Democracy of the Mind

I was laying in bed pondering the recent Palestinian crisis and the state of my mind, among other things, when the following line struck me:

"My mind is a democracy of brain cells."

It's so wonderful, isn't it?

I have various factions in my mind that take control and cede power from time to time. They annoy me. At least, the ones I don't like. I prefer to think that I have a consistent president that remains in office as the rest of government shifts from day to day and hour to hour, a president that maintains veto as long as congress doesn't get a 67% majority. But I fear that even that is changable.

And just like real democracy, new administrations always try to undo the moves of the previous administration, thus getting the government as a whole absolutely nowhere over the long run.

There's never a consensus--always a party, a number in opposition, of varying size and strength. Sometimes it wavers near the 50-50 mark, so that it seems that I am a waffler, constantly changing my position. Really, it isn't me--it's the voices in my head. Which are technically a part of me. But I'm viewing my brain from the third person right now, so it isn't actually a part of me (apparently).

The really fun part about democracy is when a minority gets so enraged with the direction of the body as a whole that they declare civil war, just like in Palestine. Just pray you aren't doing anything important when times like that hit.

I suppose that, to look at this "democracy of the mind" idea from various political perspectives, Conservatives would believe in a strong central government that quashes or ignores minority dissenting opinions to that of the majority. Liberals would believe in a pluralistic democracy, where all viewpoints no matter how contradictory are worthy of being held. Communists would believe in a democracy where all political opinions are equally valuable as long as they pass the censorship office. And Fascists? All dissenting opinions from the currently in power faction are crushed, ignored, and censored, while the minority that is in power attempts to fool itself with its own propaganda.

When faced with such a diverse democracy as this, with such harsh consequences for stepping off the road, the only safe solution is to follow whatever path leads furthest away from civil war. That is, to appease each side according to its strength, so that each is pacified long enough to have peace. Ignorance is bliss.


"No, I'm not really schizo. Not anymore than you are, anyways."

P.S. To answer an earlier question from a previous blog post, no, you cannot believe a lie you intentionally created to fool yourself. To put it another way, you cannot outsmart yourself, because you will never have greater mental capacity than yourself in any single present tense.