Curiosity and Schrodinger's cat...what happens to democracy when the trust is gone.

What a summer it has been so far.  I'm sure the media would have been glad to have something to write about this 'silly season', if only the story wasn't about them...

Whatever you think about the sequence of events sparked off by the revelation of phone-hacking practices at the News of the World, there has been no getting away from either the scandal itself, or the seemingly endless web of questionable behaviour surrounding it that has emerged in recent weeks.  The police service, senior business people, the media and even the government have been implicated in a sequence events that has certainly caused me to question the integrity of those at the heart of our democracy, and I wonder if it has done the same for you?

It's this integrity that we rely on as individuals to maintain the foundations of our 'civilised ' society, so what happens when we discover that those foundations are insecure, unstable and being compromised?

Well it's my view that the very cornerstone of this is trust, and when trust disappears in any relationship, whether it is personal, professional, or with those in authority the resulting initial reactions tend to manifest as a range of negative emotions and actions which may include anger, fear, violence, disappointment, despondency and self-protection.   In a society where there is a distrust of those we collectively place in positions of authority (through the electoral process) and furthermore a distrust of those appointed to positions of responsibility and trusted by our elected officials to act in the best interests of this society,  democracy itself is under threat.  This is the position we find ourselves in today.

I liken this situation to the famous (and rather cruel) experiment in quantum mechanics devised by physicist Edwin Schrodinger in the 1930s where a cat is placed in a sealed steel box and through a process related to the 50:50 likelihood of the decay of a radioactive atom over the period of 1 hour a poison may or may not be released into the box, resulting in either the death of the cat or its survival (see the video at the end of this blog for more).  Is the cat dead?  We don't know until we open the box do we?  So, is it dead or alive when it's in the box?  Is it either until we know for sure? Can we just accept that we don't know? 

Image via: XKCD

The same could be said for our individual understanding of the political, economic and justice systems within our own country.  We have been living with our own steel box, not knowing what's inside, for a long, long time.  Going about our daily business, relatively unconcerned with the possibility of what could be going on in there; happy in our belief that the democratic cat could be alive and living quite happily in its secure little home.  What the phone-hacking scandal has done is prise open the box and force us to look inside to finally discover that actually, the cat is dead.

So, what happens next?  When you find out the ugly truth you had been hiding from for so long?  When forced to, you have to deal with it, and this is what our society (on both a local and global scale) is trying to make sense of at the moment.

I believe we are starting to see the consequences of this loss of trust play out in all sorts of ways and in all sorts of places, on both a global and local scale.   For example, we have seen the financial markets once again lose confidence in recent weeks as the US dithered and bickered over its debt crisis, and the 'emerging' superpowers, quite rightly, questioned their ability to keep their house in order.  Add to this the Mediterranean meltdowns in Greece, Italy and Spain, and you've got a new depth of economic crisis which will leave no nation untouched.  The economy runs on confidence, and confidence is built on trust.  So, when trust is removed in one part of public life, it affects all elements of public life, including the economy.

Even closer to home, there have been riots in North London in protest at a police shooting of a local person, students have been taking to the streets to protest against tuition fee rises, strike action is on the increase and the government's recently re-launched 'e-petitions' facility has been unable to cope with the levels of activity.

This level of instability and lack of confidence is clearly worrying people as it shakes our social norms and beliefs to the core, and forces us to question the capability of those in whom we place our trust.  But I'd argue it is necessary; it's right that we should question those who lead, it's right that we should take an active interest in how our society is governed and run, and it's right that our voices should be heard in a democracy as these are the very principles on which our society claims to be built (although I in no way support the violent action undertaken by some protesters). But we've all grown so sluggish, apathetic and drugged up on easy credit and the comforting sugar-rush of conspicuous consumption, that we've forgotten how to take part, act, have our say.

There will, undoubtedly, be a rocky period ahead while go through our own little 'cold-turkey' process, but it can only be for the good of our democracy in the long run.   Activism and a renewed interest in politics and the role of the media, the examination of our own roles in building these towers of Babel, and a sense of responsibility for the impacts of our personal roles as actors in the economy are all possible positive consequences of this crisis.



A brief video on Schrodinger's cat experiment: