Democracy and Being Wrong

tl;dr: The basic idea of Democracy is that “political” issues should always be open to discussion, since nobody knows for sure which answer is right.

“No society has ever, or will ever, be built on agreement about substantive conclusions. But there are better ways to reach disagreement, and worse ones. Ways that leave the disagreeing people respecting each other and open to further discussion. And ways that degenerate into pathological antagonism and tribal warfare.” [From Barry Eisner’s blog: https://barryeisler.blogspot.com/2020/02/not-long-ago-i-wrote-blog-post-about.html]

Which brings to mind an obvious question: why has democracy pretty much stopped working in this country, being replaced by “pathological antagonism and tribal warfare”?

The easiest answer, to me, is that all sides seem to have become convinced that they’re “right”, and anyone who disagrees with them is “wrong”.

Well, they’re all wrong! Even if I disagree with them, I’m wrong too. Whatever “political” ideas I champion aren’t perfect, at the very least. Which means I can know I’m wrong when I champion them.

This doesn’t preclude disagreements about “politics”, but keeping it in mind during political arguments can help keep “disagreeing people respecting each other and open to further discussion.”

I know that, during the 1970’s, I was a pretty radical Libertarian. Today, after having had a chance to reconsider those ideas, especially in light of some of the things that have gone wrong (IMO) with “privatization”, I have a much more nuanced view. Granted that 1970’s “Socialists” were just as wrong as I thought they were, my ideas weren’t much better.

Implementing wide-ranging changes to the “social contract” is very risky business. It’s not just a matter of whether the ideal change is actually going to work, but whether we can “get there from here”. (Even in the ’70’s I realized that simply switching the US to the kind of Libertarian “Free Market” system we all thought was best wouldn’t have worked.)

The problem is that societies evolve on their own, and there’s always a systemic risk from leaving ours to do so. “Conservatives” who just want to keep things “the way they are” usually have a few “minor” changes they’d like to see implemented. And, in any event, things are already changing, and leaving the system on its own doesn’t mean nothing will change.

So the recent degeneration into factions, what the Ancient Greeks called “stasis” (στάσις, from “taking stances”, not “standing still” as in the current English meaning of the word), can probably be attributed to everybody getting fed up with how “complicated” these problems are, and settling on a position which they consider “right”, as opposed to everybody who disagrees with them, who are “wrong”.

But of course they’re all wrong. When it comes to political ideology, there’s no such thing as “right”, just “less wrong” vs. “more wrong”. And, anyway, there’s no way to know whether we could “get there from here”. So the basic idea of Democracy is that “political” issues should always be open to discussion, since nobody knows for sure which answer is right.