Re:Is everything falling apart?
by whakim on Friday April 29, 2022 @11:10AM
(#31206151)
> It's a huge political experiment
Perhaps with regards to "scale" this may be true, but in most ways I disagree. There were hundreds of democracies in the ancient world - particularly in Greece - and they all tended to break down along similar lines. The Greeks even had a term for this - stasis - which there's a body of literature about. In stasis, the norms of democratic government are slowly eroded through an escalating series of power plays (each justified by previous excesses). This in turn erodes the public trust in institutions required for society to function. Which usually ends in violence. So I think it's a mistake to assume our situation is unique.
Perhaps with regards to "scale" this may be true, but in most ways I disagree. There were hundreds of democracies in the ancient world - particularly in Greece - and they all tended to break down along similar lines. The Greeks even had a term for this - stasis - which there's a body of literature about. In stasis, the norms of democratic government are slowly eroded through an escalating series of power plays (each justified by previous excesses). This in turn erodes the public trust in institutions required for society to function. Which usually ends in violence. So I think it's a mistake to assume our situation is unique.