User:Didem Aydurmus

I am a Cultural Anthropologist who got a PhD in Political Science and maintains that it is subdiscipline of the former. My area of expertise are ethics and environmental politics, though I fall into the category generalist [studied conflict politics, identity, ethnicity, development, Islam and other stuff too]. I am an activist and avid defender of animal rights, hence vegan. I like to entertain unconventional ideas and discuss tradeoffs.

Parts of my dissertation "Survival Despite the People: Democratic Destrucion or Sustainable Meritocracy" "'explored the global trends and sentiments that conspire against democratic decision-making. The trends include increasing resource constraints and population sizes demanding tradeoffs that are difficult to implement democratically. Even more difficult to implement are the kinds of restrictions that are necessary to reverse economic growth and to mitigate ecological overshoot. Democratic principles inform means, not ends; elucidating some of those ends requires the expertise of specialists, even though choosing among them should still be left to democratic decision-making. Democracy is always limited in the sense that not all of those who are affected by decisions actually have a voice, let alone a vote; this inherent incompleteness can give rise to slippery slope arguments against democracy in principle. Finally, popular preferences tend to favour short-term benefits and easily visualised payoffs and reject necessary sacrifices towards long-term payoffs; in many instances, more democracy has not led to more environmental security in a country.'"Other parts, entertained the idea of ecomeritocracy, a meritocratic system that puts our life support systems at the center of politics.