Democracy is in retreat or at least on the defensive almost everywhere, while wars are getting bigger and more frequent. The trend lines are frighteningly bad. There are big wars in Ukraine and Sudan and another one is only on temporary hold in Gaza.
Smaller wars are underway in Yemen, Myanmar and Thailand/Cambodia and a larger and nastier one will start if the US attacks Venezuela. It hasn’t been this bad for a long time. Similarly with politics: the biggest countries are already controlled by authoritarian populists (India and the US) or outright dictators (Russia and China).
Britain, France, Germany and Brazil could also easily fall into populist hands at the next election. All those regimes except China and India would deny climate change, so that disaster would accelerate. The risks are real and the problems are urgent.
Read Full Article on The Citizen
[paywall]
But they are all problems caused by human behaviour, which means that human beings can fix them. Start with the perceived decline of democracy, which most people see as a recent and fragile system. It is nothing of the sort.
Democracy is actually the innovation that made us fully human. Like our nearest evolutionary relatives, the chimpanzees, our distant ancestors lived in small groups that were constantly at war with their neighbours. We presumably also started out with a similar social structure to the other great apes: a dominant male cowing the other males into submission and trying – but failing – to monopolise sexual access to the females.
[/paywall]
