Sunsetting democracy

As the world’s oldest and largest democracies near elections, it appears that a system invented in Athens long time ago is finally coming to an end. When humans started off in the African Savannah, half a million years ago, give or take, they certainly did not have democracy. With simple objective functions, driven by two factors, food and sex, they thrived. They killed, pillaged and raped other clans to maximize the utility of a few people that surrounded them.

Then, unfortunately their brains started to grow, aided by fat and protein. One could think of this as a disease, akin to cancer, for the humans never needed a bigger brain. Their lives and objectives were simple. However, the larger brain became a handicap as they started venturing into art, music, and even philosophy. These were pursuits that provided no value to humans as they drained time, form hunting and killing of other clans.

Humans went through many bottlenecks that brought their clans together and increasing their keen sense of enemies by the shape of their skull and other body proportions. Much later, they will wipe out any other hominoids who existed on Earth and assert their superiority on the blue planet. For the next few tens of thousands of years, they will invent agriculture, employ those less positioned in the societal hierarchy as slaves, invent the caste system based on skin color, make religions to efficiently segment, and eliminate anybody who is a threat.

And now, strongmen (not strongwomen yet) rule over half the world’s population. Most use religion as the tool to assert their leadership. And they appear well positioned to return humans to where they started. In the West, they want to just rewind time by 200 years when there was no confusion about skin color. In the East, they seek almost 2000 years when apparently there was no confusion on religion. Of course, history was never useful for the strongmen.

Everything comes full circle. Humans appear to be returning to the wild where they started, aided by their strongmen leaders.