Wellness Calendar: Thursday 5 June

Democracy vs. true democracy
If you make a cup of tea and then take a thimble of that tea and pour it into a bath and then fill the bath up with water, can you call what you have created a bath of tea? Or is it a bath of water, with a smidge of tea? Or is there so little tea that it’s just a bath of water?
Put another way, at what point does something become so diluted that it’s nonsense to call it what it originally was? Or what if it was already diluted and never really all that potent in the first place?
Democracy was formed in the 6th century in Greece to avoid the discontent of the middle and working classes becoming revolutionary (much like the origins of the Great Charter of Freedoms in 12th century England, otherwise known as the Magna Carta).
‘Rule of the people’ in reality meant only Athenian men over 18 were able to vote, so long as they weren’t foreign or slaves.
The representative democracy we have today allows citizens to vote every 4–5 years for a small group of individuals to be bestowed great powers that affect the lives of millions of people.
Is this democracy? Or is this the weakest form of democracy you can possible have before you start to call it something else, something like a blend of plutocracy and totalitarianism?
Is democracy nothing more than a homeopathic vibration of something that never even existed? Moreover, if democracy is so great on its own, how come there’s another term known as ‘true democracy’?
True democracy is where representatives are bypassed in favour of direct participation by each and every person. As Mahatma Gandhi commented, “In a true democracy of India, the unit is the village.”
What are your thoughts on democracy and true democracy? Would you like to be directly involved in the decision-making that affects you and the world around you?