The Devil in the Details

DIMITRIS MYTARAS

For male citizens, Athenian democracy was real, but it functioned nothing like what we practice today. The center of Athenian power was the Boule, a council of 500 men who prepared legislation for the Assembly to vote on — chosen not by election, but by public lottery, known as sortition. Magistrates and juries were selected the same way.

Aristotle was clear about this distinction. In Politics, he contrasted sortition, which he viewed as democratic, with elections, which he saw as oligarchic. His reasoning was compelling: sortition ensured that legislative bodies were truly representative of the citizenry; it resisted corruption and the concentration of power; and it spread the opportunity to govern broadly throughout the population.

When the architects of the U.S. Constitution met in Philadelphia in 1787, they were fully aware of Aristotle’s distinction — and deliberately chose the oligarchic option.

Today, roughly half the members of Congress are millionaires. The current U.S. administration includes 13 billionaires.

Elections also select for the wrong qualities: charisma, wealth, ambition, and connection — a dangerously unrepresentative sample of the population. They reward adversarial grandstanding over considered deliberation. Open-mindedness, perhaps the most valuable quality for wise policymaking, is nearly fatal to a successful campaign.

At first sight, it might seem absurd to ask a random sample of citizens to deliberate on complex policy questions. But a wealth of evidence from social psychology tells us something counterintuitive: while individuals are often poor reasoners — led astray by bias and preconception — people become excellent collective problem-solvers under the right conditions.

If democracy is to survive the 21st century, it may need to become, for the first time, actually democratic.

~ Jeremy Lent

The Devil is a preliminary stage of individuation.

~ Jung

We’re a work in progress, not a finished product. Maybe we’re on our very own trip to Bountiful, or maybe not. It depends on whether we refuse to become relational and conscious.

We have preserved the levels of consciousness brought to the New World by its traumatized refugees. We have conveniences and powers unimagined by our ancestors but our fears are pretty much the same. Our consciousness is still disconnected from our hearts, and our focus is still on short term survival, whatever the cost.

If Jung is right, the less conscious we are, the less good we are. Our political system may not encourage us to be just and equitable. It may be set up to protect the ones who understand power and how to benefit personally from it.

That system is currently showing its underbelly. We could be excused if we wonder if it can be made to promote true justice and equality. We keep wanting better representatives, but the ones who get traction, who fit the job description, know how to manage perceptions and power. They don’t necessarily care about justice, social or otherwise.

Our system is strangely inimical to the eccentric creativity we’re all born with. It takes it out of us as early as possible so we can function within the system. The system takes priority over the individual’s eccentric nature and prevents it from flowering.

Irving Penn

We call this democracy and we’re proud of it because it’s obviously superior to a lot of alternatives, but it has its limitations. Our educational system doesn’t exactly foster a life of conscious flowering.

We are held in a spiritual and creative vise until we forget we ever had those longings. Only if you’re lucky or exceptionally courageous will you manage to find and release yourself from those strictures. They are installed so early you think they are part of you.

The soul-building project that is humanity’s birthright and destiny requires that we each learn to grow our own consciousness, which means we have to protect our own eccentric creative soul. The world we live in may think it has no use for that, but it does.

Walid Ebeid

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