The new governance system after the pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic signals a revolutionary change in our old/present socio-economic system. In truth this system was already in decline, on life-support even before the virus, but now the lockdowns, quarantines will expedite the “end-game”.
From economic point of view it is clear that a system that’s built on excessive, unnatural overproduction, overconsumption - recklessly exploiting both the Human and natural resources - is unsustainable. Such system is like a foreign body, cancer in Nature’s finely balanced, integral, interdependent system, thus had no right to exist.
So from economic point of view we will have to scale down to a modern, healthy, natural Human necessities and available resources based system, and the virus already started “skimming off” the unnecessary, harmful excess.
But we need fundamental changes in our governance system too.
At the moment we have a top-down, hierarchical system in all countries, even in those who call themselves democracies. And the democracy we are practicing today is very different from the original, classical ideal, it is distorted, corrupted by the instinctive Human ego.
We don’t have true public representation. Instead we have career politicians who are there because they believe they are more suitable to lead than others, they deserve to be above others. Then these already egotistic, self-justifying people form self-serving political parties which then start a toxic competition, horse-trading, constant manipulation which is totally detached from the interest, well-being of the public.
It is not surprising that in recent elections all over the world people desperately tried electing people, parties that are seemingly outside of the establishment. But as long as the system is unchanged, as soon as one enters it, one becomes formed, manipulated to serve the establishment.
The only — probably one-time — anomaly has been Donald Trump, who didn’t, couldn’t conform to the establishment as a result of his petulant, almost childish personality. Of course for many reasons he is not an ideal leader — as the Coronavirus pandemic showed — but with his “outsider”, no-nonsense approach, “non-politically correct stance” he asked many very important questions, starting many necessary processes, wholesome changes, pointing out that the “emperor” — the overall system, the so called parliamentary democracy and it’s institutions we took for granted — are “naked”, false, harmful and unsustainable.
Trump is not the solution of course, as he still represents the “superior”, individualistic, self-serving, self-justifying approach we have been suffering from for a long time, and which approach — all over the world, except perhaps a few countries that are also naturally more shielded from the pandemic — also made this pandemic and crisis much worse than it should have been.
In the new world that comes after the pandemic and subsequent crisis we will have to rebuild the governance system in societies from the grassroots. We will need to erase the political party system — and all the different lobbies — that have become some of the greatest obstacles to democracy.
We will need a truly independent public representation, representatives elected directly from the public, and these people have to become “public servants” in the literal meaning of the expression.
Basically we have to remove the “overhead” in societies that overheads have become too heavy, self-serving, totally disconnected from the public, and rebuild ourselves “from below”.
Still it is very important that this rebuilding is accompanied with a unique, purposeful, practical educational method, that can teach us how to balance, neutralize, defuse the inherently self-serving, egotistic, subjective tendencies that work in all of us without exception.
