INTERACTIONS BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND GOVERNMENT
In the 48 years that I have had the privilege of living my life in the United Kingdom since I arrived here with my parents as a 15 year old boy, I have to recommend Democracy as the highest form of govement attainable. Of course, every nation has some kind of democracy functioning within it and in the extreme forms of undemocratic nations one has Communism as the atheistic philosophy of rule or some religious form of government most notable of which is Islamic States. Even within Islamic States there are different extents of democracy at play, regulated by the Quran and its Sharia laws for human conduct.
When discussing the ideal form of government, it is incumbent upon humanity to take account of the underlying difficulties that the citizens face individually for we humans are individual bodies and individual minds and not robotic machines to be brainwashed or programmed into the requirements of the State that one is subject to. We are currently all subjected to the States that we live under, so there has to be interactions between the public and the State in a continuous manner if human beings are to live in dignity and not as slaves to the systems in place.
Slavery is historic from the time that man came upon Earth and developed tribes and communes within which to live as social animals. For socialism fosters slavery where the weak is downtrodden and in the most vile forms servants used to be buried with their rulers to go together into the afterlife to continue to live as servants in that perceived world.
Democracy evolved to do away with slavery from its extreme forms and civilisation of man began once settled agriculture of growing crops came to the attention of man so that human beings had to be domesticated to meet the challenges to make society sustainable. The acted first in the hunter-gatherer societies and records show that the Viking plundering from Scandinavia harnessed warriors to plunder the resources of distant lands across the North Sea including in Normandy and the British Isles. This was in the years following the Roman Empire that extended across Europe, which had its own system of governing the State under successive Emperors. Prior to that Alexander conquered vast areas of land and even before that the Egyptian State had been created over a few thousand years in the fertile Nile river beds and enslaved people to the wishes of the Pharaohs.
In the Vedic civilsaiton of the Indian subcontinent, a different phenomenon had taken shape about 8000 to 10000 years ago. Settled agriculture was optimised under a social stratification of society in the Caste system that became ingrained in what we call Hinduism under the Vedic culture. Hindus learnt about spirituality from some indwelling Entity and studied the environment in the spare time following the harvest season of gathering in the crops. The Vedas were developed in language form and the Caste system was used to have in place Brahmin priests who would pass on the knowledge of the day to future generations. This was realised to be the way forward because time had shown that spirituality was essential to material well-being and it is this spirituality that led to the social stratification in social engineering of society with Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Sudras performing different roles as determined by the rulers of the State to be appropriately taking account of the strengths and weakness of individual people. The evolution of society had therefore become and the Caste system became hereditary so that the genes for performing particular skills were optimsed with the different roles that people had to perform for the well being of all and the sustainable functioning of the State. Brahmins conducted the priestly duties, Vaishyas were agricultural workers, Kshatryias were soldiers and Shudras did the lower skills of labouring to clean the State.
Democracy as such is not known to have existed in any proper manner anywhere. Kings had their Counsels and advisors and they had their kingdoms over which they ruled as monarchs everywhere. As civilisation progressed, there was greater interaction within and between communities (we do not know where and what the precipitating factor was) but from my studies, it has its origins in the Indian subcontinent where God was seen to be existing in the writing of the Mahabharatta and prior to that the Ramayana. Vishnu and other deities predated these and the idea came about that one had to surrender to God and perform ones dharma (duties and responsibilities) to society in a proper manner. The Bhagavad Gita came into being to reinforce that about 500 years before the coming of Jesus Christ as a real man but Moses of the Jews in the Old Testament with his 10 commandments was instrumental in engendering the idea that a God existed who wished humans to live to certain principles of personal conduct. Christianity came into the British Isles through the remnants of the Roman Empire but deriving from the New Testament Bible it was not until the Magna Carta in the British Isles is a central part of the preliminary evolution of democracy, for it discussed human rights and humanity therefore came into the government of the State.