Discussion Group Report

In the fourth century CE, Christianity's conquest of Europe and the Mediterranean world gave rise to the belief that a peaceful era in world politics was at hand, now that a consensus had formed around an ideology that stressed the sanctity of the individual," says Robert D. Kaplan in an article titled the same as this one in the December, 1997, Atlantic Monthly. "But Christianity was, of course, not static. It kept evolving, into rites, sects, and 'heresies' that were in turn influenced by the geography and cultures of the places where it took root. Meanwhile, the church founded by Saint Peter became a ritualistic and hierarchical organization guilty of long periods of violence and bigotry.Christianity made the world not more peaceful or, in practice, more moral but only more complex. Democracy, which is now overtaking the world as Christianity once did, may do the same.

The collapse of communism from internal stresses says nothing about the long-term viability of Western democracy. Marxism's natural death in Eastern Europe is no guarantee that subtler tyrannies do not await us, here and abroad. History has demonstrated that there is no final triumph of reason, whether it goes by the name of the Enlightenment, or, now, democracy."

Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Americans, because of their (comparative) equality, exaggerate "the scope of human perfectibility. Despotism, is more to be feared in democratic ages," because it thrives on the obsession with self and one's own security which equality fosters.

Kaplan maintains that the democracy we are encouraging in many parts of the world will lead to new forms of authoritarianism; that democracy in the United States is at greater risk than ever before, and from obscure sources; and that many future regimes, ours especially, could resemble the oligarchies of ancient Athens and Sparta more than they do the current government in Washington. The Greek historian Polybius of the second century BCE, interpreted the "Golden Age" of Athens as the beginning of its decline.

The establishment of democracy in some third world countries has led to anarchy. Democracy often weakens states by necessitating ineffectual compromises and fragile coalition governments in societies where bureaucratic institutions never functioned well to begin with. The trouble with our approach to promoting democracy is that in many cases where the country is in economic straits, instead of getting the improvements they need, they get the vote, and groups of soldiers then exploit the prevalent disorder to establish tyranny.

The current reality in Singapore and South Africa shred our democratic certainties. Lee Kuan Yew, by establishing a neo-authoritarian, paternalistic, meritocratic and undemocratic corporation has forged prosperity from abject poverty, while South Africa has become one of the most violent places on earth outside war zones. Educated people are fleeing from it. China from an authoritarian base is bringing significant improvements in prosperity while India has a mixed record of success as a democracy with some poverty-wracked places in semi-anarchy. Peru has benefited from a move toward a subtle authoritarianism. Some other countries are also evolving into hybrid authoritarian- democratic regimes, and they seem to be the wave of the future.

Ironically, while we are preaching our version of democracy abroad, it is slipping away from us at borne. Along with the vast and obvious influence that corporations wield over government and the economy, more covert forms of corporate power are emerging. This is manifested by the huge multiplication of corporation-built sheltered residential communities, malls with their own rules and security forces as opposed to public streets, private health clubs as opposed to public playgrounds, incorporated suburbs with strict zoning, and other aspects of daily existence in which we opt out of the public sphere and the "social contract" for the sake of a protected setting. Dennis Judd, an urban-affairs expert at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, says, "It's nonsense to think that Americans are individualists. Deep down we are a nation of herd animals: mice-like conformists who will lay at our doorstep many of our rights if someone tells us that we won't have to worry about crime and our property values are secure. We have always put up with restrictions inside a corporation that we would never put up with in the public sphere. But what we do not realize is that life within some sort of corporation is what the future will increasingly be about."

The growing piles of our material possessions make personal life more complex and leave less time for communal matters. In this historical transition phase, in which globalization has begun, but is not complete and loyalties are highly confused, civil society will be harder to maintain.

We have become voyeurs and escapists. Many of us do not play sports but love watching great athletes with great physical attributes. The fact that basketball and baseball have become big corporate business has only increased the popularity of spectator sports. They provide the artificial excitement that mass existence "against instinct," as philosopher Bertrand Russell labeled our lives, requires. And "see blood" sports have become more popular. The mood of the Coliseum goes together with the age of the corporation, which offers entertainment instead of values.

Just as religion was replaced by nationalism at the end of the Middle Ages, at the end of Modern Times' nationalism might be replaced by a combination of traditional religion, spiritualism, patriotism directed toward the planet rather than a specific country, and assorted other emotions. "An elite with little loyalty to the state and a mass society fond of gladiator entertainments form a society in which corporate Leviathans rule and democracy is hollow," warns Kaplan.

If democracy, the crowning political achievement of the West, is gradually transfigured...then the West will suffer the same fate as earlier civilizations. Just as Rome believed it was giving final expression to the republican ideal of the Greeks and just as medieval kings believed they were giving final expression to the Roman ideal, we believe, as the early Christians did, that we are bringing freedom and a better life to the rest of humankind. Nineteenth century Russian liberal Alexander Herzen wrote, 'Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it...' Although we are the very essence of creativity and dynamism, we are poised to transform ourselves into something perhaps quite different from what we imagine."