1 Rudiments Of Government.

1 The Rudiments Of Government.

In which The Professor explains the rudiments of Government.

Out of the window, Jack Truly watched the vast city below as the plane circled to land. “That is Cape Town, Truly,” the Professor said. “That’s all you’ll see of it on this trip because we continue our journey straight from the terminal.”

In the terminal building, when all the other passengers went left to collect their luggage and then to pass through Immigration and Customs, Truly and the Professor, with a dozen or so other passengers, turned right down a passage below a sign reading “Departures For The Good Country”. The passageway ended at an escalator wich took them up three levels to the roof and into a glass-enclosed room from where they could see several giant transporters, all bearing the markings “The Good Country Transport.” The passengers were soon comfortably settled aboard and the craft took off. The Professor and Truly talked as they travelled, and between talking and listening, Truly saw Table Mountain fade away and that they travelled for a time over land, and then over sea for an even longer period before he saw land again in the distance.

“Well, Mr. Jack Truly, that’s what you have come to see — The Good Country,” the Professor said. “We’ll be there in an hour.” Every body calls Jack by his surname, Truly, but the Professor often uses the full name and title just to emphasise a point.

The transporter, consisting of a comfortable passenger cabin slung beneath a cigar-shaped pod, was quiet enough inside for normal conversation, and while they travelled the Professor started to enlighten Jack.

Professor:- Truly, you want to know about good government, and I’m taking you to see it in operation. But let’s start by asking, What do you understand by ‘government?
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Truly:- Well, it means the group of people who control the activities of the citizens and strangers in a country, and the process of laws and law enforcement by which they achieve it.”

Professor:- I believe that is how most people would answer, but let’s go deeper than that — let’s get to the fundamentals. Let’s say government facilitates the interaction between one person with one or more other people who live in a common environment. You can’t get more basic than that. So where does it start?

Truly:- I suppose, in a home?

Professor:- Further back than that, I would say!

Truly:- Okay — between two who suck at the same breast? — children of one mother?

Professor:- Right! That’s where it all begins. As soon as two people share space and facilities, drink from the same fountain, the process starts. Actually, in the biblical story the interaction started in the womb when Jacob and Esau struggled with each other inside Rebekah! But, let’s start in the home. Why does life here have to be regulated in any way?

Truly:- Obviously there have to be some rules or good practices at work when more than one person uses the bathroom facility; when two or more are in audible reach of each other and one needs silence and another likes to sing; when some people dirty the dishes and one person washes them!

Professor (laughing a little):- “You’ve got the gist of it! There have to be acceptable rules of behaviour and interaction — and it all starts in the home. It is there that experience teaches inexperience, where mother and father set the standards of behaviour. It is there where one person has the final say, and that is usually the father but could also be the mother. In an harmonious home, it could be joint authority, and in an even more advanced home, it could be democratic government where the inhabitants of the home reach consensus on certain negotiable issues.

Truly:- Right — I have no problem with that. I suppose the next step is when two homes share a common environment like drawing water from the same well?

Professor:- Yes, and you can extend it to three or four families where all the members can come together for a common ‘democratic’ discussion and find agreement. But when you are dealing with a larger grouping — a community of many houses — you then need spokespersons delegated by each such group. This is the point where individual-democracy ceases and group-democracy has to come in. It is in the attempt to continue individual-democracy to the highest levels of government that true democracy breaks down and party-democracy takes over. Party-democracy reaches back into the basic family unit with possible terrible consequences — something which the prophet Micah predicted where ‘A man’s enemies are the men of his own house.’

Truly:- Gosh, Professor, I think I can see where this is leading. It’s all so simple that most of us don’t normally think about it. I suppose we are all brain-washed so that we naturally assume that what is — the status quo — is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!

Professor:- I’m afraid so, Mr Jack Truly — that’s our most basic human problem. We’d much rather have things told to us than that we should reason them out for ourselves. Party politics — have you ever thought, Truly, in what way does ‘rule by a party’ differ from ‘rule by a king with his councillors?’ Apart from the obvious physical factors, I have not been able to come up with any essential differencs. But here we are about to land on terra firma in The Good Country.

Jack Truly turned his attention to the view outside and what he saw was a city with a mountain remarkably like Table Mountain, but other things about the city below seemed different.