OF THE PRINCIPAL SOURCE OF BELIEF AMONG DEMOCRATIC NATIONS

August 3, 2008 by Dr. Mc.

Noting that Alexis de Tocqueville completed Democracy in America in the early 1800’s, I am
amazed that he foresaw the American war of secession over slavery (1860’s) and
even that America and Russia would some day become world superpowers with
competing world views (1960’s). His power of prediction stem not from religious
claims, but from uncompromised logic, applied to carefully investigated of
facts, with clear understanding of human nature.

That understanding of human nature is most clear to me in Book 2, Chapter 2
of Democracy, where he addresses a subject that I wrestle with regularly
in my century–The inevitability (and value) of dogmatism.

According to de Tocqueville, not only are we all dogmatic,
we all must be dogmatic in order to think clearly and deeply. There are too many
things to think through, so we must trust someone else’s conclusions in order to
build and think completely about anything. Anyone who has traveled overseas, or
even into a variant of our own culture, has discovered how fatiguing it is to
simply go through the day: How and when does one cross the street? Which
direction does the traffic flow? What does a mail box look like? Things we
previously took for granted must now be thought about, draining our ability to
cope. So we in our daily lives accept as true many things we have not
investigated in order to think on other things. Our society is allowed to
accumulate knowledge, instead of reinventing the wheel every generation. This
serves us well more often than not. It is a good thing to trust and build on
trustworthy sources. But what happens when people trust the wrong source?

De Tocqueville draws another conclusion: The nature of
democracy leads people to depend more on majority thinking than on accumulated
experience.  "At periods of equality men have no faith in one another, by
reason of their common resemblance; but this very resemblance gives them almost
unbounded confidence in the judgment of the public; for it would seem probable
that, as they are all endowed with equal means of judging, the greater truth
should go with the greater number." In other words, majority thinking becomes
more powerful than experience handed down from our forefathers. History is lost.

That is a scary thought. And I’m afraid de Tocqueville has
predicted again the state of America and the free world. Those who can think,
must.

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