failed to see beyond the feudal lord.
Democracy is supposed to be a system 'of the people, for the people and by the people', while effectively its just that in this statement the 'people' consist of one small, rather minute, class that rules over the other, and the other class lets itself be ruled only because of the dream that each individual entity of the ruled class has, that of making the transition to the other ruling class. It is this aspiration that preserves the feudal system.
The biggest responsibility that a man can ever undertake is that of the consequences of his own actions, on the contrary it is much of an easier job to criticize someone who is running your life. Although more often than not the individual doesn't have any option but to run to the diktats of the master, be it in the form of the proprietor, boss, or the administrator, in the sense of acceptance of fate there lies, perhaps subconsciously, the lack of will to take charge of matters into one's own hand, because that will ultimtely imply being responsible for your own actions, and you wouldn't have any imposter to blame for your state of affairs.
There is always a minority who do not follow the trends of the general mass, the ruled class, and they fall in two categories: the major chunk who plan willfully to make the transition into the upper echelon, and the minority who decide to take on the system, often by force, to change it for the better. More often than not, all the major steps forward in the evolution of the civilization has happened due to this small minority. But, the human system stabilizes back to the old feudal system, with some incorporation of the newer innovative ideas of the few who had tried to change the system. After all, it is much more fun to decide the fate of multitudinous many rather than your own, and so the transition to the ruling class is much more attractive and profitable rather than taking on the system.
Ultimately, both the ruling class and ruled class are living in their own illusions, the ruled class believes that they are guided by outside forces who cause all the miseries of their lives and they have no responsibility in the state of their own affairs as they are not really guiding their lives. While the ruling class believes that they are deciding the fates of multitudinous many. The truth is that we are all guiding our own fate, and only our own, by our affirmative actions or passive acceptance by inaction.
It can be argued, correctly, that most of the time the ruled class doesn't have any option, but the counter argument is that one should at least keep looking for options, instead of tacit acceptance of the situation, and not give up. The small minority that manage this are the ones who have brought out the changes in the human civilization, perhaps most of them get unnoticed as history eulogises the ruling class. There are a few who make the successful transition to the ruling class without losing the appetite to take on the system headlong, and they form excellent examples of the history of human spirit. These people never really adopt completely in the ruling class despite having the influence over one and all, but the tragedy is that more often than not their followers very effectively imbibe the philosophy of the ruling class and stabilize the system back to the nearly original state. Then comes the group who make their mark invisibly, only the marks are seen and not the markers. The ripples are seen but not the stone that set it in motion, and if the situation is favourable these ripples leave indelible marks and the society is gradually changed irreversibly. The purpose of democracy is to give more authority to these ripples, and not let the system get into the completely stable state of dead action, which the ruling class always professes to preserve their rule.
One has to realise that there is never a completely stable system, i.e. a static system. Had it been so, this universe (or multiverse?) wouldn't have existed. Life wouldn't have moved forward had it been static. One has to look for dynamic stability. The closest analogue is that of a moving vehicle, say a car, which is most stable when it is not moving, but to move ahead it has to compromise and optimize between stability and forward motion. This falsehood of equating static with stability is the trump card of all dictators, who play on the basic insecurity of the people, and the few who see through it are seduced by the lure of power into making the transition to the ruling class. Democracy is the mechanism to create a multi-layered complex hierarchy in the system to distribute the feudal authority to enable logic and free flow of knowledge to take precedence over personal short sighted ambitions.
