The burning question is this: Can a set of circumstances be clearly expressed by a single word or a one-liner, or is it that such a set is too complex to be so lightly expressed by one person and yet be understood by another? It is important to have an answer to this question because if we believe that democracy implies choosing between several sets of circumstances, the question becomes this: Can there be a real democracy in a jurisdiction where the people have ceased to act in response to ideas and concepts but are motivated to act by a word or a phrase?
The obvious answer to the first question is that a set of circumstances is too complex to be reduced to a word or a phrase yet be understood by someone. This leads to the following answer with regard to the second question: Because democracy is a complex set of circumstances, it cannot be practiced where the people have ceased to act in response to ideas or to concepts.
A good example to give in that regard is the previous paragraph which expresses a set of complex ideas. I doubt there is a word or a one-liner that could mirror the content of the paragraph in full. If there is such a word or expression, I would like to know about it so that I may use it and save me the trouble of having to do all this writing.
The implication here is that if the paragraph was carrying my set of beliefs and my ideas as to how society ought to be organized in a political sense, no form of democracy could be exercised by disseminating it among a society that reacts with indifference to complex ideas, but is made to respond to a word or to a simple phrase. In a society like this, the paragraph will cause little or no intellectual stirring and will result in no useful action being taken by the people.
However, after I finish writing this essay, the mere invocation of its title will tend to bring forth the ideas expressed in it to the people who will have understood its content and appreciated the extent of its reaches. Here the title is made of seven words but it could just as well have been made of a single word or a one-liner, as the title of many works are made.
In a somewhat analogous manner, a politician who uses a single word or what has come to be known as a "bumper sticker" expression, invokes complex notions that were built-up over time by the culture. These notions would be buried more or less deeply in the sub-conscience of the population such as, for example the expression: "Let them freeze in the dark."
That expression was an actual bumper sticker used by the motorists of oil rich Alberta in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis. They used the sticker to express their displeasure at Central Canada which they said had been exploiting them for decades by "ripping off" their natural resources. To my knowledge no politician used that exact quotation in public but many from Alberta and from the other Western Canadian Provinces displayed considerable sympathy with the notion and came close to expressing the same sentiment on the air.
In a similar way, every culture rests on notions that are fundamental to the core beliefs of the moment. And if you wait long enough, you will see that subsequent generations will erase from their collective memory the history that conceived the notions or they will modify that history to suit the time. Even though the people will learn –- mostly by word of mouth -– and will utter the words, the phrases or the title of publications to invoke some kind of context, they will in general remain unaware of the history and the original context in which the notions were carried.
In the absence of such context, the single word or the expression often takes on the form of a dogma and be followed by some people as if it were a command. For example, no one really knows why, when or where the saying: "Treat others the way you want to be treated" has originated but the expression is now uttered in many different ways in almost every language and every culture. It is viewed as dogma by some people and followed like a command by others.
And so, a name like Nelson Mandela, a date like D-Day, a title like "Alice In Wonderland," or an expression like: "Let them eat cake" may invoke in the hearts and minds of people the set of circumstances for which they once stood or they may invoke notions that the current wisdom says they ought to stand for. In any case, even if most people who are alive today know little or nothing of the circumstances that surrounded those words and those expressions, the people use them so loosely that the utterances play a role in reshaping the culture in a way that cannot be foreseen beforehand.
What this means is that the use of a single word or an expression to communicate is a kind of abbreviated shorthand that is also a double-edged sword because it is most efficient. On the one hand, such use invokes a host of ideas in the people who are endowed with a well developed intellect; on the other hand, it invokes an emotional response in the people who have ceased to think at the level of abstraction. And the responses will range in intensity from the mild to the violent, and in quality from the benevolent to the destructive.
If we now take all the positions of these people and line them side by side, they will form a spectrum. Between the one extreme where the people are intellectually endowed and the other extreme where the people have surrendered to emotional appeals, there is a majority that is motivated by a blend of thought and emotions. And each of these people will respond in a manner that is consistent with what motivates him or her. The intellectual type will welcome a reasoned argument and respond in like manner while the emotional type will be motivated by the emotional content of the argument and respond in like manner. But as always, there will be the exception that will not follow the rule.
And while there is no doubt that democracy can flourish at the center of the spectrum, there is question as to whether or not it can survive in the midst of people at either extreme of the spectrum. And the question therefore becomes: Where on that spectrum does the exercise of democracy cease to be genuine and become a show of smoke and mirrors?
Can we honestly say that in a self described democracy such as America, true democracy is practiced despite the fact that the outcome of a presidential election often rests on a single word being delivered correctly or delivered awkwardly? Can there be a democracy where the campaign of a candidate can be derailed by one incident being perceived by the media as inappropriate before the election, yet recognized as trivial immediately after the election?
And given that the exercise of democracy and the ideas of a free market economy have been inextricably linked, can we be certain that the economy we practice is truly of the free market type? Or is it that the economic crisis in which we currently find ourselves is nothing but the symptom of a democracy gone haywire? Have we been given a wake up call to the effect that our belief in a democracy of ringing freedoms is just as inflated as the housing bubble that brought down the economic system we thought was free and market oriented?
I received communication a while ago from someone who lives somewhere on this planet and who took the trouble to write me words that went something like this: You people believe you are free because you measure everything by the yardstick of permissiveness. You practice laissez-faire economics the same way that you practice the mores and the politics of anything goes. More importantly, you judge everyone else by how much they let their citizens display sexuality in public, and you compare that with the way you behave yourselves in public places. I know what I’m talking about because I lived for a while in your corner of the world where I studied a few things, among them psychology. So let me tell you something; you people do not practice the vibrant democracy you think you do because the only thing vibrating in your part of the world are the gadgets they sell in the sex shops. I know all about the anal fixation of infants that can translate into fetishes among twisted adults, but yours is the twisted democracy of the genitalia.
Not a flattering image of us, I would say. But was he or she correct in that assessment? Is this how we really are? Do we live in a bogus democracy of smoke and mirrors, and suffer from anal fixation and genital obsessions?