When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons, and cease to grow.
— Anais Nin, American essayist
A new sovereign experimental nation, Ochlosia, from ochlocracy (rule by people, or kedaulatan rakyat as Malaysians would style it), was recently birthed as a political breakthrough.
Heightened ideological ferment necessitated the overthrow of a corrupt government by an enraged citizenry with the help of the security forces. Public officers proven guilty of corruption faced the death penalty while the complicit were banished. All their assets, ill-gotten or otherwise, were confiscated.
The new nation introduced a new currency, the ochlo, backed by a tremendous amount of inground assets (unmined and unextracted gold and silver) which readily found favour in global cryptocurrency and digital central banks.
No more printed paper money feigning a medium of exchange, a store of value, or a unit of account cunningly choreographed for centuries by a cabal that has traditionally controlled elected democratic governments. A totally cashless society swiftly developed to prevent temptation, greed and corruption.
Only the best qualified were selected to occupy positions in government overseen by another group of professionals to discourage hanky-panky like the old days. An all-encompassing written constitution kept pace with the changing needs of present society. Archaic laws from a bygone era were repealed.
These technocrats fulfilled the functions and duties of civil servants while answerable and reporting to a Peoples’ Congress which comprised qualified people sworn to total and absolute consultation with the original stakeholders — the People.
The Peoples’ Congress guaranteed their new nation would never ever get governed by a neocracy (of new or inexperienced persons), or throttle-bottoms (innocuously inept and futile persons in public office) that made citizens’ lives absolutely loathsome and miserable in the past.
The ruling professionals knew that proven corruption and/or kleptocracy would result in public execution under new laws requiring the guilty to cast lots to choose the way their lives would end publicly by hanging, ingesting poison, administration of lethal injection, or by a firing squad.
One hundred years have passed without a single public officer stepping out of line. Every ochlocrat is wealthy, happy, contented as there are jobs aplenty, food, housing and free healthcare.
No elections but selections once some ruling technocrat fell too ill, passed away, or decided to retire with lifelong pensions.
Everyone, except the infirmed and ill, work to make Ochlosia a permanent haven of progress and contentment.
The word ochlocracy was ostensibly coined by the Greek historian Polybius (200 BC to 11 BC).
A century earlier, Aristotle distinguished between different forms of democracy, stating that those disregarding the rule of law devolved into ochlocracy as mob rule was unacceptable.
Decades earlier, Plato considered democracy to be a degraded form of government.
Poor Aristotle, for all his intellectual prowess, forgot or failed to consider that the rule by law will loudly and rudely reshape the rule of law when it gets mercilessly spun out of shape, distorted and re-configurated as the actual intent of the lawmaker to overpower the logic of the law.
Collective consciousness and collective wisdom properly harnessed became the powerful amalgam and galvanising agent to make Ochlosia a nation to be admired and emulated.
Stupidity and cupidity from history found egalitarianism suspect while portraying it as a dangerous way of life when every citizen has equal access to jobs, wealth creation, and other necessities of life.
Democracy with aristocracy and authoritarianism as twin demons on the shoulders of power-brokers and power-seekers is slowly getting stale, insipid and unattractive for the citizenry.
Synergised people power creates an economically vibrant society where equality under the law of plenty and meritocracy become the genuine coin of the realm.
The zenith of any nation’s progress and prosperity can be measured and determined when greed is permanently removed from the political equation. Greed has poisoned men’s souls.
Hell has three gates – greed, lust, and anger, warns the Bhagavad Gita.
Abolishing the jury system and thereafter seeking votes from ordinary citizens is a bizarre conundrum in a demonic democracy with a small mouth, a big stomach, and an insatiable appetite for unbridled power.
Sorry Bertrand De Jouvenel, “the simplifications to which the human spirit inclines to integrate the whole of society into one vast and permanent group” is not dangerous at all because you refuse to honour the future.
Paraphrasing Edmund Burke, there’s no greater mistake than to think one could do nothing because one could only do a little.
Total deliverance is merely an experiment away.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
