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For several millennia mankind has labored to design a system of governme...
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For several millennia mankind has labored to design a system of government to adequately host its masses. We have sought a means that can accurately represent the most people within reasonable standards of efficacy given the basic constraints of capital and bureaucratic resources, among other logistic challenges. We have attempted to craft a structure in which people can govern themselves, and have been just as effective in doing so as one could expect to be in a desperate effort to construct a daycare center where children watch over, educate, and discipline themselves. No system of government forged by man has yet been capable of serving the grand majority while acknowledging that minority ideals which are unpopular are often slivers of genius or even grandiose common sense fledging before their time.
Our species' failure to master such an integral piece of society despite ages of progress in other fields is not entirely to be shouldered by history's political architects. They have been asked to design a spacious room that is comfortable in temperature to both a polar bear and a lion, while simultaneously designing the room to keep those two beasts from quarreling without impeding on their freedom to quarrel by use of any physical constraints or barriers. Can we fault them for their consistent failure to produce satisfactory results?
A litany of systems have been tested, but our hyper sensitive communal tastes have spit them out through the ages like a spoiled food critic rejecting the finest endeavors that a laboring chef can desperately offer one after another. As our population grows and habitats expand, the populous which demands governing constantly becomes more diverse and complex. Asking a chef to whip up a dish that perfectly suits all the guests at a party becomes impossible as the quantity and diversity of the party's guests constantly increases. So it seems that the blame can be placed on the height of our expectations- but it doesn't seem like an unreasonable expectation to hope for a system of government that works. Perhaps it's about time to shift responsibility for this issue onto those who ultimately make the system fail- the citizens themselves.
Contrary to the typical layman's understanding of evolution's function- it isn't a force of nature that makes living things better as time goes on. Evolution has done to humanity exactly what we understand it to do, which is to produce more of the kinds of people that are able to survive and reproduce in their environment and fewer of those who cannot or do not. The results so far have yielded a species of instinctively short-term-thinking, selfish, greedy, and even lazy individuals, all of whom naturally want the best for themselves at the lowest cost of effort, energy and commitment. Evolution has fine-tuned us to be efficient-minded people. Most aren't naturally willing to invest energy into that which doesn't directly concern or interest themselves, even if they know it has long term, big picture significance. We want as much power and security as we can muster, and once we get it, we want to keep it.
This isn't to say that people of a mostly generous, charitable, and selfless nature don't exist. However, those people simply aren't the vast majority- and it's that majority which has thrust countless wrenches into the gears of a potentially fruitful, productive system of government. They have provided our planet with a population that's too greedy for communism, too paranoid for socialism, too apathetic and selfish for true democracy, and too large and diverse for any proposed system to really incorporate all opinions and priorities under a fair and balanced united platform. Any and all systems are open to corruption- but that wouldn't be a problem if these systems weren't attempting to control societies of citizens bent on corrupting them.
The catch 22 of the whole issue is that people aren't merely victims of evolutionary genetic contribution- they're also greatly influenced by the cultures, behaviors, and conditions of the environments they develop in. Currently they develop in a system of corrupted, imbalanced, and unfair government, which every generation continues to fail at solving because the generation they try to fix it for has grown up the same way. I know that pointing out the reason for a problem isn't equivalent to a functioning resolution, but it is a start, or at least in some cases a helpful tool in guiding the accusatory index finger in the right direction. Perhaps it's time that we stop blaming government for its inability to achieve perfection- to recognize that government itself is just a tool, and it's not worthy of shouldering the entire blame for our lack of political progress. Governments in and of themselves aren't the root of the problem here- we are.
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Jess x