The Chemistry of Trust

In this lecture, Professor Paul Zak explains the impact of oxytocin on trust and trust worthiness. He has many fascinating insights into the role of this hormone on people's behaviour and how to boost oxytocin levels. Could it be that giving people the right to vote regularly and a voice in the debates, boosts oxytocin among most people, increasing trustworthiness in society and perhaps adding to social cohesion and economic success??

Blair's Wars

A simple summary of Blair's reasons for going to war with Iraq could be that

Saddam

+ chemical weapons

+ international terrorists
= a serious threat to British Citizens and our allies.

As Prime Minister, it was Blair's responsibility to protect us.

I don't want to get into re-examining Blair's rational, his estimation of the likely confluence of these factors or the downside risks involved. Instead, I want to ask the question - does a Prime Minister's duty to the British People skew his judgment; by analogy, do people accept more risks themselves than they would allow their children to take?

And another question: is it morally right to calculate the risks and duties to your own electorate at the expense of humanity abroad?

Thirdly, can Interactive Democracy help?

What ID does is allow everyone to input their own answer, balancing the calculus of probability, risk and reward and their own moral view. It allows each voter to take a personal view and not be skewed by the worry of how history would judge them. Imagine Tony, worrying about this sort of historical epitaph: "Blair, the leader who failed to protect his people, wallowing in weakness and indecision". My point is that leaders may be driven to make decisions by pressures that the average man in the street does not feel.

The problem comes when the key pieces of information are so secret that only our leaders are privy to them. But, even then, the Government's presentation of their rational would be debated by a broad spectrum of individuals, involving many military analysts, who may have cast doubt on the 45 minute claim almost as soon as it was made; or terrorism experts who may have questioned the link with Al Quaida. In such a way, ID may not only enhance the breadth of the debate, but it's quality, too.

But it's not all about the war decision, it's also about how best to proceed. Interactive Democracy provides a channel for creative ideas about solving problems. Limited wars to protect the Marsh Arabs and the Kurds, or offering Saddam and his family a luxury sanctuary, may have been among a plethora of suggestions for Parliament to debate. Perhaps, if we'd had ID, such ideas would have emerged at a much earlier juncture.

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Michael J Sandel, the Harvard lecturer who delivered this year's BBC Reith Lectures on morality and markets, writes in his new book "Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?"

"Life in democratic societies is rife with disagreement about right and wrong, justice and injustice... Given the passion and intensity with which we debate moral questions in public life, we might be tempted to think that our moral convictions are fixed once and for all, by upbringing or faith, beyond the reach of reason. But if this were true, moral persuasion would be inconceivable, and what we take to be public debate about justice and rights would be nothing more than a volley of dogmatic assertions, an ideological food fight. At its worst, our politics comes close to this condition. But it need not be this way. Sometimes, an argument can change our minds."

He wrote in the Guardian (31/10/09),

"I think our public life would go better if we engaged more directly with the moral ideals underlying our political debates. In many ways, political argument today is morally impoverished. My book tries to bring philosophy to bear on the dilemmas we confront in contemporary politics - not in the expectation of consensus and agreement, but rather in the hope of contributing to a richer, more morally robust democratic deliberation."

According to the Guardian "Sandel maintains that he is no majoritarian: a more engaged citizenry, he argues, would actually provide a far stronger check on abuses of power, or on over powerful religious organisations." He criticises politics as "morally neutral".

It seems to me that Interactive Democracy engages the citizenry, empowers leaders to state their moral argument and has every chance of enhancing democratic deliberation. I wonder if Sandel would concur?

Morality, Democracy, Leadership

The question is "Are the majority more or less moral than the ruling elite?"

In 1887 Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, wrote "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." But why should this be so? Is it that leaders have to make tough choices that can always be perceived by some to be immoral? Tough choices lead to hardened hearts! Or is it that our leaders are sustained by large egos that blind them of empathy for the "little man"?

We could assume that the majority of common folk are averagely moral. Interactive Democracy gives them power. Could it be the case that they could countermand the immoral tendencies of despots yet be enriched by the teachings of greater folk, thus improving the moral sentiment of the nation? History suggests otherwise (Hitler's Germany, Israel's democracy).

I think the best we can say is that the majority are neither more nor less moral than rulers.

For more on how situations lead to brutal behaviour, please see "The Lucifer Effect".