Do NOT Vote In Elections If You Are Politically Illiterate

This post is a critique on democracy and the voters’ awareness campaigns conducted by various organizations that asks everyone to vote in the elections. This is the root of all the problems that we face in this liberal democratic country. We all know that democracy is “of the people, by the people and for the people”. But somewhere along the line we missed the warning sign in the backyard that it’s probably not good for the people. Especially for a country like India.

Disclaimer : The term politically illiteracy doesn’t mean lack of college graduate degree or even primary school education. It has nothing to do with any kind of formal education.

What does Socrates say?

The founding father of western philosophy is one of the harshest critics of the greatest achievement of Athens, the democracy. In book VI of “The republic“ by Plato, student of Socrates, we can observe this in Socrates’ conversation with Adeimantus. He explains his argument by comparing the society to a ship. If we were heading out on a journey by the sea, who would you ideally want deciding who should be in charge of the ship? Just any random person or people who are educated in seafaring should decide it?

If you are still not convinced, let me give you a more relatable Indian example. In 2007, M S Dhoni was selected as the captain of the Indian cricket team. Imagine for a moment, what would have happened if there had been a nationwide referendum to choose the captain of the Indian cricket team? Remember that Dhoni was a nobody back then. I guarantee you that most certainly Yuvaraj Singh would have been chosen in such a scenario, if not for other legends at the time like Virender Sehwag. Such a monumental decision of choosing M S Dhoni as the captain was only possible because there was an expert committee deciding it. In a democratic setup where anyone could vote, such an event is not even possible in our wildest dreams. Needless to say that even people who’ve never watched cricket and know nothing about the rules of the game could also vote in such a setup. If this system clearly makes a fool of itself even for a silly sport, how can this be a good idea in deciding a far complex, almost life-or-death, problem of choosing the leader of the nation?

Socrates’ death

How do you think Socrates died? Not by a savage tyrannical autocratic ruler but by a democratic jury voting. In 399 BC, the philosopher was put on trial with the charge of corrupting the youth’s minds. A jury of 500 random citizens were selected to weigh in on the case. And 52% of them found him guilty. This is an example where democracy could prove to be the direct enemy of brilliant minds.

Problem of election campaign

This is another great metaphor by Socrates. Now imagine that we have 2 election candidates. One is a sweetshop owner and the other is a doctor. The sweetshop owner would say that the doctor is an evil man since he hurts people, gives them bitter things to eat and asks everyone to refrain from delicious foods. While, on the other hand, the sweetshop owner gives them tasty things to eat. What could possibly be the doctor’s reply to effectively counter this argument? The true answer is that he does all those things to help them. But that will be the most self entitled egoistic fascist statement from the audience’s perspective. How dare the doctor torments people in the name of the so-called greater good! If the doctor was a smartass, he would try to convince them that it’s truly helpful by proving that he endures those hardships too. But the audience won’t fall for that. Who cares about a mad man who torments himself and claims that it’s actually good in the longer run? Why would people go behind such a person?

Democracy is only as good as the education system

Since the voting is done by everyone, its a collective conscience decision. To have a good collective conscience, everyone in the society should be well educated. By education, I don’t mean the formal education. You don’t need a degree or school certificate to be educated. And just because you have a degree or school certificate doesn’t mean that you are educated.

Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think
Albert Einstein

I don’t think I need to waste my time explaining how the Indian education system is a hopeless disaster.

Degradation of arts due to democratization

The rise of science and technological growth democratized arts. I’m happy for it that it’s not a dominion of aristocracy anymore. But it’s a double edged dagger. Now anyone can become a writer. Anyone can become a poet. Anyone can become a musician. Anyone can become an artist. And more importantly, anyone can become a critique of any of them. Anyone who convinces the masses that they are an artist is an artist. You don’t need real competence anymore. This is what happens when a person who knows nothing about arts decides who’s the best artist. The widening gap between the expert opinion and common public opinion of a good art work is testament to it. One could shift the blame to commodification due to capitalism. But capitalism is just democratization of economic activities.

Voting is a skill

Everyone cannot vote right. Please follow this argument carefully. I’m not saying that in an election, only one candidate is the objectively right candidate to vote for. There is no objective right answer in an election. But voting is a skill. Just like any other intellectual ability. Even with the exact same level of training, can everyone become a virtuoso musician? Can everyone become a nobel prize winning mathematician? Similarly not everyone can vote with proper analytical thinking without getting influenced by the sweet talks and charisma of the leaders. It is a skill to see through the lies of the politicians. Not everyone can master it. Just like how everyone cannot become Sherlock Holmes. A politician will be and should be sly. Only a skilled voter can be double sly in their calculations to manipulate the manipulator to work in favor of the people. They should be able to weigh in which lies are forgivable and which ones are not based on careful political assessment. They should be immune to rhetoric and prejudices.

Don’t vote, don’t complain?

This is a common phrase used by voters’ awareness campaigners to urge everyone to vote. You can still question the leaders even if you don’t vote. Even if you didn’t vote for Kohli to be the captain of the Indian cricket team, you have all the right to complain about his poor performance. Further, how could a bad vote be better than no vote? Remember that every bad vote negates the effect of well informed votes. The best thing would be obviously to have everyone present their well informed and educated vote. But we all know that it’s an utopian dream. So what’s the next best thing to have? This reminds me of the Vadivelu’s card’s game comedy.

Last minute preparation

I see a lot of “Don’t Forget To Vote” campaigns by various organizations, celebrities, and even by the government. Voting is not your college exam that you prepare at the last minute with the help of your brilliant friend. You cannot prepare in one day. You cannot prepare in one month. You cannot prepare in one year. You have to be vigilant about the political happenings every single day. You cannot be suddenly enlightened overnight by the wake up call of your favorite celebrity. You cannot watch a bunch of YouTube videos and become a scholar. I respect the people who refrain from voting, being self aware that they are not well informed to participate in it. And I despise the people who think of themselves as heroes for taking one day off their very busy life to vote.

Don’t underestimate the people

This is what everyone with optimism say. There is a fine line between optimism and a lie. And this particular lie is satisfying the ego of the people. So people are happy to hear it. They don’t care whether it’s true. Who cares about the truth especially when the truth hurts? I’m sorry, somebody has to say it. People are damn stupid. Especially in a country like India. This is a hard pill that needs to be swallowed.

Am I an anti-Indian?

Why am I criticizing only India? This applies to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, etc as well. In fact this criticism fits all countries that lack renaissance. In Europe, there was a real commoner’s movement of enlightenment. This is why those European countries have at least decent functional democracies. In India, we never had any such movement and nor did we bother to learn from others. Indian independence is mostly a movement of elites affected by British taxation and imperialism. There was never a true nationwide commoner’s movement here. Whenever we find any kind of big leaders, people just turn into mindless zombies of worshipers of those leaders. From M K Gandhi to S C Bose, from Vivekananda to Jaggi Vasudev, from Nehru to Modi this is the case. Indians unfortunately have this savior mentality. They expect some mahatma to lift them from their misery. This idea can even be traced back to epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata.

Intellectual democracy ; not birthright democracy

I’m not an elitist who believes that only a few handful of people should have the right to ever vote. But only those who have really thought carefully about their voting choice rationally and deeply with utmost care should ever be let near a vote. I would gladly accept tyranny if such a voting led to it. But we cannot tolerate demagoguery due to the foolishness of the majority.

But what’s better than democracy?

I don’t know. Perhaps, we don’t have an alternative. But the problem of democracy is real and a dangerous one. The reason why we are stuck with democracy is that the only available alternative is authoritarian communism. Compared to that, democracy is a haven. Obviously I’m not suggesting to move towards authoritarianism because of these flaws of democracy. Nobody in their right mind will say that.

“Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried”
Winston Churchill

But at the same time, democracy is not enough. We shouldn’t settle for democracy. According to Plato, democracy will naturally lead to authoritarianism over time. Already we have seen some authoritarian rulers in some democratic countries. If we don’t start to think of a better and robust system now, we could be stuck in the dark age forever. If we happen to be under a totalitarian regime in future, there is absolutely no hope of overthrowing it. Military technology has grown so much. And they are too advanced for the commoners to get access to it. So there is literally zero hope of revolution if we happened to go under the control of despotism.