In many European countries we have populist indirect democratic systems. The people elect, in a proportionate manner, a parliament. The parliament with all its parties is representative of the political opinions among the citizens. It is reasonable to claim that the people rule itself through the political institutions.
The US two party system is very different, of course. Here the people decides about who should rule them, but it is not reasonable to claim that the people rules itself through the political institutions. In comparison, I find that the standard European system is better, also as a model for global democracy.
I do believe that what I have called populist democracy is to be preferred to what I have called elitist democracy.
It is quite possible that we will soon come to live under some sort of global despotism, enlightened or not. This is not a nice prospect. And there is only one way of avoiding that this happens: to establish a global democracy. And it is not too late to strive for such a democracy, of a straightforward populist nature, where people on the globe elect a world parliament, which in turn elects a world government.
I am a left winger, thought.
Global governance need not take a democratic form.
It is obvious that humanity faces existential threats of a global nature. They are global in the sense that is not possible to deal with them unless we resort to global governance.
What we need is legislation, not negotiation, for the entire globe.
It is obvious, I think, that national democracy withers. This has to do with globalisation.
My conjecture is that most people will refuse to let go, even when their lives have become boring (at least in comparisons with possible lives lived by new generations). If this happens, there will eventually be no room for new generations. A kind of collective irrationality will lead to a bleak life for the last generation that decides to stay around. Unless we put and end to the human race (through global warming, for example), before this happens, individual egoism will block the path to a better world.
There comes a time where next to everyone will resort to techniques that enhance cognitive, mental including emotive, physical, and other capacities. When this has happened, if not before, the ban on doping in sport will have been lifted.
The possibility to go on indefinitely with our lives may become a reality and it will present us with a temptation.
It is hard to tell if capital punishment has such an effect. And even if, in some contexts it has (such as in the American South with a very high incidence of murder), this effect may very well go away if a decent welfare state was replaced for the existing social order.
I want to think that there are better ways of obviating murder than to resort to capital punishment, but I realise that this may be wishful thinking on my part.
I have been brought up in a culture where capital punishment is indeed anathema. I have always thought of myself as a principled opponent to capital punishment. However, when thinking about how the topic is handled in other cultures, in particular the American, Russian and Chinese ones, I have realised that my own tack on the issue was utterly superficial.
I have now come to the conclusion (roughly) that capital punishment is defensible, if it can be shown to have a deterrent effect on murder. In that case, a few executions save not only some people from being murdered but also some people from becoming murders.
One way of submitting your moral intuitions in relation to some issue to cognitive therapy is to learn more about how people in other cultures think about it.
It is true that it feels very differently to enjoy a good meal, taking part in an interesting conversation, or to think of how successful your children are. Suppose we do all these things at a particular time. How happy are we at the time? We do not need to calculate the value of each such feelings on any singular scale to answer this question. We need not see our happiness at the time as a mathematical function of these items. It is rather that all these experiences, together with many other factors, causally puts us at the time at a certain level of happiness, i.e. in a certain mood.
I am indeed a hedonistic utilitarian. I have defended hedonistic utilitarianism for quite a while.
There are some particular moral truths that I believe we have access to (such as the one not to inflict pain on a sentient being for no reason).
Normative ethics, pursued as a free, systematic, and critical attempt to find moral truth, regardless of religious and other authorities, is a rather new adventure. Let's wait and see what will happen!
People in different cultures think very differently about abortion. Abortion is not seen as a moral problem for example in Sweden or Russia, but it is seen as a difficult moral problem in China and in the USA.
The Chinese are generally speaking much more reluctant than Westerners to killing as a means to the rescue of lives.
Even where people in different cultures agree they may all have gone wrong.
The best explanation why people agree is that they have converged on true answers.
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