How would democracy die?

I believe, that ethics and morals are matters of opinion and can not be considered to be fact nor can they be considered to be self-evident.  1000 years ago it was believed to be fair and right and true that men should be allowed a voice with which to vote while women were denied the same privilege.  Today we think this unjust. 

Whilst I agree with that assertion I disagree with any claim that this is self-evident.  To claim self-evidence in this or any other matter concerning ethics or morals is to deny the fact that what is fair and right and true is defined by what the majority confer and agree to be fair and right and true.  1000 years ago people held the view that their state of affairs was just.  They did not perceive any unfairness in their state.  There will always be a minority who do not agree with the definition of the day, and perhaps once in every generation an individual or group will challenge these definitions and seek to redefine our perception of the world.

To look back and wonder how anyone could believe that this was fair can be unfathomable to generations of today; further, to think that there were women who believed this to be fair can escape the comprehension of many, but we know this is true.  We know there were people who did not agree but we also know that the majority were complacent and accepted the definition of the day.

We think of voting today, in the western world the right to live in a democracy is one that is asserted with such vigour that many are willing to wage war and die in the name of defending it.  They name those who challenge this view as opponents, would-be oppressors and the most common, terrorists.  Whilst that definition might fit in some cases, the reality is that the definition of the day is not at risk from outside opponents, it is at risk from ourselves.  We give up so much willingly when you stop and think about it, to hold such anger towards someone with an opposing view is quite laughable.

In 1000 years, perhaps 100 maybe less our world will change beyond our recognition, as it has throughout history.  What we believe today will be ridiculed by future generations with the same vigour that the generation of the moment scorns those of millennia past.  It may be quite unimaginable for people to think that they will give up democracy but the reality is that you relinquish the burden of responsibility and the right to make decisions everyday.  We are surrounded by technology that is advancing, evolving much quicker than we are as a race.  We delegate decision making to this technology.  This is self-evident of that there is no question and no challenge from I as I make no judgement on the morality of this observation.

Every time you open your browser, visit google, type in a query and press enter, you relinquish the responsibility of having to look for yourself.  You see a page of results, with millions found you choose from the first 5 results 99% of the time - why? "because it found what I wanted?" - yes, and no, it found an result to match your query, but most of the time what you see in those results is not what you wanted, you wanted an answer, and google gave you something that would satisfy that desire - the result is actually irrelevant.  How is it irrelevant?  If it is what you were looking for how can it be irrelevant?  That's simple - if you knew what you were looking for you wouldn't have asked google in the first place.  You asked google because you didn't want to do it yourself, you gave up the right to do it for yourself.

As technology becomes ever more intrusive in our lives we can see this process of relinquishing control become ever more intimate.  On google play and on the Apple App store there are several "smart" alarm apps.  These are apps you tell what time you want to be awake by, and then go to sleep.  The app uses the accelerometer in your phone to monitor your movements in your sleep and determine when you are in an R.E.M. Cycle or deep sleep and when you are in a shallow sleep.  The app attempts to wake you as close to your alarm time as it can whilst timing the alarm with a moment of shallow sleep to make you wake up relaxed and refreshed.  One of these apps as an example claims to have over 30 million users.  How many of those use it on a daily basis?  How many people have relinquished control of their sleep pattern to a phone.  Think about that for a moment.  Their phone decides when they wake up - and for these people their phone will be the last thing they used just before going to sleep.  We don't control technology anymore, technology controls us.

It is foreseeable that this may come to a point where say your waste is monitored by a computer, which communicated with a smart cooker that can print food comprised of the nutritional content you are lacking, in a form that looks visually pleasing and is deemed to be tasty to you based on past eating experiences.  Imagine a world where you don't even decide what to eat anymore a computer does it for you.  With all these things, people still adamantly protest to the idea that they will surrender democracy.  It is not unreasonable to say that one day we could live in a society where people no longer control government, instead computers make the decisions.  A world where political bias no longer influences policy, instead policy is decided purely on a results plus reward aggregation.

It may seem unfathomable now, and you may bark for such ideas biting on your beliefs but the reality is that any response to this position will equal in parallel the response that you would receive from someone in your position 1000 years ago if you were to describe to them the state of the world as it is today.  My words are not fact, they are not intended to be prophecy they are merely intended to highlight the possibilities that lie in our future and the delusions we have of our present spurred on by our own arrogance.