Week 125.
Elder Advice has pondering this week over the untimely death of Yevgeny Prigozhin. I say “untimely” because it should have happened years ago. When he was a chef: before he became a war criminal. All signs, of course, point to Putin as the perp in the spectacular mid-flight detonation of Prigozhin’s private plane. May he rest in pieces.
Putin, as Elder Advice has observed before1, is a thug. A thug with delusions of grandeur and godhood and, regrettably, the means to make many miserable in his desire for both. And yet, as recently as June 2023, according to the last available independent Levada Centre poll, his public approval rating in Russia was 82% . You can find similar alarming statistics for the rest of the world’s increasing number of autocrats. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, president of Turkey and Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary, to name but two. They are becoming more audacious and less concerned with what the international community thinks and does. Because, like Putin, many are domestically popular.
Now it is one thing for countries like Russia, which has never known anything but, to be ruled by a single individual with effectively absolute power. It is quite another matter when studies in mature democracies like the UK find 61% of 18-34 year olds agree that “having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections would be a good way of governing this country”. Or when 21% of 18-29 year old Canadians agree that “it doesn’t matter whether a government is democratic or nondemocratic”. Or when 12% of the same demographic agree that an authoritarian government may be preferable to a democratic one, and 49% are neutral on the statement “democracy may have problems, but it is better than any other form of government.” The very disturbing 2022 democracy report of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found 70 per cent of the world’s population now lives under some form of autocratic regime, including “competitive authoritarian regimes” which come to power using formal democratic institutions and exercise it while ignoring the conventional minimum standards for democracy. The decades of democratic advances since the seminal fall of the Berlin Wall have been erased. The number of backsliding democracies - autocracies in the making - has doubled in the past decade.
God help us.
Or maybe God is part of the problem. Assuming he exists, of course. Elder Advice can say that because he is a Protestant, and we have special permission to question such things.
Something Elder Advice read recently caused him to consider the connection between God and the decline of democracies. Fundamentalist churches in particular, it is reported, are full to bursting these days. Whether a reaction to the isolation and uncertainty caused by COVID, the endless parade of bad news placed in our daily way, the speed of change, or all of the above, folks who feel overwhelmed flock to authorities who will make critical decisions for them, who project power and purport to have all the answers. Authorities who, in return, ask only for blind loyalty or, at the least, a blind eye.
There is nothing new in this; monotheistic religions have given people thousands of years of practice ceding their personal autonomy to others. Those religions are profoundly anti-democratic, focussing on the convenience and certainty of decisions of a single autocratic entity. And “They” (to use the Christian god’s preferred pronoun, which makes sense given I understand there are three of him) are understandably attractive in troubled times, when many simply want someone else to make the decisions. With a minimum of fuss and bother.
Pagans, on the other hand, had to think constantly and critically. They had to weigh risks and decide among competing options because the gods and goddesses of the Greeks, Romans and the Norse were many, complex, often quarrelsome and frequently factional. Dealing with them provided daily lessons in the importance of co-operation in governance, consensus problem-solving and the management of consequences. Unparalleled training in the principles of democracy.
The sophisticated Greeks who, after all, invented democracy, knew better than to put their faith in one guy.
There was a lot less misogyny too, with powerful goddesses and minor female deities in abundance. And pagan gods were oftimes funny. Personally, Elder Advice was always struck by the total absence of humour in the Bible although, to be fair, that Old Testament story about King Saul demanding that David bring him one hundred Philistine foreskins as the bride price for his daughter, Michal, was a diverting read.
Anyway, the palette of piety provided by paganism was finally consigned to the scrap heap only when great social, economic and political upheaval occurred. Single, infallible deities were the obvious choice for replacement. Names which could be lazily invoked first to justify the unspeakable things men and women did, and then to forgive them for it. Mischief, mayhem, murder: Deus vult.
Elder Advice? Perhaps, to ensure the survival of democracies, we need more pagans. Elder Advice would say more atheists, but those people have no invisible means of support.
Elder Advice 107
Dan/Robert: Mother of god! Elder Advice had never had this much bantering commentary. Ever. You are both hired to promote Comments and Likes for all future editions. The pay will be equal to the amount I receive.
Haha. Good point.