DZ200074 1903 班 黄宙

On democracy

No one can deny that the most popular words in modern times is democracy
and how wide “democracy” influences us anytime, anywhere. In Longman Dictionary
of Contemporary English, democracy means a system of government in which every
citizen in the country can vote to elects its government officials. It is such a pleasure
that everyone has a right to vote and choose the one they like and trust to be their
leader., Such a brave new world we are in, isn’t it? No exactly.
Democracy is not a modern word. The term democracy first appeared in ancient
Greek political and philosophical thought in the city-state of Athens during classical
antiquity. In ancient Greek, Athens practiced democracy around 508 BC (John Dunn
qtd.in Wikipedia). Throughout the process of the history, democratic system has been
gradually developed and adopted to what we see today. So, it is naïve to say that
democracy is the representation of modernity and belongs to the world that we are
proud of.
People are under the impression that democracy is the production of history and
in modern times we reach to democratic system and country, so democracy is
modernity. Remember that “linear development does not mean progress”, as what I
have mentioned above, democracy derives from ancient Greek. So, it is not a modern
word. Even it is a modern word, can we say that modern means progress?
Many people hold the belief that democracy represents the progress of the era
we are in, without which the world is dark, unlively and people are in a poor condition
ruled by a descending monarch. We are in a democratic world; we enjoy the unlimited
right to speak and to vote. We are brave enough to express ourselves and this is a new
world with prosperity and freedom. It is not true, yes, the well-developed technology
improve our daily life and we enjoy the high civilization that our ancestors never had
a chance to imagine. But democratic system could not solve all the problems, we still
witness the conflicts and catastrophe in the world with democracy, and indeed
democracy is not perfect.
Dating back to ancient Greek, the ostracism shows the tyranny of the masses.
People follow the trend to exile their seeming fatuous leader and elect another new
leader they like. And I think it could be a reason for the downfall of Athens due to the
simple reason that the system is not stable when a leader firmly seizes the power and
want to do something to change the situations, he may be vote out of the country. This
 DZ200074 1903 班 黄宙

is the experience we learn from Greek. Now let us turn our sight to modern world,
America, a country boasts for its democracy and liberty, selected an absurd president
for entire four years and make a mess for this country. Now think about it, imagine an
emperor select his successors from his sons who receive the best educations and are
brought up and nurtured by the high culture. Another example is that people choose a
leader from 3 billion masses. You could tell me which example is more likely to get a
wise leader. The former, still we do not consider whether or not the people receive the
high education and could vote reasonably or they are just “democratic donkey”.
America undoubtedly has the largest population with high education and still they
made a bad choice for their democracy.
Democracy is not a modern world, nor it represents the progress. Remember
democracy does not mean you could do what you like what we need is to remain
reasonable and objective in the world with bewildering information and irrational
masses.

Works cited
John Dunn, Democracy: the unfinished journey 508 BC – 1993 AD, Oxford
University Press, 1994.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 6th Edition, Longman, 2014.