Democracy or monarchy for who?
Feb. 6th, 2008 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qcontinuumOOC: Reposted from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse from 5/12/2004.
Which is better, democracy or monarchy?
For what species? I'll narrow it down to Humans and Q-- I could go on and on about any number of species, but there's only two I care about lately.
Humans are such troubled little creatures. Crawling between heaven and earth, they're crushed by the weight of their own biology while they try to reach for the stars. Democracy appeals to human reason and the human sense of fairness. Why shouldn't everyone get a chance to choose the rules that control their lives, after all? And when one controls for human stupidity, by restricting their democracy to a certain degree, it works well for them. Rationally.
But they have a hunger for a king. A big daddy, a noble ruler, someone greater and wiser than themselves who'll just tell them what to do so they don't have to think. It's in the biology, the need to bow down to an alpha. Usually a man, although I've seen human societies practically worship a queen as well. And some serious ugliness can happen when they try to turn an executive leader in a democracy into a king. Which they do when they're scared enough. Humans let reason and fairness fly out the window when they're scared enough.
For Q, there's no question. Absolute and total democracy is the only way the Continuum can function. The only thing that can control one Q is a number of other Q working together. We don't have a need for a big daddy to tell us what to do; we were all born adults. (Well, except for the two Q that weren't.) We don't need to belong to something larger than ourselves; we're all quite large on our own, and besides, we belong to the Continuum, and one body larger than ourselves is frequently too many. We have been known to have certain factions end up taking control for many millions of years at a time... in fact we just fought a war to kick the people who'd been in favor of stagnation out of control for the first time in half a billion years. But for the most part, we are all loudmouthed, opinionated, strong-willed and very capable of holding our own in an argument, so the Continuum ends up having to listen to all the Q before making a decision for the simple reason that we will just yell until the others pay attention. (Why, yes, I did spend half a billion years doing that way too often.) The idea of all of us following any one single Q is absolutely laughable.
I agree to a certain extent with my old pal![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
trickster_loki, by the way. But it's not the *forms* of government that need to change constantly; if you find a form that works well for your biology, use it. What needs to change frequently is *who* is in charge. Even in a pure democracy, factions form. Every so often you need to have a revolution... though *most* of ours have been bloodless.
theatrical_muse from 5/12/2004.Which is better, democracy or monarchy?
For what species? I'll narrow it down to Humans and Q-- I could go on and on about any number of species, but there's only two I care about lately.
Humans are such troubled little creatures. Crawling between heaven and earth, they're crushed by the weight of their own biology while they try to reach for the stars. Democracy appeals to human reason and the human sense of fairness. Why shouldn't everyone get a chance to choose the rules that control their lives, after all? And when one controls for human stupidity, by restricting their democracy to a certain degree, it works well for them. Rationally.
But they have a hunger for a king. A big daddy, a noble ruler, someone greater and wiser than themselves who'll just tell them what to do so they don't have to think. It's in the biology, the need to bow down to an alpha. Usually a man, although I've seen human societies practically worship a queen as well. And some serious ugliness can happen when they try to turn an executive leader in a democracy into a king. Which they do when they're scared enough. Humans let reason and fairness fly out the window when they're scared enough.
For Q, there's no question. Absolute and total democracy is the only way the Continuum can function. The only thing that can control one Q is a number of other Q working together. We don't have a need for a big daddy to tell us what to do; we were all born adults. (Well, except for the two Q that weren't.) We don't need to belong to something larger than ourselves; we're all quite large on our own, and besides, we belong to the Continuum, and one body larger than ourselves is frequently too many. We have been known to have certain factions end up taking control for many millions of years at a time... in fact we just fought a war to kick the people who'd been in favor of stagnation out of control for the first time in half a billion years. But for the most part, we are all loudmouthed, opinionated, strong-willed and very capable of holding our own in an argument, so the Continuum ends up having to listen to all the Q before making a decision for the simple reason that we will just yell until the others pay attention. (Why, yes, I did spend half a billion years doing that way too often.) The idea of all of us following any one single Q is absolutely laughable.
I agree to a certain extent with my old pal
trickster_loki, by the way. But it's not the *forms* of government that need to change constantly; if you find a form that works well for your biology, use it. What needs to change frequently is *who* is in charge. Even in a pure democracy, factions form. Every so often you need to have a revolution... though *most* of ours have been bloodless.