Episode Two from Stelzer’s Travels

A posting at the museum’s entrance directed us to a darkened, ground-floor lecture hall in which a motion picture was already in progress.  The running commentary soon made it clear that the show was a docudrama…covering a turning point in Luxenben’s history.  The Founder’s recent election victory gave him the dubious honor of presiding over a nation spiraling out of control but now, at least, he was armed by the trees’ advice.  On the screen, he could be seen pacing about in his office as he pondered his predicament out loud.

As the Founder continued speaking, his image was replaced by a succession of brief, silent video clips: tumultuous legislative sessions, shuttered factories, street violence, faces of gaunt, enervated children, breadlines, and other disturbing scenes that marked Blueland’s domestic crisis.

“Why couldn’t the government address our problems before everything went to pot?  We were supposed to have the best system on the planet-a democracy dedicated to carrying out the will of the people.  Who knew the changing needs of society better than the individuals who comprised it?  And who better, then, to guide government in meeting those needs than those selfsame individuals acting in concert?  So we held elections and selected those candidates who most nearly reflected the wishes of the majority and then let the winners translate those wishes into effective legislation.  Finally, we saw to it that the public weighed the performance of their elected officials in the succeeding election.  On the face of it, it was a perfect feedback loop: people to representatives to statute to people and round again.  Right in line with the kind of closed-loop systems the trees had harped on.

“But damn it, it wasn’t the ‘will of the people’ that they end up jobless, homeless, hungry, and demoralized.  How could there have been such a huge gap between what the people wanted and what they got?  Either nature’s model has no application to our political system or something went terribly wrong with our implementation of it.”

After this declamation, the Founder appeared on the screen again, this time seated behind his desk and writing with evident determination.  For several moments nothing could be heard but the scratching sound of his pen.

The Founder’s image faded once again, this time acceding to that of the narrator who was seen standing alongside an imposing glass case in museum-like setting.

“What you see on display here is the Founder’s original, handwritten indictment of representative democracy that he titled his ‘Bill of Particulars.’  True, it contained nothing that was not well known by many others beforehand, but Blueland’s political misdeeds were seldom viewed in their entirety and never with the intention of eliminating them altogether.  I urge [you] to visit the Library of Agents in our capital to view this famous document.  You, too, will find it inspirational, I’m sure.  Let’s see what it says.”

After pondering over the seeming paradox of a dysfunctional feedback system, the Founder concluded that what was wrong with Blueland’s representative democracy was that it was representative.  He then went on in his Bill of Particulars to list ten reasons why this was so.

At this point the narrator opened the glass case and very carefully turned over the first page.

“The Founder began his analysis,” the narrator continued, “with the voting process itself.

“First.  Our elections are structured to favor the least qualified candidates.  Indeed, they’ve become little more than beauty contests in which the candidates are judged on the basis of superficialities that have absolutely nothing to do with their ultimate competency in office.  What counts is a candidate’s appearance on television, his acting talent, public persona, articulateness (particularly his glibness in spouting platitudes on a moment’s notice), and avoidance of substantive issues.

“Meanwhile, the attributes that are actually needed in the job-personal integrity, intellectual accomplishment, in-depth understanding of national issues, a realistic sense of how to deal with them, and managerial ability to take action-are given so little notice by Blueland’s media that they play no part whatsoever in the political contest. 

“Second.  Incompetence is not the only qualification our political system requires of its practitioners; cynicism is another.  Every candidate worth his salt is expected to be able to lie through his teeth whenever the occasion warrants, while masking his deception behind an earnest, pure-as-the-driven-snow countenance.

“Such cynicism is best exemplified by each candidate’s heartfelt pledge to spend whatever taxpayer dollars are necessary to demonstrate the depth of his compassion.  Throughout his campaign he assures his constituents that their every need will be fulfilled once he is in office, be it healthcare, education, a well-paying job, adequate housing, a safe environment, or whatever else they fancy as essential to their contentment.  Don’t worry about the cost, he adds, with a perfectly straight face.  The source of funding necessary to accomplish all these good things will be magically revealed to all at some future, post-election date.

“Third.  Our election process further requires candidates to kowtow to particular constituencies.  In that virtually every ethnic, religious, economic, and social group has some legitimate grievance against the rest of society dating back to some point in its history, it is not difficult to persuade a targeted group that its case is special and that its particular grievances are most egregious of all.  Vote for me, the candidate proclaims, and I’ll see to it that ultimate justice shall prevail.  You victims shall be recompensed in accordance with a master ledger on which all such injustices have been registered along with their appropriate compensation.  That such fraudulent appeals are destructive to Blueland’s social fabric and ultimately to her success as a nation, is, of course, a matter of secondary importance when the main object is winning the race at all costs.  Victory at the polls is paramount.  All’s fair in love, war, and politics.”

*    *    *

The narrator paused thoughtfully, tapped his finger on the case holding the Founder’s revered document, and continued his story.

“The Founder’s jaundiced view of Blueland’s political apparatus extended beyond the election process to its results-that is to say, the successful candidates’ record while in office.  His unhappy conclusion was that under Blueland’s perverted political system, elections were the main events and the intervals between little more than staging periods for the battles ahead.  Just as it was said that ‘diplomacy was war by other means,’ so office-holding was thought to be ‘election by other means.’

“Fourth.  Political campaigns require money and lots of it. Moreover, the display of a bulging war chest is effective in discouraging political rivals in the same way that a wide rack of antlers helps a bull moose ward off sexual rivals.  One way to supplement these war chests is relatively benign.  Contributors buy influence and that influence, like as not, translates into political favors. In that such contributions flow largely to the most likely winners-that is to say, those incumbents already well financed-the practice has the effect of turning incumbency into a monarchical right.  A second, more pernicious, approach might be called the ‘bread cast upon the waters’ scheme.   In this practice, politicians earmark public funds into the waiting hands of special interest groups with the expectation, not to say certainty, that a fair portion of that funding will be returned as a donation.  Finally, it must be said that it does nothing to lessen a politician’s zest for cash to know that in the event his political fortunes wane, he can look forward to discretely sweeping the remnants of his campaign funds into his personal bank account.  In short, a goodly portion of a politician’s time and energy is spent, not on the nation’s business, but on his own, and whereas he is likely to bungle the former, one can be sure that he will handle the latter most effectively. 

“Fifth.  The hubris that accompanies political office blinds politicians to the limitations of governmental action.  According to its members, Blueland’s legislature is the best of all such institutions and its collective judgment the most sagacious Luxanity can summon.  Its members claim the power to distill all the pertinent information on every issue under the sun, from that distillation to arrive at an informed opinion, and then, based on that opinion, arbitrarily to crank out one law after another.  The fact is   that, just as the dimmest of economists had come to recognize that a centralized system of economic control couldn’t possibly keep track of the myriad perturbations of the marketplace, Blueland’s equally ignorant system of government had no way of coping with every happening in the country.  Even when ‘vox populi’ managed, on occasion, to reach the floor of the chamber, it was mangled beyond recognition.  What laws were passed tended to be impulsive, unrestrained, and directionless, if not altogether pig-headed.  As often as not, they exacerbated the original problems they were meant to address, thus triggering another round of law-making to correct the shortcomings of the last.

“The greater the number of laws, of course, the larger the government grew in order to administer them.  Blueland’s governmental apparatus thus became more and more encumbered with overlapping bureaucracies, bloated staffs, unimaginable volumes of paperwork, ever more intrusive computer systems, snarled communication, and all the rest.

 ”Sixth. Once in office, politicians like to stay there and one effective way to do so is to buy votes.  And, obligingly, the political system makes great sums of public monies available for the purpose while, at the same time, allowing public officials to pose as tight-fisted guardians of the national treasury.  At one time in the distant past, vote buying was confined to paltry sums more or less openly proffered on election day in exchange for a voter’s one-time support.  As politics became more sophisticated, however, the practice expanded from one-bribe-one-vote to a continuous flow of goodies to entire voting blocks in exchange for their lifelong support.

“This advance in the extent and brazenness in the art of civic bribery was an inevitable outcome of a systemic fault in the workings of representative democracy.  On the one hand, there sits a huge pile of public funds belonging to no one in particular, and, on the other hand, there are hordes of voters milling around the pile with their hands out.  As the officially designated middleman between these two mutually attractive elements, what are the poor, vote-hungry politicians to do?  As public servants, the very least is supplying each pair of hands with a shovel.  And if, in the fulfillment of these duties, they win renown for their compassion, one can hardly expect them to call attention to the fact that the money with which they have been so generous was not their own.

“The universal practice of vote buying contains the very real threat of destroying the democratic process itself.  It does not, after all, take a very large block of government employees handing out cash in combination with a second block of grateful recipients to determine the course of an election.  Imagine, for example, that among the general population of ten million, 52% prefer a change in government and 48% are in favor of the status quo.  Given this distribution, one would, of course, expect a turnover of power in the next election.  However, if in addition to the general population, there exists a voting block of 500,000 fully committed to the maintenance of their mutually beneficial arrangement of handouts, then the next election would retain the existing government by a margin of 100,000 votes.  And it goes without saying that such a government would dedicate itself to expanding its locked-in constituency from 500,000 to 750,000 before the election that was to follow.  Obviously, it would not take many such iterations to cement one-party rule in a nominally democratic society.

“A second means of securing an office holder’s seat election after election is the practice of gerrymandering. What better way to ensure victory than to preselect one’s constituents on the basis of their political affiliation?

 ”Seventh.  Our political system, unfortunately, does not confine our office holders’ largesse to payouts in cash.  Bribery can and does take other forms.  Understandably enough, every group-be it a corporation, trade association, religious faction, farming cooperative, racial minority, labor union, rent-seeking profession, and so on-would rather compete on a playing field tilted in its favor.  And who best to do the tilting than a government empowered by legalized force?  Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, government officials have every motivation to expand their authority both to enhance their personal careers and to create more opportunities for political shakedowns.  So once again we have two poles of attraction: organized groups of every description and the regulatory favoritism dangled before them.  And between the two we again find the accommodating legislative middleman ready and willing to usurp governmental authority for a price.

“As a result, it is not hard to account for the transmogrification of our capital from a distinguished seat of democratic idealism to a disreputable coliseum packed with lobbyists and special interest groups fighting tooth and nail to get their share of governmental dispensations.

“Eighth, if there were any hope that the commonweal might at times prevail over expediency, party politics practically ensures against it.  To be a viable candidate for public office, a politician must have the recognition and acceptability that come with party affiliation, and this requirement effectively negates the essence of democracy itself-i.e., that every legislator rationally examine the issues before him and vote according to his own dictates.  As a party member, a legislator must instead keep looking over his shoulder for the current party line and, whether he agrees with it or not, vote accordingly.  Thus he finds himself acceding to cloakroom deals, attacking policies with which he may be secretly in accord, defending policies with which he is in basic disagreement, and otherwise acting as a foot-soldier in the political wars.  And what political wars accomplish is what wars accomplish generally: unnumbered casualties, torn up landscapes, and the ruination of national treasuries.”

*    *    *

Again the narrator paused to signal a break in the Founder’s “Bill of Particulars.”  Then he went on.

“Thus far, in setting forth his complaints with the legislative process, the Founder was well aware that he was simply regurgitating observations that had been raised time and time again by other observers.  What had gone largely unnoticed, however, was what Blueland’s legislature-unimaginative by nature, incapacitated by structure, and distracted by politics-failed to do.  And what it failed to do, noted the Founder, had probably inflicted at least as much damage as its questionable accomplishments.  And so we come to the Founder’s last two points.

“Ninth.  As every experienced manager knows, the most efficacious time to address a problem is in its infancy.  Unhappily, the political system motivates Blueland’s public officials to do just the opposite.  Being forced by the political process to focus their attention only on those sensational issues that command the greatest public notice, they stumble from crisis to crisis.  Less immediate problems, possibly of a far more serious nature, are allowed to fester until they too pose an emergency, at which point corrective action is either prohibitively expensive or virtually impossible.

“In this connection, the Founder noted that the maintenance of public infrastructure could be neglected for years without once raising a legislative eyebrow.  However, once national newspaper headlines scream of a major bridge collapse that takes with it a score of passenger-filled automobiles, then every political foghorn in the country shrieks its condemnation of the neglectful parties and demands the immediate refurbishing of every remaining bridge forthwith, regardless of cost.

“Tenth.  Public officials have every incentive to resist change no matter how outdated, how inefficient-for that matter, how destructive-a governmental activity has become. A ‘do-nothing’ official can count on the support of special interest groups benefiting from the status quo, of in-house ‘experts’ whose reputation rests on the perceived success of their previous recommendations, and of his own party members who had sponsored the activity to begin with.

“On the other hand, a proactive official daring to introduce an urgently needed reform automatically exposes himself to the political wrath of these same parties.  Moreover, he runs the additional risk of handing his opponents a lethal political weapon for use in the next election when said reform purportedly injures some entrenched beneficiary of the old faulty policy.  In short, the message to legislators who wish to remain in office is loud and clear: hew the party line, take care to insulate yourself from whatever bad news emanates from the legislation you supported, and, above all, don’t rock the boat.  The law of political inertia dictates that any policy at rest tends to remain at rest.”

The narrator closed the glass case and stepped forward.  “Based on these ten negative, largely self-reinforcing, influences on Blueland’s political process, the Founder concluded that the very expression ‘representative democracy’ was an oxymoron.  Even under the best conditions-the best people, the best policies, the best governance-it could not, by its very nature, represent the will of the people.  Thus, from the start, Blueland’s form of government contained seeds of its own destruction and its demise was inevitable.”

And with these somber last words from the narrator, the docudrama abruptly ended with shots of the Founder laying down his pen, rising from his desk, and shuffling tiredly to bed.

 *    *    *

When the lights went on and the screen raised, Eddie and I found ourselves facing a low stage that ran the full width of the small lecture hall.  Rows of chairs paralleled the stage and upon these were seated the fifteen-odd other Semi-intelligents who composed our tour group.  Mind you, I use the word “seated” in its most generic interpretation.  Some in the group, for example, found it most comfortable to “sit” with their chair legs parallel to the floor; others, while keeping their chairs conventionally upright, less conventionally rotated them one-hundred eighty degrees and suspended them­selves from the backs; while a few of nature’s more fanciful expressions of Semi-intelligence managed best with their chairs turned entirely upside down.  Finally, I must take passing note of one unusually asymmetric arrangement of protoplastic mass who adapted himself nicely to a chair balanced upon one leg which, when conjoined with his own three stumps, provided the needed stability.  It hardly need be added that a chapter could be devoted to each of these creatures without doing full justice to their zoological peculiarities, but this would contribute nothing to the book’s avowed purpose, so no further reference will be made to them except when demanded by the account itself.

The stage was outfitted with a six-foot-wide lectern-cum-perch mounted in an arched frame hanging from a gimbaled ceiling fixture.  And, after a moment or two, Ms. Raptur, our wing-beating, open-beaked tour guide, took her place on this contraption.  After affixing her lecture notes to a hanging clipboard, she introduced herself and began the background information we needed for our forthcoming visit to the Centre.

“All of you learned in orientation, I am sure, that every advance made by our fully intelligent hosts was achieved through the application of their religious principles.  As you will see in our tour, the effective political system they enjoy today is no exception.

“Now as you’ve just heard in our docudrama, it did not take the Founder long to realize that his first priority after succeeding to office was the creation of a new system of government.  The question was ‘if not representative democracy, what?’  Following the advice given him by the trees, the Founder looked to his fellow creatures to see how they had achieved their forms of organization.  And what he found was that they had, without exception, all successfully utilized evolution’s feedback methodology to arrive at their particular solution.  It was clear that he had only to apply the same means and the Bluelanders, too, were capable of the same kind of self- organization.  A genuinely workable system of government was only an evolutionary step away.

“There were, however, practical difficulties with this approach.  Blueland’s existing government had been created by means of arbitrary, often disruptive, measures that left it with a conglomeration of unreliable institutions that were unsuitable for use as the basis for genuine evolution.  Embarking on a legitimate evolutionary path would, therefore, require completely dismantling Blueland’s existing government and starting from scratch.  Given this scenario, it was entirely predictable that, during the anarchic transition from the old government to the new, much of Blueland’s civilization-science, art, the luxanities-would be jeopardized, to say nothing of the loss of life and property.  On the other hand, any untested ‘artificial’ approach concocted out of thin air by some political theorist would not pass nature’s test for evolutionary purity.  It appeared that the cost of a new government would mean throwing out civilization’s baby with the governmental bathwater.

“Understandably, then, the Founder sought for a way to meet two seemingly contradictory objectives: the evolution of new governmental forms that functioned in strict accord with nature’s principles and the concurrent preservation of a flawed, leftover civilization.  After much agonizing over this dilemma, he came up with an approach that held at least some hope of accomplishing his seemingly unattainable ambition.  His plan rested on the tenuous assumption that an existing natural system could be found whose functions mirrored those of a Luxan government.  If so, then the Founder had no doubt it could be taken advantage of, given the way Blueland’s scientists had adapted other natural phenomena to produce a multitude of practical applications all the way from an endless variety of wondrous gadgets to a veritable pharmacopoeia of medications.  It could thus be reasonably claimed that the resulting new government warranted legitimacy as if it, too, had been designed and tested under nature’s demanding scrutiny.  Blueland would be able to cutshort the normal trial and error evolution process and arrive at a new system of government in the shortest possible time and with a minimum of dislocation.  Civilization would be preserved, offense to nature avoided, and Bluelanders launched into a propitious new era.  All contingent, as I have said, upon finding a suitable model.

“Lesser individuals might well have been daunted by the prospect of ever finding a natural system worth copying.  No matter how nature might dote over the governance of a bee hive, for example, it was unlikely that Bluelanders could abide by its rules.  And the same could be said of an ant colony or, for that matter, a tribe of monkeys.  But our Founder was an optimist.  After all, he reasoned, nature had proven herself to be an incredibly talented systems designer.  In her career, she had organized living things of every size and description as well as harmonized the forces governing quarks and quasars and everything in between.  Somewhere in her vast storehouse of inventions there ought to be a piece of sociobiological engineering of the kind he was looking for.”

*    *    *

“Where would you start looking if you were him?”  Ms. Raptur asked sud­denly.  “Anyone?”  A light beat of one wing sent the bird rocking slowly back and forth-her round, piercing eyes challenging each of us in turn.  “Fitzroy?” she finally de­manded.

Fitzroy, cradling his huge, flat head on the rim of his shell, looked none too bright, but I must admit his grumpy answer was as good as any I would have given.  “How should I know?”

Our instructress’s purpose in singling out the doleful creature became evi­dent when she darted from her perch, hovered momen­tar­ily over him, and then utilized his skull as a makeshift heliport.  “Because I’m standing on it,” she announced air­ily.

“My head?” exclaimed Fitzroy, none too happy about its being singled out as an object of attention.

“All our heads, you ninny.  I’m talking about the intelligent brain.  Its administrative relation­ship to other cells in our body is comparable to that be­tween government and those it governs, isn’t it?  And there’s no question but that it’s a product of natural evolution.  Not just any product, mind you, but arguably nature’s most remarkable feat of engineering, right?”

“I guess so,” Fitzroy agreed, although less out of conviction, it seemed, than a means of ridding his head of its unwelcome occupant.

Giving us time to digest her point, Ms. Raptur took off, making a com­plete pass round her students before nonchalantly, or so it would appear, hopping back on her perch with such precise timing that its periodic motion remained wonderfully unperturbed.

“Just think of what the intelligent brain does.  It gathers information from all parts of the body and its surrounding environment, considers alternate courses of action based on that information, selects the most promising solution, instructs the body as to how to execute that solution, and then monitors the effectiveness of that action.  Substitute ‘body politic’ for ‘body’ in what I’ve just said and you have a near perfect prescription for effective government.

“Why not then take advantage of the governing techniques that nature had spent millions of years perfecting?  Why not extrapolate nature’s system for governing individuals and use it to govern groups of individuals?  The metaphor wasn’t perfect, obviously.  The brain wasn’t government, and vice versa.  But it was close enough to provide the Founder with a number of ideas that together provided the basis for his new form of government and lent support to its natural heritage.

It was as simple as that.  Plain as the nose on your face. . .I mean. . .”

As soon as Ms. Raptur uttered her last words, it was clear that she regretted them for all eyes in the room automatically trained on poor, woebegone Harold whose visage was, in fact, composed of little else.  Worse, I am sorry to say, a ripple of suppressed giggling spread around the hall.  Rather than make matters worse by attempting to apologize for her faux pas, our instructress wisely sought to divert our attention.

“Hush, everybody,” admonished Ms. Raptur as she affixed her beak to a cord dangling from a slot in the ceiling and, by suspending herself from it, unrolled a blown-up diagram of the Luxan brain on which the major parts were prominently labeled: the brain stem, hippocampus, cerebellum, cortex, etc.

Our instructress began by pointing out that the brain’s most obvious but most easily overlooked feature was its very existence.  Clearly nature found it necessary not only to concentrate the administration of our bodies in a single organ but to go to extraordinary lengths to expand its capabilities to the very limit.  From this Ms. Raptur concluded that nature dismissed anarchy as a workable political philosophy and had, no doubt, influenced the Founder to do the same.

Next, Ms. Raptur took to pecking at each part on the chart in turn explaining, as she did so, its function and its relationship to the government we were about to explore.

“Got all of that?” she con­cluded.  Her words were im­mediately followed by a swooping attack upon a dozing attendee who evidently had not.  Being woken by the drumming of a mature, tough beak against one’s noggin was, no doubt, an unattractive method of arousal, for the victim virtually ex­ploded in a series of distressful cries.  Satisfied that she now en­joyed everyone’s full attention, our instructress, now tour guide, returned to her perch, where she dictated our instructions for the rest of the afternoon.