November 5th and 6th, 2024, is not democracy’s finest hour.
Whether you are a supporter of Donald Trump or a supporter of Kamala Harris, you cannot be happy at the calibre of the public discussion during the recent US presidential race.
That discussion has been dominated by distortions, by polarisation, by superficialities, and by misleading oversimplifications.
Any nation that is unable to have an honest, open, conciliatory discussion about the key issues of social wellbeing, is likely to be devastated by the strong winds of disruption that are imminent. It is likely to be overwhelmed by literal floods and fires arising from climate change. And likely to become easy pickings for its enemies both at home and overseas.
To quote from the Sermon on the Mount in the gospel according to Matthew, a house built on sand cannot stand. A house built upon superficiality will fall.
For a sustainable future, we need more solid foundations. We need a fuller shared understanding of the basis of human flourishing – an understanding that respects multiple perspectives and multiple lived experiences. We need a deeper societal agreement about the things that matter most. We need bonds of mutual support, that enable each of us to become better versions of ourselves.
To call a future a sustainable future doesn’t mean there will be no change. Change is fundamental to human life, and we must anticipate that a great deal more change lies ahead – changes in technology, demographics, ideas, standards, and narratives.
Similarly, a sustainable future doesn’t mean there will be no disagreements. But it requires people not to be constantly disagreeable, or contemptuous.
To help us build a sustainable future that can thrive on change rather than collapsing, and where disagreements are constructive rather than contemptuous, whither can we turn?
As someone who spent 25 years immersed in the technology industry, my first instinct is to suggest that we should turn to technology. However, the USA is already awash with technology. The companies that are at the forefront of the global race toward AI superintelligent are headquartered in the US. That surfeit of technology has by no means translated into better democracy.
My next instinct, as someone with a strong personal interest in philosophy, is to suggest that we need to encourage more people to appreciate the insights of that field. Instead of being swept along by rip-roaring tides of “we can” and “we want to”, we need to spend more time pondering “we should” – more time considering alternative scenarios for how the future might unfold.
But even before people are willing to look at alternative possibilities, there needs to be a softening of the spirit.
So my biggest personal takeaway, overnight, is that I should stop looking with hostility or contempt at the vast numbers of people who have reached different decisions, from me, about (for example) which person should become the President of the USA. For that reason, I have resolved to spend some time over the next few days listening to the audio of the 2019 book by Arthur C. Brooks, Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt.
(The book has the word ‘America’ in its title, but I feel sure its messages apply elsewhere in the world too.)
Earlier this morning, the following sentence from the book’s opening chapter struck me hard: “We need national healing every bit as much as economic growth”.
That’s a good start!
(I prepared the remarks above to share with attendees at a private roundtable conversation this evening, arranged long before the US election took place – a conversation with the topic “How can we harness emerging technology to improve our democracies?”)
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