{"id":194628,"date":"2026-06-22T05:36:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T13:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=194628"},"modified":"2026-06-22T05:36:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T13:36:04","slug":"pinsof-on-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=194628","title":{"rendered":"Pinsof on Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Pinsof writes June 22, 2026<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Throughout our evolutionary history, our ancestors faced a variety of threats to their survival and reproduction\u2014feuds, raids, tyrants, power struggles\u2014that no individual could overcome on their own. As a result, early humans evolved to do what the Autobots do in the Transformers movies. They evolved to click into a new shape, to transform from a set of isolated individuals into\u2026 a GROUP.<\/p>\n

A group is a thing that binds itself together with orthodoxy and conformity. It\u2019s a thing with rituals that demarcate insiders from outsiders. It\u2019s a thing that manufactures narratives that justify sacrifices to insiders and hostility to outsiders. It punishes traitors, freeriders, dissidents, and other poisonous elements, while rewarding heroes, martyrs, and true believers. It produces feelings of meaning and inspiration in its members.<\/p>\n

But then what causes us to click into the shape of a group? A context where we are weak as individuals but strong as a collective. Maybe it\u2019s an unruly alpha male who\u2019s dominating us. Maybe it\u2019s a vengeful outgroup who\u2019s plotting our demise. Maybe it\u2019s an enormous beast that can only be felled by a torrent of arrows. It is this type of situation that, across evolutionary time, selected for all the cognitive machinery of tribalism. It is this type of situation, marked by the futility of individual toil and the power of collective synchrony, that activates something deep inside us: group mode.<\/p>\n

So what is democracy? It is a key that perfectly fits the lock of group mode. It is a system that brandishes a fearsome weapon before our eyes\u2014the coercive power of jails and cops and militaries\u2014and tells us we cannot control it, and cannot defend ourselves from it, unless we band together into huge, lumbering groups. It is a system that pries power away from the hands of individuals and tosses it to mobs, cliques, unions, religions, interest groups, ethnic groups, and grotesque agglomerations of all the above called \u201cpolitical parties.\u201d It is a system defined by the crushing hopelessness of individual toil and the awesome power of collective synchrony.<\/p>\n

Once we recognize this, the political world comes into focus. We can see why dropping a ballot on top of millions gives our ape brains a rush of dopamine, and why we commemorate the ritual with a sticker that says \u201cI voted\u201d (instead of \u201cI have accurate political beliefs\u201d). Voting in unison is like chanting or dancing in unison: it sends a signal that we\u2019re part of a unified force or hivemind\u2014something larger than ourselves. We don\u2019t vote to change the world: we vote to be part of a group.<\/p>\n

Of course, not every member of the electorate is in group mode. Some citizens feel alienated by both parties and remain in individual mode. By and large, these are the people who don\u2019t vote. They don\u2019t feel any tribal allegiances\u2014they don\u2019t trust any politician\u2014so they disengage from politics. In some ways, they see reality more clearly than the rest of us. The political scientist Diana Mutz has shown that the people who are best at \u201chearing the other side\u201d and accurately understanding opposing viewpoints are the least likely to vote and engage in politics.<\/p>\n

So why is it taboo to utter the words: \u201cVoting is a waste of time\u201d (aside from the fact that they are vile, untrue words that I wholeheartedly repudiate)? Because we\u2019re afraid of what those words can do to us. We\u2019re afraid that they will jolt us out of group mode and into individual mode. People who don\u2019t vote, or who tempt us into nonvoting with the sinful logic of probability theory, are freeriders and traitors\u2014poisonous elements that threaten us from within. People who do vote (you know, for our guys) are heroes and true believers\u2014defenders of the common good.<\/p>\n

Individuals, on the other hand, don\u2019t get it. \u201cWhat\u2019s so heroic about adding a grain of sand to the Sahara desert?\u201d \u201cWhy should I bother learning about public policy when I have essentially no chance of influencing it?\u201d These are the questions that flow through the mind of the individual when cogitating in individual mode. Groups have a hard time answering these questions, so they make them taboo.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a lesson here, it\u2019s that democracy is not designed to empower the individual. It marginalizes and discourages the individual. Democracy is designed to empower groups. It is a government of groups, by groups, for groups.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Pinsof writes June 22, 2026: Throughout our evolutionary history, our ancestors faced a variety of threats to their survival and reproduction\u2014feuds, raids, tyrants, power struggles\u2014that no individual could overcome on their own. As a result, early humans evolved to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42718],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democracy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t