Voting
We're stuck with it.
Voting is a core idea within the memeplex of democracy.
Not only do we have legislatures that hold votes. We have votes to decide who gets to be Speaker in the House of Representative (current events). Every organization I've ever been involved with holds votes at the level of board of directors even as the board dictates to others.
Constitutional democracies hold elections at many levels. Authoritarian countries hold elections too but its hard (and dangerous) to get on the list of electors. I imagine that even Genghis Khan had a council of elders of some sort that would vote.
We have to vote - we disagree with each other and need to act in concert sometimes.
That is, the group has different kinds of issues to deal with than the individual does. I think it may be one of the sources of the idea of God - God is a kind of group mind that keeps everyone in order and balanced.
Every powerful person wants the group to treat them as the group mind so that the group does what they want.
It doesn't work that way - the people in the group are individuals with their own perspectives who don't see the world in the same way the leader does. My point here is that this is a property of human group interactions. It applies at level of abstraction from the UN to condominium boards. A group is always made up of individuals with their own interests.
I yearn for objective ways of deciding on the best way forward. I got disabused of the idea of objectivity 50 years ago when I edited a student newspaper. I learned that all reporters are biased and so there could be no objective reports.
I tried to point to science. People smirked and pointed to how 'science' was saying coffee or wine or whatever is good for you one year and then bad the next and then good the year after - yeah yeah - how is that objective?
I stamp my foot in frustration.
How can people who trust their lives to airplanes and cars and electricity deny an objective reality?
But there they are.
What is to be done?
Say we have a pandemic (yeah, how likely is that) and restrictive public health measures need to be put in place to resist it. The measures are based on a "best we know" consensus among scientists.
And notice here that not all scientists agreed. There was a consensus. A sort of vote. There was a lot of government propaganda around the pandemic. We had mask mandates and vaccine mandates and constant reminders about social distancing. Parties and concerts and sports events were forced to cancel A lot of people didn't take in a lot of money they might have gotten and they howled
The people implementing those restrictions were authorized by legislatures and the legislatures were authorized by votes . but in any vote there are people who don't get their way These days the losers are very sore.
But consider the alternative to elections - basically - might is right And a society full of people trying to be mightier than thou rather than competing fairly under the rule of law will not prosper.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.