| EQI.org Home | Democracy Democracy Since I wrote last about a local government issue here in Australia, I have learned a lot. Most of it has discouraged and disillusioned me. Right now I just want to make this note about one thing I have learned. I have learned that the local government here is what I would call a propaganda machine. I have learned that the people are basically electing a group of dictators. People here call it "democratic dictatorship." I have learned that there is more hypocrisy than democracy. I have learned the elected officials and the long term non-elected bureaucrats are not
... at least not in the case of the waste processing center by the river here. Hypocrisy bothers me. It is a type of lying, but somehow worse. It raises your expectations, then disillusions you when you find out the truth. If you ask someone if they stole your phone and they lie and say "no," it bothers you to find out the truth. But if they say, "I am against theft. I support honesty and trust in the world and I do all I can to make the world a more honest and trustworthy place," it offends you more. Somehow it seems it wastes more of our time to be covered in hypocrisy. Leo Buscaglia said the loving person hates waste. In this case it is not just the waste processing by the river which bothers me and many others here, but it is the waste of our time trying to sort out the truth and trying to get those in power to do the jobs they are paid and elected to do. I have also found that people are too busy to get involved in local government and the daily decisions. They put too much trust and faith in those they elect and pay the salaries of. They give them too much power. Then they -- the voters -- get and stay too busy to check up on what is being done. By the time the next elections come, it is too late to reverse all the bad decisions -- typically made out of self-interest, not out of community interest -- which have been made. And the bureaucrats are even a bigger problem. It seems almost impossible to get rid of them. I am convinced the system needs changing. Not just the few people who have power in it. But the people who have power are the ones who write the laws saying how you can and can't go about changing the system. Of course they won't make it easy. They will make it *seem* easy, but in reality it will be next to impossible. Yet it still must be done. The sad thing is how many people believe the system works. And how many are being fooled or "having the wool pulled over their eyes." It is like a corrupt religion or church that people keep believing in, in spite of all the evidence of corruption. I see a need for society to re-think how democracy works, and to figure out a way to keep the people more involved, before it gets too far out of control. Or, maybe it is better to say, before the control is shifted too far to those in power. There is control, definitely. A lot of it. But in many cases around the world, not just in this small town where I have been staying for the past few months, the control gets increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. It is human nature that those with power will use it to serve their own needs and goals. So the system must be designed not to allow this kind of concentration of power. It is an age old problem. I just happened to have had a chance to see it first hand at this point in my life. There are many related issues and problems which I may write about in the future, but I felt a need to write this much now. S. Hein |
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