I think many people are drawn to the idea of democracy because they intuitively know it is far better than what we've got, that if you get enough of these like minded people living under a real democracy unexpectedly great things can happen, and you don't need fancy building or works of art, or great technology to build such a society, these things are byproducts of such a society founded on truer principles...
I will make a broad generalization here that the more the principle of democracy is applied to a society the more it will prosper. But that the degree to which it is applied is based on the intellectual maturity of that society. One cannot see what one doesn't want to see.
Why is a democracy so important?
Why do people claim it's important yet their actions say the opposite?
The simple reason a democracy is important to me is because when people look out for the good of the whole then everyone prospers, why because it's basically the opposite ideology of "survival of the fittest", it is "survival of the most cooperative"...for example the organs of the body must all cooperate to make a human, and each cell of the organ must cooperate to make a tissue and so on.
But here's something else, both methods have their place, although the only real "authority" that should be in control over people is a reasonable argument. Doesn't that make more sense than saying that authority should be appointed by popularity or genetics or darwinism? See these things are neither wrong nor right, they are different degrees of wrong or right with different effects, the effect we want most is a long term good for most. People sometimes say well, if we had a real democracy the first thing that would happen is the majority would oppress the minority so it fails. No this is what already happens in every society, in a real democracy people learn from their mistakes that when the majority oppresses the minority unjustly you get war which makes everyone worse off.
Another thing is why do people do the opposite of what they say? Big subject, but essentially it goes back to this idea of "intellectual maturity", people rationalize and justify all the time to themselves, we all do, no one is immune, but some people have learned to look beyond egotism a little, 1 step up from that perhaps, they actively seek to know why they do what they do. And that's all it is basically seeing a little farther down the road for the greater good, having a little more control over oneself rather than one's emotions controlling one's self. Often people don't know or see the truth because they don't want to know it, because that would mean they couldn't stimulate their emotions with the daily drama as easily by having meaningless arguments for example...
Anyway here's one way to apply a truer form of democracy to a society:
-Use the new technology of computers and the internet to form the political body. That is each citizen if they wish can participate in "educational reform" or "budget spending" or whatnot, each person has equal vote on these matters with thumbs up system that promotes good arguments to the top(eventually the truth will rise to the top though not at first), those who aren't interested in some subject don't vote in that area. This eliminates the problem of a few taking control over many in politics and in becoming a financially motivated fascist society.
-Set up a forum like a ruling democracy. This becomes the political body, we all are the politicians and encourages everyone to participate in their own little world of expertise with their own solutions and problem findings. Think about it our politicians are trained as lawyers they don't have the ability to solve all our world problems, it takes everyone, lots of people and ideas, and this notion of "authority" is mostly an illusion, anyone can be an authority if they find compelling reasons or problems or evidence for something. This is also way more efficient than a town hall meeting, if the founding fathers had the internet back then they probably wouldn't have use a representational system of rule.
-Set up a simple court system ruled by peers, get rid of the multitude of flim flam lawyers, lawyer speak laws judges and regulations and costumes, and just say if someone has a grieveince then take it to their democratic court when everyone gets a chance to exercise their reasoning ability argumentation and judgement equally, and people vote on what is best for the community, yet nothing is written in stone, if you can't communicate your ideas in plain simple English under free speech then what is the point, that is everything is just considered a best judgement for the time and can be retried. That is all the minor stuff within the laws of the country of such a society,
could probably set this up online too for most things.
