From Democracy to Tyranny

24 Oct 2011

This morning's newspapers are full of stories about deteriorating relationships between European leaders such as Merkel, Sarkosy, Cameron etc (the leaders of Germany, France, and the UK respectively). Sarkosy apparently told Cameron "You have lost a good opportunity to shut up. We are sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say you hate the euro yet now you want to interfere in our meetings."

David Cameron argued: "I realise that resolving this crisis requires greater fiscal and economic integration in the Eurozone. But this must not be allowed to come at the expense of Britain's national interest..."

Think about that statement. Think about the philosophy behind it. Do you agree with it? Do you think it's the kind of thing that Jesus would have said? Do you think it's the kind of thing Socrates would have said? What's wrong with it if anything?

Translating his words into philosophy we have the idea that: Justice is whatever profits the community without harming the individual self. I am not saying this is the only possible definition of Cameron's mindset, but I think it's a useful way to approximate his ethics, so please think about it for a moment. Can you see how this underlying ethical principle gives rise to Cameron's opinion that: the Eurozone should do whatever it takes to solve the crisis, but only so long as it does not hurt the British?

Now if you think about what people sometimes call "the search for truth and justice", this definition of justice can be looked at as a sort of step down from invisible hand which rejects individual suffering. Under invisible hand the worthy strong kill the unworthy weak, but in this new philosophy of justice individuals are protected from suffering. Unlike invisible hand justice never hurts the unworthy individual, it doesn't mandate equality, but it constrains the flow of benefits so the weak at least never suffer.

I think we can connect this underlying philosophy with "liberal democracy", just as invisible hand appears to be the underlying philosophy of "oligarchy". For example, up until recently Angela Merkel has been trying to solve the Eurozone crisis by coming up with generous financial rescue packages that attempt to square the circle and cure everyone's pain. Back in the old days of oligarchy, society didn't have government aid, they would have just put the Greeks in debtors jail. So Merkel's justice is different, more modern, she never talks about "punishing the unjust Greeks", she rejects the old fashioned idea that righteousness often requires suffering.

What do you think? Do you agree that justice is whatever profits the group without hurting the individual? Do you remember the traditional way to answer ethical dilemmas? Image your favourite hero or god etc. So what do you think Jesus would say? Obviously Jesus said words to the effect of "Giving one's life for one's fellow man is the greatest love" and "do many good things by being the one divine thing called love", so the question is now how do we apply this loving theory?

If we take this statement and apply it to the Greeks, it means the Greeks would give their lives for the greater good. If everyone in Greece was prepared to give their life for their fellow man, what would they do? That really depends on their definition of "fellow man". If their fellow man is their fellow Greeks, it means the Greeks would do whatever it takes to make the Greeks better off, and the short term material emotional pain pleasure instinctive response might be to resist austerity. However, remember Jesus rejected the parochial individualism of Judaism. So his "fellow man" is not just fellow Greeks, it's everybody in the world. Looked at in that way, the Greeks would set aside their national interests and do what the world most needs them to do, and that is clearly to surrender national sovereignty, to accept whatever reforms are required, to make whatever sacrifices are required to repay their debts, selling their islands and working themselves to the bone, restoring faith in European sovereign bonds, and doing their bit to fix the crisis and save the world.

Alternatively, if we take this statement and apply it to the Germans, it means the Germans would give their lives for the greater good. If everyone in Germany was prepared to give their life for their fellow man, what would they do? There are three hundred million people relying on the Euro and billions more around the world whose standard of living is threatened by Eurozone disaster, so it goes without saying that the Germans would solve the crisis. Now if the Germans really faced up to this divine calling they will stop pretending the ECB can conjure up magical tricks or keep kicking cans down the road, and they would face up to the fact that there are two essential paths ahead and they must choose one of them. What are those two paths? To fight the Greeks, or to surrender to the Greeks. Surrendering to the Greeks is to give them enough money so they don't have to reform. Fighting the Greeks is to impose reforms on them, or kick them out of Europe so no one else ever dares to walk away from their debts again. Neither of these choices are pleasurable for the Germans. Germany is a country still consumed by Second World War guilt. Because they feel guilty, the Germans are terrified of pushing the Greeks around, they treat their European neighbours with kid gloves, that is why they pay for the EU but leave its running to France (but unfortunately the French have run Europe almost as badly as the Greeks have run Greece, and now it's all falling apart). My guess is that for Angela Merkel surrendering to the Greeks is the least painful choice.

So we have talked about the Christian way to think about justice. Now let's take a look at the philosophical way. Do you think Socrates would say that justice is whatever profits the group without hurting the individual? Socrates, of course, admired the Spartans not the Athenians, even though he was an Athenian himself. Does that liberal democratic description of justice sound Spartan to you? Of course not, the Greeks would never have defined justice in terms of individual rights - like the Christians they looked for a idealistic objective viewpoint on truth and justice. In fact, I think Socrates would approve of our analysis above of what Jesus would do. However, I think he would be less undecided on the course of action the Germans would take. Recall that we said: the correct course of action for the Greeks based on Christian love is to surrender, but the Germans have a choice between fighting and surrendering to the Greeks. So what would Socrates say and why?

I think Socrates would say one sophisticated way to analyse this problem is to look at justice in terms of evolving harmony. If the Germans fight and win, they impose on the Greeks precisely the reforms the Greeks would take for themselves anyway if they were virtuous; so the for an intellectual Chinese Sage looking at universal harmony between the nature of the personal and environmental challenge, the course of action the Germans should take is pretty clear. Anyone who can understand both sides can see that in this case war is a more beautiful tune than surrender.

I think another way Socrates might decide what the Germans should do is to look at the idea of self control. For the Germans surrendering is the easiest option, it's much easier to give the Greeks some money rather than to confront some very scary skeletons in the closet. Likewise for the Greeks accepting a lot of money is the easy way out. The Japanese Samurai always takes the path away from himself, a sort of moral compass that points away from pleasure. This detachment from self is why philosophers and warriors, a pair Socrates might call Guardians, are famously ascetic.

I think another way Socrates might decide what the Germans should do is to think about strength. When incompetents are forced to reform they become stronger. Underling our basic laws of human justice is a sort of strength principle which mirrors the Darwinian nature of our world. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, the laws of Karma etc all make for a stronger world. So Socrates might suggest the Germans fight the Greeks because making people pay their debts and things like that is the traditional Darwinian way of justice.

I think another way Socrates might decide what the Germans should do is to look at the idea of courage. Courage is a sort of upside down vision of the earlier idea of self control. With courage we are not trying to head away from our lower nature, but rather head toward what higher nature, so a sort of moral compass for virtue. So in fact the courage solution is really a lot like the idea of imaging what Jesus would do. But I think Socrates would say that you need to imagine a something a little more human than Jesus. You see Christianity splits in Catholicism and Puritanism, and they follow different paths. Now if you are a Puritan, and the Germans are, you should try and imagine Martin Luther not Jesus. I think it's pretty obvious Martin Luther would start singing Onward Christian Soldiers etc, and put the Greeks in the poor house for reformation. I think if Martin Luther had make a mistake in the Second World War, he would learn from that mistake and move on. He wouldn't allow it to turn him into some kind of hippy pacifist like character, he wouldn't stop being true to himself.

So these several examples have illustrated the concept of justice, demonstrated some ways of thinking about it, and compared "liberal democracy" with the old religious and ancient philosophical ideas of justice. We have shows how, back in the old days of religious or philosophical Kings, justice was certainly not described as whatever profits the group without hurting the individual. Now it's interesting to take a look at the progression of society and see how the modernist concept of justice developed.

If you pick up a copy of the Financial Times or listen to European politicians, it's immediately apparent that whereas tabloid newspapers talk about justice and shame all the time, the elite rarely mention these things. The liberal elite call conversations about justice and shame uncouth. But in Plato's dialogue Protagoras he describes these fundamental human instincts as the glue that holds human society together. How then is it possible that justice has become such an unfashionable subject amongst the modern elite? For example, back in Ancient Greece and even Ancient Rome the elite talked about justice all the time, in fact the more elite a person was the more obsessed he was about justice and shame - but today you need to go to the working man's pub to have any kind of conversation about justice. Isn't that a shocking change in the world? It's not the decline of religion in the West, atheists still have a concept of justice and shame, they are integral parts of human psychology. Of course, the modern loss of interest in justice and shame essentially comes out of a long period of rising living standards. If you think about, to a certain extent the liberal elite inhabit a world in which history and evolution have ended, all pain and suffering has been cured, so there is no need for punishing questions of justice. Western society is like candy floss even for the average man, but for the elite it's like Cloud 9, and on Cloud 9 everything is perfect and there are no police or prisions.

So conversations about justice tend to disappear from society as life gets easier, because it appears as it there is nothing wrong with society and everyone can afford talk about humanitarianism all day long. It's only now, with the Western economic crisis, that life has gotten interesting again. Suddenly the masses are waking up to the fact that the elite are sort of witch doctors who have deluded themselves into thinking they have cured all suffering with economic tricks, but in reality they have just been treating the surface with ointments, and deep down their utopia is totally rotten. Now their magical ointments have reached the limits of their effectiveness, and not only are we completely rotten inside, the external environment is disastrous. If you look at both the inside of the body and the external skin, it looks as if our whole socioeconomic system is being flooded by rising seas, is cracking in terrible earthquakes, is erupting in boiling hot volcanoes, and being blown away by fierce winds.

The end result of all this upheaval is that the elite liberal democratic idea of justice, namely whatever profits the group without hurting the individual, simply burns down. Suddenly people start seeing evil everywhere and saying "why the hell aren't you punishing it?!" The liberal elite have spent their entire lives thinking about sweet nice things, they have no experience with the hunt or punishment of evil. It's like that film "Demolition Man" when the cryogenically frozen bad guy is released in utopia. The police of the future are blown away by his murderous rampage, they haven't had a single murder in a hundred years. He is so far removed from what they know, the only way to solve the problem is to wake up another cryogenically frozen psychopath to catch the one that is already out there. Today, for example, the masses talk about modern politicians as "gutless superficial fizzy drinks", and Margaret Thatcher is suddenly more popular than ever before. Cameron came to office telling the people he is the heir to Blair and a Thatcher critic. Now if you look at Cameron today he is a state of constant u-turns about everything, it's like his entire ideological outlook is totally out of touch with the popular man, and he is desperately trying to stay in control of a society which is pulling away from everything he has any experience in handling.

So what do people like Cameron do next? Unfortunately, what they don't do is pick up a book on Ancient Greek philosophy and lean about justice! Because they live for the love of the herd, they take the easy path to power, which is to play to the bestial nature of the herd. So they become like populist American politicians, and sooner or later the people follow them, and then everyone in Europe becomes like the Greeks, which is to say completely self serving. So they redefine justice not as whatever profits the whole without hurting the self, but rather as simply "whatever profits the self". Then Cameron no longer says "the Eurozone should reform without hurting the British", but rather "all that matters is British interests". Look at the Greeks today, the violent mob roaming the streets do not talk about personal failure or sacrifice, they just talk about "evil German Nazis" making them endure the "pain" of reform and making them pay back "unfair" debts etc. The Greeks have already stepped over the edge, they are living in a state of total injustice and tyranny, a state which is likely to end up eventually tearing Europe to pieces.

Plato describes the four stages of government corruption as aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. These four stages represent the cycle of increasing corruption that societies which are born into favourable circumstances undergo. Imagine the son of a great King, then his son, then his son and so forth, and with each successive generation their love of truth and justice disintegrates, taking them first to virtue loving, then wealth loving, then pleasure loving, then madness and existential collapse. Plato is a sort of master of big picture psychological philosophy who can see the historical progression of society.

Today, of course, we are at the transition between democracy and tyranny. The emerging philosophy of "whatever profits the self" is exactly the definition of tyranny. Now the fascinating and terrifying thing about these transitions is that they are connected with the "yin". If you read this section of Plato's Republic, Socrates is always joking about how the men made the mistake of listening to their wives, and as a result they let go of their ideas and sought more virtue, wealth, etc.

This "yin" connection is very shocking, but think about the failure of liberal democracy today. Suddenly the Greeks realise that it is no longer possible for the world to profit without hurting themselves, so they give up on the world and follow themselves. Thus the decision is "humane". Realise that the nurturing mother elevates her children's welfare over society. The goodness of this maternal mindset is connected with its weakness, because as long as the mother doesn't have power beyond her family, her kindness to her own is good and beautiful. So the maternal urge is good as long as it is operating on the passive plane, but when the maternal takes power it gradually destroys the world. This is why Plato talks about the crazy idea of communal upbringing of children in the Republic. This is also why, of course, Plato makes so many jokes and references to homosexuality. If you can read Plato, you can see that partly what he is doing is scrambling what the early Confucians talked about, namely the more dangerous ideas about the yin/yang, so he avoids using male/female imagery all the time, he can use boys and old men instead. Also, of course, the homosexuality, the feminization of Sodom and Gomorrah like Ancient Athens was connected to their spiritual corruption and existential destruction, which is the whole topic of Plato. So the homosexuality in Plato is one of his many smoke screens, it's a sort of typically ironic Ancient Greek joke which everyone unworthy gets completely backwards.

This article is quite bold, but I have decided to start writing a bit more openly about Plato's ideas. So read this article through and think about the concept of justice, and how the "yin" perverts it with individualism, and how liberal democracy is changing into tyranny. Think about people like Cameron who still still on the edge of tyranny. Then people like Merkel and Sarkosy who are further along. Then look for the radical next stage, the real zombies. For example, the bulk of Conservative MPs are basically already completely mad and completely corrupt, you know when you have seen inside them because it's like terrifying violent black hole of individualism. Think about the Greek people, think about the conduct of Israel in Palestine. If you want to be really philosophical, think about how the Greeks killed Socrates and the Jews killed Jesus, how they are sort of enormous karmic volcanoes at the centre of world history. Notice that the evil revolves around the relationship between "the one" and "the many" in the context of power not passivity. I am not bashing David Cameron because I prefer New Labour or Old Labour etc, in fact Cameron is probably redeemable. It's not about party, although parties that are suffering tend to be worse. So the economically failing Guardian is like a black hole of evil that twists the world to suit itself in the most hideous contortions. Likewise the struggling Republicans in the United States are almost full on flesh eating zombies. But this evil is not just populist or desperate, you can also see it in the successful Economist Magazine. The Economist devotes itself to freedom and openness, how can it be evil you say? But that's because you make the mistake of confusing the "yin" and "good". The whole illusion of yin as good is what creates the cycle of destruction. You have to see past that by looking at the extent to which the journalists twist the injustice of their personal philosophical failures to suit their political interests, therefore allowing them to maintain control over the masses and sell copy etc. In the Economist for example, an article today about the anti-capitalism protests blames everything except capitalism, because capitalism is the dogma that runs through the veins of the Economist Magazine. It's actually a much better article than The Economist usually write, but like a politician they are experts at tricking you into believing them, their entire life is a toxic fight against "true justice" and an attempt to make justice appear to be their self belief. As the situation degenerates they start hunting for their scapegoats in whatever is furthest from themselves, so the socialists start shooting the rich, and the capitalists start shooting the hoodies, and we philosophers beat a hasty retreat into remote communities while the zombies slaughter each other.

This article makes many points using geopolitical relations between sovereign states, but this self interest not community interest concept reflects human though processes, so the internal state of the country becomes a microcosm of the geopolitical macrocosm. Do you see that? Can you make out the vital fact that seeing the reflection of abstracts through layers is the starting point of philosophy? As soon as you pick this up you live a completely different world from the rest of humanity. Do you feel alive for the first time in your life? Do you feel like you are watching the Forbidden Plant and making blurred images with the brain boosting machine? Can you see why we who have have woken up call others zombies? Can you hear the music of the spheres? Do you realise, you didn't wake up at random? It's like that old biblical idea of the fisherman coming at the flood before the water recedes, this is what it's all about!