Ancient Greece sowed what the US-centric Western Hegemony reaped. The popularity of democracy, similar to capitalism, has been immense especially over the past few centuries. But unlike capitalism, which has received a disproportionate amount of criticism (barely any of which is qualified), democracy has been relatively unscathed by vitriolic counters. Why? Perhaps the reason democracy has it easy compared to capitalism is because capitalism seems rudimentary and ripe for regime change. A natural progression of decadent civilizations is Nietzsche’s Last Man. A fever dream of the Last Man, a vision of “pure equality”, which he envisions as the end goal, the target towards which all of humanity is stretching towards. “No herdsman and one herd. Everyone wants the same thing, everyone is the same: whoever thinks otherwise goes voluntarily into the madhouse.” Hence, all that aligns with this vision of the Last Man is accepted and celebrated and all that does not, is disregarded and sent to the madhouse. The only reason capitalism has survived this onslaught is because of how naturally it expresses our innate tendencies. A fever dream, to become truth, must become a collectively shared truth, and as of this very moment, it ‘is not’. The less said about how long this will stay true, the better. The evolution of technology, specifically the printing press, radio, and the internet has caused a major shift in how psychology interacts with the societal fabric, and by consequence, how reality is shaped around us. The individual psyche has always been a nested function of all the psyches around it, and with this development, the way we think of ourselves has changed from being an individual, community or tribe, to now conceiving of ourselves to be parts of a much bigger whole, a nation, the human race, etc. The logical subsequent to this, since the incentive functions of an individual consciousness is inherently different from the collective consciousness, is the morphing of the very objective function that runs our civilization. This has driven the mad phantasm of populism across countries at large, and by definition, there exists no bigger populist movement than democracy. Another aspect of the conventional popularity of democracy is the unimaginable size of the current population combined with the creation of the hive mind facilitated by technology. The problem is, our biological machinery is incapable of comprehending, or even begin to process, what numbers this big even mean. Our upper limit seems to be set at around 10,000 faces in a lifetime. The industry-best-practice during our hunter-gatherer phase was to have a God to rally behind. Post the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, the totem which we rallied around began to crumble. By no means should one suggest a nostalgic return either, regression is proto-extinction. To sustain the very fabric of society, a new totem was to be chosen. Among the options we had were a technocracy, but due to the direct conflict with the ideals of the Last Man, this option was almost instantly disqualified. The only one that diplomatically resolved, with compromise, the different drives of the human race was democracy. They chose to worship not The, or even A, Human, but out of shame in there being nothing worthy of worship in those in the crowd, they chose to worship the crowd itself. This behavior can be observed in prey species, herding around one another in hopes of the survival of the majority at the expense of the minority. Human beings, had sublimated this behavior by raising the herd behavior to new heights, but for different ends. To effectively hunt and be on the prowl. This sudden shift in mass psychology is not only unnatural but just ‘is not’. Exploration of ideas most frequently leads us to the same problem. Ideas being summoned from the realm of sober thought to the concrete world around us face a distortion, a sort of Loss in Translation. This is the essence behind the ‘is not’. Democracy, hand in hand with Capitalism, has been single handedly responsible for lifting billions out of poverty. In terms of collective benefit, and growth of humanity, there is no doubt in its effectiveness. In Why Nations Fail, the authors make a brilliant case for the real source of prosperity of a nation being inclusive institutions, which allow for participation and competition while extractive institutions, which concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few, lead to failure. This has been commonly misunderstood to be a case for Democracy as a whole, but these two characteristics are not equivalent. The assumption, and a risky one at that, is that democracy encourages competition and inclusivity (whatever that means). This implies the existence of a decoupling point where the marginal benefit per unit inconvenience of democracy has long stagnated and in hopes of further evolution, something else must supplant our current system. To understand where we go ahead from here, we must seek a fit between our biological machinery vis-à-vis the political machinery. For this, I shall knit together an analysis of the current situation of democracy and extract insights of where we might best find an answer; outside of “populist opinion”, or rather, outside of democratic discourse altogether. Intersection Theorem: A compromise between any number of agents will only stem from the intersection of their individual characteristics. Although simplistic, this theorem has huge implications for a social system like democracy. The bigger a vote bank gets, the higher the variation between the agents, and sooner than later, the intersection will only include the bare animalistic tendencies within us. This explains why all populist movements in all of human history have been rooted in tribalism, hate, xenophobia, etc. This is akin to our species joining hands and walking back through the same path we struggled to evolve past. Regression is proto-extinction. As per the Intersection Theorem, the only defense for democracy is if it is also the ideal system to improve people at the individual level. But this is oxymoronic in the abstract as well as the concrete. A system that is so vehemently against the individual cannot have any place for the growth of its constituents. It would be akin to a sick person “consciously thinking” away the disease and curing himself. In practice, this plays out in the form of state-dependence. A system that appoints a leader who’s goal is to maximize likelihood of reappointment, would use his tenure in power to facilitate the same. Reappointment is easier if the population stays docile, dependent, and uneducated. Therefore, any efforts in raising the populace to higher standards will suffer from the dissonance of incentive clash and will only be a vacuum for resources. This has been the case for all of recorded history, one apt example being India’s National Rural Employment Act, 2005 which guarantees minimum wage labor. This essentially, keeps mass swathes of citizens of the nation imprisoned with no disposable income for savings, and more importantly, dependent on the state. A sheer onslaught on the Independent Individual. You can argue for the off-chance political movement that pops up in the collective consciousness of the nation unaccompanied by these animalistic emotions. A good hearted leader, with the support of the people, prophesied to rise up. Alas, the Nash Equilibrium for any political entrant is to use populist ideas, and especially the negative drives. Because of who we are as a species, they are just more impactful in getting a larger support amongst the people. “You get the government you deserve” The Democracy-Capitalism power couple has my respect for seemingly being the ideal solution for maximizing the social mobility index (which should be the only goal any self-respecting society should aim for). But where do we, as a species evolve towards next? If anyone truly believes Democracy to be the perfect and final iteration in the series of political systems, they naively overestimate the scale of human wisdom, and terribly underestimate the time scale of the rest of reality. But what aim should a new system seek to achieve? Perhaps, maximizing the heights the greatest amongst a population can reach? Whatever it may be, may it not be selected by popular vote. Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate appealed to them again. But the crowd kept shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”