Let's Talk About Voting

In the first edition of this newsletter I made a bold(?) claim that the vast majority of the world for 364 days of the year formally or informally lives and works in monarchies. And then in the United States, one day out of the year, on the first Tuesday in November, we go participate in a representative democracy where we elect someone else to participate in a democracy for us.

As a result, many of us, our families, friends, and neighbors, can’t tell the difference between a monarchy and a democracy. Most of us work in monarchies every day without knowing it. Many of us take that thinking home and run our homes as monarchies. We support monarchs in our communities, our religious institutions, neighborhood associations, friend groups, and ballot boxes, all primarily because we don’t know the difference.

Types of Monarchies

Some of these mini-monarchies have obvious monarchs. They are led by mean, vindictive people who reward the people who support them and punish those who oppose them.

Others are stealth monarchs who give the illusion of choice. They ask for opinions, they weigh the evidence, maybe they change their mind, but in the end the monarch still does whatever they want. 

And some of our monarchies are actually benevolent, led by good, honest people. They really do listen to their people, let people recommend the best courses of action, and then support those ideas wholeheartedly.

But whether they are vindictive, stealth, or benevolent monarchies, we have been conditioned to see monarchies as the only option in almost every aspect of our lives.

(For example, I mentioned Star Wars in the first article. Many people think of Star Wars as a battle between democracy and monarchy. But the real tragedy of Star Wars is that it started as a stealth monarchy, which led to a vindictive monarchy, and the rebellion kept failing because they kept trying to and eventually replaced it with a benevolent monarchy. But everything about the world of Star Wars is built around monarchy thinking, even the Jedi.)

"Many people think of Star Wars as a battle between democracy and monarchy... But everything about the world of Star Wars is built around monarchy thinking, even the Jedi."

Acknowledging Formal Oppression

Now I feel I need to pause here to address formal oppression. We still have formal monarchies ruling whole countries around the globe, and some of us may have very strong, traumatic memories from having to live in those formal monarchies, escape them, or maybe even overthrow them. And after escaping a monarchy it can be really hard to fathom, or even want to fathom, that we could or would have anything in common with that level of evil. This is real pain born of horrible memories and unfathomable traumas. If that is you, I am so sorry for your pain and I have no intention of making light of or minimizing that pain. 

What I want to offer in this newsletter is that for the world to get past that pain, for us as a society to prevent future pain, for us to put the source of that pain truly in our global past, we have to learn how to recognize which types of thinking set us on the path to monarchy, and which types of thinking lead away from it. We need to recognize that some of the benign choices that we make every day unconsciously divert us back onto the road to monarchy, and if we want to take the road to democracy, we have to learn how to make new choices every day.

Which reminds me of that famous Robert Frost poem:

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” – Excerpt from "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

The Tyranny of the Majority

In the first article I mentioned the first objection I always hear when I talk about democracy, "We need leaders!" To recap in a couple sentences for continuity: monarchy and the principles of leadership were important developments of our world history. When the stakes are high, if people don’t know what they are doing, if they do the wrong thing, they can really make things worse. But we are at a point now where we know enough and have the technology necessary to use new and better techniques. And I promise I’ll get to those alternatives...

But first let me talk about the second major reason why we still use monarchy on a daily basis. People don’t actually like voting. They don’t. Sure, they like the concept of voting. It’s often referred to as the “wisdom of the crowd”. The choice of a group of people is usually better than the idea of any single individual.  

But most people actually loathe the process of voting, and they dread the outcomes of voting. The source of this dread is the “Tyranny of the Majority”. In a majority vote, some people – “the minority” – don’t get what they want, or maybe need. And after multiple votes, all of us end up in the minority at some point, so eventually everybody feels dissatisfied, left out, unheard, and disenfranchised. And you never know if you’re going to be in the majority or in the minority until the votes are tallied, so we sit in angst waiting for the results, and we never really know if it’s going to be good news or bad.

"...most people dread the outcomes of voting... so we sit in angst waiting for the results..."

The other manifestation of the “Tyranny of the Majority” is that hated word that everyone dreads, [shudder] “consensus”. Consensus is a belief that through an ungodly amount of talking, everyone will somehow come to the same conclusion and produce a unanimous vote. What usually happens, though, is that some fraction of the people lose their will to live along the way and just vote with the majority to make it stop, regardless of their actual opinions.

(If you are a fan of consensus, I’m sorry to reveal it this way. I used to be a fan, until I discovered how few people actually enjoy consensus. They just don’t want to hurt our feelings, so they keep it to themselves.)

If these two tools of democracy – majority vote and consensus – are the only tools that you have been introduced to, then you probably also think of voting as a necessary evil. But this is not what I mean when I say democracy. As I hinted at before, we have new tools and techniques at our disposal now. The array of tools available to modern democracy is much more expansive than classical Democracy, and even orders of magnitude better than the techniques available to the Founding Fathers of US Democracy.

Defining Monarchy and Democracy

So let me pause here and define my terms:

• When I say “democracy” I do not mean “majority vote” or “consensus”.

• When I say “monarchy” I do not mean a “single, all-powerful, infallible ruler with a lifetime job”. 

• Going forward, when I say small-D “democracy” I am referring to multiple different techniques and strategies where a group of people collaborate in solving the problems that affect them. 

• And going forward, when I say small-M “monarchy” I am referring to the historical thinking that led to monarchies, the idea of choosing the best person for the job, and then letting that person make all the decisions. 

• And when I use the word “leadership” I want to distinguish between the “leaders” who lead the implementation of a decision and the “monarchs” who make the decisions. Sometimes the “monarch” and the “leader” are the same person, but when they are separate I will use the word “leader” to distinguish.

What's Next?

Next up I plan to lay out what I see as Democracy 1.0 and Democracy 2.0 so that I can share what I see as the core principles of Democracy 3.0. That will open the door for specific techniques and practices I've encountered in my journeys that rewrite what's possible both inside organizations and in our communities.

If you like where this is going or you're also fascinated with how to build better lives, subscribe. I would enjoy discussing how to build a future where we all want to live. Please share this with others who you think should join the discussion.