Changes in the condition of human practical experiences effect
changes in the self-identification of the individual and of
groups of people. Emphasis is less and less on nature and shared
living space, and more on connections free of arbitrary borders,
even of elements pertaining to culture and history. New political
experiences, still subjected to expectations carried over from
the past, do not actually continue the past. Accordingly, the
nature of political experiences changes. Assumptions regarding
leadership, organization, planning, and legality are redefined.
Tribal chiefs might well have turned, through the centuries,
into the kings of the Middle Ages, and, with the advent of a new
society, into presidents. There is, nevertheless, no reason to
believe that in a universe of distributed tasks and massive
parallelism, a need for political centralism and hierarchy will
remain. The president, for instance, is the king of the
civilization of literacy; and his wife becomes the queen, in
defiance of all the literate documents that justify presidency.
Executive power, in conjunction with the legislative and
judicial branches, implements ideals of liberal political
democracy as these became essential to the pragmatics of
industrial society. But once new circumstances emerge, the
underlying structure reflected in the power structure undergoes
change as well.
In the spirit of the dynamics of change, one should notice that,
in a framework of non-hierarchic structures, there is no
legitimate need for the presidency. Theoretic arguments, no
matter how rigorous, are after all irrelevant if not based on
related facts. New circumstances already made the function of
president strictly ceremonial in many countries. In other
countries, a president's ability to exercise power is impeded by
laws that make this power irrelevant. Economic cycles, affecting
integrated economies, turn even the most visionary heads of
states (when they happen to be visionary) into witnesses to
events beyond their control. Politics does not happen at levels
so remote from the individual that individuals disconnect
themselves from the political ceremonial. It happens closer and
closer to where ideals and interest crystallize in the form of
new human interactions.
Who would represent the country if the function of head of state
were abolished? How can a country have a consistent political
system? Who would be responsible for implementing laws? Such
questions originate, without exception, within literacy's system
of expectations. The extreme decentralization that is made
possible by the new means of the civilization of illiteracy
requires, and indeed stimulates, different political structures.
Instead of the self-delusion and demagoguery triggered by an
idealized image of the politically concerned citizen, we should
see the reality of citizens pursuing goals that integrate
political elements. Literacy resulted in a politics of
representation that ended up in effectively excluding the
citizen from political decision-making. Rationalized in the
structures of democracy, political ideals are now a matter of
efficient human interaction. A president's performance is
totally irrelevant to the exchange of information on networks of
human cooperative effort. Agreements relevant to the people
involved, executed in view of reciprocal needs and future
developments, result more and more outside political
institutions, for reasons having little to do with them.
The majority of political functions, as they apply to presidents,
congresses, or other political institutions, still originate in
forms characteristic of past political experiences. They are
based on allegiances and commitments contradicted by the
pragmatics of today's world. The fact that heads of states are
also heads of the military (commander-in-chief) comes from the
time when the strongest man became the leader. But in the modern
world of growing emancipation, women are valid candidates as
heads-of-state all over the world. However, sexual bias has kept
women from gaining the military competence that a
commander-in-chief is expected to have. Another example: What is
the reason for a president to be at the funeral of a deceased
head-of- state? Blood ties used to bond kings and nobility more
strongly than political arguments, long before fast
transportation could carry a monarch to the deceased in less time
than it took for decay to set in. A farewell wished today at the
funeral of a Japanese emperor, a Moslem ruler, or an atheistic
president belongs to the spectacle of politics, not to its
substance. The expensive, and delusive, literate performance of
state funerals, oath-taking, inauguration, parades, and state
visits is more often than not an exercise in hypocrisy. These
spectacles please only through their cynical pandering to the
people's desire for circus. Pragmatically relevant commitments
are no longer the privilege of state bureaucracies. When the
historic necessity of states winds up to be no more than the
expression of remote tribal instincts, the literate institution
of state becomes superfluous.
Political idolatry, commercial nationalism, and ethnic vanity
affect politics at many levels. Nationalism, emerging as a form
of collective pride and psychological compensation for repressed
instincts, celebrates gold medals at Olympic games, the number
of Nobel Prize laureates, and achievements in the arts and
sciences with a fervor worth a better cause. Borders of pride
and prejudice are maintained even where they have de facto
ceased to exist. No scientist who achieved results in his or her
field worked in isolation from colleagues living all over the
world. The Internet supports the integration of creative effort
and ideas, beyond borders and beyond national fixations, often
expressed as military priorities rather than as cooperation and
integration. Art is internationally nurtured and exchanged.