I have always thought that deciding by majority was a good idea. If we had to wait for everyone to agree before doing anything, many decisions would never be made. We discuss, listen to proposals, vote and, at some point, choose. Not necessarily what I would have wanted, but something that lets us move forward without giving one person the right to decide for everyone.
Yet a question stays with me: what happens when the majority chooses something wrong? Not something I simply dislike. Something unjust or harmful, done at the expense of someone who does not have enough voices on their side to prevent it. Does the fact that so many people want it change what that choice does to people?
My first answer has always been rather instinctive: I like the majority when it chooses good things. But I realise that this answer is not enough. It expresses a genuine concern while leaving an enormous problem unresolved: who decides what the good things are? I have no solution that can settle every doubt. But I do feel the need to distinguish between the ease of counting votes and the difficulty of understanding what is right.
A way to decide, not a way to be right
A vote answers a precise question: among the people asked to choose, which proposal has gathered the most support under the agreed rules? That is an important answer. It means we need not depend on the mood of whoever is in charge, the voice of whoever shouts loudest, or the demands of someone determined to block everything until they get what they want.
But that answer does not automatically lead to another conclusion: that the chosen proposal is the fairest, the most sensible or the one that will do the least harm. People may be well informed or not, generous or self-interested, attentive or distracted. They may even have understandable reasons and still reach a decision they will later regret.
Being in the majority gives us the power to decide within shared rules; it does not certify that we are right. That distinction seems essential to me. A method can be preferable to others without making every result it produces flawless. Recognising its limits does not mean wanting to abolish it: it means not asking it to guarantee something it cannot.
The same applies to those who lose. Being the only one left does not prove that I have seen further than everyone else. I may have noticed a problem others overlooked, or I may be stubbornly clinging to a mistake. A number, large or small, does not spare me the effort of explaining my reasons and listening to those of others.
When numbers become an excuse
Imagine a group of friends voting to make the one person who objects pay for the entire dinner. Everyone else saves money, the proposal passes almost unanimously and the bill is quickly settled. We would have found an efficient solution. That would not make it a fair one. The convenience of many would have been bought by imposing on one.
That is what troubles me when I imagine a majority approving even theft. Something does not stop belonging to a person because others agree to take it. The consent of those who benefit from a decision is not the same as the consent of those who pay its price. Indeed, when the benefit is widely shared and the harm falls on just a few, we should look all the more carefully.
The example of drugs calls for a further distinction. A vote is not enough to make every choice good, but neither can I treat aggression against another person as identical to a decision about one's own life. Debating whether to prohibit, punish, regulate or offer help does not necessarily mean approving of a behaviour. Proposals should be examined for what they seek to achieve and the consequences they entail, not reduced to a simple “everyone is free, so everything is fine.”
The point I want to hold on to, beyond these individual examples, is this: a vote does not erase consequences. If we have allowed an injustice, we cannot absolve ourselves by saying there were many of us. Shared responsibility should not become vanished responsibility, as though dividing it among enough people meant that no one had to answer for it any longer.
Not everything should depend on a vote
To me, there is a difference between choosing together how to organise our shared life and deciding whether someone still deserves respect. We can vote on a proposal, an expense or a priority. I would not want to live in a group where a person's dignity had to be confirmed each time by counting the hands raised in their favour.
That is the value I see in rules established to protect everyone, even against whatever happens to be convenient at the time. The opportunity to speak, to defend oneself, and not to be humiliated or arbitrarily excluded should not be a favour granted by those who have won. It should belong just as much to the unpopular, to those who make us uncomfortable, and to those who hold an opinion I do not share.
Of course rights can come into tension with one another, and saying a fine word is not enough to resolve a conflict. But having shared limits means at least requiring those who decide to explain why a restriction is necessary, who will bear it and whether there is a less burdensome alternative. It means being able to challenge a decision without first obtaining permission from the people who made it.
Perhaps the most serious test is to imagine changing places. Would I accept this rule if tomorrow I were on the losing side? Would it still seem reasonable if one of my children had to bear its consequences? It is not an infallible test, but it can lift a convenient blindness: calling something fair merely because, for the moment, it does not hurt us.
Who decides what is “good”?
Here I must also return to my opening thought. Saying that majority rule is acceptable only for good things can conceal a demand: that others should be free to decide provided they ultimately choose what I consider good. If that were so, I would not be defending justice. I would be granting others a vote while keeping the final word for myself.
I cannot ask others to question their certainty while keeping my own beyond the reach of every question. If I argue that a decision is wrong, I must try to explain why. Who is being harmed? What freedom is being taken away? What responsibility is being pushed onto someone unable to defend themselves? And I must accept that someone may examine whether those harms really exist, or whether I am merely calling the end of a familiar habit a harm.
Not every choice different from mine is a threat. Not every behaviour I disapprove of must be forbidden to everyone. I can reject a certain life for myself without demanding that other people's lives be arranged in the same way. Respecting limits applies to my convictions too, not only to decisions made by people who contradict me.
That admission does not oblige me to think everything is equivalent. I can still distinguish loyalty from betrayal, care from indifference, freedom from bullying. But it asks me to support those distinctions with reasons that can be discussed, rather than treating my conscience as an authority that owes explanations to no one.
Before counting, listen
Speed is an advantage only when it does not serve to avoid uncomfortable questions. A vote can close, in a few minutes, a discussion that never really began. If the proposal is poorly presented, if information is missing, if those most affected have not had a chance to speak, the final count may be accurate while the decision remains poorly considered.
Before asking how many are in favour, we should understand what they are agreeing to. What alternatives have been considered? Who will bear the cost? Which consequences are likely and which are merely imagined? We need not pretend to know every outcome, but it would be honest to distinguish what we know from what we hope.
Listening to people who understand a problem helps, as does listening to those who live with it. Neither voice should automatically silence the other. Expertise deserves attention, but it does not make someone the owner of other people's decisions; personal experience deserves respect, but it does not, on its own, describe every possible situation. Our reasons need to meet, not merely take sides.
And listening does not mean discussing forever. At some point we must choose, accept a risk and act. But I would want us to retain the possibility of checking what happens and changing course. If a decision causes harm we had not foreseen, admitting it should not be considered a betrayal of the majority. It should be a sign of responsibility.
Losing a vote, not your conscience
It seems to me that maturity also shows in how we behave on the losing side. I cannot ask for a shared rule and then accept it only when it goes my way. If the choice was between legitimate possibilities, my disappointment is not enough to make the result unjust. Sometimes living together means taking part even in something that would not have been my first choice.
But accepting a result does not require me to declare it perfect, pretend to be convinced or stop asking questions. I can respect our shared decision-making process and continue to propose an alternative. If I believe that rights are being violated or unjustified harms imposed, I can seek a hearing, ask for scrutiny and peacefully challenge that choice. Dissent should not be treated as a defect to be corrected.
Likewise, winning does not authorise humiliation. Those who gain a majority should feel responsible towards those who did not support them too. If a decision affects everyone, it cannot be administered as a prize reserved for friends. Otherwise, we have not learned to live together: we have merely established who, this time, can afford not to listen.
I have therefore found no formula that prevents every mistake. I have found a few safeguards I would not want to abandon: limits on power, understandable reasons, concern for those who bear the consequences, and the possibility of changing our minds. They do not eliminate the problem. At least they keep us from considering it solved the moment we finish counting.
What I would like to leave my children
My children, I would like all three of you to learn to live alongside others without handing them your conscience. Do not choose a position merely because it is crowded, but do not seek solitude just to feel more intelligent either. Being right does not mean being many, and it does not mean being the only one: it means having the courage to examine what you stand for.
When you are in the majority, look especially at those who risk being forgotten. Ask yourselves whether you are making a choice that takes them into account or simply deciding over their heads. Do not use the strength of the group to obtain something you would be ashamed to ask for while looking that person in the eye.
When you are in the minority, do not turn every defeat into an insult. Listen, try to understand, acknowledge the good reasons that may exist even where you have not found agreement. But if you see an injustice, do not call it just in order to feel accepted. Try to explain it, to oppose it without bullying, and to build a better proposal.
I would also like to leave you the freedom to say “I do not know.” Not as a refusal to think, but as the beginning of more honest thought. On this subject, I have no answer that reassures me completely. I would rather leave you a question that is still alive than a certainty constructed so that there can be no more doubts.
The majority can bring a vote to an end. It cannot bring to an end the question of whether we have done the right thing. Perhaps this is where I would like you to begin: with respect for shared decisions, without forgetting the people whose lives those decisions will change. Because deciding together matters. Remembering who we are deciding for matters even more.
Papy