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Truth and...Orville (?)

When I climbed on this soapbox, I had intended to take a lofty, high minded intellectual view.
Alas...
Last night I was watching the TV Show "Orville" episode 7 "Majority Rule" and it spoke to exactly the ideas I've been thinking about, so I couldn't resist sharing it. Orville, a Seth MacFarlane project, is a humorous take on Star Trek.  Obviously, spoilers ahead...

Majority Rule

Imagine a society guided by an absolute democracy.
The population can vote yes or no on everything. There are no fixed laws. Actually, the only laws guide how votes are organized. At the age of 18, all citizens are issued and required to wear a little gadget on their chest with an up or down button and a running counts of "likes" vs "dislikes".  At some level (500,000 dislikes ?) individuals start to lose rights - like service at a cafe. At a very high level of 10 million dislikes, "criminals by acclimation" are required to undergo lobotomy-like re-education.

Consider these examples:

  • Somebody compliments how good you look - you press his "like" button.
  • Somebody likes the blog you just wrote - "like". 
  • Somebody insults you - "dislike"
  • Somebody give you poor service - "dislike".
so far so good.  If fact, this seems pretty familiar. However, what about these;
  • Somebody says something you don't like - "dislike"
  • Somebody says something you disagree with -"dislike"
  • Somebody states a fact that you don't like - "dislike"
If this happens enough,  there are consequences.  In fact, if the speaker states those inconvenient truths two much, they can be censured and previous facts become  falsehoods aka "FAKE NEWS".
What about these...
  • Everyone votes on what foods are healthy and what are dangerous. 
  • Everyone votes on what medical practices are most effective.
  • Everyone votes on which economic policies are most effective. 
In other words, everyone's opinion is equally valid and everyone is an expert. 

Of course, in the story, the crew of the Orville decide this is a terrible situation, but given some "prime directive" kind of view of the universe they are prohibited from intervening.  Unfortunately, one of their members gets caught up in the system and faces a citizen vote driven threat of lobotomy. 
Where I found the episode to be especially challenging, however, was the way in which the Captain intervened to rescue his crew member. Rather than allow the crewman to face the unacceptably  extreme consequences of his admittedly ill-advised actions,  the Captain figures out what images and actions would sway public sentiment and then literally manufactures those images and floods the media with them. To rescue the crew man, he produced "Fake News" to sway the public opinion. 

The real problem with this kind of society wasn't so much the way it was working, but the way it could be manipulated and perverted, and this was done by people who saw themselves as superior to it. 

Again, this is very similar to our current situation in America.  Democracy is based on beautiful principles. 
Churchill once said " Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"
However, at some point individuals within the government, think they are above it. They think the purpose are superior, and thus manipulating and perverting the system itself is justified...

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