William James, the father of psychology in the United States, described a small incident that happened in Africa at the end of the 19th century in "On the Blind Spot of Human Knowledge", which has a very unique value for our understanding of the real society. He said: An American tourist in Africa found a few loose pages of the New York "Commercial Advertiser" and read them voraciously. A group of black Africans gathered around him, and when he finished reading it, he ** bought this mysterious thing. When asked why they bought it, they replied, "For ophthalmic purposes." American tourists keep their eyes on the newspaper for a long time, so that the black African onlookers feel that the newspaper can be the best eye disease. This little story tells us the truth that when the observer's judgment is contrary to the essence of things, very stupid conclusions can be drawn.
A careful study of Chinese society shows that from the beginning of the last century to the present more than 100 years ago, Chinese society's perception of democracy has been like that of a group of black Africans who read newspapers around American tourists. In the past 100 years, Chinese society has regarded a distribution tool invented by human beings in the political field as the purpose of human existence, making Chinese society a testing ground for various Western trends of thought. The so-called "**" that occurred in the sixties and seventies of the last century was a human disaster caused by the experiment of Western-style democracy. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to clarify the essence of democracy.
The first thing we need to understand is why and how human beings form society. Fundamentally, whether political or economic, past or present, East or West, the constitution of human beings is to fully guarantee the freedom of every human individual. Throughout the history of human society, there are only two ways in which human society is formed: centralization and decentralization. The manifestation of centralization is **, and the manifestation of decentralization is democracy.
There is no absolute superiority or inferiority between centralization and decentralization, but they have shown different states at different stages of the development of human society. Societies composed in a democratic manner can promote human civilization and progress, such as the United States of America; Centralized empires have also produced many peaks of human civilization, such as China. Since the unification of Qin Shi Huang, China has been standing on the stage of earth's history for more than 2,000 years** is the best proof of this. Therefore, it is simply impossible for ** and democracy to negate each other, which is determined by their essential characteristics.
However, to this day, it seems that democracy has become the only correct way for human society to develop. However, there is no consensus among the people of the earth about what democracy is. As a result, some people use democracy as a way of life to fool the public. In essence, democracy, like **, is a distributive tool invented by human beings, a political tool used by people to distribute political power and economic benefits and guarantee individual freedom. If democracy is a way of life, then why hasn't there been a one-size-fits-all way of life on the planet? There is no doubt that there is identity and comparability of tools, such as weights and measures, which can be followed and used by people on earth as long as there are authoritative social institutions that make relevant regulations. The way of life is diametrically opposite, and no one can deny the way of others in their own way. There are problems with the scope of the tool, for example, you can't use a thermometer to measure the length of the road, and democracy is no exception. Moreover, the tools will have different practical effects in the hands of different users, and the tools can still be improved, and they need to be continuously improved and improved.
In this world, democracy, like **, is just a tool for human beings to distribute benefits and individuals to enjoy freedom. For human society, freedom is the purpose of life, so democracy only has instrumental value, not purpose value. Those who regard democracy as the only way to solve problems, or even as the purpose of human existence and the way of life of human beings, undoubtedly go to extremes and deviate from the essence of things. History has proved that democracy is not the key to everything, because tools are bound to be flawed. The inferior democracy that existed on the earth has also brought very great disasters to mankind, even worse than the disasters caused by the abandonment of **, which is a fact that those who regard democracy as a guideline cannot deny. The democracy we can see at present is not flawless, such as the inefficiency of decision-making, voting for the sake of voting, opposing for the sake of opposition, the ** of the majority, etc., which are all determined by the nature of the tools of democracy. The instrumental nature of democracy dictates that it is necessarily diverse, and it cannot be uniform. This is the reason why more than 200 countries and regions on the planet consider their societies to be democratic and nothing else.
To sum up, democracy is just a tool, and any act of deification of it is harmful and unhelpful to human society.