Democracy is a domain of expectations. Humans constitute
themselves as members of a democracy to the extent that their
practical experiences acknowledge equality, freedom, and
self-determination. The concept of democracy has varied
enormously over time. In ancient societies, it acknowledged
equality of the demos, and that free men-not slaves, not
women-were entitled to vote. Subject to many emancipations,
democracy denotes the right of people to elect their government
(based on the general will set forth by the Jacobins, as
mentioned above). How this self- government actually
works-through direct or indirect representation, in forms of
government based on the division of power between the executive
and legislative, or under monarchies-is itself a matter of
practical experiences pertinent to democracy. The democracy of
human misery and neglect is quite different from the democracy of
affluence. Equal access to work, education, health care, and
art, and equal access to drugs, murder, joblessness, ignorance,
and disease are far from being similar. A small town-meeting in
Vermont or one in a Swiss canton, effectively governing life in
town, is quite different from the forms of political
self-governance in countries where the central power effectively
overrides any self-governance. The same can be said of the
overriding power of other factors-the economy, for instance.
Democracy is a major form of social and political experience. The
power of the majority, expressed in votes, is only one of its
possible manifestations. When only a minority of the population
votes, the so-called majority ceases to be representative, no
matter what the formal rules say. We live by democratic practices
of delusion, and multiply, enthusiastically, their effect
through the literate discourse of democracy. As a domain of
expectations, mirroring hope implicit in literacy, democracy
conjures meaning only if it is paralleled by democratic
participation in social and political experiences. When one of
the two terms of this critical equation diminishes-as is the case
with participation-democracy diminishes in the same proportion.
There are many reasons for decreasing participation. In
countries where effective democracy was replaced by democratic
demagoguery, changes, such as those brought about by
revolutions, revolts, and reforms, initially mobilize the
people, almost to the last citizen. We are still observing a
phenomenon symptomatic of democracy in East Europe and the
republics of the former Soviet Union. From the almost unanimous
enthusiasm over renewal, leading to formal conditions for
democracy, individual participation in government is slowly
diminishing. What are the causes of this phenomenon, which is
paralleled by diminishing interest in religion, art, and
solidarity?
Many answers are given, and even more hypotheses are advanced:
psychological fatigue, lack of democratic tradition, egotism,
desire to catch up with affluent societies. From the
perspective of the relationships characteristic of an
individual's literate language and literacy programs of societies
claiming to be democratic, the answer should be sought in the
conflict between literacy-based values and the expectations of
efficiency characteristic of the new scale of humankind.
Efficiency made possible by a pragmatics emancipated from the
structural characteristics reified in literacy converted
democracy into commercial democracy. People can buy and sell
whatever they want. Their equality is one of access to the
market of affluence; their freedom is sealed in the mutually
acknowledged right to plenty. Democratization, which people
believe is taking place all over the world, is a process of
absorbing newer and newer groups of people into prosperity, into
the superficial culture of entertainment (including sports
competition), and into a government that guarantees the right to
wealth and consumption.
This description can easily become suspect of moralizing instead
of tight analysis. Literacy embodies certain expectations from
democratic institutions. Like other institutions, this type is
also subjected to the test of efficiency. When the institutions
of democracy fail this test, they are, in the language of
democracy, diverted to consolidating not democracy, as a
practical experience of the people, but the institution.
Bureaucracies are generated as a diversion of democracy from its
social and political focus in an incestuous love with the
language in which its principles are enunciated. Mediation
insinuates itself between the people and the institutions of
democracy.
Media generalize the role of the literate system of checks and
balances and, as mass-media, becomes a participant in the
equation of power. Taking full advantage of means that
characterize the civilization of illiteracy-the power of images,
instantaneous access to events, the power of networking,
communicative resources of new technologies-the media play a
double role: representative of the people and representative of
power. Since their own domain of experiences is representation,
the media depend on the efficiency of the practical experiences
of people's self-constitution in productive activities. Mass
media activity is carried not by its own motivations, but by
those of the market, whose locus it becomes. Consequently, the
equation of democracy becomes the equation of competition and
economic success. The media select and endorse causes and
personalities appropriate to the process of marketing democracy.
Instead of government, and the responsibilities associated with
it, democracy becomes the people's right to buy, among other
things, their government and the luxury of transferring their
democratic responsibilities to its institutions.
Media bashing is a favorite sport of politicians whenever things
don't work the way they expect. It is also practiced by the
public, especially in times of economic uncertainty or during
political developments that seem out of control (wars, violent
mass demonstrations, elections). Bashing or not, criticism of
the media reflects the fact that media expanded their
participation in power. The practical experience of public
relations, an outgrowth of media participation in power, uses the
methods of the media to promote causes and personalities as
products best suited for a certain need: support hungry
children, elect a sheriff, endorse a tax hike or reduction, etc.,
etc. The domains of competence and ability are effectively
disconnected from the domain of representation. Literacy-based
methods of establishing hierarchies and influencing choices are
enforced by new technologies for reaching targets, even in the
most saturated contexts of information dissemination. Advisers
committed only to the success of their endeavors use the
discriminating tools of the market in order to adapt the message
to all those who care to play the muddled game of democracy.
Information brokerage, feedback strategies, symbolic social
engineering, mass media, psychology, and event design form an
eclectic practical experience. Calling it by a certain
name-media-ocracy-is probably tendentious. But the shoe seems to
fit. From all we know, the effort of this activity does not go
towards promoting excellence or persuading communities that
democracy entails quality and defending self-government from
corruption. It rather focuses on what it takes to convince that
mediocrity adequately reflects the quest for equality, and is
the most people can expect if they are not dedicated to the
exercise of their rights. The literate and illiterate means used
to defend democracy, and the entire political system built on
the democratic premise, make it only more evident that
democracy, an offspring of language-based practical experiences,
is far from being the eternal and universal answer, the climax of
history. Indeed, the scale of humankind renders impossible
participation in power through the definition of ideals and
goals, as well as awareness of the consequences of human
actions. Alternative forms of participating in democracy need to
be found in the characteristics of the pragmatics corresponding
to the new scale. Such alternatives have to embody the
distributed nature of work, better understanding of the
connection (or lack thereof) between the individual and the
community, awareness of change as the only permanence, and
strategies of co-evolution, regarding equally all other people
and the nature to which humans still belong. Democracy is the
offspring of human experiences based on the postulate of
sameness. The alternatives derive from the dynamics of
difference.