The Hidden Blueprint
Our society is built on a foundation of out-of-date assumptions.
Few things are as perplexing to a foreigner than the antics of an American political campaign: the hot-dog chomping, baby-kissing, the reserve hesitancy to throw their hat in ring, the primaries, the conventions, never-ending fundraising, stump speeches, and endless ads— all in the name of democracy. Nor can Americans make sense of the way foreign elections of the German, French or British or understand stable democracies such as the Dutch, Australian, or Japanese systems. All these political systems seem separate from each other. Even more unfathomable are the one-party elections disguised as free elections in Russia and authoritarian regimes. All Second Wave industrial nations resemble each other when it comes to politics.
Yet once we look past our propagandized history and remove our cultural blinders, we quickly realize the similar mechanisms underlying all Second Wave industrial systems. There is a hidden blueprint for all Second Wave political systems.
After Second Wave revolutionaries toppled the First Wave elites in places like America, France, and later in Russia, they soon had to set up new governments, write constitutions and build nearly from scratch new political institutions. In their creative enthusiasm, they pondered new theories, new forms. A crucial question revolved around the nature of representation. How would representation work and who would represent whom? Should representatives be told how to vote by the public— or decide for themselves? How should terms of office be set? Should they be limited or not? What function should political parties perform?
Following each Second Wave revolution, a new political system emerged in each nation. A scrutiny of these systems exposes that they are built on top of previous First Wave assumptions and new emerging concepts ushered in by the industrial age or the Second Wave.
A millennium of agriculture made it hard for the Founders of Second Wave political systems to think deeper thoughts than we give them credit. Most failed to comprehend how an economy based on labor, capital, energy, and raw materials would play out in the future: except maybe Thomas Paine. These men, and yes, they were all men, still primarily thought in terms of land. During the long arch of civilization, it was land that was always at the very center of life. Geography was deeply at the psyche of our Founders and how they constructed different voting systems. Our congressmen in the United States as their counterparts in Britain’s Parliament or any other Second Wave industrial nation still are elected as representatives of the occupants of a specific piece of land. Not as representatives of some social class or occupational, ethnic, sexual, or other groupings.
First Wave people were usually stationary, so it was natural for a Founder like Thomas Jefferson to conceptualize the yeoman farmer as the citizen of the future. Little did Jefferson and the other Founders realize they were also designing Second Wave industrial-era political systems. Through this same system, they would fail to foresee how people would not remain stationary well into the future. Even today, voting regulations fail to factor in home residency versus work locations. Never mind the long-distance commutes of many voters.
The tempo of First Wave living was slow. Communications were so slow it might take a week for a dispatch from the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to reach General Washington in New York. Even as late as the 19th-century, the news of President Lincoln’s assassination took almost two weeks to reach London. So, because things moved so slowly, the representative bodies such as our Congress or the British Parliament were considered “deliberative”— because they had the time to think through their problems. However, this is not the world of today with our near-instantaneous communication.
In First Wave society, people were mostly illiterate and uninformed. Thus, it was generally accepted that representatives, especially those from the educated upper classes, would inevitably make more intelligent decisions than the mass of uninformed voters. Yet now we know this is absurd as representatives rarely align with voters, but heed to money and power instead.
But even as they built a Second Wave society, they laid the foundation of our political institutions on First Wave assumptions. These Second Wave revolutionaries tried to cast their eyes on the future, but their foresight was limited. Thus, the architecture they constructed reflected only the latest technological notions of their antiquated time.
Notes:
https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2006/02/thomas-paine-and-promise-america
https://www.americanheritage.com/myth-happy-yeoman