According to Francis Fukuyama, "in stable democracies
there has been a democratic culture, sometimes irrational, and a spontaneous
civil society based on pre-liberal traditions. Capitalist prosperity has
developed best through a strong ethic of work, which has depended on the
ghosts of religious beliefs... or on an irrational dedication to the nation
or race. Recognition of the group has been a better support to economic
activity and to the common life than universal recognition."
This current perspective of democracy has
still caused some confusion between power and powers, because those who
are chosen to the governing powers, having therefore limited powers in
time, space and sphere of choice, often enrapture themselves in them, and
assume themselves as the power — in this case naturally false, hollow,
rotten and condemned to discredit.
We have seen some politicians from these days
trying to impose solutions and hush up the opinion of a large strata of
the population who delegated the material power to them, as has been happening
in Portugal in the many peripheral regions and, namely, in the north of
the country.
The North hasn't got any T.V. station and
its space on the schedule of the channels of the capital city (or of the
powers) came to an end. The official radio station also suspended the national
broadcast from the North. The North maintains its expression only in the
press; it is however upsetting that a daily paper, founded a few years
ago, whose capital funds are mainly from the North, is today the greatest
defender of Lisbon's view points, and that the two traditional morning
papers from Oporto are dominated by share holders from the capital.
But, since democracy is the expression of
the free will of the majority — what makes any attempt to appropriate and
keep the power against that will totally unacceptable —, situations like
the one referred to above are naturally rejected and corrected in a short
period of time. The majority is conscious that the democratic culture appeals
to the calm expression of pluralities, differences, individual freedoms;
and also that democratic culture is based on tolerance and free circulation
of information.
However, as for the recognition of universal
values, which will certainly change the current conception of democracy,
we can only wait for its "discovery" in the long run.
When Man is able to synchronize with universal
values (which are permanent), he might know exactly how to occupy "his"
position in the whole, respecting tolerantly (aesthetically and specially
ethically) the rest of the parts of the whole.
He will then be conscious that Truth is announced,
not imposed; Purity exists, it isn't created; and that Perfection is achieved,
not demanded.
He will then feel the true Power or Universal
Force, in all its splendour, reflected in himself.
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