Responsibility and guilt in society and politics
Introduction
What starts society, I think, which is the impossibility of each one of us to supply himself, for the need we have of many things. Or do you think that the cause of its origin is another? […] Thus, the need for a thing having forced man to join another man, and another need for another man, the multiplicity of needs has gathered in the same room many men with the idea of helping some toothers;And so a state is formed. —Socrates, in “La República” by Plato. Second colloquium. 380 a.C.
More than two thousand years after acceptance, subsequent questioning and the conclusive partial or total refutation refutation. And the argument to refute or coincide with Socrates and Plato does not go through an empirical verification issue of scientific methods. The same issue that they raised is repeated today: if we are all brothers, and naturally we collaborate among us to achieve objectives, what is the type of government organization that corresponds best to us? Who should represent us? And, much more daring questions, as will we evaluate those who will govern us? What guarantees its efficiency? Should we constantly monitor them? Should we adopt a caste system or divine providence? Or is meritocracy the best adjusted contemporary philosophy for the liberal democracies of the 21st century? These questions I will try to answer in the following essay.
Does the people know what they want?
We hear this phrase all the time: "People don’t know what suits him". The people, as a mass, is a stupid, ignorant entity, whose individual and collective mentality was overwhelmed for decades and centuries for populisms, on the right, on the left, by the dictatorship, etc. Those who were called and were called "ruling elite" since the beginning of the times have protected themselves in divine law. From the Greeks, justified by Socrates who believed that “divinity, when he molded you, put gold in the mixture with which those trained to govern, being in such a form of the highest value;silver in the auxiliaries;iron and bronze in peasants and other artisans ”, through the Egyptian pharaohs or the Sapa Inca, to the same contemporary monarchs that govern" Dei Gratia ". Today it seems ridiculous to consider someone suitable to govern just because he has the approval of a divinity, but the reality is that until very recently that was the standard and the condition to be a legitimate leader.
This was the excuse in which both despot and benevolents were protected to justify their actions and their ability to govern for centuries and millennia. After all, what do the people know? The manipulation, control and lack of education we can put them aside for now. Where I want to direct my attention is to the fact that the Government, at its maximum republican, democratic and liberal expression, continues to maintain rest of this clerical and monarchical inheritance. We filled our ears every day listening to speeches from presidents, senators, deputies, prime ministers and thousand national and international political figures always arguing from the same fallacy ad verrecundiam: “He who won the elections was me and that is why I express what thePeople wants and this endorses me to do what I want, ”sometimes they become“ if they don’t like it, put on a game and win the elections ”.
Consider an ignorant people – whether or not – is in itself a double -edged sword. The resident endorsement in the vote then becomes an guarantee -based guarantee. Loses all validity. But the political subject uses it disregarding the vote and its meaning per se. He takes it as a symbolic expression of democracy, protecting himself in the "popular ignorance" to consider himself a Messiah, a Savior Sabelotodo that has the magical formulas to solve all the problems.
This is where the role of the media also comes into play. If people let themselves be manipulated by them and vote according to what the media say, they are manipulated and therefore the people are ignorant;If the opposite happens, the people do not understand how the policy and the processes of lobby and internal moves that it completely ignores. As we see, the pattern of the "ignorant voter" is always repeated. And the media clearly rely on this for political speculation. As voters, we are stigmatized and, as if that were not enough, then we have to end up voting "to the lesser evil". The media (no matter their hegemony or prominence, independent and low -income media also repeat the same speech) transmit again and again the recidivism of problems of which our representatives must be purely commissioned in power: corruption, security, security, inflation, etc. But what happens when those in power cannot solve these problems? Who has the responsibility of its lack of suitability or responsibility? They, or the voters?
Sign of our times
What are we blame for? Why do we have it, like voters? And if the government is not to blame, then what? We have only the system to sit on the bench of accused. But the reality is that the system can be modified and adjusted according to the needs of modern times and obligations. The same inability to update political systems to efficient formulas is in itself part of the issue. In coincidence with this fact, it is not surprising that the inability to correct the errors of the past has made them repeated in endless cycles. The most participatory, updated and inclusive democracies of the world have made advances in this regard – for mentioning Finland, the Netherlands or Canada as examples – but not because they are developed countries are exempt from falling into the same diatribe. His strongest tool, however, is in the resilience they have to avoid falling into the same problems mentioned.
In developing countries, however, this phenomenon is much more evidence and not by elements less simple than the structural problems caused by decades of corrupt political systems, passive societies and uncompeitive economies. There is an underlying idea in fear of capitalism and neoliberalism that has caused its empirically proven benefits in the rest of the world, their improvements in these countries have not achieved either. Meritocracy, probably the only tool that is really able to grant responsibility and competitiveness to citizens in their participation in democracy and the construction of their government and their policies, is seen as an unfair social model. But it is also not unfair that millions of people are affected by the arrival of unqualified politicians, protected by a vote lacking responsibility and will then use as guarantee of their poor policies?
If the meritocracy then does not offer us a democratic accepted solution to solve these problems, what is the tool that we must use to guarantee the competitiveness and suitability of our representatives? How can we avoid corruption and poor quality of our governments?
In a proliferating digitalization era throughout the continent, from the smallest town to the most urbanized megalopolis, it seems that the solution lies in this place. Various solutions have been presented to democratize in a digital way access to government participation to citizens. However, almost all have been failed for the simple reason that the vast majority of the population is skeptical about it.
In contrast to Estonia, a nation that has digitized absolutely all its government and its social structure obsessively, the alternatives in our region have failed to offer the same type of trust regarding security, privacy, transparency and efficiency. The evidence also does not allow us to be optimistic, living in a country where the implementation of the electronic vote wants to be carried out based on vulnerable systems or the vote for the implementation of public policies of low impact on social networks are subject to mockery or of popular delegitimization. But, being redundant, why can other countries and us don’t? Can’t we then be architects from our government?
We have all the tools and ability to be. Beyond the technological problems, which are easy to solve, and of cultural or ideological differences, we live in an era where we are more connected than ever and the information can no longer be obstructed for physical or technological reasons. Already Socrates said more than two thousand years ago that the impossibility of a man to do something was what forced him to live in society and cooperate with others. We have no obstacle other than those that we ourselves think voluntarily or involuntarily. The real question of this debate is, are we prepared to face the challenge?
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