Everyone brings a perspective to the table, an angle, a point of view, a proposed direction of movement, a 'Will to Power'...We have seen this at least as far back as Plato's 'The Symposium'...
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From Wikipedia....
The Symposium (Ancient Greek: Συμπόσιον) is a philosophical text by Plato dated c. 385–380 BCE.[1] It concerns itself at one level with the genesis, purpose and nature of love.
Love is examined in a sequence of speeches by men attending a symposium, or drinking party. Each man must deliver an encomium, a speech in praise of Love (Eros). The party takes place at the house of the tragedian Agathon in Athens. Socrates in his speech asserts that the highest purpose of love is to become a philosopher or, literally, a lover of wisdom. The dialogue has been used as a source by social historians seeking to throw light on life in ancient Athens, in particular upon sexual behavior, and the symposium as an institution.
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dgb...
Sorry ladies, there were no women present at The Symposium...a statement of the male-dominated, patriarchal times that would spread over thousands of year of Western history, culture, philosophy and politics....It would be a long, long time before the first female philosopher would make made her presence known in Western culture, specifically between 1759 and 1797 with the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, arguably the first recognized 'feminist' in Western Philosophy. This is not to say that women didn't wield significant power behind the scenes relative to men's thoughts and actions...but none of these influences have been historically documented...at least from a philosophical perspective until Mary Wollstonecraft came along and said that 'Mind has no sex' and therefore rights are not determined by gender -- a shocking new idea even amongst so-called 'liberal, Enlightenment' philosophers...
In Plato's time, 'slaves' were taken for granted and they would be a part of Western civilization right up to the movement towards 'The American Civil War'...
'Democracy' is the collision -- and the purposeful egalitarian negotiation -- of a wide assortment of often strong, individual 'Wills to Power'...
Democracy has always been both the process and the outcome of an often very 'unstable', 'fleeting', and/or 'pseudo-for-public-appearance-only-symposium' among men...and more lately, women...which can be, and oftentimes is, at least partly compromised if not completely toxified and corrupted, by a 'strong undercurrent' of a domant sub-group of men and/or women who still very much 'want their own way'....and may even have their own pressing 'hidden agenda' that never, ever reaches the 'symposium table'...and/or makes its covert appearance after The Symposium...
Such is the difference between a 'democracy' and a 'pseudo-democracy' that puts on a front, a personna, or appearance of 'democracy' for the public masses, even though the real power, or a significant portion of it, is wielded in private rooms behind closed doors...
There will always be a collision in power between an 'individual's will to power' vs. a 'group's will to power', with a wide assortment of possible different 'group wills to power' depending on the size, the individual make-up, and the individual contributions of particular members within the group...
For example, there could be a general consensus and agreement of the majority of a group of politicians -- even amongst different political parties -- to create a new 'pubic tax', or to keep hidden the exact particulars of all individual politicians 'expense accounts'...but come election time....in a 'representative democracy'...if the democracy is working right, these same politicians could be voted out of office by the 'larger voting public'...for doing what they did when the public had no vote...
-- dgb, Nov. 10th, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
