Art - By Angela Gooderson

This weeks artist was Angela Gooderson: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Angela-Gooderson-Portrait-Artist/212749708758739?fref=ts

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Democracy' Issue 41

The limits of democracy - By Selim 'Selim' Talat

Everyone can have some say in how their society is run. Why? Not because of some idealistic natural right which we can never demonstrate to be absolutely true. Not because of divine commands from supernatural forces. No, I believe people can have a say because they have earned that say by living and experiencing their society. From this basic starting point, the more power that then flows into the hands of people, the more they need to have access to knowledge, and the stronger they must become to keep up with the increasing demands of power. This is the only fair way to ensure that a society works in the interests of those who make it up.

             
For instance, When a community is considering the placement of an aqueduct, the people whose lives it is effecting must be consulted. Even if they do not have the expertise to build one, it is going to effect their lives in a way that is essential, providing them with enough water to survive. Who could possibly know ones needs more than oneself?

            
In matters of art, on the other hand, no one has a say in how I create. No one is *I*. There is no possible way in which anyone can earn a say in my creativity. Art has no such essential function. If the people wish to be entertained (which you could say is of equal importance to food, water, shelter and so on) then there will always be mediocre entertainment available to allow them to function. Michael Franti once said television is the place: 'Where imagination is sucked out of children, through a cathode-ray nipple. TV, is the only wet nurse, that would create a cripple.' There is a clear distinction between art made for its own sake, and entertainment made to placate a warped image of the 'masses'. This I believe to be the difference between art made by 'vote', and art made by some deeper principle.

             
It is certainly not for the artist to alter themselves by consulting such a democracy, nor creating things for the purpose of satiating peoples basic needs, as opposed to exploring themselves and the universe in their 'transcendent and/or spiritual' quest. Not only should the artist be ignorant of what people want when creating something, they should also be ignorant of the audiences reaction to their creation.

             
Democratic organisation of societies, which provides essential needs, cannot be guided by a tyrant. Art, as a voluntary activity, can be guided by a tyrant. Indeed, every hollywood film ever made was an anti-democratic process in its creation. Or at least, it should have been. What is created in the mainstream world of 'art', however, is often determined by the audience, not by the artist. When the audience decides what is being created you have an utterly absurd situation: 'I wish to see a theatre play with at least three assassination attempts, two acts of infidelity and one major battle scene'. The artists then give people what they want, based on what the majority of people will go for. If you want to see such a (mediocre!) play, why not create it in your head? Surely the whole point of art is that it is someone else's creation, and it is something surprising, which will broaden ones mind. You have had no say in its creation and that is the joy of it.      

Likewise with philosophy. Just as the artist is creating things from a 'spiritual' domain within themselves, that can only be accessed by themselves, the philosopher is looking to find reasons for their thoughts that go beyond tradition, ritual or mass beliefs. If fifty-one percent of people say two and two makes five, do we then agree that it does? If fifty-one percent of people say that every third child must be sacrificed to the hungry gods of the sea, do we then obey such a barbaric practice?

            
The eternal search for questions and answers posed by philosophers are not determined by crowds, only shared with them, checked by them. Even if we are trying to build a system of morality out of love for the greater masses, it must ultimately be grounded in reasons and experiences which 'transcend' a show of hands - for if we base our decisions on popularity alone, what would happen if one day a majority turned upon a minority; who could say it was an unfair decision?

Now some might accuse this author of being elitist: 'If art and philosophy are beyond democracy, then why not leave power and organisation up to experts - why not get rid of democracy altogether?' There is no equivalent in the world of politics to the artist or the philosopher. There is no one in the world of politics pushing the boundaries of human endeavour with their unique and personal brilliance. The only goal of democracy should be to provide the framework within which all people can meet their basic needs and then pursue their own goals after this. Democracy must have its limits if this is the case.

Here are some questions raised by this article:

i) Is there is really such a big difference between art and entertainment? Can one really be placed so highly over the other and is there no middle ground between the two?

ii) Is art really the result of an internal process or is the best art produced in a more communal way? Is this emphasis on the individual creating art removing them from the world (and the opinions of other people) too much, giving them supernatural status?

iii) If the only goal of political power is to provide the basics of living, with every other project left for individuals to pursue on their own merits, will society cease to exist as we know it? And what are these basic needs we all have, how can we come to define them in a universal way?

Selim 'Selim' Talat

  The Philosophy Takeaway 'Democracy' Issue 41

     

Democracy and patterns of exploitation

One of my hobby-horses is that many forms of voting give voters a choices, but in the main, only preferential systems enable one to choose the choices. But more of that later. My view is that democracy and capitalism cannot work anyway, unless voters who exploited by the capitalists, or more generally - exploited, get a share of the swag from exploiting external groups, e.g. the Third World.

             
In effect, workers in Britain will support a Loyal Opposition (or Government) as long as they exploit the Third World more than they are exploited by their own bosses. We might call people in such a position net exploiters. Now democracy is relevant to philosophy, partly because of ethical issues, and partly because any hypotheses concerning its viability should be able to be tested scientifically. In ethical terms, we might say that democracy is the collective counterpart of the freedom to do as one wishes provided others do not suffer. In practice the proviso is not embedded in any democratic procedure, and checks and balances such as international law have very imperfect procedures to enforce them
 
In terms of hypotheses, can we test it, and if not, how do we respond? I am going to take the view that we cannot test it: alongside developed countries that in some way directly exploit the Third World, such as the United States, and many EU countries, probably not Greece, we have countries such as those of Scandinavia and New Zealand which for the sake of argument achieve their prosperity by favourable trade terms with the exploiting countries. We might call these countries secondary exploiters.

 

So unless we have shining examples of democratic capitalist countries that are not prosperous through trade with the exploiting countries - primary or secondary - we cannot refute this hypothesis. I think the hypothesis is a very reasonable one, and as a result we cannot condemn say communist countries for human rights violations from a position of moral superiority. My view is that left-wingers can rightly say "ah but this is all a hypothesis", but they must also show they are trying to make it wrong. They can address the problem without saying their voters are net exploiters!

And I think that secondary exploiters exist within society as well as in international trade. People like me who have provided professional services to capitalists in their working lives, whom the capitalists wish to take their side in industrial disputes. And when it comes to the crunch, they will side with the capitalists rather than the workers, both industrially and politically. Probably they form the backbone of the LibDems, though perhaps LibDem candidates are unlikely to suggest this. And this comes back to my original hobby-horse: with preferential voting I choose as my highest preference candidates who are the least exploitative, but still indicate I prefer Labour to Tory. Tories might say they prefer they too wish to prefer the 'least exploitative candidates', those who stand up to trade unionists and/or scroungers, but in the final analysis they prefer Tory to Labour.

Martin Prior

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Democracy' Issue 41

Why Democracy never existed

The definition of Democracy by Pericles is as follows: "Democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people". In our societies, Democracy is waved into people's faces as a warrant of a just government, the ideal form of government. But the fantasy of a real Democracy unfortunately fades away in the real world. 

I will expose a brief introduction to Athenian Democracy, and in a second part, two examples of today's use of the word Democracy. Since the rediscovery of the Ancient World during the Renaissance, a cult glorifying anything done in classical times has pervaded our occidental (western) societies. After all the Ancients invented everything didn't they? Mathematics, Philosophy, Democracy...                        

But what was the Democracy created in Athens? The sovereignty (kratos) of the people (dêmos); these people being the Athenians citizens, and that of course implies that not everybody had the right to participate in this first Democracy (women being excluded in the first place). To be Athenian, you had to be born of two Athenians parents, so the access to citizenship was more than limited, and the delegates of the Athenian citizens were chosen through drawing lots. Then we have to remember that Athens was a city-state that governed over a rural territory as well. So apart from the Athenians citizens there were farmers, slaves and foreigners (here I mean any other non-Athenian), and that meant quite a lot of "people" lived under the rules of Democracy but were excluded from it. That doesn't seem like a very just government to me but nevertheless it is the role model for us.                          

Yet alone the concept of a Democratic Republic seems an aberration, for here two different ways of choosing the delegates are apposed. For in the Roman Res Publicae (the affairs of the people) the delegates were elected. And even without considering these discrepancies, taking the example of the French Democratic Republic, the ideal of a government of, for and by the people remains a mere illusion. We vote for a couple of persons that then govern the country as they like, and that send the police and army against us if we dare show too much opposition. And again, the misuse of the word democratic is close to schizophrenia when seen in the context of Constitutional Monarchy, where the monarch is considered the guardian of the Constitution and of Democracy. Was he by any chance chosen through drawing lots for a specified amount of time? 

In any case, the word Democracy, apart from losing its primal meaning, has never been more than an ideal, a wonderful ideal that unfortunately only served on innumerable occasions all sorts of governments to legitimate their oligarchies, monarchies or dictatorships.

Alice S.Dransfield

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Democracy' Issue 41