Heroes Not Zombies

Yesterday I wrote about how power corrupts so we need the means and ways to insist on transparency and accountability. As I thought about the dominant model of democracy around the world it struck me that most systems foster conflict.

In the U.K. there is the government and the “opposition”. The role of latter is to oppose, and the procedures and practices in parliament seem designed to foster argument and conflict. In the USA it’s perhaps worse with a more two party system than there is in most European countries.

The first past the post voting system creates the narrative of a winner and a bunch of losers.

“Us and them”.

Division and conflict seem to be worsening in those countries which foster this idea of politics as conflict.

But there are other models out there which make some attempt to force a number of parties to work together. There are some countries which use proportional voting to try to get a better representation of a spread of views in parliament. And there are various examples of participative democracy in recent years with citizens assemblies and attempts to foster genuine discussion.

One thing which strikes me is that if the wind blows in the direction of competition there will be winners and losers, division and conflict. But if the wind blows in the direction of consensus, there might be more listening, more discussion and more cohesion.

When the aim is to agree how to live together then we might develop the systems which foster active listening, tolerance and consensus. But if we continue to favour competition where one group “beats” another group, what kind of society do we have then? A divided, angry and frustrated one, it seems.

We are all different. We won’t ever all see the world the same way, and nor should we. I often think of the human body made up of completely different organs and tissues which don’t compete with each other. They integrate with each other.

Integration is the formation of mutually beneficial bonds. That’s how all our organs work so well together. If they started to fight each other, they’d all die.

Imagine what a political system would look like if integration was the aim. Imagine what society would look like if we gave priority to the formation of mutually beneficial bonds, rather than to dividing into us and them and creating winners and losers.