The democratic political hierarchy exposed

Words such as politics, economy, power, responsability, sustainability, etc have a meaning. This meaning varies depending of context in which they are placed.

There is a thin line between being servent to the prosperity and wellness of a community and being servant to oneself at expense of it all. With corona these lines were crossed, back and forth, exposing “this system” in all its weaknesses. Part 4 will talk about strengthening our society placing the words and actions in proper context? For now we have to deal with the weaknesses and its consequences.

Politics

One of the relevant definitions of “politics” is: the activities aimed at improving someone’s status or increasing power within an organization. When we organize such politics in societal context, using groupings called “political parties”, then the definition refers to improving the group’s status and power in society. In a democratic setting such parties defend certain interests to gain sufficient votes to get into the front seats of conducting society.

Once in these seats the promises and reality become secondary to sustaining the groups power in the seat or even getting better seats. It is a popular saying that “power corrupts”. The thin line between the original ideals that got one into the seat and the manipulation needed to remain in that seat, once confronted with the broader spectrum of dealing with societal responsibility, is easily crossed. Within a normal democracy one can be blamed for one’s actions in a driver’s seat and loose power. But corona was not normal taking those in power into abnormal choices. How do you justify such abnormal choices, such as a lockdown and still remain favorite in the political arena?

Responsibility

The definition of “responsibility” found is: the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or having control over someone.

The “duty” or “control” aspects are easily confused if one deals with self and community interests. Especially when the practice of “responsibility” is combined with “politics”. The definition of politics shows the existance of a hierarchy in whichs duties and controls are mixed. People in power suddenly sense many responsibilities, such as satisfying the party, the electorat, themselves and especially trying to avoid being blamed of not complying. True leadership responsibility, the one of justified change, is avoided simply because “change is never popular”. That is one of the reasons why politically chosen governments hardly truly introduce change, they stick to “the normal”, maybe taking inpopular measures of cost reductions or tax increases that affect (large) minorities, but never restructuring society based on new formats, unless …..

Unless of course a crisis upsets everything. The common reaction then is not for change but more control.

Often such crises can be avoided if governance were not so risk avoiding in their decision making, mainly based on their blinding fear of losing their popularity and positions of power. Political oppositions tend to criticize litterly everything of people in power but hardly introduce alternatives themselves out of the equivalent fear of failing.

Corona is a crisis. The questions are:

• “could it have been avoided?”
• “are we dealing properly with the crisis?”
• “are we willing to transform society if needed?”

In between conclusion

If we consider the current democratic political system of risk avoidance and fear of losing, then we can conclude that it is not at all geared at proactive avoidance, or change, or resilience through permanent change. It is focused mainly on control and “finding the proper explanation, no matter what”, even at the expense of ethics and morality. The system has exposed its weaknesses, not just at the level of driver’s seats but also the blindness of the masses who made (lured into, forced into, voluntarily accepted, reluctantly sat back, never even thought about it, etc) themselves dependent. In essence “fear” and “control” in all layers of society is predominantly present, justifying all decisions (red cloud in the picture of human complexities).