Wreckers or Courageous?

In a recent blog, Santosh Desai says that democracies seem to be increasingly supporting actions that have a common theme:

“These are all focused on dismantling existing systems without having a clear idea of what the consequences are, and what needs to be put in their place. Each dismantling is in response to an angry impulse for sweeping change and each is a product of the democratic process.”

He was basing this on Trump, Brexit and demonetization. He worries that this isn’t just a “short-term and cyclic phenomenon”:

“A new grammar of democracy has begun rooted not on the lofty ideals of how humanity should aspire to be, but on what it might really be deep down.”

But is Desai right? Haven’t people always feared change and its consequences? Remember why Plato was worried about the invention of writing?

“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer form within themselves, but by means of external marks.”

Also, what Lila Rajiva wrote (in a different context) in her book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, is true about the fickleness of a group’s sentiments in general:

“If there is one thing we know about the sentiments of crowds, it is that they change. Today it is greed. Tomorrow it is fear. But rarely is it doubt.”

So yes, today the theme in democracies seems to be overthrow existing systems and ways of doing things. But tomorrow? Who knows?

Besides, can anyone really know whether today’s trend is correctly described by these lines from a passage from my school days that said:

“I can easily wreck in a day or two,

What a builder has taken a year to do.”

Or are the actions of today’s democracies a case of having the courage to do what’s right and necessary, a la these lines from the famous Serenity prayer?

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.”

Or have we, the eternally bored, always needing our smartphones to be entertained, now shifted to Calvin’s fantasy of how to lead an “interesting life”?