Feeding My Ignorance

...but flawed!  After writing my previous post I had a bit of a "lightbulb moment" regarding the democratic system.  I am not saying for one minute that I have in any way solved the problem - but perhaps my lightbulb will shed a little luminance on it.

...

My insight is simple - but maybe a little profound - and almost certainly a little contentious.  A fundamental problem with any democratic system is that it is built on the assumption that everyone is equal.  We have all heard it "one man - one vote" - every voice counts - and so on.  The problem, in my eyes at least, is that everyone is not equal - to quote "The Life of Brian" - you are all different - and yes, I heard that little voice at the back saying "I'm not" thereby proving the point

Equal rights is a very popular phrase and I am all for the ideology behind it - BUT - that does not translate into the idea that we are all equal.  Yes - we are all equally important - we should all have equal "opportunities" (whatever that actually translates to) - no one should be discriminated against on any basis - all that is good - but it doesn't make us equal.

Actually, what a boring place the world would be if we were all equal.  I doubt that there is anyone who has ever been on this earth who isn't "better" in some respect than I am.  I hope that I myself have some "better" traits/skills/knowledge - but that is for others to judge.

This means that - for some questions - others are better at providing answers than I am - it also means that I sort of believe that for all questions there is, or has been, someone better than me at providing the answer.  Democracy, however, assumes that everyone is equally qualified to make judgements and decisions.  This is patently not true.  Unfortunately the Dunning-Kruger Effect amply demonstrates our inability to recognise our own incompetencies.  This, seemingly, applies in many areas of life (see Illusory Superiority) and can be seen easily in others - even when we are blind to it in ourselves.

So - when faced with putting forward an answer to a 'difficult' question (such as the desirability of Brexit) people will come down strongly on one side or another - even though a significant number do not have any 'real' basis for moving away from "I don't know". The same, of course, applies to our representatives.  They are almost obliged to have an opinion on every question - even when they are woefully uninformed about a specific event.  Sometimes that opinion is based not on "fact" but on "ideology" - perhaps that is the case more often than we would like to think.

This sort of means that it is unreasonable for the same people to decide on every facet of government since there will, inevitably, be many who are comparatively ignorant (in the meaning of ignorance as used in this blog's name) of the realities about some things and who, therefore, make a decision not based on knowledge or facts, but based on what they are told to believe by their party.

An individual can make decisions for themselves which are going to be "good" ones (bearing in mind what I wrote on those lines in the previous post) - and in a small group of people who know each other well, any individual can (usually) make a decision that will be in the best interests of the group.  For a club or society with a few dozen members a committee can (again usually) make good decisions - but it has already become more tricky.  As the numbers grow - so the likelihood of those in the decision making posts being able to truly reflect all their 'constituents' diminishes rapidly.

Yet - the whole point of government is to try and steer a large group in the 'right' direction.  Even though they are doing so with much less knowledge of what is "right" for the individuals.  No wonder government is difficult.

There is another effect along the lines of the illusory superiority - that is the fact that politicians (as a group) are people who are good (whatever that may mean) at politics - or at least they think they are better at politics than anyone else - and that sort of leads them to the conclusion that they are better at decision making.... oh dear!  Groucho Marx famously avowed that he did not want to belong to any club that would have the likes of him as a member.  And Billy Connolly said "the desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one - don't vote - it just encourages them..."

Both of those comedians were spot on - and would recognise what I am talking about here.  Unless we can all start to be more cognisant of our own limitations we will continue to make decisions that are uninformed and based more on "gut-feel" rather than anything more 'solid'.  Yes, gut-feel can be the right decision - but the higher up the political tree one reaches, the less does it make sense to rely on it.  There must be a recognition that the world is complex and that we CANNOT understand more than a small part.  Any decision that is more than "simple" (and arguably that is EVERY decision) needs to have a very great understanding of what is NOT known as well as what is known.

This doesn't solve the democracy problem - but it highlights one of the reasons why the problem is so difficult