Over the years I have noticed that people speak so highly of democracy as though it is the one and only system that can possibly work in a civilised society. My views on democracy is that democracy always has and always will be a double-edged sword. On one hand we have the power and privilege to cast our vote and potentially shape our country’s future, a privilege that I will never take for granted. However on the other hand, a very important decision has been left in the hands of thousands of millions of idiots (including myself of course) to decide upon.
What goes hand in hand with this ideology of how inferior democracy is as a system to all other systems, is this need to comment on other nations without a democracy as though they are primitive in their ways and approach to different policies. Tyrants are not prevented through democracy, if anything one could argue that if a tyrant were given power in a democratic country, then the people only have themselves to blame.
People who usually want change when their lives are filled with discontent and what that change is even most of them don’t seem to know. This intrigues me as someone who has seen two polar opposites around the world: one being privileged yet discontent people, the other being people who are content with their lives and yet have so little entitlements compared to the citizens of many other well off countries. Although this is a slight generalisation, there is some logic behind it, although I won’t explain it now in this particular article, however there is a crucial point I would like to highlight: every nation has its issues and perhaps democracy isn’t the answer to all of them, because it certainly isn’t the answer to ours. It is merely a tool for the people to use, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will solve the problems of a nation and in some cases it has done nothing but divide people.
This is not a condemnation of democracy, but merely a note that for one to think it is a perfect system would be borderline delusional.
HANA 