Electing a new people

I left this as a comment here (or it got eaten by WordPress, whatever) about the relevantly snide Brecht quote: if the government isn’t satisfied with the people, why doesn’t it elect a new people?

A few minutes later I got to thinking about how often I see that quote around now. It’s practically a meme, born out of the fatigue of the governed. The arch tone of the quote (well, that’s how I hear it in my head) is a response to the schoolmarmishness of the government’s new Morality Laws. I’m talking about Sri Lanka here -that’s where I live- but really, this goes for everyone. Is there any government that did not at some point enact Morality Laws? Thou shalt not watch television after ten p.m. Thou shalt not smoke in public places. Thou shalt not buy booze on full moon days, nor shalt thou buy meat. (Or is that simply about the “public display of meat”, rather than the actual purchase thereof?)

Maybe there are more of them. Those are the only ones I can remember.

I liked fatigue of the governed. As a phrase it evokes in me an instant recoil. I dislike the notion of being the governed. Too much like being herded -but surely if we have a government, they must govern, and who is that is governed if not us? It just becomes particularly irritating when your government acts like a governess.

But irritation is not the appropriate reaction of the Morality Laws. Or rather, I don’t think there is an appropriate reaction to the Morality Laws, except silence. I know silence has a bad reputation in democracy, but think about it: in a representative democracy the default state of a citizen is silence. It takes energy and effort to make noise, and a great deal of noise before you begin to approach even the possibilities of making change. Why? Because the democracy is representative: my political power isn’t here with me, but deferred, or abdicated to the government. So if I want something to be different, I must aim at persuading them to do what I want -there were historically practical reasons for this model, of course. The government can use this aggregated power to make decisions on our behalf, to undertake projects that individuals or small groups would find more difficult. That is, in fact, the function (and a workable definition) of the government. But it remains true nevertheless that by this abdication I have given up my existence as a political entity and now must petition the government who represent me in order to achieve political action.

Or is it true? I never actually abdicated this power that I know of -it was done for me at birth, automatically, subliminally, involuntarily. And for everyone born into a representative democracy. Mostly we don’t complain about this, even when we’re older and understand what happened, because a representative democracy is a much better place to live than many alternatives.

If this “abdicated power” is a fiction for the sake of convenience, what sort of political power is still here with me, innate and not surgically removable? And would answering that question perhaps help us think of a model of governance improving on representative democracy? And if we were to think of such a model, would we have to petition the government to let us have it? Or is that a trick question?