Representative democracy is a remarkably blunt instrument. Hundreds of issues are bundled together at every election, yet the vote tends to swing on just one or two of them.
Interpretation
Representative democracy often oversimplifies complex issues by forcing voters to choose based on a few key topics.
George Monbiot's quote addresses the limitations of representative democracy, highlighting how elections tend to consolidate numerous diverse issues into a handful of prominent topics. This bundling can distort voter choices, as individuals may prioritize one or two issues over a multitude of others that are equally important, leading to governance that does not fully reflect the electorate's needs or opinions.
In practice
During a debate about electoral reform, I referenced Monbiot's quote to illustrate the challenges of representative democracy.
The notions that nature exists to serve us; that its value consists of the instrumental benefits we can extract; that this value can be measured in cash terms; and that what can't be measured does not matter, have proved lethal to the rest of life on Earth.
I believe that anyone who wants to stand in a national election should receive a course of psychotherapy. Completing the course should be a qualification for office. This wouldn't change the behaviour of psychopaths, but it might prevent some people who exercise power from imposing their own deep wounds on others.
I became an environmentalist because I love the living world, but I spend much of my life thinking about electricity, industrial processes and civil engineering.
Places that have become agricultural deserts, trashed by giant corporations, could be reforested, drawing carbon dioxide from the air on a vast scale. The ecosystems of land and sea could recover, not just in pockets but across great tracts of the planet.
Never underestimate the power of intrinsic values. They inspire every struggle for a better world.
Why is it so easy to save the banks - but so hard to save the biosphere?
Using these unnamed sources, if done properly, carefully and fairly, provides more accountability in government.
Every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite . . . to the attainment of the ends of such power.
Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. "We have a single system," he wrote, and "in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses."
Scotland is not a region of the U.K.; Scotland is a nation, and if we cannot protect our interests within a U.K. that is going to be changing fundamentally, then that right of Scotland to consider the options of independence has to be there.
I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interest.
It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.
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