire and after it had burned away, caused a long dark winter that left most creatures dead and many extinct, including the non-avian dinosaurs. This disaster was, however, good news for the mammals. Perhaps because they were small, lived underground and could eat anything, some survived (along with birds, who are smart flying dinosaurs). Within a million years, the earth had recovered and mammals were the dominant large land animal. Some of those eventually evolved even further in reliance on brains, eventually producing us.

That asteroid wiped the slate clean, resetting the course of animal evolution in favor of the brain and intelligence. There is no reason to assume that an additional 66 million years would have led the dinosaurs towards the Gorn as in 175 million, it had not done so. It’s as if the universe has a bias in favor of intelligence and sent a “do-over” to set things right.

Humming along….

The human brain is able to store and retrieve memories spanning the decades of an individual life. This occurs despite the exchange, death and constant rearrangement of our neurons. Which raises the question of how? In the hard drives of modern computers – classical or quantum – data is stored in physical bytes (or qubits). Data is written to them and retrieved from them. They can be re-written but the bits themselves do not otherwise change. If one does change through damage or failure, that bit of information is – generally speaking and leaving aside backups – lost. Computer memory is hard. Ours is soft, organic. Amidst the constant comings and goings of millions of nerve cells, our memories – our very identity and sense of self – remains constant (within the margins of error associated with life and aging). It’s a marvel of evolution, really.

According to a recent study, we owe this happy state of affairs to the fact that “as individual neurons die, our neural networks readjust, fine-tuning their connections to sustain optimal data transmission.” It’s a matter of individual nerve cells and networks of same being both excited and inhibited from discharging, thus maintaining a dynamic balance. Through this process, the entire system (networks of networks) achieves “criticality’ – sustaining an overall state that apparently maintains the data structure despite changes affecting the underlying organic bits. What this means is something like this: our inbuilt self-regulating rhythm of neural activity at the individual nerve, synapse and network levels tends towards an optimal level of brain-wide activity. That allows us to remember stuff even as nerve connections change. It’s like the brain is constantly humming to itself the story of our lives. The humming is the basis of mind and memory.

While one might take the notion of this “humming” as simply a metaphor, the researchers suggest that the mechanism they hypothesize also may explain consciousness. But it seems to me this cannot be the case. Ever listen to a gurgling stream? It kinda hums too. But a stream – okay, as far as we know – is not conscious. But we are. I hum therefore I am.

Light Ages and Dark Ages

Read recently a dystopic sci-fi short story set near the end of this century in which a floating city of refugees is overturned by one of the then frequent super typhoons in the Philippine archipelago. The “hero” then must flee from super biotech Chinese police. Nothing about the story line offered reason to look forward to the world that will be brought about by climate change, environmental damage, rising sea-levels and technology-enabled authoritarianism. Indeed, the end of the century will most probably be one of desperation, displacement, disease, poverty and death for billions. Made me wonder what is the meaning and purpose of any of the lives we live now if it leads to this. The answer seems to me to be that there is no meaning but there may be purpose.

Most who live in the wealthy countries of North America, Western Europe and the Pacific Rim enjoy lives of security, well-being, comfort and accomplishment. In the past 200 years, advances in industry, agriculture, transportation, and technology have improved the lives of many others and reduced poverty globally. While not everyone shares in this progress, collectively, the human race has never had it better. But the good times and bad times come in waves – light ages followed by dark ages – and the next one may indeed be a super typhoon.

Throughout history, periods during which many lived relatively well are followed by times of collapse. During the golden age of Rome, its citizens enjoyed relative stability and comfort. When Rome fell, Europe entered the centuries of the dark ages. Other civilizations rose and fell in their own spaces and times. This was probably true in prehistory as well. Homo sapiens almost went extinct at least twice before: around 195,000 years ago and again some 70,000 years ago. Both times it took hundreds to thousands of years to recover. We now live in a global civilization that has entered the age we created from scratch, the Anthropocene. When our global light age ends, the dark age will therefore also be globalized.

What does this mean for those of us alive now? Well, we can enjoy what we have. Beyond that, nothing. Ages swing from good to bad and back again. It seems likely they will continue to do so. None of this has any meaning, it just is. At most, it has perhaps been the engine of human evolution as overcoming the past dark age allows us to rise a little bit further in the next light one. But we can not claim credit for our relative well-being. We were just born lucky. And we also cannot be blamed for the past centuries of burning fossil fuel and despoiling nature. We were merely alive when the bill came due. But we can still have purpose. At some point in the next century, humanity will reach a new equilibrium with the changed earth. So we can try to live more sustainably now and do everything we can to ready the world and the next generations for what is to come so that the next age is a light one.

Notes on "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 28

For episode 27, see here

The Theory of the Nation State: The Moderns

XXVIII. Hegel: Dialectic and Nationalism
 A. The typical conclusions of the Enlightenment:
       1. Hume showed ambiguities of "reason."
       2. Rousseau set up reasons of the heart (sentiment) against reasons
           of the head.
       3. Immanuel Kant sharpened contrast of science and morals (and between
           theoretical and practical reason) to preserve both.
       4. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel sought unifying synthesis through
           transcending analytic logic of science. 
 B. Hegel proposed dialectic to demonstrate logical relationship between
      fact and value.
 C. Revolution seen by many, including Hegel, as destructive, doctrinaire
      attempt to remake society and human nature.
       1. Therefore necessity of reconstruction of continuity of national
           institutions.
       2. But was to be reconstruction of stability by the creative forces
           of the nation.
 D. The nation, not the individual, is the significant unit of history via the 
      genius or spirit of the nation -- Volksgeist.
 E. Hegel's political philosophy built around the dialectic and the theory
      of the nation state as the embodiment of political power.  (These two
      did not necessarily entail each other.)
 F. The historical method:
       1. Method of studying history also could be applicable to other
           social studies.
       2. Mode of deriving from the order of historical events standards
           of valuation with which to access significance of particular
           stages in evolution (a philosophy of history).   
       3. Assumed single pattern or law of development that can be 
           exhibited by a proper arrangement of subject matter.
       4. Order is not imposed but immanent.
       5. Standards progressively revealed in evolution of morals, 
           law, etc., provides historically objective standard of values
           to fill vacant place of natural law.
        6. Hegel sought to show necessary stages by which reason 
           approximates the Absolute.
       7. Understanding and reason were faculties of analysis and 
           synthesis respectively and dialectic unites the two.
       8. Understand "breaks up" organic wholes, it is the philosophic 
           basis of indivualism.
           i. fosters illusion that men can remake society
           ii. misses organic creative continuous growth
       9. Only reason can see below historical detail to perceive forces
           that really control events and thus understand that the process
           should be as it is.
 G. In study of religion, following Herder and Lessing, saw succession of
      world religions as progressive revelation of religious truth.
 H. Thought Western civilization product of Greek free intelligence and
      deeper moral and religious insights of Christianity.
 I.  The process of development of the spirit of a people:
       1. Period of "natural" happy but largely unconscious spontaneity
           (thesis).
       2. Period of painful frustration and self-consciousness in which
           the spirit is "turned inward" and loses its spontaneous 
           creativeness (antithesis).
       3. Period in which spirit " returns to itself" at a higher level
           embodying insight gained from frustration (synthesis).
       4. The total process is "thought."
 J. Hegel saw freedom as existing only within bounds of a nation state.
       1. The state is the expression (de facto power) of national unity and
           a national aspiration to self-government.
       2. The state is consistent with any lack of uniformity which does not
           prevent effectively unified government (such as class differences).
       3. With Machiavelli saw no higher duty for the state than its own 
           strengthening and preservation.
       4. The state is the realm in which the Idea of Reason materializes 
           itself (The German Constitution, 1802).
 K. Realization of national spirit contributes to progressive realization of
      the world spirit and is the source of dignity and worth that attaches
      to private concerns of individuals. 
       1. Freedom is voluntary dedication to that realization.
       2. National monarchy is the highest form of constitutional government.
 L. Dialectic and historical necessity (The Philosophy of Right, 1821). 
       1. Dialectic is the new method.
       2. History of a people records the growth of a single national
           mentality that expresses itself in all phases of its culture.

"The individual is for the most part only an accidental variant of the culture
  that created him and insofar as he is different his individuality is more
  likely to be capricious than signficant."

       3. Dialectic is the opposition of forces moving in orderly equilibrium
           and emerging in a pattern of progressive, logical development.
       4. Contradiction means fruitful opposition between systems that 
           constitutes an objective criticism of each and leads continually to
           a more inclusive and coherent system. (Dialectic could manifest as 
           evolution or revolution.) 
 M. Hegel claimed dialectic as logic of reason to supersede logic of
       understanding.
       1. Dialectic both moral judgement and causal law of historical
           development.
       2. Unites relativism with the absolutism.
 N. Dialectic offered no criterion of rightness except success of outcome.
 O. Hegel: individualism and theory of the state.
       1. Individualism had no hold in Hegel's Germany and the same with
           sense of national unity.
       2. Hegel's Philosophy of Right deals with the relationships between
           individual and the social and economic institutions.
       3. Placed state as on a level of political evolution above civil
           society (the result of the end of feudal law and institutions).
       4. Revolution's ideals of liberty and equality made state a mere 
           matter of private interest, a utilitarian device for satisfying private
           needs elevating abstract individualism over society and state.
       5. The individual's best interest lies in being a member of society and 
           the state.
       6. Individualism indifferent to moral and spiritual development of 
           personality by falsifying the nature of social institutions through
           regarding them only as accidental and mere utilitarian devices to 
           satisfy irrational needs
       7. Hegel shared the "Greek notion" of citizenship not in terms of private
           rights but of social functions. 
 P. Hegel saw individual motives as capricious and sentimental, with civil
     civil society as a realm of mechanical necessity, a result of irrational 
     forces of a society.
       1. Society, apart from the state, is governed by non-moral causal laws
           and hence ethically anarchical.
       2. Only the state embodied ethical values and ought therefore to be
           absolute.
       3. Individual attains moral dignity only as he devotes himself to
           the state.
       4. Hegel's theory of freedom implied nothing definite in the way of
           civil or political liberties but he did not reject them in practice. 
       5. The state depends on civil society as the means of accomplishing
            the moral purpose it embodies.
       6. The state is absolute but not arbitrary, it must rule through law and
           law is "rational."
       7. Civil society consists of corporations and the legislature is where
           they meet the state.
       8. The legislature only advisory to the ministry of the governing class
           or "universal class."
 Q. Hegel's constitutionalism not liberal (i.e., democratic procedures)
      but based on orderly bureaucratic administration not subject to
      to public opinion but to the public spirit of an official class that
      stands above conflicts of economic and social interests.
 R. Hegel united Rousseau's general will (the manifestation of the 
      spiritual force forming the core of reality) and Burke's religious
      vision of history as a "divine tactic." 
 S. Replaced eternal system of unchangeable natural law with a
      rational unfolding of the Absolute in History.
       1. Reason manifested itself in social groups not individuals.
       2. Society seen as system of forces rather than community of 
           individuals.
       3. Highlighted importance of historical study of institutions but
           left individual actions as merely a "reflection" of social forces.
       4. Can be seen as giving rise to Marxism (a direct link), the English
           liberalism of Oxford idealists and the Italian fascists. 

Next week:  Liberalism -- Philosophical Radicalism