Despite its imperfections, democracy remains by far the best system we have. I still believe we can improve it over time as we evolve beyond emotional voting. Emotional voting is a reality in all human societies; it has been, is, and will be prevalent until we all start thinking like CEOs. Today, you can see people voting for whoever can excite them with convincing speeches about religion, nationalism, security, the economy, poverty, etc. If we all fall for these speeches or are emotionally attached to our belonging groups, we are under the influence of a sense of belonging.
This is just as bad as having a democracy in an uneducated society where people vote without knowing its real value. If you lose an election, you may get so upset that you start killing and dying over it. It’s not a flaw of democracy; it’s the human reality of being emotional.
In a democracy, a majority is a majority even if it’s a close one. You just can’t pick up weapons if you don’t win. Being civilized and educated should be the first demand for a democratic society. Unfortunately, we have problems with democracy. People don’t understand the real system of democracy because they lack self-understanding. They vote emotionally, and if they don’t like the results, it’s not the fault of the democratic system; it’s related to the problem of emotional voting.
Democracy is a valuable tool for governing an educated human society. It requires individuals to understand their rights, as well as, at least to some extent, the general knowledge of how the democratic system of governing works. If you don’t have an interest and you let anything happen in society, you are not using your rights.
These days, especially young people, need to be educated about their rights as they reach maturity. They have to learn and understand their emotional connection to their hormones before they reach adulthood; it will help them to prepare themselves as the changes arrive. Not only will they go through the turbulent zone to save the relationships in their lives, but they will also save themselves a great deal of confusion regarding their feelings and realities.
The value of spirituality is not only related to religions; our school systems should have a clear agenda of equal human rights, and it should be enforced as a rule to the kids, especially if they have been taught prejudice at home. Families should be exposed to counseling if needed and made aware of the court decisions about equal rights. Helping society to run smoothly is not a privilege; it is actually a duty as well as a right of each and every one of us.
That level of understanding can help the individual to evolve, understand, and accept that in the modern-day democracy, people can have differences of opinion but still are able to live together.
I go to Folklorama every year and see all different cultures displaying their culture with pride. It’s great to see the sense of freedom in a society where everyone is treated equally. My desire is to see a pavilion that demonstrates all nations becoming a melting pot of humanity. For instance, mixed-race children representing their identity with pride. Regardless of all the freedom, we still have stereotyping going on in our homes. Even the Pope and the Supreme Court have made decisions against prejudice; the problems still persist. It can only be dealt with by the individual themselves. To me, proof is in the pudding; just look at mixed-race children. They are perfectly functioning human beings; President Obama is just a fine example of that. (Back to emotional voting)
If you vote because you want businesses to be free to charge whatever percentage of profit and don’t pay taxes, you are voting for extreme selfishness, not spirituality. Because human insecurities will play a role in hoarding money, thus it would be taken out of circulation, which would make the rich richer and the poor poorer. In the long run, it would create chaos.
If you vote for and stick with your group of interest like trade unions or any kind of cause like sexual orientation or gender issues, you are voting for the other extreme because the voting is for human rights, equality, and social justice.
Politics always make people stick with their belonging groups, whether they are good for governing the whole government or not. If you make a lot of noise, you would get your way. That is the reason political parties need a lot of cash, and when there is cash involved, the votes are being sold. If you are selling your vote, whether it’s for your religious beliefs or sexual liberation, it is not a good democracy.
The individual has to know that equal human rights and the workable governing system are the most important things. Even in modern democracies, there is a big percentage of voters who fall for and let their emotions get the best of them. If we have democracy, we need to educate people to understand everything necessary for human rights. If we promote democracy for the world, we need to educate, educate, and educate people all over the world. We can only achieve the peace we all seek through the education of the ordinary individual. Until an individual has evolved from his emotional sense of belonging to the real sense of belonging to humanity, we would be running in circles. So instead of spending and sending armed forces, we need to focus on the education of the individual. Only then will they learn to create a balance between a sense of belonging and a sense of freedom.
A CEO’s knowledge is required to understand democracy, and anybody who is an emotional voter is not a CEO. A doctor without people skills, a judge without compassion, and a policeman with too much passion are the people who come out of the tunnel as successful professionals but not as successful individuals.
We need to be taught, not forced, because we have the ability to self-regulate, and we can mix and match existing knowledge to do justice to the people and ourselves beyond the boundaries of learned knowledge.
Since there are no boundaries of knowledge for an evolving organism, we have to relate and deal with each situation we face. You can use previous knowledge as a guideline, but you have to have a human touch as well, so you don’t carry some kind of guilt along the way.
At the end of the day, you can’t say, “Oh, I was just doing my job” if your decisions hurt someone. If you are a decent individual, you can’t just hide behind your job, especially from yourself.
It is not just the job; it relates to you as an individual as well because of your free will, and you will have to live with yourself knowing you have hurt someone innocent.
“Good times,” a magazine issue from October 2012, page 16, quotes, “We are interdependent in our society, and if you can lighten the load by bringing many hands, shoulders, and backs to the task, you can be successful.”
On the Discovery Channel, I heard that spruce trees don’t really have a deep root system, but they can withstand big storms and harsh weather. The reason is, and it makes sense, that their roots entangle together to help each other.
This natural phenomenon is present in human beings as well. As individuals, we may feel and think of ourselves as weak and vulnerable, yet we are an integral part of the real strength of humanity. Our reliance on the community and the community’s reliance on the individual may become confusing for the individual, especially if they have been given the education of inferiority, like being told they are born sinners and are nothing compared to God.
The fabric of the community depends on the thread, and that thread is the individual. The community may have an agenda to keep the individual weak so they can be controlled. But if everybody is dependent on the community, then how is the community going to get its strength?
It’s essential for the community to make the individual strong so that help is coming from the basic source. Any system that reduces the power of the individual ends up in dictatorship, monarchy, communism, and religious authoritarian governing systems. These systems have been proven wrong and failed for governing human societies. Any governing system that doesn’t comply with human nature will eventually fail. Communism failed after seventy years of success just because it chokes the individual from a sense of freedom. All other failed systems, including communism, promote a sense of belonging to the extreme and fail to promote a sense of freedom; it’s not one or the other, it’s the balance of both.
We have a natural desire to be free as individuals, yet we have a deep social need to be with the community. This extremely opposing nature needs balancing, and it can only be done by the individual individually, not forced upon by the community. If the individual can self-discipline or regulate themselves, the community does not have to force its agendas. It all depends on education; we need to encourage the individual’s deeply ripened spirituality so that they can automatically function as a CEO who is independent yet altruistic.
Let’s look at it from a different angle: modern science has been discovering things from the inside out. “The Economist” (Aug 18th, 2012 issue of the magazine) has a front-page story: “Microbes maketh man.“ “The traditional view is that a human body is a collection of 10 trillion cells which are themselves the product of 23,000 genes. If the revolutionaries are correct, these numbers radically underestimate the truth. For in the nooks and crannies of every human being, and especially in his or her guts, dwells the microbiome: 100 trillion bacteria of several hundred species bearing 3m non-human genes. The biological Robespierres believe these should count, too; that humans are not single organisms, but superorganisms made up of lots of smaller organisms working together. It might sound perverse to claim bacterial cells and genes as part of the body, but the revolutionary case is a good one. For the bugs are neither parasites nor passengers. They are, rather, fully paid-up members of a community of which the human “host” is but a single (if dominating) member.” This reinforces my view of God as a human society or humanity, and humans as the cells and other creatures as part of the whole picture. Vegetarians may not like this, but this is the law of nature: nature provides food for every creature for survival. We may live intellectually and make sense of things with our compassionate feelings, but the facts of hunger, survival, and reproduction remain to carry on the life of the species and literally God.
We still can be, have been, and will be savage beasts at times, but we have been progressively marching towards our potential. One can say God would not let Bambi, a nice baby deer, an innocent creature, die for food. But if it provides for the little kittens, it is nature’s way of providing life for life. It may not make any sense to the passionate feeler, but always remember we are a work in progress.
We may learn more of life’s wisdom as we evolve. From drugs to technology, social systems to religions, if we always come up with better and more effective ways to deal with our problems, that means there is still room to improve. So we can’t be passionate about human knowledge. Even scientifically proven things can be upgraded, and so can religious rules be bent or changed as society changes and evolves.
When it comes to human evolution towards potential, there are no holds barred, so there is nothing written solid, yes, not even the Ten Commandments. Everything is subject to change, so where are we going? Well, we are approximately on mile ten or maybe twenty out of a hundred, and we have changed so much in the last little while. Only time will tell; we can’t even imagine the next ten years.
Every era of humanity has been working to domesticate human beings, especially religions, working against the wild beast we all carry inside. Regardless of religion or any other human social system, if domestication is done by force or fear, it will eventually fail because as the individual finds themselves in a free place, they will defy the rules.
Strict rules may reduce the crime rate initially, but the population would feel oppressed and rebel. These days, with the internet, all the news travels around the world with no restrictions, so people know how things are done all over the world. This knowledge gives everyone the opportunity to compare themselves with others.
Some may think of it as a problem, but it should be taken as an opportunity to come together and create a justice system with human rights, regardless of belonging to religion or nation. In the past, the success and spread of religion have been based on the justice system it provided. In a strict rules society, you may have a lower crime rate, but today with our evolved social systems, we think that suppression of any kind is a crime as well.
It may seem that crimes are mostly related to individuals, but our groups have been committing crimes against humanity. So, every system, whether brought on by the people, as empires, or religions by the prophets, they all have some dark history. If the life lesson is about control, then never forget that as a mortal, control can rob you of your happiness, health, and everything in between. So, be aware that you have the control to manage your control.