Millennials - democracy vs authoritarianism

[FortyTwo]

No, not anger. Just making an effort to expose them for what they really are/represent.

The majority of people on this board are sympathetic or potentially sympathetic to the movement, so I think this is a more meaningful use of my time than just staying on topics that are nothing more than preaching to the choir.

I'm trying to be annoyed with the sweeping generalizations and condescension, but honestly... this is just funny?

It's like if a cat keeps knocking a salt shaker off the table, and you keep putting it back on the table and the cat keeps doing it with this look of pure spite in their eyes... and you know it's making a huge mess every time the thing falls and that the cat is actually mad at you for some aimless reason that only the cat understands but it's still hilarious and you just keep doing it.

Anyway, the easiest way to spot when someone doesn't have a point is when they use the term 'PC Police.' That's how you know their ideology belongs more on a slur-laden Newgrounds thread in 2007 than in the modern day.

Other key words include 'mindless drones' or one of its varieties, 'liberal media,' 'feminazi,' and 'sheeple.'

 

[FortyTwo]

The absolute funniest bit of this whole routine is the whole, 'I'm fighting Fascism' motivation. Telling disadvantaged people to shut up and sit down is the least anti-Fascist thing ever, for the record.

 

[Freesia]

In NZ right now we are realising just how corrupt our government is. It is so bad. Just horrible. It is not a democracy, God knows what it is.

 

[Second Summer]

I was watching an educational YT video the other day about the philosopher Socrates and his attitude to democracy. While Greece was the birthplace of democracy, where every eligible voter has one vote, Socrates was highly skeptical of this arrangement. One of his concerns was that this electorate is vulnerable to demagogues, i.e. people who can lead us astray with slick and persuasive rhetoric. Sounds familiar? (In an ironic twist, Socrates ended up being sentenced to death by a democratic vote (a jury of 500 fellow Athenians), I believe he was accused of refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state and for corrupting the youth.)

I believe our friends in the US are learning the hard way why Socrates' criticism might be valid.

Against the idea that everyone should have the right to vote, Socrates argued for a system where only educated voters had the right to vote on a particular issue. (According to this video.)

 

[Second Summer]

Here's the video I referenced above:

 

[Blues]

Against the idea that everyone should have the right to vote, Socrates argued for a system where only educated voters had the right to vote on a particular issue. (According to this video.)

Its an interesting narrative, that only "educated " people should have the right to vote , that seems to float around the Internet from time to time . It does have the ring elitism about it .

Not always , but the argument seems to come to the front when "their" party didn't win .

I think you can be intelligent but not educate , you could have had circumstances work against you re up bring , access to education ,wanting to start a family , to name a few .

After viewing the video , I thought there were more holes in it than a sponge in regard the reasoning put forward .

 

[Freesia]

I was watching an educational YT video the other day about the philosopher Socrates and his attitude to democracy. While Greece was the birthplace of democracy, where every eligible voter has one vote, Socrates was highly skeptical of this arrangement. One of his concerns was that this electorate is vulnerable to demagogues, i.e. people who can lead us astray with slick and persuasive rhetoric. Sounds familiar? (In an ironic twist, Socrates ended up being sentenced to death by a democratic vote (a jury of 500 fellow Athenians), I believe he was accused of refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state and for corrupting the youth.)

I believe our friends in the US are learning the hard way why Socrates' criticism might be valid.

Against the idea that everyone should have the right to vote, Socrates argued for a system where only educated voters had the right to vote on a particular issue. (According to this video.)

I rather think they are discovering the result of politicians offshoring jobs and stealing/hoarding money so that people lose their sense of security and then their faith in their current government so that they end up desperately chasing anyone who is dangling enough carrots at them, no matter how vile they are.

If there was functionality and security built into an economy, it would hardly matter that there are uneducated people.

Also I have sometimes met the biggest fools ever who are highly educated, also I have met corrupt, reprehensible people who are very well educated. Education does not necessarily mean a wise or good person.

 

[Second Summer]

Its an interesting narrative, that only "educated " people should have the right to vote , that seems to float around the Internet from time to time . It does have the ring elitism about it .

Not always , but the argument seems to come to the front when "their" party didn't win .

I agree that this sort of idea has a tendency to crop up whenever the supposed "educated" side loses an election. I'm not sure whether Socrates' ideas for a better system of government should be termed elitist. In any case, even if it is, that doesn't address the validity of his argument.

I think you can be intelligent but not educate , you could have had circumstances work against you re up bring , access to education ,wanting to start a family , to name a few .

After viewing the video , I thought there were more holes in it than a sponge in regard the reasoning put forward .

Well, the system of government in place in Socrates day was direct democracy, which is different from the kind of democracy we're used to in our time, i.e. representative democracy. It's not clear how Socrates' ideas could be translated into something that would work in a representative democracy.

Also, I think I misrepresented what was said in the video before: Socrates didn't say that only the educated should be allowed to vote, he said that "only those who had thought about an issue rationally and deeply should be let near a vote".

I'm curious, what did you think were the biggest holes in the reasoning presented in the video?

 

[Second Summer]

I rather think they are discovering the result of politicians offshoring jobs and stealing/hoarding money so that people lose their sense of security and then their faith in their current government so that they end up desperately chasing anyone who is dangling enough carrots at them, no matter how vile they are.

Then why did they vote for these politicians over and over for decades?

If there was functionality and security built into an economy, it would hardly matter that there are uneducated people.

Even if the uneducated are lead astray so they support candidates that will crash the economy?

Also I have sometimes met the biggest fools ever who are highly educated, also I have met corrupt, reprehensible people who are very well educated. Education does not necessarily mean a wise or good person.

Yes, I think simply being highly educated in some narrow field doesn't make someone more qualified than ordinary people in other disciplines. And agreed, wisdom and being a good person have little to do with education. However, you can be a good person and yet be clueless about politics. Certain kinds of education, such as training in critical thinking, is valuable in undressing the lies, half-truths and demogoguery of politicians. If critical thinking skills were held in higher esteem in the US, perhaps the current disaster could have been averted.

 

[Blues]

.

Also, I think I misrepresented what was said in the video before: Socrates didn't say that only the educated should be allowed to vote, he said that "only those who had thought about an issue rationally and deeply should be let near a vote".

Maybe in his concept that only those who had worked on themselves to see their own makeup to then understand it and change for the better .

^If that was the case , how would you judge another persons understanding of themselves ?

:I'm curious, what did you think were the biggest holes in the reasoning presented in the video?:

^ I will run it again when I have more time

 

[Freesia]

Then why did they vote for these politicians over and over for decades?


Even if the uneducated are lead astray so they support candidates that will crash the economy?

It isnt just the "uneducated" though... many middle-class university-educated people voted for policies which ended up eventually draining all the juice out of the economy ...

political corruption runs deep when corporations are the real bosses and not the politicians, they have been in charge behind the scenes all along and the people never were...
and it has been happening for a very long time. Drumpf is sadly involved in this, as he is one of the elite.. he lied to the voters.

 

[FortyTwo]

It would be nice if we could have some sort of Anubis scale where we weighed peoples' intentions to see if they really understood something enough to make an educated vote on it. Unfortunately we're equipped with just our terrible human attempts to communicate. We can lie and we can be stupid, shortsighted, or stubborn enough to ignore the reality of any situation.

Taking away voting rights, especially for the 'uneducated,' is a really slippery path to go down. It leads to disenfranchisement of marginalized groups, as we're seeing right now in a lot of states.

1:1 democracy might not be perfect but it's sure as hell better than what we have going right now, which is to hold 50 separate elections, each prone to their own unique version of imperfection, and then to just kind of mash the results together.

 

[Freesia]

Making higher education an expensive, pretty much luxury item which requires either rich parents or a crippling loan, does not help either.

 

[Blues]

"

I'm curious, what did you think were the biggest holes in the reasoning presented in the video?

Well, its stated in the video: have we lost the distinction between intellectual democracy and and democracy by birth right: ....I cant think there has ever been a intellectual democracy to compare it to . His concept of "intellectual democracy" (for me ) seem very difficult to understand .......

Also, I'm on slippery ground here IS , as I have mentioned before, I don't vote . But I support the democratic process

 

[Mischief]

I don't buy into the assumption that people with a higher education are automatically smarter or even better educated, and that people with little formal education are automatically less intelligent and/or less knowledgeable.

My father had only a seventh grade education (one room schoolhouse), but when the coaches who taught math at my high school didn't know how to work the problems they assigned as homework, guess who helped me figure out my algebra, geometry, trig and calculus homework? My father. He was really smart mathematically, and could figure out things he had never seen before. He was just a whiz at anything with numbers, any mathematical concept.

My mother, who had only a sixth grade education, was one of the intellectually smartest people I've ever known.

Of course, neither of them would have voted for Trump. They would have been shocked at him. My mother, who lived through the Hitler years in Germany, would have seen him for the demagogue he is. She always thought that fascism would have an easier time taking root in the U.S. than it did in Germany.

Actually, I think that a love of reading is a much better indicator of how knowledgeable someone is than the number of years of school attended.