Whoever works against democracy is, in principle, working against his own freedom. And everyone has the right to resist when democratic principles are in danger. Evidently all those who take on today’s democracies feel that it is precisely their freedom that is being curtailed. Indeed, some see themselves as resistance fighters defending freedom. That goes for protest voters too. At times they see no option but to punish all those who do not take notice of their opinion. Yet it is less about opinion than about their own living conditions and outlooks, which politicians do not perceive as substantial. So, by proxy, others are given the mandate to give “those up there” a proper kick up the arse. Even if it is hard to imagine that the new parties will not end up just as ignorant of the little man: what counts is the protest.
Understandable, on the one hand, if, like me, you grow up in a region that was a birthplace of National Socialism and was hit hard in the political turnaround (Wende). On the other hand, an expression of political immaturity that is basically self-incurred. And for many protest voters I would put my hand in the fire on the claim that they do not feel anti-democratic. They see the government as anti-democratic and genuinely see themselves as defenders of their freedom. That does not lessen the danger to the free and open society, though. On the contrary: it shows the problem of open societies in which groups feel threatened by the freedom of everyone else. What seems paradoxical is a question of psychological normalisation, a problem of the state’s counter-pressure against free but always violent expressions, and above all a question of what substance freedom is made of and how it can hold free individuals together in a community. It has been no novelty since Socrates that freedom has manifold definitions. And as enlightened people we know that there can be no substantial (positive) definitions. Nevertheless, every person has his own idea of it, which he must regard as right, good and true. That is a question of intellectual integrity.
This intellectual substance in our heads that we regard as truth has a stubborn dynamic. Our brains generate world views that refer in complex ways to further concepts. Every word meaning associates what is similar and what is opposite. Every experience is out to redefine connected concepts in our heads. That makes truth as substance complicated: all concepts, as our idea of the world, have to be put into relation anew, and that takes an effort that some living conditions barely allow. In a sense, we resist it, because the irruption of such new experience demands that we redefine our world views, and doubt is intrinsic to it. The open-minded person is forced to live with dissonance, which he tries to reduce by permanently adjusting his attitude. That is the democratic process.
Even if conservatism, by contrast, wants to preserve world views — or rebuild them — concepts and world views do not remain immovable dogmas; they are a plastic phenomenon of our brain that takes place — even unconsciously. In it, the world is scanned every second, filtered and taken in as impulse. Its nature influences our judgements and actions. Enlightenment as a process all but forces itself upon us through our disposition. That is why conservative dogma does have a calming effect, but it also has temporality, or rather fallibility: it only works for so long.
Dieser Post ist auch verfügbar auf:
