The lack of integrity of the “representative” politicians “we” elect now is intrinsic. The process itself creates the lack of integrity. Politics is intrinsically about multiple, fractured personalities, saying, and superficially doing, whatever people (have been made to believe they) want.
Integrity means in one piece. Namely one has just one personality, one character, one psychology, one system of mind, one system of thought, one system of emotion. Practically, the emotions one exhibits are exactly those one has.
Whereas the essence of the modern politician is to present a public persona that can be sold, and has nothing to do with who they truly are, what they truly believe, what motivates them.
I of course supports many of the aims of Justin Trudeau, the new Canadian PM. Yet, being led by a New Man, son of the Old Man (and thus, not at all a New Man, in the Roman sense of the term!) is no real progress.
Canada fell deep in the abyss. Seeing the light again, after falling in the abyss, does not a paradise make.
The ecological policies of high CO2 emission countries (Australia, Canada, USA) are nothing short of criminal on the largest imaginable scale, that of melting icecaps.
Analogies have long been made between humans and wolves (Homo homini lupus: man is a wolf for man… and reciprocally, added the French comic Coluche). Another tendency is believe dogs are, somehow, a “species” we could emulate. Yet, dogs are not really a species. Dogs gives a false impression: we don’t know how stable dogs are, as a species. After all, dogs are the product of artificial selection. In the wild, dogs can be very nasty. I knew some geologists who got attacked, in Iran, by four wild dogs (domesticated doggies returned to the wilds). The geologists had to kill them one by one, with geological hammers, to not finish as canine dinner.
Dogs come from European wolves. American wolves have been studied in the wild, especially in Yellowstone (because scientists wanted to study the ecological impact of their return, which turned out to be considerable). The “alpha” position is stable, until the next mayhem. Researchers were aghast to find the alpha female they beloved dying of her wounds in a ditch, after she had been replaced from her previous executive position.
In many primates, it is true that leadership tends to be hereditary (through moms’ influences). Comparing wolves and advanced primates help us guess that human are ethologically made for rather pacific, democratic, leadership. This conclusion is accentuated by recent research on baboons: decisions where to forage tend to be taken by “initiators” (who are not particularly “alpha”), It is also implied by the small sexual dimorphism in the human species.
This is all important, because it means our present political system, which is more similar to lupine society, is not adapted to our genetic heritage. The latter did not arise just by happenstance, either. It is a consequence of the rise of intelligence. We became democratic, because we needed that, collective thinking and debate, to become more intelligent.
Thus present world political organization is evil in the deepest sense, and contradicts human nature, also in the deepest sense. We truly are imposed EVIL RULE (Pluto Cracy) not the rule of conversation, debate and thinking, the essence of humanity.
As a a noun integrity came to mean, “adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.” This interpretation is derivative from the original sense, literally un-touched. That came then to mean both “whole” (entier in French), and integer (also entier in French). The original meaning is important to understand that the essence of immorality has long been perceived to be double faced, or worse.
(I often use etymology. Not to tell me what words mean on the surface but how the wisdom of the ages conferred to them what they are. It is related to the “Sum Over Histories” of Quantum Mechanics.)
How to gat out of all this?
New men are nothing, but more of the same old crime. We have to call upon a new process, DIRECT DEMOCRACY.
Geeks swimming in their new noise, claim the Internet will change everything. No, it does not. Not yet. It will, when people can directly DEBATE, and vote, in plebiscites, using the Internet. As the noun indicates, plebiscites, when the plebs directly voted, were already known in Republican Rome. But they were hard to organize, just as they were hard to organize in democratic Athens (where they were required).
The average Athenian farmer needed a day trip to get to the Athenian Assembly. Now the Internet will allow us to vote with a simple click.
And what of the excess of Athens’ National Assembly of the People? Just youthful troubles: similar troubles did not happen during the centuries of Republican rule in Rome.
Moreover, we presently have huge political structures full of professional politicians. They will not disappear overnight. Just as in Switzerland now, they will persist, giving us plenty of safety during the transition from the dictates of the oligarchs, to the People Rule (Demo Cracy).
Patrice Ayme’