Today many citizens in the world pride them selves in living in democratic societies that offer equal opportunities to everyone. And when you think about it, democracy is a pinnacle of society evolution. People have the liberty of speech, everyone is governed by transparent laws, basic human wrights have been established, and public services exist to improve the quality of life of citizens.
There are many forms of democracies, and I will not explain each one of them, but what is common is that people have some saying in creation of government (mostly legislative and executive). And through organized citizen's movements people can alter many aspects of government. But can we do better than this?
What would be better? Would it be better if we could at any point replace our representatives. Would it be better that people can alter every aspect of government any time they want. Would it be better if the people can alter judicial practice any time they want, or even make judicial decisions by themselves?
Imagine that. Imagine that every decision in the country is done by voting. You would just need to vote all day, for every possible decision, so this is probably not possible.
How to improve then? It is in human nature to strive for bigger and better. Constantly improving and changing. That is actually what got us from living in caves to writing blogs on Steemit.
If we look to the origins of democracy, in the old greek city states, we see that people have much more saying in how state was run than today. BUT.... Not many people were even allowed to speak out. Only man that finished basic military training, and were not foreigners could speak up. So pretty restrictive. So definetly not the best way to go. Another dead end.
Yet improvements are necessary, not all people are treated the same. People with more money tend to have more connections, and by so, they have better treatment in many aspects of life. Even ancient Romans detected this problem: Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi is a Latin phrase, meaning "What is permissible for Jupiter is not permissible for a bull". Maybe then, the distribution of money is a problem?
How to distribute money fairly? Is it fair that people who work harder have the same amount as lazy, incompetent people. Is it fair that lazy incompetent people who are born into rich families have more money than a Steemit blogger :) .
In which direction than should our societies develop. People also create new societies every day on Internet. I mean look at us, all of us. There is this big platform that is a society for itself, and also this platform spawned creation of many other steemian organizations. And don't forget there are millions and millions of other examples similar to this on Internet. And each of one them has their own set of rules and policies, also people who are in charge of something and people who just do as they are told. People are experimenting freely with politics here actually. Probably we can make some conclusions from experiences that can be transformed into real life.
There are also thinkers and sociologists that create their own models . One that I am familiar with is the Venus Project. They believe their project can improve life quality, and would be fair to everyone... but to create this perfect society further technological developments are necessary. Don't get me wrong I am not promoting their ideas, actually I do not totally agree with them, but for me it is interesting to see how people think.
More and more questions and doubts are there, yet the fact is, this is the best we got AT THE MOMENT. Changes are going to happen, and some of them will not be to the better, but some will. Even Winston Churchill said Democracy is the worst form of government ... except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
But all of us must care, Maybe we can improve the world, but changes don't happen over night.
I am grateful that I live in a world where my daughter can live up to her full potential, because lets not forget in ancient Athens she would have been a second-class citizen, but that also means that I want her to inherit a better world than that I have inherited.
That should be everyone's goal.
Image sources:
http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/tragedy-modern-democracy/