General Will—A collection of essays

September 2025 collection of essays.

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A very short summary

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions. —Thomas Paine

Human beings cannot be trusted to do the right thing. So, for a just society, it is important to prevent the concentration of political power in the hands of a few individuals or factions for prolonged periods of time. The only way I can think of achieving this is to replace democracy-by-election with democracy-by-sortition. Since that will not be allowed to happen by the incumbent political powers the alternative is to establish a political party run by a scheme of rules which has sortition as its fundamental basis and try to get this party enough seats in the parliament to be able to form a government. Then it can start working towards changing the democratic process gradually to transition to democracy-by-sortition.

General Will

How can persons be free and, at the same time,
be obliged to obey the laws of the state?

It was to resolve the above question that Rousseau came up with the concept of the General Will. This domain name, generalwill.org is inspired by this concept and I think it is appropriate given the subject matter that I write about. In this collection of essays there is one titled The General Will where I have attempted to explain the concept.

In these essays I have made the point that

The social contract does not bind us to be governed by the majority rule,
it binds us to be governed by the general will.

I have wandered into the subjects of human nature, justice (social justice), the rational basis of morality, leadership and education and arrived at governance in democratic states.

I believe that the roots of most of mankind's problems can (and should be) traced back to human nature. Not the nature of specific individuals but the nature of human beings generally. Unless we recognise and acknowledge our common natural propensities and inclinations for what they really are we cannot start to address mankind's problems in earnest. Justice, morality, leadership, governance all make the assumption that (general) human nature is good which is not rationally justified. The idea of what is good is taken as settled when it really is not and hardly any thought is given to the fact that different individuals can and do have different conception of good. It is wrong to prioritise one's conception of the good over another rational being's conception of the good but this is exactly what political power does.

There isn't much that is original in the collection of essays. I have brought together ideas and concepts from a variety of sources (mostly reading books and on the internet, listening to Radio 4, watching and listening to some YouTube channels and, discussions with friends and acquaintances) and tried to stretch the synthesis in interesting and useful ways.

I cite and quote my sources quite a lot (although I am sure I miss acknowledging some) but the intention is only to give credit and recognition, not to argue from authority. No opinion should be taken to be true or correct based on authority only, without a well-reasoned justification.

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