The primary purpose of government before the After Age, if it had any, was as a tool for the powerful to exploit the powerless. That was not its only purpose, but it was the primary one. In the After Age, government’s purpose is to serve the people. That is what is expected, it certainly does not do so all the time. But exploitation, when it happens, and certainly it does, is seen as a failure. We’ve raised our expectations. We demand better.
This is a profound change. The fact that it is not universal (like so much progress) does not take away from its importance. Some governments serve their people better than others. A few governments still see their people as mere profit centers to be milked for cash. An even smaller few have a hostile relationship with their people and are obsessed with controlling and containing them. Most governments have a mix of these intentions.
But even outside the democratic world, government as a service is the de facto expectation. A government that does a poor job of serving its people is a fragile government indeed. It is a dinosaur left over from the past, and we all know what happened to the dinosaurs.
As the After Age spreads and matures, the transition of governments from exploiters to service providers will continue. But we continue to cling to the old model. And not just governments and their leaders – for sentimental reasons, we the people also have trouble letting go, as I will explain.
As an individual, you can sharpen your understanding of government, how it works and how it does not work, by keeping this transformation in mind. Doing so will help you figure out what it is you really want from your government and protect you from political scams, conmen, false hopes, and empty promises. Your improved savvy benefits you, and all of us.
To start, it helps to remember one simple rule:
Government should serve a purpose, not an ideal. The greatest mistake we can make in governing is to believe that we are serving a higher purpose. Government is not sacred. Government is, or ought to be, simply a service that administers justice, collects the garbage, and many other things in between. In other words, government should serve a purpose, not an ideal.
The belief that government is sacred is a holdover from our past. It was one of the ways exploitative rulers of the past (and present) justified their existence. The idea is a direct descendant of the ancient belief that the man or woman at the top of the social pyramid was a god. Gradually, that idea was watered down as it became harder and harder to convince anyone it was literally true. But it lingers, even in democracies that have thrown off the divine right of kings.
To be fair to kings and queens, we the people have invested a lot in the idea as well. In fact, it is very hard for us to let it go. When we try, by overthrowing corrupt, controlling regimes, all too often we find ourselves crawling back to the old ways, like a lover in an abusive relationship.
We like having leaders with symbolic power. We like believing that our rulers are divine, or at least very special and all-powerful. It is a comfort to us to think the people in charge were destined to be there, and that their leadership will protect us and bring our lives meaning. It is very hard for us, individually and communally, to view government as just a service and our leaders as, essentially, customer support.
When we view government as a sacred institution whose every action is either an affirmation or betrayal of some higher spirit or ideal, we invite trouble. This has been proven over and over again in history, especially in the last 250 years. If you want ideals, in other words, if you are looking for meaning, find some ideals you believe in, and try living by them. Do not go looking for them in the government. And, if you do look for them in government, when you don’t find them, don’t try to impose them on it. Government is a huge, complicated bureaucracy that has enough trouble functioning well as it is without having to embody our fantasies of the ideal world.
Treating government as something that serves a purpose rather than an ideal is, to be fair, somewhat of a luxury. In the past, it was hard to be so pragmatic. The living conditions of most people were desperate and their governments at best didn’t care, and often deliberately made things worse. Drastic, revolutionary, idealistic solutions like Communism, fascism, and theocracy were attractive (and still are) for their promise of radical change from the horrible status quo. They also were (and still are) easier to get passionate about than a more sensible course of action. The mass murder, oppression, and failed economies of Communist, fascist, and theocratic governments are the best argument for why trying to govern according to ideals is such a bad idea.
But if you live in the After Age you don’t have the excuse of desperate circumstances to justify supporting radical ideology. Your life is far, far more comfortable than that of the French, Russian, or Chinese peasants who staged bloody revolutions and installed insane, radical regimes over the last 250 years. You have more than enough to eat, you live in comfortable surroundings, and your government does not systematically persecute its citizens. You can afford to be sensible.
Even if you do feel persecuted by your government, because of your political opinions, or ethnicity or gender, or the religion you practice, or your economic class, your circumstances still do not match the dire circumstances of the past, and still do not justify those kinds of drastic measures. Our anger over injustice can spur us to action, but it can also blind us, make us too impatient, and knock out our reason.
I am well aware that modern liberal democracy is, at least in part, the product of wild-eyed idealists dreaming up new ways of organizing government with no idea if it will work or not. Of course ideals matter. They are the invisible stuff that keeps these huge, imaginary social organizations – governments – glued together and existing in the real world. Government will never be reducible to mere purpose.
But the future of government lies in being more purpose, or service driven, and much, much, much less ideal-driven. Ideals are vague, contradictory, and inflammatory dreams that can very easily lead us astray. But a purpose – to feed the hungry, pave the roads, clean the air – you either do it or you don’t.
As an individual, you can help yourself understand the world around you better, and help your country be not just OK but great, by thinking of your government as more of a service, and less something that brings meaning to your life.
To be passionate about politics is to make politics worse for everyone. In the After Age, most political battles happen at the margins about relatively unimportant things. I am not going to provide examples of “relatively unimportant things,” because I do not want to turn off anyone who thinks what I consider relatively unimportant to be absolutely important. However, I’m sure we can all come up with examples of controversies that are very important to us, but that if they were to be decided one way or another would not have a big effect on our lives as a whole. One way to find an example is to think of some political controversy that did not go your way, and ask yourself whether it was really the disaster you thought it would be at the time. And remember: by disaster I mean a real disaster, not a relative one.
If your government maintains basic law and order, a justice and legal system, a public health system, a public education system, national defense, and a social safety net, then the important arguments have already been settled – in your favor. It might not seem that way when we are arguing over exactly how these things should work, what they should cost, or how much they should do, but that is to lose the forest for the trees. For most of human history, no government provided all of these things, and few provided any of them. For people who do not live in the After Age, these services may still be missing. Compared to that huge leap, our political controversies look very petty.
Unfortunately, all too often these petty controversies capture government, forcing it to serve an ideal (one side or the other side of a controversy) rather than serve a purpose. And then government starts to fail at all of the critical and uncontroversial things it needs to be doing.
To be passionate about politics is to make politics worse for everyone. Government is an administrative function. It ought to be boring, at least to anyone outside the process looking to be entertained (for those inside government trying to solve problems it is, hopefully, exciting).
As individuals in the After Age, we can help make our governments better by governing ourselves better. Stop watching the show, stop responding to the provocations of professional attention-seekers who are looking for people to applaud them. Start supporting leaders who represent the best in you: your ability to cooperate with other people. (These people tend to be bland, uninspiring compromisers. That is what politics does to people who actually practice it. Be grateful to them for the sacrifice they have made.) Our “ideal” government will reveal itself through the work we put into making government work properly and well.
If you are an American, I do not need to tell you that draining the passion from your politics can have a very positive personal benefit as well. We have lived through one divisive, nerve-wracking election after another for the last 20 years. It sucks. It is a tax on our mental health. You might think that it is the politicians that start these fires, and to a certain extent that is true. But the nature of politicians is to pick up on the vibes we are sending them. If we show them we are unamused by their antics, they will get the message eventually.
Government is oppressive by nature. Government is a conservative institution dedicated to controlling human behavior, and that is how it behaves. Expecting government to be anything different is, at a minimum, frustrating. Government should be expected to be heavy-handed, reactionary, conservative (wherever it may lie on the left/right spectrum), tone-deaf, insensitive, un-experimental, non-evolutionary, clumsy, uninspiring, and slow. Government will almost always lag behind society’s most progressive or visionary opinions, insights, culture, and practices.
It is not that we shouldn’t hope that sometimes government will surprise us by leading, rather than following. It is that when it does not, we should not despair. That is what government is. To expect anything else would be like driving a car into the sea in hopes it will turn into a boat. And then feeling deeply betrayed when it does not.
Because government is a conservative institution dedicated to controlling human behavior, we individuals need to understand and accept that it will be a little oppressive – i.e., a little “controlling” – most of the time. We can see this behavior in anyone who has power over us: the police, our boss, our mom. They become – we become – slightly oppressive when given responsibility over other people. We come to believe that we must be that way, and those we oppress come to resent us for it.
Acceptance of this unfortunate truth does not mean acceptance of oppression beyond “slightly”. A distant, tone-deaf, or clumsy bureaucracy is slightly oppressive. Imprisonment and execution without trial is deeply oppressive. Somewhere between we draw the line. The arc and promise of the After Age is to render that line unnecessary by making the drastic circumstances that force drastic acts a thing of the past. As the conditions of human life improve, we have less to fear from our government because it has less to fear from us.
Democracy is (just) one more perk of the After Age. Being a democracy is not a requirement for a country to enter the After Age. It just seems to work out that way. The reason is that as people get wealthier, better educated, freer and more empowered in other aspects of their lives, enjoying the freedom to choose their leaders, rather than fear them, seems a natural next step.
But democracy is just a method, not an inevitability, and it is not immune to the fundamental rule for government in the After Age: Government should serve a purpose, not an ideal. It is not hard to imagine a form of government that works better than democracy, especially since we are witness to the failures of democracy, and the successes of non-democracies, all the time. Many countries are trying to create exactly such a form of government. Or at least they claim they are. We shall see. More likely, their rulers are simply trying to justify remaining in power.
In practice, it is definitely true that less democratic countries sometimes serve their people better than more democratic ones. Democratic politics often stand in the way of getting things done or doing what is right. In this case, it might be better to think of democratic standards – political representation, freedom of expression, the rule of law, and so on – as standards of governmental quality and safety, like building codes. To meet all the building codes in constructing a house is more expensive and time-consuming. You can get what you need by ignoring them completely, and you can build the house faster and cheaper. But the end result of a house built to code is more pleasant to live in, higher quality, and, most important, less likely to collapse on top of you. Of course, some people can’t afford the nicer, safer, democratic house. Yet. But the greatness of the After Age is that eventually we all will.
That said, thinking of government as a service rather than an ideal ought to put pressure on democracies as well. For example, by encouraging them to spend less time exercising democracy, and more time focusing on results – services – for their people. That would be an improvement. Government should serve a purpose, not an ideal. If democracy is preventing government from serving the people, then having less of it might be an improvement.
The After Age is full of wonderful advances that our ancestors never would have thought possible. Government that is regularly chosen by the people and serves the people well is one of them. That it is not always well-executed in reality does not diminish its value.
For you, the individual, what this means is this: Don’t give up on democracy, whether you live in one or not. You deserve to have all the material benefits of the After Age – greater wealth, health, and so on – and the political freedoms of democracy, too. You are totally worth it.