During these times of turmoil and disorder, a time period marked by democratic governments being challenged, attacked, vilified and overthrown, it has become easy to issue an indictment against democracy, and particularly the manner in which it is carried out, almost everywhere in the world:
1. It does not create enough jobs or good jobs.
2. It does not ensure that one has the purchasing power that he hopes.
3. It cannot prevent the proletarianization of the middle classes and the desertification of vast territories, caused by the tsunami of technical progress and the globalization of markets.
4. It leads to the concentration of power in the hands of a few groups, typically the holders of cultural and networking capital.
5. It remains bounded within the boundaries of its areas of technical competence, which are becoming increasingly narrow.
6. It provides only short-term solutions and seems unable to convince people to put future issues ahead of those of the present.
7. It obeys a capitalism that leads to wasting natural resources and treading on the weakest.
8. Many leaders of these democracies are fascinated by the apparat that surrounds them and fail to realize that they have practically no power over anything real.
9. Many voters, (convinced that everything will worsen for them, and be even worse for their children), think about either fleeing or have lost interest in politics.
10. While admiring the apparent efficiency of totalitarian regimes, more and more people think that dictatorship could be a much better system; they want the departure of those who govern, but not only that; they also want to end republican institutions.
However, democracy remains the best form of government. But this is conditional on remembering its three main missions:
A. Allow each person, through school, to find his raison d’être. And provide him with the means to fulfil it.
B. Allow each community, no matter how small, to act for itself.
C. Give meaning to the notion of concerted effort, to serve and act for the benefit of future generations, in order to ensure that the future is better than the present. And build consensus.
Voters should only blame themselves if their parliaments and governments are unable to focus on these major issues; if their leaders are not up to these formidable challenges and are too often just puppets of the media. They are the ones who chose them.
And it is not by replacing them with clones who lean further right or further left on the political spectrum that we will change something. Moreover, it is not by replacing elected officials of a representative democracy with dictators, or by leaders selected by lot, that we will recreate the ethical and moral bonds that human communities sorely lack today.
To achieve this, leaders in each human community should be chosen because of their ability to: understand global movements, embody common greatness, speak truth, refuse to flatter the lowest reactions, listen, respect, learn, change their mind, trust, listen, help, encourage, marvel, admire, with humility and empathy.
The countries that will succeed in choosing these types of leaders in the long term will find their way back to growth and serenity.
When? Where? Who?
j@attali.com