Majority Rule: The Ruin of Governance
Last Update: 19 January, 2023
What this Issue is About:
This issue questions the idea that majority rule is some kind of perfect foundation for the advancement of good in our society. Majority rule is, after all, the continual reliance of democratic governance in our society today (ignoring Shadow Government for purposes of this discussion).
What the threat is.
As we will discuss and show, majority rule is the same thing known as 'mob mentality' or 'herd mentality', and it is actually the fastest way to ruin rather than righteousness.
What is the greatest obstacle to the advancement of good in our society?
It's not inability. The forces of good are capable.
It's not the forces of evil. The forces of good are way stronger.
It's not ignorance of the truth. Higher levels of truth have always (thankfully) been available for those interested to pursue them.
It's a herd (usually authority) following majority which has too long obstructed good. In particular, due to majority voter support, atrocious evils which should never have even been done, have continued under Government protection. Rulers have been installed and re-elected of such immorality that they should never have been allowed to lead a doghouse nevermind a nation.
Parts to the Problem:
Mob (or Herd) Mentality
This is where a person is influenced by their peers in a way which results in different decisions and behaviours than if they were alone.
Of course, the problem is if the influence is something evil, then that's a bad thing. But who can say if the tendency of the group would be towards evil or good?
If we assume that people limit their actions by a combination of their own internal morality and fear of punishments, unfortunately the larger the group is, the more difficult it is to hold anyone responsible by authorities of limited resources. Once it gets to a point that people realize that it's practically difficult or impossible to hold them accountable, the 'fear of punishment' basis of self-restraint is erradicated, and as for the 'internal morality' limitation, it's psychologically and often practically difficult to maintain your morality independent of group behaviour for long (as shown in the Asch conformity experiments of 1951). With both bases of self-restraint compromised by the group, the tendency is for members to give in to irrational emotional passions until someone or something stops them and thereby restores a reason to self-restrain. Stories where an unrestricted group degraded into murderous tendencies are found in The Lord of the Flies and the Ox-Bow Incident (1943).
The majority is the social group which is most difficult to hold accountable, and it tends to make them irresponsible in their behaviours and decisions, reduced to serving their most selfish and/or emotional desires.
When decision systems protect their anonymity, such as a secret ballot system, the tendency towards irresponsibility is only magnified.
In mob mentality, in the absence of responsibility, the tendency is not towards good or evil but the most immediately self-satisfying course of action.
Automatic Authority SupportIn mob mentality, the easiest person to follow is whoever runs the society with the most power. Some examples:
Canadians re-electing the same tyrants to assumed dictatorial emergency powers and lockded them down for some of the worst oppression in North America, on the next election after they had done this: such as Ontario's Doug Ford and Quebec's Francois Legault. Example articles on the latter:
Re-electing USA president George W. Bush after he unjustly invaded Iraq. It's difficult to find words to address this atrocity or its implicit approval by the Public.
Automatic Belief of the Most Repeated NarrativeIn mob mentality, there is a psychological stress to resist a narrative the more it is repeated. When any narrative is repeated by many prominent sources, the easiest thing to do is believe it.
Fear of Anything Putting them Outside the HerdThose who take security in the herd put an additional obstacle between them and accepting unconventional information: they fear that adopting the information, however true, it might put them outside of the herd, and undo all the security and comfort they take being part of the herd, and turn it into persecution and rejection. So they reject the truth.
Tendency to Follow the Most Powerful GroupYou might have noticed that the more strong a religion in society the more it is respected and followed no matter what it teaches or believes. This is because those who love the benefits of being in the herd have them best in the strongest herd.
The Benefits of Being in a Powerful Group are Real
Members typically enjoy significant acceptance and help in various really unlimited forms of support. Groups can give you a tremendous advantage in finding work, a spouse, and a good place to live, as well as support for your initiatives and help in emergencies.
The Harms of Leaving a Powerful Group are Real
To protect the size of the group, members are typically lead to persecute people who leave even more than they are taught to help people who are in the group. Common tactics include shunning, verbal or physical bullying, sudden withdrawal of supports, and might include formal prosecution and killing.
Tribalism leads group members to react to you based on membership in the group above any other factor
Many people believe that loyalty is a virtue, plus they want the approval of and rewards of pleasing the group. For this reason, if you have differences or criticisms, they may not care at all if you are right, or what you say is true, because loyalty, not truth, is their only priority.
By the time you find out that your individual truth and morality is a greater eternal security than you group membership, it could easily be too late to change or warn anyone else.
Democratic Obstruction
Systems of governance which are based on majority rule tend to have the following problems:
A tendency to follow authorities blindly, to focus on what they say the priority topics are, believe what they say is true, and do whatever they want, because it is much easier than resisting them.
A tendency to support policies aimed at the maximum comfort of the present majority, on any level, at literally any cost to the minority or even future majorities, including consistent support for: elective abortion, sexual or gender immorality, war anywhere but here, vaccine mandates only after voluntary majority acceptance, and deficit spending to debt which will burden future generations.
A tendency to decide Government policies emotionally, such as based on fear, for example the politically successful idea that we must surrender all human rights if we are threatened by a virus.
An apathy to any policy which doesn't affect them directly, even though those policies, such as national or international or planetary, are often of greater impact.
A lack of hesitation to vote on policies the voter knows they don't understand because they don't care due to the paramount importance of their choice and the total lack of responsiblity for it in the majority-rule secret ballot system.
Express support for atrocities to begin or continue. Example articles include:
Majority of Canadians support federal government’s plan to regulate internet, poll shows
Majority of Canadians support more COVID-19 restrictions for unvaccinated: poll
Strong Majority of Canadians Support Vaccination Mandates; Open to Measures Including Vaccine Passports
Most Americans continue to support vaccine mandates — and want more
Majority support return of mandatory masks, but very few are wearing them every time they shop
With Supreme Court poised to reverse Roe, most Americans support abortion rights: POLL
Poll Finds Support for Geoengineering by Blocking Sunshine. Yes, the majority even supports blotting out the sun.
There is literally no limit to what a complacent majority will give their approval for so long as they have enough emotional incentive to do so. Tyrants have learned that if you scare the Public enough, even if the threat is complete fiction, as long as it comes from the mouth of trusted officials and is repeated often enough, the Public can be worked into such an emotional frenzy that they will support literally whatever solution the trusted officials offer, even if that solution involves:
stripping other people's human rights, such as they approved the persecution of Jews under the Nazi regime or persecution of the COVID-unvaccinated, based on Government promotion of Public hatred for these groups (as dirty, subversive, or infectious for example)
stripping their own human rights (such as in the COVID-19 crisis for example), if they are afraid and are told it is necessary to save their lives, or
Canadians voting for COVID-19 vaccine mandates and proof-of-vaccination requirements where these issues were primary election platforms. This happened in the Canadian 2021 federal election, where Canadians re-elected the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on clear promises to impose these restrictions without even an end date. The majority were in strong support because authorities told them these human rights suspensions are a good thing.
outright invading a nation which has never threatened theirs, if either the fear (such as the 2003 Iraq invasion justified on the scare of Saddam Hussein supposedly having weapons of mass desturction which has never been evidenced) or the hatred (such as the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan based on '9/11' crisis official narrative of impossible explanation of 2 jets turning 3 steel skyscrapers into powder) is enough.
In the face of such a majority, however wise and nationalist the minority may be (they are often the minority precisely because group inclusion isn't their top priority) it can have tremendous trouble getting wrong policies righted.
Experience with the Majority
Our experience with the majority indicates that most people don't care about anything which doesn't clearly and directly affect them, with one exception: if an issue is repeated prominently and recently in the mainstream news, they will discuss and possibly act on it according to the narrative given to them by the mainstream news. Any other topic, no matter how important, they usually refuse to discuss at all and if they will discuss it they usually refuse to take any kind of action on it no matter how easy (such as refusing to sign a well-written online petition in one click which could stop an otherwise coming nuclear war).
It's all academic until you actually try, yourself, to motivate someone to action on an important but unconventional topic or position. When you try that, you see just how many people don't care in the slightest, and you realize that these people shouldn't be deciding national and international issues with their vote some of them will tell you to your face they don't care about.
Majority rule fails because the assumption that the majority cares about national and international issues far bigger than them should never have been assumed.
Why Do People Allow Themselves to Think Like That?
There are lots of reasons:
They've adopted a religion which allows them a cop-out from activism. Typically religious organizations promise a good relationship with God, and a good Afterlife, simply by being a member of that religious organization. There isn't much incentive to do more than show up as required and put the required money in the collection box.
Here are some of the ways:
Saying 'it is written': this excuse implicitly argues that we should do nothing about current events because they are ordained by God. It ignores compassion and responsibilty. It is only used for problems the copout doesn't want to be involved in.
Saying that you are 'saved by faith and not by works'. The existence of God is a fact which all of us will eventually realize. There's nothing to reward that someone believes a fact ('faith' in this context). You can be saved by your relationship with God, but that implies active effort to pray and monitor your morality, which includes the world around you. Specifically, the God of the Bible does expect us to care about others as a requirement we are to answer for, and this implies activism to protect human life in our society: And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. (Holy Bible, NIV, Genesis 9:5)
Saying 'who knows what is good or bad?': This popular teaching is that we don't know the ultimate result of things that are happening, so we shouldn't judge them. Since you're not allowed to judge if something is good or bad, you cannot form a motivation to act on it. The teaching fails to recognize that everyone knows what is good or bad, especially when it happens to them, and ultimate results beyond our understanding are also beyond our responsibiltiy.
Saying that since the scripture has a specific prophecy that the world will be destroyed and there can be no averting it and any attempt to do so is fighting against God. You have a responsibiltiy for what you choose to believe, and if you believe disaster cannot be averted, you are responsible if you are wrong. A book does not absolve you from responsiblity. That something is written in a book doesn't mean it is the complete and pure truth from God, especially when truth is unlimited, and what you pretend is infallible complete truth isn't usually even in the same language as it was originally written down in, which proves it was altered by someone. In the case of the book of Revelation, there used to be a passage describing a nerw heaven and new earth but no destruction if the people chose to serve God, which would seem to make sense, but this passage didnt make it into the popular version. Now too many Christians are simply waiting for the doom of Revelation to happen rather than try to resist it.
They might be impeded from activism waiting for activist leadership from their clergy which never comes. Even if the religion has activist leanings, the clergy might not. There are incentives to sell out the congregation in an attempt to keep those Government incentives. Specifically, religious institutions typically have generous tax advantaged status awarded on the explicit or implicit condition that they won't challenge the Government: not themselves, and not by their teachings. This is the easy path. It effectively makes them Government-based religious institutions.
People may be encouraged to be family-serving, not Public-serving, by their Family. After all, you owe it to your family, right?
They might get enough handouts from Government enough that they Trust Government.
They might get enough handouts from Government enough that they are afraid of losing them through any criticism of Government.
They submit to the encouragement to by selfish byt business Advertising. Such advertising usually entices us to seek our own self-pleasure, for which we need their product or service, rather than sacrifice for the good of society.
They think loyalty is the highest virtue, so they will keep supporting whatever political party they they see as their benefactor no matter what that party does. They will vote for a farm animal if it's their party's candidate.
They see not helping others as part of their plan to for success by competition. Why help the competition? Surivival of the fittest, right?
They don't see any need for improvement in anything except in wealth and technology.
They have adopted a belief that the purpose of life is first and foremost to enjoy yourself. Sometimes this belief is fortified by clerics who teach that this is why God made us. Consequently they don't want to hear about or think about nevermind act on any problems which are not clearly their own, and that includes all social problems up until the point that they become so bad that a gun is physicially pointed to their head and the trigger is pulled. That's the only time they see social problems as relevant to them. Until that point is reached they see social activism as irrelevant and futile nonsense: they just let someone else do it.
Why a complacent majority is a Threat to Life and Good:
They tend to be naive toward the Government, ie. to believe without contest whatever the Government tells them. This is because they refuse to put any time or effort into hearing different viewpoints on the truth of social issues because they don't care about either social issues or the truth. The only reason Government has the advantage in their minds is that Government uses its authority and imposes penalties surrounding the narratives it gives, such that no one in society can reasonably refuse to listen to the Government and still be part of society.
They make it nearly impossible for elections to result in something good for our society. Democratic elections being won by majority, however foolish the majority may choose something, everyone else is stuck with it, no matter how much the minority might know better.
A complacent majority just doesn't care about the most important social issues, because those issues affect everyone for the long-term and don't have the immediate and direct personal benefit these people are looking for. They don't care about a moral way to treat people in some other region, or even about helping everyone, just about helping themselves right now. Therefore they care about relatively unimportant issues, such as whichever candidate promises cheap beer. That's right: Doug Ford was elected to rule Ontario, Canada from June 2018 on the promise of cheap beer (article: Doug Ford promises buck a beer if elected Ontario Premier and Ontario Premier Doug Ford promises 'a buck a beer'). For anyone socially responsible, it would have been immoral to elect a Premier/ruler for such a petty personal benefit when there are far more important issues on the table (such as abortion), and it hints at moral depravity of the candidate if they would bother to make this a major focus of their election campaign: as if there is nothing better to change. The Public elected him, and not only did beer prices actually go up instead of down (article: Doug Ford's Buck-A-Beer plan made beer prices in Ontario go up, expert says), but when crisis (the COVID crisis) struck, Doug Ford behaved as a tyrant, instituting some of the most severe social restrictions in the North American continent. Who takes responsibility for electing a tyrant? As of this writing, polls show the Public has forgiven his unrepentant atrocities and are ready to re-elect him in the next election because he gave them a little handout in cancelling the vehicle license plate renewal fees, even mailing everone who already paid a small cheque in the mail for reimbursement.
As for the past, every major atrocity has been based on a failure of the majority to bother themselves to object to it, no matter how easy it would have been for them to do so.
As for the future, when you have a majority of people, in a majority-ruled society, who, because they are complacent, will refuse to support initiatives for the public good, refuse to be bothered with the truth, and will condone any evil so long as it makes them feel personally safe, that is an extremely dangerous foundation of governance. It is actually a tyranny of a complacent majority.
How/When It's Been Happening:
For example, in the COVID crisis, Governments were able to scare the Public, by a threat so invisible its existence is only discernable from data published by the medical industry, into converting the concept of human rights from inalienable to suspendable at any time by Government. This was when we started living each day by how the Government allowed us to live that day. It started under the guise of public safety, but the legal and political change seems permanent.
The Majority is Unfit to Rule:
The idea that the majority is some reliable foundation of wisdom is false, and relying on majority opinion seems the primary reason why democratic societies have degraded into moral and planning failures. There are numerous examples of the majority being foolish, irresponsible, and cruel; in fact majority rule is the very same thing as 'mob mentality'. It seems that the larger the size of a group, the more impunity it feels, and the less interested it is in anything but satisfying immediate physical desires. The secret ballot voting system doesn't help this. In practice, regarding elections, mob mentality means that many people vote but almost no one feels personal responsibilty for the implications of their vote. To be more clear, despite voting on community, national, international, and global issues, there seem to be few voters who have a wide enough sense of responsibility to even bother to understand these issues before voting on them. Certainly if you don't care about an issue you shouldn't be deciding it but that simple fact has eluded the designers of majority rule systems. For example abortion or support of war overseas: if it doesn't affect them personally, they ignore that issue as a deciding factor in their vote, yet their vote is an implicit show of support for policies on these issues. Unfortunately when the selfishness of the majority is plugged into the power of Governance, the result for indivudals, society, humantiy, and the planet is only increasing disaster.
Milgram experiments: These showed that the majority of the public will commit cruel murder by progressive electric shocks if an authority figure tells them to do it.
Choosing to free Barabas over Jesus. This is where a public crowd of Jews, informally interpreted as representing the Jewish people as a whole, demanded the release of a murderer over the saviour Jesus Christ. As scripture reports:
[38] Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.
[39] But ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the passover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews?
[40] Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.
(Holy Bible, KJV, Gospel of John 18:38 - 18:40)
Voting for deficit spending which they won't be expeted to repay, but future generations.
Failure to reject many evils in our society such as: war, abortion, COVID-19 human rights suspensions; all of these have been supported by majority votes.
What We Can Do About It:
A solution is not obvious. Pray. All forms of government are based on some kind of majority consent, whether free or coerced, and if the majority keeps consenting to evil and refusing truth it's difficult to see a way out.
|