The subject is Democracy and the Internet.  More precisely, the subject is the absence of democracy – and the hoped for democratizing influence of the Internet.

            Let me make my position clear right up front.  It seems that whenever talk turns to democracy, people express dissatisfaction.  For one reason or another, all complain about the state of our democracy.  I find this extremely frustrating.  We don't have a state of democracy to complain about.

            Here's the argument.  We are morally assured that democracy is essential for minimal decency – be it politically, socially, economically and even when it comes to  scientific inquiry and technological innovation.  Constitutionally, we are guaranteed democracy.  The species of democracy we have institutionalized and practice is representative democracy.  However, genuine representation has proven impossible to practice.  Therefore, representative democracy is not genuine democracy.

            Here’s the condensed version:  Democracy is guaranteed.  Representative democracy is practiced.  Representation is not genuine.  Therefore representative democracy is not – genuinely – democratic.

            The only contentious premise in this argument is that representation is not genuine.  This premise, however, is contended without exception – generally along the following lines:  "Surely it is not the case that representation is never genuine.  We have gone to great lengths to curb public excess by elected representatives.  There are checks and balances in place and the judiciary is appointed – or elected – to watchdog the constitution.  Perhaps representation is sometimes not genuine – but in those instances it is not genuine despite our best efforts, which are considerable."

            I refer to this contention as the come on, be reasonable objection.  Public bodies  do their best to ensure genuine representation – could you do any better? 

This objection is a trap.  The reasonable will walk into it and debate how often representation is and is not genuine – whether the best efforts of public bodies are good enough.  Inevitably the debate becomes protracted and collapses under an avalanche of detail.  There’s no light at the end of that tunnel.  The unreasonable will insist that unless public bodies get it right every time it isn’t good enough.  Of course, we all know better than to listen to the unreasonable – so when we are finished humoring them they conclude by talking to themselves.

            To avoid the come on, be reasonable trap one must choose clarity over either the reasonable or unreasonable.  The thrust of the premise – that representation is not genuine – is not that public bodies do their best but may fall short.  The thrust is that they don’t do their best; in fact, that they just don’t do.  One might add that anyone contending that public bodies do their best doesn’t really mean it.  That’s fighting dirty but it’s entirely justified for trap blowing up purposes.

            So the thrust of the premise that representation is not genuine is not that public bodies do their best and sometimes fail.  The thrust is that they don’t genuinely try – although they sometimes pretend.  And if that doesn’t sound radical enough, let’s add that everyone knows it – though we might not know that we know it.  This is a conspiracy theory which implicates all of us.

            A brief aside: conspiracy theories seem radical and paranoid because we are led by the question who is conspiring?  The question suggests that conspirators are difficult to find and we imagine it is necessary to produce actual power-brokering carricatures in smoke-filled back rooms.  Quite to the contrary.  Back rooms are not required – the non-smoking  section at Starbuck’s is more than adequate.  No more is required than unspoken sharing and systematic implementation of a hidden agenda.  Since hidden agendas – by definition immune to criticism – can maximize particular short term gains at the expense of general long term gains, it is a pretty safe bet that everyone – other than saints – conspires at one time or another.  So it isn’t really necessary to produce power–brokering carricatures.  It goes without saying that some are more capable than others when it comes to implementing hidden agendas.  It might be difficult to expect to locate those who are best at it – there is the possibility they do not give themselves away by smoking obnoxious cigars.  There is also the possibility there exist conspiracies in which everyone participates.  Global conspiracy would require that some generally shared agenda remain hidden from the conspirators.  Such global conspiracy would constitute a sort of cultural or socio–political neurosis.  I will mention this point again a little later.

            Put it this way.  We dismiss theories of conspiracy largely because we get confused by two questions: “Who is conspiring?” and “How can unspoken, hidden agenda be implemented systematically?”  The answer to the first is: just about everyone.  Those who do not are at an immediate disadvantage – and probably do not survive long.    

The answer to the second is similar: once an agenda is expressed, it is subject to resistance and criticism – and therefore at an immediate disadvantage.  In fact, let’s not dismiss the possibility of highly pervasive agendas so well hidden they not only remain indefinitely unspoken – but are not even known to those who prescribe to them.

Let’s return to the contentious premise that representation is not genuine.  The thrust of the premise is not only that representation is a fiction.  There is nothing wrong with fiction.  After all, a wealth of fiction – be it theoretic, descriptive or narrative – constitutes speculation and conjecture which survives the test of experience and time so well it comes to be thought of as discovery.  The thrust of the premise is that representation is a malignant and cancerous fiction.  It is a fiction which persists on the world stage despite being refuted day in and day out.  Do corruption, nepotism, cynicism, political dishonesty, lack of accountability and our universal distrust in political character surprise us?  Are we surprised to find the representation fiction refuted every single time we open a newspaper?  By no means.  We know far better than to expect genuine representation other than from ethical giants; and we know far better than to look for ethical giants in houses of representatives.  Ethical giants are found, at worst, in asylums; otherwise, under vows of poverty or under nothing much at all, on the street.  Not in houses of representatives – we all know that. 

            In order for the representation fiction to be maintained despite constant refutation we insist that public bodies invest some effort in maintaining the charade.  In other words, when the democracy guarantee is infringed blatantly enough we may demand a trade-in or our money back.  The blatancy line shifts in the wind of public opinion but not unpredictably so.  In republics of the former soviet union public bodies are blatantly out of bounds more often than not.  In recent years, public bodies in Italy and Japan have been blatantly out of bounds.  Here in Ontario public bodies generally have the good sense not to go too far out of bounds.  Bob Rae’s NDP, and even more so Mike Harris – with his MegaCity fiasco for instance – have cut it close but have avoided the sort of blatancy that makes us feel so swindled we act on the democracy guarantee and demand our money back.  Incidentally, the MegaCity example has us paying attention at the moment – but let’s be clear that on the world stage it is a minor note in the perpetual symphony entitled now that we represent you, your concerns are no longer relevant.

            What it comes down to isn’t merely that the representation fiction constitutes a permanent scandal.  It also constitutes a scandal the permanence of which we take for granted.  What we do demand is that we not have our faces rubbed in it.

            If it is in fact the case that – with the exception of the radical and the unreasonable – we all conspire to maintain the representation fiction, it is natural to ask why.  One answer is semantic, brief but not entirely out of turn: because our civilization is neurotic.  Arguably the general conspiracy to maintain the representation fiction despite constant refutation comprises only one of several expressions of cultural neurosis.  Arguably, there are numerous other symptoms of cultural neurosis.  This is too far afield, however; and semantic answers are not explanatory.  A question the answer to which would prove explanatory might be: what components of the cultural neurosis under conjecture might give rise to symptoms such as  our commitment to a malignant representation fiction?

            I will be brief in suggesting an answer.  Components of neurosis – cultural or otherwise – may well consist of tacit assumptions.  Such assumtpions, perhaps arrived at explicitly and adaptive at one time, require examination – particularly if ingrained and severely maladaptive in the present.  I suggest that the assumption which accounts for the conjectured cultural neurosis when it comes to socio-politics is that it is best to let sleeping dogs lie.

            To expand slightly, there appear to be two elements involved in the sleeping dogs assumption which assure its persistence.  The first element: it would be criminally negligent to tinker with the script of our democracy.  The ink in history books runs red with our efforts to get this far.  Let us not re-open the books now that our hands are, if not clean, at least dry.  The second element: it is castles-in-the-clouds utopian to imagine we can improve on the architecture of democracy.  The spirit of history has guided our hands over the centuries in its construction.  We may wish to re-decorate, but so long as our feet are on the ground we would be crazy to re-construct. 

            So long as both elements are present the sleeping dogs assumption will persist.  However, the advent of the Internet phenomenon appears to have begun providing effective therapeutic intervention.  This therapy does not proceed by re-examining and dissolving the sleeping dogs assumption – it is not that easy to get the culture to lie down on a couch.  Rather, the therapy appears to be proceeding strictly along behaviour modification lines.  Before I address how the political behaviour of our culture may be modified by the Internet phenomenon – despite the elements of the sleeping dogs assumption – I will lay some groundwork by re-emphasizing the consequence of these elements on our political behaviour.

            The consequence I am emphasizing is conservativism so extreme – when it comes to democracy – it may as well be referred to as intellectual cowardice.  The cowardice component of intellectual cowardice results in our doing no more than resigned sighing while being politically burglarized.  So long as the burglars don’t burn the house down, we do not wake the dogs.  The intellectual component of intellectual cowardice results not only in refusal to conjecture and test structural improvements to our political house but also in avoiding considering and implementing advantageous blueprints which are available to us historically.  For an alternative blueprint example, consider comments such as Agassi’s on competing views and implementations of democracy in Hellenic times:  “Democracy was not public opinion – this is pre-democratic and Homeric – but the settlement of disputes by rational means instead of violence.  This, however, is shortcircuited when the difference between democracy and the (violent) pre-democrats has to be settled by violence.  Greek democracy inherently could not withstand the pressures and so vanished...”  Here, then, is a ready made advantageous blueprint: democracy not primarily as pageantry and degrees of public body popularity but rather primarily as conjecture and rational debate not only to resolve dispute but also to establish public policy.  In turn, the relative success or failure of the public policy thus established may then serve as testing grounds for the political conjectures which prompted establishing the policy.  If a process of conjecture – and refutation of unworkable conjecture – were to become established in politics we would find ourselves benefiting tremendously.  It would constitute a reasonable method in politics ­– a method analogous to that which succeeds best in the method of science.  In science we make the attempt to critically expose our stories about the world to our experience in the world – and to discard the stories that don’t stand up to experience.  And although to date we remain too neurotic to choose political stories other than violently or by relative popularity of the story tellers, the Internet phenomenon just may provide the overdue therapeutic forum.

            In a moment I will address some brief remarks to the therapeutic qualities of the Internet.  These remarks will not revolve about the question what can we do on the Internet? but rather about the question what will the Internet do to us – particularly in terms of cultural therapy?  Historically, the implementation of a political method founded in conjecture and refutation was disqualified by technicalities.  When it came to establishing public policy, more so than anywhere else, what has mattered traditionally was not the soundness of policy proposals.  Rather, it was the relative social standing – whether in terms of military power or popularity – of those proposing public policy.  As far as establishing public policy goes, world history might as well be written in red ink.  Of course global culture is globally neurotic in matters of public policy.  The Internet as a many-to-many medium provides a potential forum for establishing public policy far superior to what general purpose currency provided to the economic marketplace or what the printing press provided to academic disciplines.  In a public policy forum which is not pageant hall and especially not battlefield, aspects such as the source and mandate of proposed policy and voter turn-out, for example, would become irrelevant or less relevant.  The principal criterion in establishing proposed policy would be the soundness of proposed policy in terms of providing public solutions.  Of course, this is all science-fiction – but not because we can not imagine the functional details of such a forum.  It is science-fiction because, given the cultural neurosis mentioned earlier, there seems to be no hope that public bodies will begin to vest authority in an open debating society perpetual plebiscite on all public issues.  Yet, that is the crux of the current argument: what the Internet will do to us is provide exactly that hope despite our cultural neurosis.

            What it comes down to is that the Internet even now, in its infancy, functions as the sort of forum in which the representation fiction is being dissolved.  Whatever our neuroses, our behaviour seems to be altering.  We seem to be having fun representing ourselves.  If this continues indefinitely, we’ll wake up one morning to the realization that consent is no longer being manufactured; instead, that it is being distributed on demand.  At that point the politically mandated representation balloon will be punctured – not by refutation but by irrelevance.

            Let’s put it another way.  Of course we will not use the Internet as if it were a virtual town-hall.  Elected representatives, however reptilian, will not shed authority as if it were an old skin.  If pressed, they will insist that their mandate is legitimate and stress that it would be bedlam to hold a perpetual plebiscite on all matters. Nevertheless, the malignant representation fiction will die a natural death.  Over the years we will first notice and then realise that representing ourselves and speaking all at once is no bedlam. We will realise that representing ourselves and speaking all at once on all that concerns us is perpetual plebiscite; and that the soundest voices carry as they should.  The voice of the people will become a virtual ocean; and in that ocean, like tides, will emerge and flow currents of consensus.  The elected will have to swim for it; and it is very likely that, should they ignore the currents, they will drown. 

            I hope the metaphor is clear.  The mandate of elected representatives currently rests on a mere mockery of consensus; but when consensus will emerge from the virtual voice of the people, it will be genuine.  Should the elected seek to ignore genuine consensus when it does emerge we will conclude they prefer mock consensus to genuine consensus – effectively, that they mock consensus.  Absent our neurotic consensus, the representation fiction will collapse.  Absent a credible representation fiction, the legitimacy of representative government would collapse.

            All this not only can but likely will come to pass if the people will speak their minds publicly on the net in large enough numbers for genuine consensus to arise on at least some socio-political issues.  Eventually large numbers will cease to be relevant and will be replaced by relative soundness of proposed policy among interested participants.  Until then, the quantity of grunts – which do not translate into policy – will remain the criterion of legitimacy.  But will that occur?  Will the people speak their minds publicly in sufficient numbers on the Internet such that genuine consensus will arise within and across political jurisdictions?  I believe so – but, this being a factual conjecture, I must appeal to examples. These are examples where it is happening already – while the Internet is in its infancy.

            There are two parts to the question.  I will answer them in turn.  Will the people speak their minds publicly on the net?  More so than anywhere else – be it traditional print media, orally and even television media.  Some two or three years ago Carolyn Burke began to maintain her private diary on the Internet.  That’s pretty public – particularly in the case of a private diary.  The semantics of the term diary incorporate the sense of privacy.  Yet, Carolyn’s Diary is accessible on demand.  That was two or three years ago.  As of now there are hundreds of known Internet diarists – and the number of individuals who express themselves more publicly there than elsewhere, while unknown, must be greater by several orders of magnitude. If there is any place people are willing to go public, the net is it.

            Will the people speak their minds in sufficient numbers on the Internet for genuine socio-political consensus to arise?  Yes – it is beginning to happen right under our noses.  Our culture has already begun to evolve under consensus that arises on the net.  Take, for example, the impact of discourse in the newsgroup alt.sex.bondage.  This newsgroup, one of the most frequented on the net, is dedicated to discussion and debate concerning domination, submission and related subjects.  In it there appears to have emerged a radical consensus: anything consensual goes.  By cultural convention and tradition, this is radical indeed.  Traditionally, the pathological and the harmful often do not go – despite consent.  Even where individuals have reached the age of consent, we not only legally dictate that they are forbidden to kill one another; we feel justified in dictating they must wear seatbelts.  More to the point, traditionally we felt justified in intervening on observing individuals deemed to be suffering some psychological pathology beating one another.  If anything is pathological, requiring domination or submission – nevermind beatings – in order to achieve sexual gratification is it.  Despite the motto in alt.sex.bondage – safe, sane and consensual – by traditional standards what is discussed is sometimes not safe and, on the face of it, almost never sane.

            The consensus that anything goes so long as consensual is not absurd.  Decent arguments in its favour exist or can be made – for one that, at least statistically, non–intervention by authorities constitutes the best available therapy since it allows those suffering from the pathology the dignity to learn from experience; for another instance, whose life is it, anyway?  The consensus is not absurd – it is radically unconventional.  And it has had impact on our culture – not merely on sub–culture.  And if it hasn’t already, it will impact legislation next.  That anything consensual goes has become both the dominant and the reputable view on the street.  It is now expressed as the default sentiment.  This, at least in Toronto, is fairly recent; somewhat more recent than the popularity of alt.sex.bondage.  And if it is happening already, in these, the nascent years of the Internet.. well, perhaps we should hold our breath.

            All things being equal, it will happen.  In time the voice of the people will begin arriving at political consensus on the Internet.  From the Internet, the consensus will spill to the streets.  Government will ignore that consensus at cost of losing step with the people.  This is a cost greater than government can deficit finance.  It is the cost of public bankruptcy at a time when the credibility dollar is suffering hyper–deflation.

            The voice of the people must continue to be permitted free expression on the Internet.  This is crucial.  We are constitutionally guaranteed democracy – and the voice of the people on the Internet is our best hope for genuine democratization.  On this argument, Internet regulative intervention interferes not only with freedom of expression – but directly with the character of our allegedly free and democratic society.  It doesn't get any more unconstitutional than that.  Elected representatives and public bodies who would argue that Internet regulation is justifiable under some circumstances must be judicially burdened by the heaviest legal onus possible – since neither public bodies nor the judiciary speak for the people.  The people speak for the people – and now, finally, the people are finding their voice.  And if Internet evolution manages to avoid the meteoric strike of public intervention we may yet wake to a new morning; a morning on which the notion of democracy revolving about personal self–representation disturbs us no more than the Darwinian or Copernican heresies.