The Myth of the "Sovereign People" Obscures the Enslaving Consequences of Centralised "Democracy"
my recent talk at Campout 2023
Please find below the video and transcript of my talk at a grassroots event on freedom and political transformation in Braziers Park, Oxforshire, England on 13th August, 2023, “Campout 2023.” My travel from Spain was made possible by the generous support of donors.
We are storytelling creatures. We tell ourselves stories about ourselves and about our society all the time. And these stories are like the air we breathe. They're often invisible. They condition our actions: the way we think, the way we see reality - a little bit like The Matrix. And often, we don't question these narratives. Examples are the idea that science is data driven, not based on theories, but based on just hard data or facts.
That's nonsense. But it’s part of a popular narrative. Or the idea that free market economies are morally neutral, as if there's no human agency involved. Or as if nobody actually designed anything there, nor nobody is complicit in the results of a free market economy.
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Narratives in themselves are not a bad thing because that is our nature. We tell ourselves stories. In fact, we can't live without telling stories about ourselves. And if we had no story to tell about ourselves, our life would collapse into meaninglessness.
So we need stories. But the question is what kind of stories are either true or empowering and what kind are false and enslaving? Narratives can happen at a personal level, or at a collective level. The kind of narrative that I'm interested in is political narratives in particular.
And there is a particular narrative that we have in our society, which is the idea that our society is built on a kind of social contract, that somehow we citizens or “we the people” have authorized a government to rule on our behalf, that we have conferred our collective power on the government. So the government will now be “sovereign.”
The government will represents the will of the people and whatever they want or need. Political elites use this narrative all the time when they say “the people have decided” or “we're just doing what the people want.” And “this is, after all, democracy.” And “we are embodying democracy.” That's what political ruler will say, or parliamentarians. We are simply doing democracy.
And this narrative is a false narrative and it's highly damaging. It actually blinkers us from seeing the way society actually works and from seeing the way we can be free individually and as a community.
How does it blind us and how does it blinker our view of the world? Well, essentially it makes us think that the will of citizens can be channeled into a single parliament and represented in its actions. The will of a complex, very complex people, a people with many different regions, many different interests and needs, and many different also religious and personal beliefs.
The notion that every person in England could be party to one social contract that then sort of confer their will on a parliament that will then represent their interests is actually crazy. It's actually crazy if you think it true. First of all, we all know that this contract never happened, obviously, right? Because we never had an assembly of the people that did this.
And second, even as a metaphor or as an image of power, it's completely misleading because the parliament sitting in Westminster could never adequately embody the diverse wills of the citizens of England. It is just not possible. They couldn't do it. They couldn't possibly understand the needs and interests of citizens which are diverse across the country. And if they try to grasp it, they will collate it into simplifications, a very simplified picture of what people need.
Because they're not omniscient and they're not gods, so they can't see and they can't understand what's happening on the ground…even if they wanted to. That's just an actual hard limit on human nature. They're sitting in a centralized parliament and it doesn't matter how good your staff is. They're not going to be able to gather all that information and understand it and concentrate in a way that can be actionable and can be effective.
They're not going to be able to do it. So this narrative of the sovereign people and democracy and national democracy is a false narrative and it's damaging. And it's damaging because ultimately what it does is it disempowers us from thinking about alternative channels of self-government, alternative ways in which we can govern our lives that are not, in fact present in a nationalized democracy.
So, you know, the idea is there's a dichotomy, either we're free, and in that case, we just have to get the right party into into Westminster or the right party has to govern. And then we could be liberated through their wise decisions. Or else, we’re enslaved because we have a bad party that just does a bad job. So the answer is we just have to vote for the right people.
Well I'm sorry to burst some people's bubbles, I don't think I'll be bursting your bubbles, but some people's bubbles will be burst when they discover that it doesn't matter what party they get into Westminster: they will always be alienated and disempowered: As long as there is centralized democracy or centralized governance, that is inherently disabling and it is inherently disempowering.
So the question is, what do we do about it? I'm here to tell you or to suggest to you - and you can think about this - that one of the most important steps to overcoming the damages of this narrative is the imagination. We need to change our imagination and to start to think about who we are in a different way: to shift our view of ourselves.
So that means educating ourselves. It means just opening our mind to a different way of thinking about society. So basically, who are we? So if you live in England, what does it mean to be English and what does it mean to be part of the English people? Does it mean to be part of our people that governs itself through a parliament?
I think that if that's the way you think of yourself collectively, then I think that you're basically condemning yourself to slavery, to a form of slavery. It's a very strong word I'm using because it could be a soft slavery or soft despotism, or it's just rule through bureaucracy. And then it's just following all these new rules all the time and being told, I can't do this, I can't do that.
Maybe you don't end up in prison, but you know, you can't actually get a project off the ground because some bureaucrat has told you that it doesn't follow the rules or because you get fined because you showed up at a rally or at a protest.
So I don't have a really well-worked out alternative to this narrative that I think is so damaging. But I would say this: whatever narrative that we want to develop in terms of our collective narrative of who we are as a people, I think it has to be a complex narrative and a lot more complex than the idea that we can have one government that represents us. And I would suggest that an alternative narrative could be something like, we are a complex and multifaceted people with many different dimensions and many different parts, and that these parts have dignity.
These parts each have to have dignity. Not just individuals have dignity, but groups have dignity. So I think this is crucial because the social contract, as we've been heard from philosophers, puts the individual at the center, the individual and then the government. Right. That is, the individual and the state. But in fact, we find meaning and purpose in our life by participating in groups, communities.
For example, this group here actually has enriched a lot of people's lives. So so my plea is that when we're considering rewriting this narrative, that we write into the narrative, the dignity of groups, the dignity of group life. So for example, right here in this group, there is self-government, right? Right here, there is self-government. Now, you know that.
I know that. But the typical story that you hear in the media will not really grapple with that very well. You know, it'll tend to just say the country and the nation. It won't tend to understand that your dignity as a self-governing creature, a human being who can govern their life, is actually upheld by your participating in groups on a human scale.
On a human scale. If you are an individual faced with a state, if you are just a person who pays your taxes and obeys the laws and that's the extent of your citizenship, then it's a kind of a rump of citizenship. It's a sort of a cheap imitation of what real citizenship is, because it's kind of passive.
It's just, you know, I'm subject to the rules of the state. And that's kind of the end of us, and it's disempowering. So I think to sum it up, governance occurs through social groups that are self-organizing. And what we need is, first of all, a narrative that gives recognition to the dignity of groups. And second of all, we need a legal system that starts to embody that narrative and give it life in the legal system and also a political system and the political system insofar as it does so, I think we'd be talking about a highly decentralized political system which England does not have.
And in addition, a system that recognizes robust autonomy for social groups to govern their own lives. And I don't mean just in the kind of the rules that they give themselves. I mean, economically, financially. I mean, that we don't have to hand over a huge amount of our income to be spent by a national government. I mean that we should have enough available income that we can fund social groups at a local level because if you find that 30% of your taxes are gone or disappeared down a hole to fund the national debt, then you probably have very little money left over to fund your local initiatives.
So this is why the tax system also needs to be reformed. This sounds like a sort of a Christmas list or something that I'm putting out here. But just to say, the fact of the matter is there won't be change until you're able to envisage the change. So this list is a way of envisaging and reaching and shifting the narrative and envisaging what's necessary in order for us to enjoy real freedom individually and collectively.
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Your awesome post might help to explain why, despite Brexit having taken place in the name of sovereignty, I see most of the absurd policies advocated inside of the EU, using similar pseudo arguments, also in the UK.
It looks like something else, not only other than and above the citizens, but also something other than and above the EU as well as above individual countries inside and outside the EU, is in charge.
While Brexit was necessary, it was by no means sufficient.
David, I hadn't thought before about the importance of imagination and story-telling in those areas. Thank you.
I prefer not giving clicks to YouTube when possible. So was glad to find you've also put this talk up on Rumble. : https://rumble.com/v3eojxk-debunking-the-false-narrative-of-the-sovereign-people.html