They say that democracy is the best of all the bad ways of governing a large group of people.

It is mainly known as a quote from Churchill, but in the full quote, he admits that the source is unknown to him: “Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…” (Churchill by himself)

We no longer want to be ruled by a king, the best or the richest. These rulers did not rule better or worse than all the other systems that have been tried. After all this experimentation, the conclusion was, somewhere in the 19th century, that the wisest among us had as much idea about what was good for a society to prosper as the dumbest person you could find. The point of democracy is to get an average of all the opinions and go with that. 

To prevent radical decisions, they invented (they is time) systems on top of a pure democracy where every vote counts. In many countries, there are parliaments where certain groups of voters, people who vote in a certain direction, are represented by representatives, the people we also call politicians. These politicians defend a certain direction, guided by those who voted for them or that direction, and compete with other politicians for a share in the decision-making. In other countries that claim to be a democracy, there are other systems to keep radical swings in control, like a Senate and judges.

However, the basic reason democracy is the system in use now is that power in one person or a small group of people has never worked. Under democracy, there is still inequality, but far less than under any other system. Why is some sort of equality in, for instance, opportunities important? Because the basis of democracy stands for the idea that we are all equal(ly stupid), and the differences that exist are so small compared to the tasks and challenges we face. There is no reason to claim that certain people(s) are more important than others.

As long as most people can only oversee their own lives and that of a few people around them, you will also have rulers that do the same. Democracies try to prevent that, but the people can choose a dictator in the end, something that happened many times. This can happen because people find it hard to form a more or less original opinion. It is, of course, almost impossible to be completely original, but many people vote in a certain direction based on repeated slogans and feelings. Echoing slogans as a reason for why is not healthy if you want your democracy to function. Individuals who know how to rile up people and, from there, the masses also know how to play them, and from this, a vicious circle emerges where non-believes rule. 

The best way of saving democracy is to teach people why we have a democracy in the first place. We have a democracy because we don’t have an alwise ruler. We are all living like it was a kindergarten class without a teacher, and we have no answers; we are children. You might say there are no answers, and you should be skeptical of people claiming to give you the answers. We can find answers only through the scientific method, but mostly about what is around and in us, but not on why this all is. 

“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.” George Carlin