A.C. Grayling and Democracy

Last week I had the good fortune to attend another of the brillant A.C. Grayling lectures in Edinburgh during a pre-release of this new book Democracy and its Crisis.

As you may know from my post from last year, I am a huge fan of Professor Grayling and have attended his book releases before. Again after his lecture I was able to obtain a copy of his new book over a week before its official release date and he also kindly signed it for me, making it out to my son Sam who is currently 13 but my hopes are he may gravitate towards such readings in the future once he is older and thus understand the history behind democracy and its current shortcomings.

I dont intend to give a full review of this excellent book here but what I will say is its an excellent and informative read, only a couple of hundred pages long so can be finished in one sitting if you have the coffee handy. The story about democracy is very interesting. Democracy first came about in Ancient Greece. The famous Athenian contemporary thinker Plato was actually very critical against a democracy for fears that it could readily degenerate into a ochlocracy (get the dictionary out, I certainly required it as an aid whilst digesting this book) which is basically mob rule and the direction of this mob rule can be instigated by a hidden oligarchy which is a small group of people and they would control the larger number by manipulation to carry out the hidden oligarchy's agenda by directing public anger through fiery rabble-rousing speeches and strategically chosen "false news" which these days can be driven through newspapers, internet and social media to its targeted audience. Basically this is demagoguery which means an appeal to people that plays on their emotions and prejudices rather than on their rational side. It's a manipulative approach often associated with dictators and sleazy politicians that appeals to the worst nature of people. We need a informed and reflective electorate and a responsible Fourth Estate as a vehicle for distributing information and providing a platform for debate and analysis. Unfortunately we don’t have this and our democracy suffers as a consequence (I am tempted to input some of my views about the Scottish Nationalist party and their attempts to get independence but I don't what to air my political views just now.....at least not on this post but people with a certain grasp on these things will know already)

Its rather interesting that Professor Grayling said (or at the very least hinted at) Brexit will not go ahead, well at least not as we feared. He would not elaborate on this point as he said he was sworn to secrecy, even when I asked him personally whilst signing my (well, Sam's) book the best I could get from him was..."watch for an announcment soon"....all very intriguing. Again it was so great to see and hear this wonderful man who I have a lot of respect for. He continues to be the professor of philosophy and master of the New College of the Humanities in London and if you have never read any of his many books then please at least try his essays which are collected in many books, they are wonderful and enlightening reading. He does refer to Plato often and its worth doing some homework and reading Plato's 8th book of the Republic if the Philosophy of democracy interests you. With recent events such as Brexit and Trump across the ocean it really should, we bitch and complain about it but Grayling instead of banging his head of a wall writes a book about in in the attempt to understand its failings and where it all went wrong.