The basis of democracy is elections, where the majority wins by forming government. Therefore, it turns out that the democracy is the power of the majority. However unfortunately the intelligent people over the period of centuries and millenniums always have made minority in different states and societies.
The history repeats all the time and in fact little is changed. During the first open voting of the AD Christ was crucified. The crowd chose the criminal and gave him freedom. In closer past in Germany the national socialists came to power.
It’s well-known that democracy is not the ideal form of governance, however there is no better than that invented yet. But will there be a better one if no attempt is made to see the drawbacks and no wish exists to improve the imperfect system? We won’t have a better one as long as we don’t wish it. The West with its certain expressions of democracy reminds us of the Soviet times, where people were busy with self-deception. Thus the Western countries, including USA, in my opinion, tries to disseminate ideas, which are no worse than the ones disseminated during the Soviet period.
During a conversation Avet Terteryan said that he wanted to write an article about the category of “average”. I didn’t manage to express my astonishment because he quickly started to explain that one can never demand more from a guard, administrator or a school principal to be average because their professions don’t anticipate any talent. By feeling that I have perceived the idea he stopped continuing to explain and as far as I know he hasn’t written any article about that. The whole point is about the fact that the word “average” relates to those professions, which require certain talent and abilities. Thus the synonym of the word “average” may be the word “untalented”, by which one cannot insult the bus driver or the bank manager, who only needs professionalism for his job. Also, Avet Terteryan, by being an intelligent person, was a real democrat. Moreover the two traits are inseparable from each other and are tightly linked. He thinks that the real art regardless of direction and methods will always find its audience. This way thought an outstanding representative of avant garde music because this kind of music is hard to understand and only elite can get it. But he didn’t think so and didn’t agree with type of art, which is remote from the average citizen because when saying average he didn’t mean the impolite mass of people.
But in general there is infinitely repeating rule. It’s not an accident that the story about Mozart and Solieri has become a stereotype of relationships between the talent and the averaging. What usually happens when the untalented artist or the scientist turns out to be envious? It becomes even worse when the person in parallel with enviousness has cunningness and thirst of power. At that time the disaster takes place even when the talented one or the average people live in different periods.
We don’t mean those people, who have an ability to glorify and magnify, who are able to create a background or environment for others to develop ea and become rare talents. We mean those people, who are very often called fighting average people, who happen to be real disaster for the society. These are the people, who have scarce abilities but great intentions and zeal to reach their goals. Of course the category of “averages” doesn’t only relate to the culture or arts. Very often we mention names of talented military commanders or talented politicians. The current democratic system has not elaborated and doesn’t have mechanisms to defend itself from such phenomena. Vice versa it creates great opportunities to ban the process through conducting unfair elections.
I just remembered a moment of voting. At that time one filmmaker was to be fired in the Art department of the State Television. Thus they decided to do through voting on the part of other filmmakers. It was the first stage of “perestroyka”. The ice was being broken. About ten filmmakers participated in the voting. As a result of a closed voting the best filmmaker f the studio was almost unanimously fired. Everybody, us and others, were surprised. But we had what we had. I’d like to ask one rhetoric question. Who is supposed to become an academician of the State Academy of Armenia? And who we have now? Or was it an accident that during the first “Super Star” show, Anna Avetyan with her exclusive voice didn’t win the competition?
If the environment is garbled because of the struggling “averages”, which create not background but weather, dictate their will, it doesn’t matter how they do it, through free and fair or unfair lections. Besides elections, which is only a mechanism, what is democracy? What is important in this system? Old as Rome?
In my opinion the real democracy is when people are respected not because they are electorate or mass of people but for being separate individuals. This is where the West has victories unlike us. The real democracy is when the government and people stand on the same stance. It’s when people are not ignored. Perhaps when this happens we will have a society, where the average people will occupy their modest places in there, where educated and intelligent people will majority and the election s will start to have their logic. .