The Copernican Principle
TALKING POLITICS
Catherine Carr
4.7 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2019
⏱️ 38 minutes
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Summary
David gives the third in his series of talks about the future of democracy. This one uses an idea from cosmology to work out where we might be in the story of democracy: are we at the beginning, in the middle or near the end? It all depends when and where we think the story starts. From Stonehenge to Les Miserables, from ancient Athens to Facebook, a simple idea turns out to have some surprising applications, and some important lessons for contemporary politics.
Talking Points:
The Copernican Principle is based on the idea that we are not the center of the universe.
- Because we are not inherently special, most of the time, we encounter things without a natural life expectancy somewhere in the random middle.
- If something has been going on for years, it will likely keep going for years. If something has been going on for weeks, it will likely keep going for weeks.
What does this mean for democracy? It depends on which story you think we’re in.
- The long story is about 2,500 years old, going back to the principles articulated in ancient Athens. This is the idea that humans are equal in political terms and no one is uniquely capable of rule.
- The middle story is about 250 years old. This is the story of representative democracy. Democracies exist to protect against misrule and are based on a division of labor between professional politicians and everyone else.
- The short story is at most 100 years old (and in many places, shorter). This is the story of mass enfranchisement, mass communications, and administrative democracy.
It’s unlikely that all of these stories will end at the same time, but it also seems fairly likely that there are people alive now who will see at least the short story end.
- In Eastern Europe, the short story is only 30 years old.
- The second story is also under pressure. People are getting tired of the safeguards, and the division of labor appears increasingly unsustainable.
- The old story, however, still stands. These may be the ideals that are better suited to tackle the current challenges.
David on Democracy:
Further Learning:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, it's Catherine Carr here, producer of the podcast. In a moment it will just be David, |
| 0:09.6 | with the third in his series of talks about the future of democracy. They follow one |
| 0:14.0 | from how democracy ends and democracy for young people, which we published over the last |
| 0:18.7 | year. This one looks at how an idea taken from cosmology might help us understand where |
| 0:24.4 | we are in the story of democracy. It all depends on where we think the story starts. |
| 0:34.6 | Talking politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books, and the LRB has |
| 0:39.8 | a new podcast of its own called The State Of, and it's hosted by LRB editors Joanna Biggs and Tom |
| 0:46.4 | Crue. It aims to take the temperature of contemporary culture. The second episode is now available |
| 0:53.5 | in which Joe and Tom discuss the state of the nation with LRB writers Lorna Finlayson and |
| 0:59.7 | William Davis. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts or on the LRB website at lrb.co.uk |
| 1:09.0 | forward slash state of. In 1969, or this is how the story goes, a young American physicist called |
| 1:19.6 | Richard Gott took a trip to Europe, and he came to England, and while he was here he visited Stonehenge, |
| 1:26.3 | and then he went to Germany, and in Berlin he went to look at the Berlin Wall. And then on his |
| 1:31.9 | way home he found himself thinking about these two imposing permanent seeming monuments. I wonder |
| 1:39.1 | if I will outlive either of them. And he decided that it was really unlikely that he would outlive |
| 1:46.7 | Stonehenge, because Stonehenge had been around for 4,000 years I think. And that would mean if it was |
| 1:53.9 | down while he was still standing there would be something weird about him visiting it, because like he |
| 1:58.2 | goes to see it, and then after 4,000 years it comes down. It would imply there was something special |
| 2:03.2 | about him or his visit, and he thought I'm just a tourist and people are being going to look at this |
| 2:08.3 | thing for thousands of years. Why would it fall down now? But he thought the Berlin Walls only |
| 2:13.4 | been around, this is in 1969, for 8 years. It looks just as imposing and some ways even more |
| 2:20.4 | imposing. It's got a nuclear arm superpower propping it up. But if it was to come down in 10 years |
... |
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