Some (for now) final thoughts about the Dalai Lama, power, and democracy

There are several reasons why I have started this writing project by focusing on the story of the Dalai Lama: for one thing, it's a great story and I love stories! But also, there are lessons here about politics: about power, how to allocate it, and what to do with it, a topic that I always seem to keep coming back to these days.

The story of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people's campaign to remain autonomous is so bizarre to western eyes that one could well question what lessons could possibly be drawn that would be relevant to us. (Oracles falling into a trance? Rebirth? Seriously?) But this story is in the end about issues that are universal: power, equality, autonomy, security. It allows us to see these issues from a completely different direction, and thus perhaps lead to entirely new ideas about our perhaps too familiar western liberal democracies. So humour me please, as I try to draw some conclusions relevant to you and me from this strange story about Tibetans following a beloved monk across the Himalayas by the thousands.

On authority and power

It is clear that the authority of the Dalai Lama—and I am referring here to the centuries old figure, not the 14th Dalai Lama in particular— is never under question. He is respected and loved. People are willing to give up their lives for him. He consults with advisers and ministers, and even oracles, but in the end the decisions are his. That's how the system works, and that's how it's worked forever and will continue to do so.

It might seem strange that such a system does not descend into authoritarianism. But there's a good reason why this doesn't happen. The antidote against authoritarianism is built into the system by ensuring the Dalai Lama truly works for the benefit of the people. That's what happens when you isolate and carefully educate someone from the age of two.

“Democracy”

Compare this with what we understand as democracy today. This is a system born out of popular uprisings against the authority of an absolute monarch: the French Revolution and the American Revolution at the end of the 1700s, and the gradual shift of power from the monarch to parliament that we might call the British Revolution, which includes a period of civil war in the 1600s.

These revolutions in turn inspired similar movements in other countries, against their own monarchies or remote colonial masters, displacing the power of a few into power of the many. Or at least presumably that was the intention. With variations, the resulting system is essentially the same: an elected legislature with the power to make laws, an executive with the power to send bills to the legislature [1], and most importantly to regulate and implement the law, and a judiciary that settles disputes and punishes law breakers. And last but certainly not least, an armed police to enforce the law and keep everyone in line: we must not forget that a police force is an essential component of the system. Without one, it doesn't work.

In such a system, power is delegated to elected representatives [2]. The citizens themselves are reduced to voting for someone every few years. They have zero power.

Electoral democracy is a mechanism for allocating power (hopefully) without bloodshed

What grew out of those violent uprisings against absolute monarchies was a compromise to allocate power by some means that could be deemed to be fair, and hopefully non-violent. This is why there is such horror today of contested elections. It will take Americans a long time to digest the events of January 6, 2021 when the Capitol was stormed by a large and definitely violent mob.

But the process is still intrinsically adversarial and competitive, and winner-takes-all. This is key: the winner is handed near-absolute power; the result is essentially a dictatorship. The only thing that distinguishes electoral democracy from absolute power is term limits: every few years, there is a vote.

Who actually gets the power?

Not the citizens. The citizens have zero power. And anyone who has lived in such a system for a while knows that, with very rare exceptions, the people who get into power as their representatives do not represent the best interests of the community. Rather, they represent specific interests, generally revolving around money.

The battle for power never ends

There is no end to the competition for power. What we call democracy is simply an eternal competition for the minds of the voters, waged with all the marketing techniques crafted by the rich experience of sellers of things, with a prize to be awarded every few years. It is a substitute for the hereditary system of kings, interrupted only by the occasional palace rebellion or bloody popular uprising.

“Democracy” is not a system of government. It is the same ancient competition, just with rules to prevent bloodshed.

So you see my fascination with the politics of Tibet: There is simply no competition for power: No warring political parties, no campaign rhetoric, no false promises, no lies.

However, as we have seen, this is not enough. There is another requirement: the state should be run for the benefit of the citizens, and no one else.

The antidote to authoritarianism

There is a way for the citizens to gain power in a “democracy”, albeit indirectly: they can vote in true representatives who will act according to the best interests of the people. Again, we see this with the traditional role of the Dalai Lama: by careful training from an early age, he is guaranteed to believe only in serving others. By the time the Dalai Lama reaches adulthood he has fully internalized the bodhisattva's vow to live for the benefit of all beings. Including of course his fellow Tibetans.

Very occasionally an electoral democracy produces an Olof Palme or a Jacinda Ardern , but the system soon reverts to its natural state of bitter competition between people not at all driven by a will to serve the community, and protect it from the ambitions of this or that special interest. Jacinda Ardern burns out, Olof Palme is assassinated. Liberal democracy has no mechanism to ensure the people's representatives really represent their best interests.

The challenge

So maybe the Tibetan model is not easily transferable to other societies. But the question still remains whether real democracy, without the quotation marks, can still be achieved. What Tibet teaches us is that we have to

I don't have a complete and satisfactory answer to this challenge, although I have a few ideas which I will explore in the future, and maybe you do too. But I am certain of one thing: I am not going to waste my time clinging to the illusion that “democracy” is the only possibility.

#democracy #politics #DalaiLama

[1] In a parliamentary system, the executive is part of the legislature, but the idea is the same.

[2] But not always. In a republic, the executive chooses their own ministers, who are not elected. This is a serious vulnerability in the system, if the ministers are powerful enough.