One is forced to underscore, again, some evident truths. As I wrote during the Mubarak era and again during the Morsi era, I reiterate in the Al-Sisi era — democracy is both one of the greatest and one of the most difficult of all inventions. Aristotle is noted in the history of political thought for his famous maxim that politics is the science of sovereignty, which is the science of happiness. What he means is that the art of government and the management of the affairs of the state is the master of all other sciences. If the affairs of government rest in wise hands, the aim is to lead to the happiness of all mankind. A society may produce hundreds of brilliant and creative persons, but of what use are their talents if that society is ruled by a Hitler or a Mussolini? Politics is the science of reconciling (and not necessarily favouring or choosing between) conflicting necessities. Stability is a necessity. But so too is democracy. It requires the greatest skill to reconcile the two without sacrificing either. Casting a look back over the history of human discoveries and inventions, we find no less than 16 million of them in the last 5,000 years that constitute the age of human civilisation since the invention of writing. So we are informed by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example. But when we link these to their added value, which is to say their impact power on the greatest number of people, we can reduce the number of the greatest and most profound inventions or discoveries to seven. These are, firstly, electricity, which had the twofold impact of increasing mankind's control over nature and increasing the space of time available to people. Without electricity, cities, like villages in the past, would go to sleep at nightfall. The second greatest invention is the internal toilet, which promoted the transition to sedentary and then to urban life. Third comes the printing press, which accelerated the pace of the transmission of knowledge. Without the press, we would not have discovered or learned of the discovery of other inventions, at least not for a long time to come. The fourth is mathematics in its various branches. Math forms the basis of modern science. It has been crucial to enabling the transition of the sciences, whether the natural or social sciences, from the domination of theoretical-philosophical debate and normative wrangling over what should and should not be to the quantitative and empirical methodologies that work to eliminate subjectivity. The fifth of the greatest inventions is money, which facilitated human transactions in ways that were felt by all. Were it not for money, as a medium for exchange and a repository of value, we would not be able to speak of trade, commerce and the exchange of services between human beings and communities. Sixth is the university, inclusive of scientific research centres. Without such complexes for advanced study and research, the scope of human knowledge would not have been able to double every 30 years, as is currently the case. To better grasp this magnitude of growth, consider the fact that 90 per cent of the scientists responsible for human progress are still alive. All the great scientific names that have passed away, from Socrates and Plato to Mostafa Musharafa and Gamal Hamdan, account for only around 10 per cent of the world's producers of knowledge. This is because with the invention of universities and research centres, science, research, invention and discovery became independent professions as opposed to activities a scholar would pursue in his/her spare time. The seventh of the greatest inventions, as well as the oldest and the most challenging, is democracy. Were it not for democracy we would not have benefited from all the above mentioned and other inventions, as we would have remained trapped in the hands of dictators. True, for the sake of argument, one could point to the dozens of newspapers available in some nondemocratic countries. But in reality those newspapers are variations on a theme. They all sing praises to the great ruler and his boundless benevolence. It is also true that universities, money and electrical inventions could have come into being without democracy. But we would have no security for our lives, property, wellbeing and the right to choose. Democracy is truly a brilliant invention, precisely because of its power to vanquish the oppressor. Democracy fetters the hands of the despot. In its simplest definition, by guaranteeing a plurality of decision-making centres, it obviates the existence of the tyrannical autocrat. It also guarantees that government is constantly working to alleviate the suffering and better the lives of the people. As the renowned philosopher and economist Amartya Sen famously pointed out, “While famines are a fundamentally natural phenomena, they occur in non-democratic Pakistan and do not occur in democratic India.” After all, the government that knows that it will eventually be “judged” in national elections and either be allowed to continue or be sentenced to step down from power cannot neglect its commitments to major segments of the populace. Putting all the above mentioned inventions and discoveries in the civilisational blender, so to speak, we can discover why we lag behind where others progressed. In our societies you find, as Samir Amin observed, the features of superficial progress superimposed on structural underdevelopment. We shell out vast sums of money for private lessons for our children. But as Ahmed Zuweil said, these sums are not for the sake of knowledge, but rather for the sake of pass marks and certificates. We care more about registering stances and positions than we do about devising practical solutions to our problems, as Fouad Zakariya noted. We have material modernisation without democracy, secularisation with no genuine respect for the value of science, education without critical thought or capacity building, the move to the cities without real urbanisation, and transformation to capitalism without respect for its ethics, as Ali Mazroui pointed out. A modern society is a society that understands the value of all the great inventions and how they interact. Its demand for these inventions is “inflexible”, to use the term economists apply to the demand for cigarettes, for example, on the part of cigarette addicts. Regardless of how high the cost of education or civil rights, for example, those who understand their value are willing to spend lavishly of their time, even if it lands them in prison, or of their efforts, even if they die fighting, for their sake, for they are as vital as air and water. Did not Nelson Mandela epitomise this spirit? As for pre-modern societies — backwards societies, so as not to mince words — they may possess the most state-of-the-art printing houses but they lack freedom of thought. Their ruling parties may propound a slogan for political reform, but whatever measures are implemented are more in the nature of an accommodation than structural change. There might be a margin of freedom of opinion, but it is ultimately ineffective. The people are not agents of action; they are acted upon. As a result, such societies are untouched by all but the outward manifestations of modernism, in the form of the mobile phone glued to the ear or the satellite dish planted on housetops. Still, history works in clever ways. Perhaps those outward manifestations of modernism may, in the long term and despite intentions, generate a growing awareness of the pivotal importance of that “blend” of inventions fathered by the needs of mankind. No society can progress until it appreciates that true democracy, excellent universities and serious scientific research are as important as electricity, fresh water and waste disposal. The problems of breadlines, bus queues and queues to receive your paycheque are important. But the problem of free and fair elections comes first because the queue at the ballot box is the route to eliminating all the other queues, because it enables you to choose a government that keeps you, as a citizen, at the top of its priorities. A renaissance is possible when leaders at the helm of government understand the importance of the blend of great inventions and act accordingly. The writer is a professor of Political Sciences, Cairo University.
