A Good Nightmare

"Democracy was achieved by such a long, arduous and heroic struggle that it can feel embarrassing – even shameful – to feel a little disappointed by it. 

We know that at key historical moments people have made profound sacrifices so that we can, every now and then, place a cross next to the name of a candidate on a ballot sheet. For generations across large parts of the world democracy was a secret, desperate hope. But today, we’re likely to go through periods of feeling irritated and bored by our democratically-elected politicians. We’re disappointed by the parties and sceptical that elections make a difference.

And yet not to support democracy, to be frankly against democracy, is not a possible attitude either. We appear to be utterly committed to democracy and yet constantly disappointed and frustrated by it."

—The School of Life: Alexis de Tocqueville

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Dear Kate,

So you think you have a problem and think also that serendipitously you have a solution, that the real problem is really to bring to bear the surefire, foolproof, failsafe solution you have in mind.  You are very educated—indeed overeducated—to readily identify both, your aptitude and rectitude affirmed daily by what you read in the news and hear from kindred, reasoned spirits.

After all, it's all very obvious, isn't it? we say to ourselves and each other.

The problems are obvious: racism, homelessness, or more broadly, inequality, injustice, and it's simply a matter of having the will to carry out the solutions just as obvious to all: to "eradicate" the specific evil, to "fight" against resistance, to "conquer" the cancer of our society.

Why the evil? who is resisting? and how does the "cancer" grow?  These are philosophical questions, too off-the-topic to be of any value, not practical at all.  (We only need to know we aren't implicated.)

We have a thirst for facts, "information" picked and chosen to support our even stronger propensity towards action.  We can tolerate anything, as long as what we can't is toppled swiftly to level the playing field for all to flourish.  We shall get to the bottom of it all by nightfall before the bottom falls out.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a dead white man I am afraid, a Christian I fear further, long ago spoke about the conditions and pitfalls of democracy in an egalitarian age, and I wish you would spend some long, quiet time to ponder on what you learned from the video crash course above.

One takeaway from his teaching is, if we don't find ourselves in a teachable position, there shall be no fruitful conversation or thoughtful discourse in our society.

Consider what is happening in our society, and the five particular issues he took with democracy:

• Democracy breeds materialism
• Democracy breeds envy and shame
• The tyranny of the majority
• Democracy turns us against authority
• Democracy undermines freedom of mind

Don't begin to think Tocqueville was against democracy.  His 1835 study "Democracy in America" was carried out with great hope and praise for the U.S., a model for the elevation of democracy and thus Man.  What he tried to warn us is the price we will need to pay when the ultimate authority is given to "everyone."

"Let's ask the average person" and have another referendum on, say, if we should have a Bible Study or how do they want to do church, how do they feel about the whole thing (before anything is done at all), what would they say is the best for themselves (that being the ultimate goal, of course).  What we don't want to acknowledge is how selfish, ignorant, lazy, shortsighted and obsequious an "average person" is.

Tocqueville's nightmare vision of America is our present reality: demagogues, statists, friendly dictators competing for the cross on the ballots of jaded, thoughtless, lonely citizens.

The first question, then, for us Christians, I believe, is to question our true condition.  We must admit we've been playing along, from fields Left and Right or something in between.  We must question our own culturally conditioned assumptions when we think we've properly identify our problems.

Say, if we think our challenge is to give everyone an equal chance to express his/her equally valid opinion and make our togetherness answerable to all separately and equally, we must slow down and ask ourselves, What are we assuming here?  Why is it necessarily true, let alone desirable, for "everyone" to babble endlessly?  Is this imperative to being "authentically human"?

Is that even the vision of human flourishing in God's Garden?

Yours, Alex