Democracy is now working as designed, and it’s dangerous!

Emanations of the Philosophy of Life Instinct

The past Golden Age of democracy

In the last couple of hundred years, there have been periods when an artificial form of democracy operated in a handful of countries. Political parties were led by men and women who were thinkers and visionaries, and generally well educated. They were elected as prime ministers and presidents and steered their countries and international affairs based on principles they thought best for the people they represented, and for humanity.

Names that come to mind are Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, Churchill, Gandhi, Nehru, Lee Kuan Yew, Kennedy, Mandela, Thatcher, and Obama. None of them was perfect, but there was a widespread feeling that they raised the bar for human behaviour and achievement.

In those times, leadership was understood as inspiring individuals and communities to become better versions of themselves, which meant being kinder, more thoughtful, more rational, more peaceful, less bigoted, more charitable, more literate, more productive, and so on. Morality and ethics were unambiguous terms for measuring words and actions.

Leaders were not like the common man, and they were not expected to be. Being an intellectual was expected and considered part of the job definition.

Democracy is turning into Majoritarianism

But leadership no longer means that.

Now leaders are expected to be just like ‘the common man’.

And by the common man (and woman) is meant those who are the majority in a country, defined by a combination of race, religion, and language.

The only difference allowed between these newfangled leaders and the general populace is that they can be more ambitious for the power to make decisions for everyone.

So, in many countries, leaders have come to faithfully reflect the majority of people as they are. The reasons for this trend can be studied systematically, but they are likely to be rooted in two evolutionary social developments —

1. As poverty is eliminated, individual self-confidence in survival and success grows into the arrogance of ‘Why should anyone tell me what is right and wrong? Why should anyone tell me to change?’
2. As people see shifts in old ways and ‘other types’ migrating into their territory, they feel a loss of identity, which leads to a feeling of insecurity, which turns into the reaction of ‘I want someone just like me in power.’

This peculiar combination of confidence and insecurity is changing the nature of democratic power structures.

There is now no expectation that the leader or person in power will change people for the better. They can sharpen and amplify the existing characteristics of the majority, but anything else is political suicide.

This form of government is called majoritarianism.

So what’s wrong with majoritarianism?

Representative democracy is defined as a system in which citizens elect government officials to govern on their behalf. An election is usually decided by a simple majority. Personal freedoms and minorities are only expected to be protected by a constitution, a relic of ‘the intellectually right thing’. By this definition, majoritarianism is its inevitable logical outcome.

So where can majoritarian democracy go wrong?

Three problems can arise, and usually do —

1. The majority may not be wise enough to know what is best for it.
2. The minorities may not be taken care of.
3. In time, it can move towards authoritarianism.

The first is unfortunate, the second morally questionable, and the third can be stifling, assuming that human fate, morality, and freedom matter to us.

And the constitution is easily ignored when the majority is with you.

This is the turn democracy has taken in the USA, India, Turkey, Italy, Israel, Argentina, and several other countries. They are now led by demagogues wrecking progress, minority rights, and fundamental freedoms.

In theory, if the majority of people in a country had characteristics that increase the happiness and living standards of all sections of society, democracy and majoritarianism would be two sides of the best possible form of government.

But alas, neither is this wisdom common in the masses, nor does a collection of people lead to a virtual superior ‘mesh brain’ capable of transcending their base level of thinking and feeling.

Naturally, we observe that only a handful of democracies today have an enlightened majority, governed by one of their typical members or better. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, and Canada (with Carney), are the ones that come to mind in April 2026. There were and will be others at different times, but the number is small, and each one a miracle.

Where to, from here?

I sometimes wonder whether the trend towards the extreme right and demagoguery is an unconscious evolutionary experiment by our species to see whether it is better off abandoning intellectual ideas such as liberty, equality, and fraternity and returning to ‘might is right’. I believe it will automatically correct itself when it finds that those values were not just theoretically noble but practically the best for humanity, but I may be wrong.

Fewer than half of the 195 countries are democracies; of those, 46 are flawed democracies, and only 25 are full democracies. With many of the latter moving towards majoritarianism and authoritarianism, can billions of humans do anything to ensure a better future?

The UN is ineffectual, and countries that were champions and models of holistic, wholesome democracy have lost their way or their influence.

What governmental alternatives do we have to majoritarianism?

• Communism — does not align with human nature and has failed.
• Totalitarianism and dictatorship — are repugnant and proven dangers.
• Monarchy — is outdated and a glorified form of dictatorship.
• Oligarchy — leads to authoritarianism.
• Theocracy —is authoritarianism and dictatorship in religious garb.
• Meritocracy — is tempting but unworkable and ethically problematic.
• Anarchy — is no government at all, and hardly a serious alternative.

Not much of a choice then.

Should we conclude that the state of human evolution is such that we can do nothing about the ‘leaders’ and governments we get? Should we just be happy with what we have where we live, or try to move to a better place?

What do you think, my dear reader?