This post is about how evolutionary theory and quantum mechanics help us understand the incompleteness of democracy.

Rotten apples

Certain politicians often do not resign because of or are not affected by formal corruption allegations. Sometimes, the environment that surrounds them works as a protective shield against blatant and formalized accusations of corruption. One could feel that such an environment subconsciously prevents the expulsion of a rotten element (politician) regardless of the formal evidence that this element is corrupt and harmful to this body. 

How come?

Democracy cannot be encoded

The apparent paradox comes from a common mistake of understanding the formalized code of democracy (constitution, laws, bylaws …) as the totality of democracy. The mistake coming from such presupposition is the same as saying that life can be explained by codified DNA double helix; better said, it is as if life itself could be codified. Although life does not belong to any mystical realm, it cannot be encoded. Democracy cannot be encoded, as well.

Life (and democracy) are quantum-like. A photon is both a particle and a wave. So long as light was recognized as a wave or matter only, its comprehension was entrapped in the same paradox as when democracy is understood as a formalized code or a free expression of human beings.

We should be a bit more exact regarding the topology of democracy. We should not understand it as existing both in the realm of digitalized formal procedure and in the field of analog human “free will instinct” but as a possibility that oscillates (like a wave) around codified (collapsed) matter (law).

The topology of democracy i in constant superposition. As much as a momentum of a particle and it’s position cannot be simultaneously defined before the detection (a collapse), so much the democracy oscilates like a cloud of possibilities around with funtions of codified rules on y axis and individual or collective moral rules on x axis. More than you define a location (rule), less you know about the momentum (moral justice); and vice versa. More than you stick to the codified role of law, less there is space for morality, the x-factor of life. More than you adhere to x-factor of life, less there is a room for the rule of law. 

Evolutionary formula

It is thus quite simple to put down an evolutionary formula of democracy: 

Above there is a famous Feynman formula of quantum probability amplitudes. Not going deeper in QED, we could state that Probability of Democracy (P) is a multiplication of magnitudes, where v represents formalised set of rules (material) and w informal set (wave). 

Disclosure: I am using Feynman only as a memetic tool since I am not a physicist.

X-factor of life and ESS

Why do we not define x factor (of life)? Because it is a P. You cannot quantify it. Whenever we try to quantify x factor (and human history is a history of the compilation of such quantifications), it ceases to be an x-factor and becomes either v or w, either formalised (infertile) set of rules or unmanageable subjective “morality”.The formula tells us that democracy grows with both dimensions that are, in fact, not reducible one to another.

Back to the initial story, we now understand better why a social body sometimes does not expel a formally accused rotten element. Such a body acts according to the previously explained democracy formula. Such a body intuitively understand that the best evolutionary strategy (to survive) is not to stick to formal rules (only), but that such evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) oscillates somewhere around the limits of the formalised rule of law. That is why we say that democracy is never achieved, but can only be approached.

The intriguing part of this oscillation (and it goes for every life x-factor) is, that it can be only proven for the past, and never for the future. And the only proof is survival of the body (community, city, state, civilisation…).  Hegel sad with the quote of the owl of Minerva which always come too late:

When philosophy paints its gray in gray, a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the falling of the dusk. (A.G.F. Hegel, 1820, Preface to Elements of the Philosophy of Right)

Evolutionary survival can be proven only by the survival itself; the evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) is only confirmed by the survival of the body that executes the strategy.

The corrupt politician might be a rotten apple in the cask, yet one might later be in need of vinegar made from rotten apples.