DEMOCRATIC PERSONALITY

       In a democratic situation the individual works in a team and is always trying to get his opinions and policy ideals accepted by other members of the team; he bargains with other people and what eventually becomes policies and laws are compromises that reflect what most members of the team (and those they represent) agree upon. In democracy teams make laws; the individual alone does not make laws and policies in democracies.

     In democratic societies where leaders are selected on the basis of competition and many persons participate in the formulation of public policies, the individual is less likely to see himself as all powerful hence has less chance of becoming a deluded leader.

       In totalitarian, authoritarian dictatorships paranoid leaders are rampant. In fact, it can be said that totalitarian leadership produces grandiose deluded leaders. Clearly, democracy has advantages over other forms of governance.

       Nevertheless, the advantages of democracy are often exaggerated. It is as if democracy has no downside, it has.

        We need to have a discourse on the various forms of government and take what is good in each and combine them to form appropriate governments for African countries. Dictatorship, for example, is deleterious to the individual’s liberty but has some short-term benefit for the polity as a whole.

        It might do us well to look at how nature operates. Is there democracy in nature?  Nature does not concern itself with human feelings; it simply operates according to its laws. Through science human beings discover these natural laws and device technologies to manipulate them, but we cannot operate outside them. If we try to operate outside natural laws we pay a price.  For example, germs (virus, bacteria, fungi etc) destroy the human body. If we expose our bodies to germs our bodies are infected, become sick and eventually die.  Nature does not accommodate our feelings; its operation is impersonal and immutable.  If we want to live we figure out how nature works and do what it requires of us to live. By the same token, it seems to me that certain circumstances require us to do certain things if we want to effectively cope with them.

INDUSTRIALIZATION REQUIRES DICTATOPRSHIP

         It seems to me that countries that are trying to build national unity and embark on economic development need some form of dictatorship. If you doubt that view, may I ask you: has any country ever become industrialized under democratic institutions?

        Was there democracy in the USA when it was industrializing?  Was England democratic when it was industrializing?  Were Germany , France and Russia etc democratic when they were industrializing? 

       Since the answer to all these questions is no, could it be that democracy is a post industrial political phenomenon and that those countries that want to industrialize ought to do what past industrializing countries did: opt for a benevolent dictatorship?

        (If you say that democracy existed in some pre-industrial societies, such as in ancient Greece and Alaigbo, may I remind you that in those societies women were disenfranchised and that slavery existed? It seems to me that democracy can only exist in a society where most people have either university or technical education and are reasonably economically well off, that is, are middle class.)

       It seems to me that what industrializing countries like Nigeria need is not participatory democracy but a team of benevolent dictators who consciously agree on what the country needs and undertake to do them. 

       This team does not have to be involved in the day-to-day governing of the country. They could call the shots from outside the parameters of government. Thus, there would be the usual institutions: legislature, executive, judiciary etc performing their functions but an extralegal team of dictators supervise them and make sure that they do what they are expected to do and have the power to remove them from office if they did not follow through in performing their duties.

       The team, let us call them the Guardian’s Council, composed of thirteen members, one of whom is its leader, have the power to over rule what any branch of government does that is not in alignment with the vision of national unity and economic development.

          A necessary question is: who selects the Guardian’s Council and how do we make sure that the members are not dictatorial? This question is an oxymoron. They are dictatorial and therefore selected themselves and imposed themselves on the polity; they are benevolent dictators and do not hide the fact that they are dictators. They justify their dictatorship (means) with their end (uniting the various ethnic groups, developing the country, eradicating corruption etc.)

THE DANGERS OF DICTATORSHIP

           One does not minimize the risk of this team becoming grandiose and deluded and seeing themselves as gods and behaving like Hitler, Stalin and other deluded dictators.  

       We can attempt to prevent this problem by subjecting the members of the team to psychological evaluation and giving them feedback when their individual behaviors veer towards delusion.

     Eventually most dictators, if they were not already so, become deluded and fancy themselves having godlike powers.

        In delusion the individual believes what is not true as true. In this case the dictator believes that he is god and that whatever he says is the law; he comes to see his every whim as something to be obeyed by the people.

        Human beings have a desire to have their wishes become reality and if they have absolute power they are more likely to compel other people to accept and obey their whims and caprices. 

       Human beings ordinarily feel small and powerless vis a vis the immense universe they live in; if they can manage to get themselves into powerful situations where other people obey their wishes or else they are killed they tend to become a threat to other peoples lives.

       Simply stated, human beings run the risk of imagining themselves to be all-powerful when, in fact, they are not (a bullet and Hitler, the all-powerful fuehrer, died and his body was dumped in a flowerbed where it became manure for it).

      Man wishes that he were god and could change the functioning of the universe. This wish for absolute power is, of course, impossible of attainment. 

ACTIVE AND PASSIVE DICTATORS

        There are active and passive dictators. Active dictators have energy and drive and overtly jostle with other people and suppress opposition to their views and impose their own idea of what should be on society. Hitler and Stalin are examples of active dictators.  (The active dictator is most likely a paranoid personality disordered person and or a narcissistic or antisocial personality disordered person.)

        There are passive or inactive dictators; these merely have idealistic wishes, dreams of how they should be, how other people should be, how governments should be etc and do not actively do anything to impose their wishes on society. They usually lack social skills and do not get along with other people and therefore cannot persuade any one to accept their points of view. They live in the background and are full of imaginations on how society ought to be. In so far that they impose their opinions, it is on their family members. These are the tin can dictators who want their wives and children to do whatever they want them to do and fly into rage if they are not obeyed. These people want to change reality to their liking and making and if others disagree with them, they feel angry with them.

         Passive dictators are folks with humongous egos; they want to be the most powerful persons in their world but are not assertive enough to actually assert their egos. Instead, they hide and in hiding (passive aggressive personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, and dependent personality disorder) they manage to keep and maintain their cherished grandiose egos.

         These people are playing god and want to change the world and make it seem the way they want it to be. They are in struggle with the creator of the world, and want to kill him, usurp his place and replace him and become the creator of the world. (God is the collective self, all of us, whereas the ego is the separated self.)

WE ALL HAVE SOME DICTATORIAL TENDENCIES

   Ask yourself whether you have dictatorial tendencies; do you want other people and institutions to be, as you want them to be, and feel angry if not?  If you do then you have some dictatorial tendency; please accept who you are and understand it and redirect it to democratic tendencies; that is, accommodate others rights to be themselves and have their opinions.

       It should be noted that in the business world, active dictators tend to do well for they can posit what they want and go do it and run their business in such a manner that their employees obey them. But business organization is not politics. This is why it is very difficult to have business entrepreneurs become political leaders for they tend to be little bedroom napoleons whose employees obey as if they are gods or else get fired. In politics there is give and take; politics is the relationship of equals.

WHAT MAKES SOME PERSONS DICTATORIAL?

        In terms of causal explanation, suffice it to say that some people feel inordinately inadequate ala Alfred Adler’s individual psychology and want to become adequate; they compensate with pursuit of superiority and power. 

       Existentially, all human beings separated from God and want to be more powerful than God (The part wants to be larger than the whole.).

        Whatever is its root, the fact on the ground is that some human beings, beginning in childhood, want to be powerful, want to make the world over to their likings.  This is neither good nor bad; what is salient is for such persons to understand the forces motivating them and redirect them to pro-social ends.

      If one is dictatorial one can understand it and use that force to improve society but one cannot become complacent, compliant and docile; indeed, even when the dictator oriented person pleases other people, it is out of desire to manipulate them, to get them to do what he wants them to do, as in passive-aggressive behavior.

          Of course, other people and reality will not change to become what dictators, active or passive, want them to become.

     History shows that all dictatorial regimes eventually come to an end and that only democracy lasts.  Hitler’s fascist dictatorship lasted twelve years and collapsed ignominiously, the Soviet Union’s communist dictatorship lasted seventy years before it was relegated to the dustbin of history; Latin American banana dictators ended, aristocracies and monarchies ended etc. The only political system capable of longevity is one that enables all citizens to participate in their governance and that is democracy.

        Democracy in its various attenuated forms…some persons always play a more central role in democracy, for example, in American democracy the rich play a greater role than the poor, for one thing it costs millions of dollars to buy a seat in Congress (or if you prefer the euphemism, to be elected to Congress) ….is the only political system with a future.

        One is a democrat. However, in the short run one acknowledges that some situations may call for attenuated democracy. Industrializing African countries, I think, need a period of benevolent dictatorship whereby a small group of people seizes power and uses it to consciously unite the disparate African tribes and industrialize them.

       The trick is how to get this small group out of power when their function is performed so that society returns to democracy. The struggle to return to democracy is the stuff of politics and I will not worry about that now; what concerns me in the present is how to unite African ethnic groups and develop them and what means is best suited for accomplishing that task.

        I think that enlightened benevolent dictatorship is the best way to drag Africa into the modern age. I am obviously aware of the dangers of dictatorship; nevertheless I am willing to risk it.

WHAT IS REALITY?

        Reality is that which all of us agree is real; reality is socially constructed. At the spiritual level reality is God; God is all of us combined; God represents all of us, God is our collective voice.

        Will is what the collectivity agrees on; wish is what the individual desires.  What the collectivity wills generally occurs whereas what the individual wishes may not occur, for it takes the whole working in tandem for any thing to happen.

      In the temporal universe what is real is what all of us agree is real; reality is not what the individual says that it is but what all of us agree that it is. Therefore, the team, democracy is the best way to go. Nevertheless, sometimes it is necessary to affirm the wishes of a few individuals, as in dictatorships.

        Dictatorships can only be a temporary phenomenon; they are not designed to be permanent form of political and social organization.

        During national emergencies, for example, polities often resort to dictatorial powers to enable them survive. I submit that African countries embarking on constructing national unities out of different ethnic groups and economic development are in emergency situations and require a period of dictatorial rule to accomplish their task.

      Moreover, given African countries inability to conduct free and fair elections, as we just witnessed in the April fool charade called elections in Nigeria , it follows that we really do not have democracy in Africa . We merely have a pretense of democracy. The powerful foist their selected politicians on us and use them to loot from the national treasury.

       Considering this absence of democracy, why don’t we consciously choose the governance of benevolent dictators; why not have in political offices those who profess to unite us and develop our countries; why this pretense that we have democracy in Africa when we do not? I say that it is time we are honest with ourselves and have real dictatorships in Africa , dictators with well defined goals.

       I would not regret it at all if a group of Nigerians emerge as dictators and use force to do for the country what we all want done. Indeed, I would not complain if that group uses force to unify all of West Africa into one country (with each ethnic group a state within the proposed West African Federation) and, ultimately, use force to unify all of Africa into an Africa Federation, a federation where each of Africa’s 500 or so ethnic groups constitute a state.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

May 17, 2007

Dr Osuji can be reached at ozodiosuji@gmail.com

Robot  Villager

# 1 var sbtitle3174=encodeURIComponent(In Defense ...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 18.05.2007 05:20

ocnus  Villager

# 2 It is a fallacy to believe that dictators get things done. If that were true, Africa would be a far different place. Stalin opted for rapid development and managed to kill, starve and imprison tens of millions of his citizens. Then he started on his neighbours. You have had dictatorships but you've never managed democracy. Nigeria is a strange place. Over the years we have had contracts to dig boreholes across the North. We were to have dug 1,200 boreholes and provide 25,000 gallon storage tanks. In a four year period only four (4) holes were ever dug (at people's houses). The rest never got built because the contractors took the 'mobilisation money' and disappeared. We had contracts to do rural electrification of sixty towns in the North. Our copper wire was stolen faster than we could replace it and no villages were electrified. There was no power anyway. We built oil storage depots at Kaduna and Jos, but these lasted six years and were left to decay. We provided top-of-the line fast patrol boats for the Navy; boats which now sit docked unable to sail. I can go on. These were not problems of dictatorships or democracies. Some were under Obasanjo I; some under Shagari; and some under Abacha. It wasn't the government who interfered with our business, it was greedy businessmen and their political allies operating as Perm Secs, etc. There were no abstract arguments about democracy or dictatorships; the arguments were about commissions; buying tender documents; paying for the tender documents not to get lost; paying to read your opponents' tender submissions.. Everyone was a democrat; at least they believed they were. It was democracy which allowed them the privilege of being in a position to steal. Nigerian politics is not about the rules of governance or ideals; it is about cash (getting it and keeping it). There are no closet democrats waiting for their day in the sun; nor are there closet dictators waiting to rule. There are rich people and there are the others. That is the distinction. So, in answer to the question of whether dictatorship will work or will democracy be the key, I'll tell you what my grandmother taught me "With truth, justice, honour and ten cents you can make a phone call. If you don't have the ten cents you don't talk to anyone." Posted by ocnus| 19.05.2007 01:56

Abraxas  Villager

# 3 =ocnus;176816>It is a fallacy to believe that dictators get things done. If that were true, Africa would be a far different place. Stalin opted for rapid development and managed to kill, starve and imprison tens of millions of his citizens. Then he started on his neighbours. You have had dictatorships but you've never managed democracy. Nigeria is a strange place. Over the years we have had contracts to dig boreholes across the North. We were to have dug 1,200 boreholes and provide 25,000 gallon storage tanks. In a four year period only four (4) holes were ever dug (at people's houses). The rest never got built because the contractors took the 'mobilisation money' and disappeared. We had contracts to do rural electrification of sixty towns in the North. Our copper wire was stolen faster than we could replace it and no villages were electrified. There was no power anyway. We built oil storage depots at Kaduna and Jos, but these lasted six years and were left to decay. We provided top-of-the line fast patrol boats for the Navy; boats which now sit docked unable to sail. I can go on. These were not problems of dictatorships or democracies. Some were under Obasanjo I; some under Shagari; and some under Abacha. It wasn't the government who interfered with our business, it was greedy businessmen and their political allies operating as Perm Secs, etc. There were no abstract arguments about democracy or dictatorships; the arguments were about commissions; buying tender documents; paying for the tender documents not to get lost; paying to read your opponents' tender submissions.. Everyone was a democrat; at least they believed they were. It was democracy which allowed them the privilege of being in a position to steal. Nigerian politics is not about the rules of governance or ideals; it is about cash (getting it and keeping it). There are no closet democrats waiting for their day in the sun; nor are there closet dictators waiting to rule. There are rich people and there are the others. That is the distinction. So, in answer to the question of whether dictatorship will work or will democracy be the key, I'll tell you what my grandmother taught me "With truth, justice, honour and ten cents you can make a phone call. If you don't have the ten cents you don't talk to anyone." Hi, folks! I agree, in toto with all of Ocnus' above. It seems like this is the right time for Nigerians to focus serious attention on the hidden variables of corruption in Nigeria: i.e. government contractors, heads of government departments, and the civil service in general. Muchas gracias. Don Juan-Carlos ABRAXAS (III) Posted by Abraxas| 19.05.2007 02:21