Democracy: Ignorance, Indifference & Constitutional Change.

i got a question from the audience
asking about democracy and you know what it's a long convoluted question and i'm going to try to give a very simple concise positive and constructive answer what this question boils down to is this why is it that in so-called mature western democracies there is so little interest in democracy itself in improving democracy in reforming democracy in amending the constitution now you've lived through some exceptions to the rule haven't you there's been a whole lot of interest in gay rights constitutional amendments for gay marriage and gay rights yup that's true oh what else can we think of abortion it's been a lot there's been a lot of interest in abortion but when you look at democracy as such when you look at what an outrageous joke elections are whether it's in the united states of america england canada australia any of these any of these countries when you look at how parliament itself works when you look at how little anyone can do in canadian parliament if they are not the prime minister or one of his direct acolytes you know members of cabinet working with the prime minister indeed even the united states despite the congressional system where you seem to have a country ruled by just one man and an unbelievably dysfunctional quasi-democratic system certainly of course the issues of corruption and what have you um in this video i'm not asking negatively or analytically about those problems i'm asking positively and constructively about the solution and what i say to you is in a word education the solution is education and the current problem is also excavated by education because the problem is nobody cares right the problem isn't democracy the problem is lack of interest in democracy the the problem is lack of any positive interest in reforming democracy and again we can we can illustrate this by looking at exceptions to the rule you know where people really care about the future of democracy you know where they really care thailand right now in 2020 in thailand they look to the east and they're looking at cambodia they look to the west they're looking at myanmar they look to the south they've got malaysia and indonesia people in thailand care about democracy just just a little bit further north there's china hmm do you want the future of your country to be more like china to be more like japan to be more like western europe it's big question right now the streets of bangkok thailand they're asking how much democracy are they gonna have you know where people care about democracy hong kong they're not gonna get it but people in hong kong are willing to stand up and kill and die for democracy right now in the year 2020 it's tragic it's sad but that's the truth they care we don't why don't we care why is there so little interest in democracy in countries where people feel they have enough enough democracy uh you know and just one more one more example mongolia mongolia has a great big land border with russia and they got people on business coming back and forth on the train to and from russia every day the trains connect mongolia to russia they got people on the other border coming back and forth from china they're looking at russia they're looking at china they think we're interested in the future of democracy we're interested in not having our future look like russia not look like china not look like north korea maybe they want the future to look more like japan maybe like the united states of america or western europe they are interested in democracy we are not and why of course of course it's our system of education aristotle set out this puzzle for us and then he died leaving the book incomplete at any rate the only extant copy we have of aristotle's politics is incomplete maybe there was a complete copy in the great library of alexandria before it was burned down right but aristotle set out this puzzle for us that in every country system of education has to correspond to has to work with has to work for the constitution of that country if you have a democracy you need a system of education that prepares people to be good citizens to be participants in a democracy if you have a monarchy you need a system of education that prepares people to be good citizens in that monarchy we still have monarchies today we have saudi arabia you tell me do you think the system of education in saudi arabia is doing a good job educating and preparing people to be citizens within saudi arabia to have freedom of speech within those limits to influence to live a life as a publicly responsible person within that society right i mean an example would be charity work i realized that the amount of democracy in saudi arabia is close to zero but there are ways people can take responsibility to be civic-minded and do something good for the community islam is very big on charity work well are you learning to do that in the saudi system even if you accept the constitution of saudi arabia you can question you can evaluate is the education system succeeding or failing in preparing you to be a good citizen of saudi arabia is the education system in any given country doing a good job of preparing you to be a member of a participant in a leader in you know the democratic system in that country however much or however little democracy you may have we have a further problem because denmark democracies change dynamically constitutions get rewritten sometimes every few decades sometimes every few years and that even happened in athens even within aristotle's lifetime okay constitution gets rewritten again and again the number of years between the draconian laws and the constitution of solon of athens it's not that many years you'd be surprised we still have these words in in english draconian laws draconian legislation we still say reflecting this constitution that only lasted for a couple of years constitutions don't last forever we have a cultural tradition especially the united states of america of regarding the constitution as if it's something set down once and for all time like the pop culture idea of the ten commandments moses carried down from the that is not true about constitutions anywhere not in the united states but even more flagrantly not in west germany not in south korea not in japan definitely not in canada you know in most countries constitution has changed there is an inherently conservative bias in that your system of education is never going to be preparing you to participate in the democracy of the future it's only and always going to be preparing you to participate in the democracy of the past at best the system of education you've got is preparing you to participate in democracy as it was neither as it is nor as it should be now in canada i can't even say that many years ago i saw an interview with um the rapper tupac shakur probably some you can send me the link it's probably on youtube right now somewhere and it's tupac complaining that in his high school education he didn't learn to take a complaint to parliament he didn't learn to take a complaint to city hall he didn't learn to participate in the democratic system anyway he didn't learn to fight for his rights or just to even dispute some zoning regulation some relatively minor legal kerfuffle at city hall or state senate or whatever he didn't learn how any of that works or how to participate how to be a good citizen instead he says i learned how to play volleyball right he wasn't the most articulate guy and as i recall he was a teenager when he gave that interview right but it's a sincere and hard-hitting complaint what we are teaching people in high school doesn't prepare them to be citizens and what we're not teaching them right it highlights it it's the basis of this whole problem this person's writing in terms of why is there no interest in direct democracy or even making parliamentary democracy work in any of these countries people have the delusion that they have enough democracy but it is largely a delusion predicated on ignorance so it would be one thing if we could reform the system of education so that people and democracies really were prepared to be responsible citizens to be participants and to even be leaders in democracy we don't have that yet but there's a further challenge i want an education system that prepares you not to participate in democracy as it is but in democracy as it should be afghanistan they have a system of democracy it's deeply flawed it's riddled with corruption and inefficiencies and men with machine guns have to guard every ballot box against terrorist attacks and taliban a lot of problems all right if you're designing the system of education in afghanistan today in 2020 are you going to teach people how to participate in democracy as it actually is or as it ought to be as it should be and as it quite possibly could be within just 10 years 10 years goes by pretty quick but what you're educating people about in high school today or university day it could be reality just 10 years from now and in a country like afghanistan that's not reckless optimism like okay here's how to participate in in the elections not that we had four years ago but that we should have four years from now right that's reasonable it's reasonable and again a situation as stark and terrifying as afghanistan a situation like mongolia a situation like thailand are you educating people for the democracy they already have or for the democracy they ought to have and they ought to be equipped to demand right again in a country like canada we don't even have a system of education that explains to you how system democracy already works anyone who takes a moment to glance at how the elections actually work which people are interested in now for five minutes in 2020 because of the election of donald trump and it's been a big disaster 20 years ago the year 2000 elections that swept uh george w bush into power there was a brief moment where people stopped and took five minutes to read the wikipedia article for how elections actually work in the united states america i'm like huh this doesn't make any sense and then what happened nothing there was no constitutional amendment these problems it's not just reasonable to have a constitutional amendment it's reasonable to tear up the constitution and write a new one it's reasonable to start with a blank sheet of paper and start making laws that actually work so a man is choked to death on the streets in the united states of america and for five minutes the whole world pays attention to this very strange accretion of laws and standards of practices and expectations of how the police work for five minutes it's so fleeting people care it's it's the same with you know aircraft crashes when there's a disaster in the aircraft industry for just five minutes people are learning the details how the black box works how the you know the government ministry that inspects it for safety works and who's responsible and they move on and they forget right there's been no sincere interest in reforming democracy and i don't just mean the united states of america supplies to canada england really all the mature western democracies there was a spark of interest in france with the chilejone and i'll just mention again i've said it before it was a really weird conspiracy in the media to suppress the democratic aspect of the shiloh zhang because they were explicitly calling for constitutional amendments and reforms to make democracy and france more democratic to have more direct democracy they really wanted change in a meaningful way it wasn't just a set of protests about gasoline prices right um public attention is sparked in this very fleeting and shallow way by a disaster of this kind but the pattern that's held true during my lifetime is that soon enough that attention dissipates there is no reform there is no progress towards a more perfect democracy or even just a more more adequate democracy all right now if we look at the two halves of the equation that aristotle set out for us right so there's the the constitution and the system of education question i want to ask you is which one is going to change first and which one can you change which one can you make a difference in now and in the next five years all right from my perspective both of them have to be completely demolished i mean i'm i'm dead serious when i say that the university system of education we have in the western world right now needs to be torn down and in tearing down the university system you cause a disruption throughout society at all levels because we live in a society where most rights ranks privileges and sources of income correspond to credentials that are handed out by universities and other educational institutions i mean ultimately getting your driver's license comes from an educational institution although not a university right who is a surgeon and who is not who is qualified to fly an airplane and who is not who is allowed to be a stockbroker and who is not who is an architect and who is not who is a lawyer and who is not who has to pay a lawyer as opposed to being paid to get even the simplest thing done in a court of law right all these things are controlled and defined by your system of education so if we're calling for a total reform of education to demolish the establishment we now have it's not a minor revolution that i'm that i'm calling for right and the constitutions that we have in the western world they need to be torn up and rewritten but it's also fair to say that if we tear up the constitution the united states of america today or of canada today right and start from a blank sheet of paper you know you know how little engagement how little interest how little enthusiasm there's to the public right you know you're not going to get a great or good or even passable constitution to replace the old one just look at the quality of the intellectual response at all levels to police brutality in 2020 look at the astounding stupidity of the defund the police movement and of what's come out of blm black lives matter there aren't new ideas here and let me let me just be let me just be clear you need new ideas that are so good that are so much fundamentally better than the old ideas that they make those old ideas obsolete that's what we're looking for we're not looking for new window dressing new decoration not for something that's just fun just just decoratively better on the surface right we're looking for fundamental innovations fundamental improvements or rather what i mean to say is nobody is looking for fundamental innovations nobody is interested in any fundamental improvements and that is the rot at the basis of our system of education which is most obviously evident in political science education political philosophy politics as an area of education than the knock on effects that that has in the system now i'm 42 years old within my lifetime police brutality is not the only example of this so there has been a critique of police brutality and i'm saying there's an appalling lack of new ideas and that this shows the weakness of our education system that shows how poorly we're prepared to actually tear up the constitution and write a new and better constitution i don't mean me personally i mean us on the level of thousands or millions of people whoever's going to participate in this you know okay what you ever heard of neoliberalism have you looked at the critique of neoliberalism in the last 30 years again in this sense the paucity of new ideas is just appalling it's just shocking you know yes of course i can't say there are zero ideas if you if you rake through the the you know um mountains of paper that have been presented at academic conferences about neoliberalism but but in this sense the same way there are now conferences talking about police brutality in 2020 and you know giving different left-wing watchwords about uh you know defunding the police and what have you no neoliberalism was never confronted with a fundamentally new fundamentally better fundamentally innovative idea that could replace neoliberalism and that would make it obsolete that was so much better that you know nobody's talking about going back to the apple ii nobody's talking about going back to the apple lisa because the new computers apple is making makes them totally obsolete nobody's typing back to the iphone one because they got the iphone 11 or the iphone 12 now whatever we're up to you know that's the nature of obsolescence all right it makes what was rendered obsolete seem laughable by comparison it's not just a change in window dress we're talking about big fundamental steps forward now at the same time anyone who just stops and looks at the reality of police procedure the reality of how elections function the reality of how parliaments function we'll say there's so much outrageously wrong with us there's so much laughably wrong that a high school student could see oh this is wrong this is the solution oh this is a bad way to organize parliament here i'll write down some rules tear up the ovals this will be better like there's so much wrong that 10 or 12 idiots could come together and get organized and come up with a better set of rules and procedures very briefly in canada we have the grand tradition of question period it's the only democratic thing about the system we have in canada which is otherwise just a system of elected democracy during question period the elected representatives who do not form the government in power stand up and ask questions and then they don't get any answers and if you really pitch a fit and get snide and point out that the government has failed to answer your answer to answer your questions they will say back to you that's why it's called question period not answer period it's such an obvious gaping hole in our constitution obviously you could write a better constitution that just says yeah when the government is asked a question by another member of parliament they have to answer and they have to answer within a certain number of days and they have to make a sincere effort to give the the true and honest answer you can imagine filling in some fine print in case there's you're actually exposing secrets that would lose people's lives in the battlefield or something you know to what extent secrecy can vote of course question period needs to have a corresponding answering period and we have these kinds of laughably obvious gaps in how the system works today that nobody's ever thought to sit down and fill and yes in case you didn't know in canada uh our equivalent to the senate is not elected we have an unelected senate so does england where it's called the house of lords you know and by the way it's not just called the lord's temporal but also the lord's immortal they have unelected representatives of religious groups in their house of lords they're all these weird accretions of what were short-term decisions sometimes made in the dark ages sometimes made in the renaissance sometimes made just a hundred years ago or just 50 years ago short-term decisions that seemed to make sense at the time but what they add up to as they ossify and remain in place for centuries is a wildly irrational wildly dysfunctional system that utterly lacks the dynamism of politics in taiwan of politics in japan of politics in thailand of politics in mongolia in relatively young democracies that started with a blank sheet of paper after world war ii unencumbered by these traditions so yes in this sense as long as they're speaking analytically and destructively i see the positive potential of people getting rid of this you know tradition the accumulated tradition of british empire parliamentary democracy that just getting rid of it would be a great accomplishment yes i i can talk about that negatively but now when we turn to talking about it constructively and positively that's when i say whoa we'll wait look at our system of education look at the appalling stupidity of what we've managed to produce in terms of new ideas and innovation whether that's in response to neoliberalism globalization another great word that brought together thousands of pens with phds attached to them writing out reams of paper you know who all these theories about globalization go through them you try to find a new idea that meets this criterion a new idea that would make the old idea obsolete you know uh all of the most fundamental and important questions of government have gone unasked and unanswered since the end of world war ii and why is that you know my answer is to point back to aristotle and say tragically tragically it's because of this relationship between the constitution and our system of education what we need is a system of education that doesn't prepare us to plow the fields as silent peons in a system of feudalism you know we don't need a system of education that prepares us to be powerless people in a society dominated by you know an unelected class of lawyers and government employed bureaucrats and captains of industry you know in corporate america or the leaders of corporations in canada that collude with government we don't need a system of education that prepares us to be de-politicized consumers in a bureaucratic technocratic society that in my words lacks lacks any kind of lacks any kind of polity whatsoever you know what we need is a system of education that protect prepares us to participate not in democracy as it actually is but democracy as it should be