BB, LotF and Democracy

[Kuja]

Right, here in the Uk, BB4 has just started. Well, I was watching the highlights and one of them showed all the housemates gathered round the sofas and talking. They used a sthingy to decide who could talk, whoever had the sthingy could talk.

This suddenely reminded me of the book Lord of the Flies which I am currently studying for my GCSE English, then started to think about how long before the sthingy becomes as useless as the conch did in the face of basic society.

Then I decided this would make a good debate topic: Can Democracy stay Forever, or is it always eventually doomed to failure?

And also, has anyone else read LotF, what did you think of it?

[Chickensoupcheese]

Hehe. Having only managed to watch the opening hours of Big Brother (from a distance, of course), I haven't come across this sthingy, but I've certainly come across the conch.

As with most things like this, it works for a little while; after a little while, when people begin to question these ideas, they start to condemn them: "Stupid sthingy, why the hell do we need to hold a flippin' sthingy?" I should think would be coming out of the mouths of one of the contestants quite soon, if it hasn't already.

As you said, with Lord of the Flies, law and order was eventually non-existant, as the regression to a more "primitive" way of life had taken place. A certain degree of power can in some cases go straight to one's head, allowing him or her to make irrational decisions because they could.

With BB, of course, the people with the power are the producers and "scriptwriters", because they decide what they do, and if they don't like how one thing is going, they're the ones who can change it.

Democracy, like other systems works well in some ways, works not quite as well in others: it seems more fair to give preference to the majority of society admittedly, but then again, would the majority of society always be right? If there was a democratic vote on giving out free money to everyone, most people are gonna vote for it. Of course, this is a bad idea because it would drain the economy quite quickly (bad example, too, but s'all I could think of); the people who took into account the consequences of a ruling like this would probably be the right ones, but they would be the lessers. Having the people as the power is nice and all, but I think it should be kept to capitalism: it may be better to get someone in charge of the people, a country's producer (and "scriptwriter" ^_^) to look over everything, make sure everything's okay, perhaps over a longer period of time.

Lord of the Flies was the first set text, as far as I can remember, that I enjoyed .

[The~Inquisitor]

Hm, I read Lord of the Flies for GCSE English. I couldn't stand it. One of the dullest books I have ever read...I don't know why schools always pick the most boring books.
I know it's because of the style of writing, but surely there must be some intresting ones out there...

The democracy probably wouldn't work seems it didn't work in LoTF.
I don't watch the show anyway, its so boring...(People say its funny, but it really isn't.)