politics
The Rise & Fall Of Liberal Democracy’s Shared Fiction
For most of human history, climate disrupted our shared beliefs. Now communications technologies do. We are caught between frames.
TL;DR
- Societies organize around 'shared fictions' or transcendent beliefs, historically disrupted by climate and now by communication technologies.
- The current crisis in liberal democracy is marked by the breakdown of the postwar 'citizenship' framework, evident in events like the 2025 Munich Security Conference.
- Communication technologies, from the printing press to social media and AI, have repeatedly reshaped these belief systems and societal structures.
- Past disruptions, while chaotic, eventually led to new, more stable and often more democratic frameworks.
- The current transition, driven by social media and AI, is still in its chaotic phase, but future iterations of these technologies are expected to help build a new transcendent framework.
- The rise of populism is linked to attempts to revert to older, restorationist or utopian belief systems that are no longer scalable.
- The emergence of a new, stable transcendent framework is anticipated through ongoing technological evolution, likely shaped by AI and accepted by the next generation.