[MD] Democracy

[Christoffer Ivarsson]

Bodvar and Andre + discuss.

Chris wrote:
>>  No. It isn't SOM thinking, even though that would make it easy enough
>> to dismiss it.  The fact of the matter remains: Democracy, which is a
>> certain way of governing people, is NOT of the intellectual level as
>> such, because it is a social pattern. It may be used to lift up
>> intellectual values, intellectual values that has truth at it's core,
>> but it can just as easily not be. This is not an issue about words, nor
>> is it SOM thinking.

Bodvar answered:
> Well, at least Pirsig lists democracy among the intellectual patterns.
> I'm not a "word for word" adherer, but here he is in agreement with the
> MOQ. The term "community" implies a rule (anarchy spells the
> dissolution of society) and the most basic is despotism so when the
> rule is democratic it's society controlled by intellect. There is no "as
> such" in the MOQ, f.ex. a human being is an an aggregate of Q-levels
> that dominates the lower one.

I don't agree at all. I think. All that happens when we have democracy 
instead of despotism is that a larger amount of people get do decide things. 
The real question is whether they are interested in social values or 
intellectual values.  Truth is indeed a intellectual value - perhaps THE 
intellectual value - but Truth doesn't necessarily have to be valued in a 
democracy.

You said that "it's not possible to imagine a "constitution" based on these 
things
 that ignores truth" and perhaps you can build truth and objectivity into 
the system (and here we are talking about the juridical system) but of 
course, that doesn't require democracy, and democracy can actually be the 
thing that makes it work worse - because the laws are made by the people (or 
people elected by the people) and are subject to the values of the people, 
values that may be social or intellectual. You know. It's illegal for 
homosexuals to adopt kids in quite a few democracies. Why? Social level 
values.



In addition to this I would like to ask Andre a question:

Andre Broersen wrote:
> I have argued in previous posts that a socialist doctrine, no
> matter how highly worked out intellectually, belongs with social PoV's.

Chris asks:
Why?