Identity Politics & Intelligent Democracy

By Waseem Hameed –JUNE 6, 2019

Waseem Hameed

We, the homosapiens, have individual elements and collective elements. Individual elements are the characteristics an individual possess which are relevant and necessary to interact with another homosapien to establish peace and carry on with the noble meaningful functional purposes that may fit for your life or, simply respecting individual sovereignty. The collective elements are the identities that could manifest within you so that you may belong to a group. You can belong to so many groups such as age, religion, social class or caste, culture, deaf hood, dialect, disability, education, ethnicity, language, nationality, sex, gender identity, generation, occupation, profession, race, political party affiliation, sexual orientation, settlement, urban and rural habitation, and veteran status. Identity politics refers to the tendency of sharing identity political alliance instead of traditional party based politics.

Then there is the radical collectivists. Radicals based on identity politics as both recent and past historical evidence indicates that they are dangerous to any society. Everyone is entitled for their beliefs, but no one has the right to impose their beliefs on someone else forcefully. That is just a Na! Certainly no one has the right to take authority in to their own hands. This is what radicals do and not forgetting that they represent a fraction of the community. They are people with anger and full of ignorance who doesn’t understand the long term implications their actions may cause. They should be stopped! They say it is for the development and progress of the country but it has been nothing but power maneuver of the hierarchies to occupy a place for dominance.

If you are a feminist, you could interpret a scripture to support your claim. If you are a misogynist, you could interpret the same verse to support your claim. Likewise the violence you interpret in a religion is solely because you are a blood thirsty, revengeful and filled with idiotic, imbecile, outdated ideologies. We should not tolerate such stupidity! Especially when it is obvious that these radicals represent only a fraction of it and all they are is a mouth piece to their identity trying to gain a place for dominance in the society. This is why ignorant, hate filled and evil leaders get corrupted. What amuse me the most is that how as a society of religious fundamentals could let such fraction of bacteria to cause so much disrupt to the entire country?

This is where intelligent democracy comes in. A research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people’s ideas. This is the prime reason for the incompetent individuals occupying position of power and dominance. But how do they occupy such positions of power?

They occupy such power of positions when the voters don’t understand the importance of intelligent democracy or doesn’t possess the skills to judge competence. This is what the ancient philosopher Socrates argued about the flaws of democracy by comparing the society to a ship. The book narrates further that he questioned Adeimantus that if he would select randomly anyone or someone with competence in seafaring to run the ship. He further argued why do we think that any old person would fit to run a country? Obviously this is what’s happening in Sri Lanka. Older incompetent people with outdated ideas are running the show. The power hunger greed has taken over the souls they’ve had and they genuinely do not care for the citizens of Sri Lanka. Power is bad when it is in the hands of a person who needs to reevaluate their moral character.

See, it is obvious that whoever gets the power can possibly get corrupted. People who represent themselves as saints could also get corrupted once the positions of dominance are acquired. Fighting for the power and dominance is not new and it has been there since ancient history and not just with humans but also with every living creature. But moral values differentiate us from animals.

Read More