We are the masses. Unthinking, unaware, clueless, helpless, uncaring, afraid, and self-absorbed in our daily lives. The leaders we portray are mirror reflection of us; amplifications of what we want, of how we are. Parts of us want to do good; but maybe, just parts of us.
And thus we choose, as a mass, a biased, prejudiced, unthoughtful mass. We choose lazy bums, just as us, if*, we are lazy bums; choose moronic monkeys if*, we ourselves are primates; because whoever wins, is what the majority has chosen. This is the system we’ve built, the system of selection; Socrates would agree.
And if, someone virtuous, someone good ends up in the system, we have built it as such to indoctrinate them, or to give them medicine and call them insane; the system works against them, their virtue dies in dust, them, just another zombie who carries on the system.
Nothing seems to work, unless turned upside down; until everything is laid to ruins and maybe rebuilt, as the utopians would have it; to start from scratch. This is the system.
But, the system isn’t flawed, we are.
If we tried starting from scratch, there’d be just scratches and scars; because the system is all we have, and to kill it would be moronic; you don’t kill a person when their legs are broken, or I hope you don’t.
We are the musical instruments; the leader we select are our voices , the media, our amplifiers; the system, the symphony. If the music sucks, is it the symphony’s fault or the lack of our ability to play a good music?
It is due to our lack of awareness, consciousness, our cowardice, our indifference, our lack of knowledge, our need to speak rather than observe, learn; our need to change the world without ever attempting to make ourselves better first, our need for pointing fingers to everyone but ourselves. The music sounds bad, maybe because our guitars’ strings are loose? But we are unable to ever consider ourselves at fault; blaming the mic and amp and everything else but ourselves.
The system, any given system, given our current circumstances, our level of consciousness, knowledge, industriousness, virtue, is, by far, the best we have come up with. Its imperfection runs down its core because, its core and every part of it consists of humans; and humans are, imperfect. We aren’t seeking perfect, not anymore (we know where that road goes), we are only seeking good enough, and maybe even good. And the good thing about votes, is that we only have to be right only a little more than half about who, or rather what side of us do we want to see as a reflection.
If everyone was the best they could be, we’d certainly have better reflections, i.e. have better leaders.
On a side note, the media, the internet, they are amplifiers, of everything we choose to amplify; and us, as humans are bound to amplify our imperfections, our biases. I’ve observed some of us, self-obsessed, self-criticizing, anxious about how they portray themselves, just because we amplified that part of us, the part of us which seeks to compare ourselves with the rest of who, what we see.