Tilvera: In a democracy, no-one is powerless. Man’s power can be broken by a man, by a revolt of moral conscience and by civil society.
Ónytjungur: He who prefers to say nothing often resorts to hollow concepts; and since the hallmark of societies is the love of chatter …
Tilvera: I didn’t use a hollow concept.
Ónytjungur: Interesting. And what should I think when I hear the words democracy, moral conscience and civil society?
Tilvera: Democracy is the sovereignty of the people, civil society is an information society based on science, and moral conscience is considered to be a particular characteristic of human conscience that determines how we should judge.
Ónytjungur: And do you think you improve your statement by adding other hollow concepts? Isn’t moral conscience the feeling of calm or agitation that enters the conscience when a planned, completed or forgotten act is in agreement or contradiction with a moral principle that an individual considers as vital?
Tilvera: I still haven’t used a hollow concept.
Ónytjungur: Interesting. And what should I think when I hear the words information society based on science and human conscience?
Tilvera: Western society, of course.
Ónytjungur: Have you noticed that you are going round in circles?
Tilvera: Because I use synonyms?
Ónytjungur: Not at all; because you confuse assertion with reality.
Tilvera: So what would you call reality?
Ónytjungur: Well an example of reality would be like Albert Einstein said: science without religion is lame, while religion without science is blind.
Tilvera: And what would your assertion be?
Ónytjungur: That Western civil society is an information society based on science.
Tilvera: Do you want to make me believe that your intelligence is not yet sufficiently developed to establish a relation between a scientist’s statement and the statements of an information society based on science?
Ónytjungur: Quite. Because it is indeed this information society based on science which today, just like in the past, not only produced, owned and used nuclear bombs against the will of this scientist, but into the bargain, considers it perfectly normal and legal that a handful of charlatans can destroy society and along with it, everyone on earth when they see fit, on a scale and in proportions that would make the atrocities of the barbarians in the Middle Ages seem like the pathetic attempts of novices. If my memory serves me well, this attribute of humanity is called evolutionary humanism.
Tilvera: This is not an evil, since as I said at the beginning; no one is powerless in a democracy, because man’s power can be broken by man, by the revolt of moral conscience and by civil society.
Ónytjungur: Isn’t it true that when man evokes a possibility that theoretically exists, he has degenerated to the state of an ideologist?
Tilvera: Do you dispute the fact the man’s power can be broken by man?
Ónytjungur: What do you believe by that? But you have to know how to be an idealist to declare that the revolt of moral conscience has never been a trigger for civil society.
Tilvera: So how would you define an idealist then?
Ónytjungur: To remain neutral, I would say it’s an idiot, who takes what is presented to him through an arrow slit as an important world concept.
Tilvera:You are forgetting the existence of the intellect.
Ónytjungur: Not at all. The intellect and collective feeling are two separate concepts. What they share is that one must be absent for the other to exist.
Tilvera: Democracies are only made possible by the interaction between collective feeling and intellect.
Ónytjungur: Well, that would explain why after two thousand years, western civilisation has yet to experience true democracy.
Tilvera: So in your view, what has it experienced?
Ónytjungur: If I go back to a scientist, in this case, Aristotle, who introduced the concept of democracy, then democracy refers to the power of those who are guided by arete, i.e., courage, generosity, munificence, justice and wisdom. No doubt you are also aware that courage, generosity, munificence, justice and wisdom are never limited by the boundaries of countries or lands, and you will not make me believe that among the systems that you call democracies, there is just one example based on the different criteria identified by Aristotle and which operates according to these criteria.
Tilvera: No, probably not, but what other systems could there be?
Ónytjungur: Here we find the same principle as for Einstein’s phrase and that of the so called information society and based on the knowledge which has been drawn from it. Here the result is that these systems really like to present themselves as democracies so that we fail to notice that they are pure dictatorships. The difference between these systems and those that we consider as dictatorships can only be found in the number of dictators involved.
Perhaps here it is a specific form of an anthropological constant that occurs in information societies based on science, and therefore the result is that an intelligent person likes to replace words that have negative connotations with positive words, just as they like to use positive concepts to hide the constant meanness of reality. While the first is totally inoffensive, since when hearing the words recycling centre, no one would imagine anything other than a dump; however, the other direction is dangerous, because it inevitably involves forgetting what the word democracy truly means.
Tilvera: All you need therefore is to talk of a democratic dictatorship, to make it impossible to know what a democracy is.
Ónytjungur: In the dictator’s mind, dictatorship is always people power.
Tilvera: You are forgetting collective feeling.
Ónytjungur: Are you talking about that stance created to condition people to support an individual? Doesn’t that lead to creating a kind of social group that strengthens tribal behaviour, but makes fools of scientists?
Tilvera: There are more serious things.
Ónytjungur: Why does this argument remind me of the boy who said he was working on healing the world, because he had been content to rip off his classmate, while another boy had also beaten him up?
Translation: Jackie Dobble
