Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

The "other" ERE. Societal aspects of the ERE philosophy. Emergent change-making, scale-effects,...
Post Reply
avalok
Posts: 277
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:42 am
Location: West Midlands, UK; Walkscore 73

Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by avalok »

I am unsure if this is the correct place to post this, but I could not think of anywhere better:

I discovered the song Democracy by Leonard Cohen this year, and initially thought it to be sarcastic, but the more I listened, the more I began to believe it is a list of the "components" that facilitate democracy's emergence, by their interactions. Many of the interactions are tensions, but that is what allows democracy to emerge. Of course the list is not exhaustive, none could be, and the specifics may be debated, but I think the song's list is a very good summary of some key parts.

I also think Cohen's use of the term democracy is loose, in that it goes beyond political procedure to encompass what we recognise in the West as a "free world". Again, this may or may not be actually "free" or true democracy, but I think Cohen's list of "elements" giving rise to what the West recognises as democracy to be pretty good: he gets a lot of variety in there, capturing the tangled web of interactions from which it may arise.

Here are the lyrics for reference.

N.B: I appreciate this thread could become (maybe it already is?) political. All I am looking for is a discussion of the song's relevance to systems thinking and emergence as a property. @Jacob, if this thread already breaks the rule: apologies.

jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15907
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by jacob »

It's pretty hard to run a forum that questions how we live and think without touching politics because at that level every action and idea is political at some level, i.e. an emergence. It is quite the handicap not being able to discuss it freely but responsibly.

What I want to avoid, because I'm entirely burned out on it, is serving to reconcile us-vs-them camps whenever some have been riled up to seek win-lose outcomes by their respective partisan bubbles. Psy-ops whether it's partisan media or outright propaganda is at a stage where it's far easier to play offense than defense. It's just too freakin' easy to create us-vs-them dynamics these days over pretty much any topic regardless of how material or irrelevant it is.

From time to time I think of bringing politics back because I miss the good discussions. But then I'm reminded of the consequences of the bad discussions and realizing that the world at large has not moved on from that point yet.

So what I'm actually doing in terms of moderation is clamp down on known wedge issues(*) but let other political issues live. Effectively this means culture war topics are out, international wars are out, touchy subjects are out. Basically anything that easily splits into us-vs-them is out.

(*) Because I don't want further wedges driven into this forum. It's just not worth it.

Sometimes it's pretty easy to see that a topic will turn bad on the first page, so those topics get shitcanned immediately. Other times, topics get locked down because someone knowingly or unknowingly imported bad faith arguments from the generally sick political discourse. They live a little longer. But there is in theory nothing that prevents a certain political threads (see above list) from living forever.

avalok
Posts: 277
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:42 am
Location: West Midlands, UK; Walkscore 73

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by avalok »

The rule makes a lot of sense to me. I have seen threads from before I was a member that show clearly why you introduced it. Thanks for clarifying your moderation heuristics; it'll help with future posts.

jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15907
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by jacob »

Back to the topic.

Democracy is to legislation what the market is to capitalism under the constraint that everybody is about equally rich (one person > 18yo, one vote, if they show up). As such it's a centralizing way of reaching compromises that are turned into legislation which is but a legal technology for governing. (Compare to an dictator who has to make every single decision. That gets old fast and it's pretty much impossible to run a large country that way.)

The closer people live and the more different people are, the more this [democracy] process needs to be consulted/used. Conversely, more sparsely populated or uniform areas don't need to compromise as much and as such don't need democracy to the same extent. They either already agree or don't need to agree in the first place because their rights "end" before the rights of their neighbor, who lives 5 miles down the road, begin. Not so much the case in cities where the right to have a 110dB midnight party needs a compromise with the neighbor, who lives 15 yards away, and their right to sleep at night. Also called ordinances.

The one person one vote serves mainly to make everybody feel they're part of the decision process---not to tap some infinite herd wisdom, most humans are really too stupid for that. However, voting does really create an "average sentiment result". This is why most democracies are representative.

So, democracy is a method that's installed in about half(?) the countries of the world.

But people use it differently according to their understanding. Spiral Dynamics is a great way to understand how different colors would apply it differently. For example, the Red vMeme (tribes and gangs) sees the world in terms of strong winners and weak losers. This vMeme is still present in 10-20% of the population---more so in the US than the EU---and so will accept the democratic process only when they win. Basically, that is to say, even if the tool exists, that doesn't mean that it's perceived the way it was intended(*).

This is what Cohen means when "democracy is coming". It's basically an increasing awareness and concern for other people as they literally start living closer to each other in this relatively thinly populated country.

(*) Recall that even the inventors or founders usually reserved the right to vote for just a few people. We still exclude about 20% of the population from having a say, but it used to be far more.

We can cover the other colors's view/interpretation of what democracy means as well!

Methinks that the dominant perception is still Orange ... the majority of politicians still see democracy as a process of finding a "price" for conflicting values. "I vote for this, if you vote for that..." This is not how Green, Blue, or Yellow would go about it...

Add: To ferret out what [Color] someone is look at how they engage with the democracy-tool/technology. The colors are essentially what is emerging along the spiral.

avalok
Posts: 277
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:42 am
Location: West Midlands, UK; Walkscore 73

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by avalok »

I hadn't thought before about the correlation with population density. That provides some explanation of its initial rise in industrialising nations.

If democracy is a tool "installed", and as you point out, can be used in ways not intended, that suggests you do not see it as an emergent property of those societies we recognise to have it?

If Orange sees it through the lens of transactions, I would think Blue would see it as a duty: a way to be a good citizen, and perhaps a way of fighting for right (us) against wrong (them). Not that the latter is exclusive to Blue.

I still wonder, though I am struggling to articulate, if Cohen is on about more than democracy as legislative process. He's touching on markets and commercialism (Chevrolet), the suffering of AIDS victims (ashes of the gay), free love, and the atomic family (who will serve and who will eat?). All these are related to democracy as a tool to resolve a problem of more and different people, but they also relate in ways more than that. The reality we have in the West (the USA) is because of the interactions between these things listed. Is Cohen seeing these interactions, tensions, as vital to the system; would this consitute a Yellow perspective, or am I looking for more than is in the song?
Last edited by avalok on Mon Sep 05, 2022 11:05 am, edited 2 times in total.

User avatar
Jean
Posts: 1891
Joined: Fri Dec 13, 2013 8:49 am
Location: Switzterland

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by Jean »

i see democracy as way to know wo would win in case we'de fail to agree peacefully.
I think that what happened in rwanda ia an examples of what happen when people think the process failed as a proxy for war.

ducknald_don
Posts: 322
Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2020 12:31 pm
Location: Oxford, UK

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by ducknald_don »

I see it more as a release valve. Instead of having to bear arms against a poor leader we can just wait until the next election and kick them out without bloodshed.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think the Cohen song is coming from a Yellow perspective, especially since it’s message seems to be in alignment with improving or motivating the democratic functioning of all participants up the spiral.

The U.S. has always been relatively sparsely populated, but also relatively heterogeneous in population. So, a more homogeneous population would be more similar if under higher pressure of population density. Of course, it’s also the case that the founding philosophers of the U.S. were as often in Paris as Kentucky.

avalok
Posts: 277
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:42 am
Location: West Midlands, UK; Walkscore 73

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by avalok »

@7W5 yeah you've hit on what I have been trying to articulate; that Cohen is acknowledging the importance of the integrity of the whole spiral. Perhaps the thread would be better titled An Ode to the Developmental Spiral. Of course, democracy doesn't necessarily require the particulars he lists, but the manifestation of democracy in West may well do (it's too complex to know).

I think the final verse is the clearest indicator of Yellow:
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet
I take this to mean: I don't fit into any particular camp, I am instead watching the system unfold, and I will stand here holding up the importance of the entirety of that system (wild bouquet) for those who only see a part.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Avalok:

I agree, and I also think he is communicating something about being post-post-modern in the final verse. The plastic garbage bag kind of represents the worst of Modernity ("There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?"), but if a plastic garbage bag is blown by the wind up against a fence it can create a protected microclimate environment in which a "wild bouquet" might thrive, or really more like a "feral bouquet" if "feral" can be reconstructed as positive attribute in the Anthropocene.

prudentelo
Posts: 173
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2022 8:55 am

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by prudentelo »

Cohen is modern genius, like Socrates with a guitar.

zbigi
Posts: 978
Joined: Fri Oct 30, 2020 2:04 pm

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by zbigi »

avalok wrote:
Mon Sep 05, 2022 10:53 am
I hadn't thought before about the correlation with population density. That provides some explanation of its initial rise in industrialising nations.
Not sure how strong that explanation is, given how there already was democracy in pre-modern times, going all the way to ancient Greece. Polish Commonwealth (c.a. XV - XVIII century) was a democracy [1] as well and it was anything but densely populated.

[1] In the original sense of democracy as defined in ancient times and by US founding fathers - i.e. only the ruling class (people with some wealth in the US, nobility in Poland) get to vote, and of course slaves/serfs are excluded.

ducknald_don
Posts: 322
Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2020 12:31 pm
Location: Oxford, UK

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by ducknald_don »

It does seem likely that you will need more rules the closer people are to each other. I wonder if this at least partly explains why libertarian thinking seems more common in rural areas. If you live a mile from your nearest neighbour then you won't see the need for noise control but if your neighbour is only one thin wall away then you will have a different perception. The same goes for public services, living in a tiny apartment with no parking is only going to work well if you have access to outside amenities and public transport. Meanwhile someone in a rural area may have parking for a dozen old cars in their front garden and will scoff at the few mostly empty bushes that see on the road.

ertyu
Posts: 2893
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2016 2:31 am

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by ertyu »

ducknald_don wrote:
Tue Sep 06, 2022 5:03 am
there is even a saying about this: god is high, and the king is far away

avalok
Posts: 277
Joined: Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:42 am
Location: West Midlands, UK; Walkscore 73

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by avalok »

@zbigi I thought about the classical world while writing that, and what you say is spot on. Perhaps there is a certain population density that needs to be reached before democracy is viable. At lower densities the problems it seeks to solve do not materialise, or are not severe enough, and so it isn't appropriate.

chenda
Posts: 3289
Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2011 1:17 pm
Location: Nether Wallop

Re: Democracy - Leonard Cohen: An Ode to Emergence?

Post by chenda »

Yet conversely urban areas usually offer more economic and social freedoms to the individual.

Another interesting geographical distinction is between upland or mountainous areas and the flat lowlands.

'The highlands are as a rule a world apart from civilisations which are an urban and lowland achievement. Their history is to have none, to remain almost always on the fringe of the great waves of civilisation...which may spread over great distances in the horizontal plane but are powerless to move vertical...' Fernand Braudel

Post Reply