Over the last half-decade global shifts have sent a quake through democratically designed institutions. These events are shifting the ground that is the international order responsible for the development of current economic, political and social systems. Despite the insecurity among those whose dominance is waning, marginalized nations and people – those further from the centres of influence and decision making – aim to use the expanding fissures to their advantage. These openings offer as much or more opportunity as has been available in any period since the end of the Second World War – the same time that the United States became the world authority. Those in tune with current trends predict that the next few years will be particularly significant in determining the future of international order and the role that democratic institutions will play in that order.
Large global shifts produce a paradoxical response among those most aware of its existence/imminence. Generally, those who have done well under a current system are anxious of change, especially if that change is difficult to manipulate to suit their wishes. The thing is that those with influence are advantageously positioned to use shifts to suit their interests, in fact many are designed to do exactly that, but in this matrix some shifts are tidal-like. For instance a major cause of First World War was the economic upheaval produced by the Industrial Revolution. Wealth generation, disproportionately controlled by the banking, agricultural, and political elite prior to the invention of the combustion engine, suddenly had a new contender in the form of an influential and growing manufacturing elite. During World War I the “war machine” most accurately embodied its name – both fronts fought with the fruit of mechanized energy to deadly effect. It was in the field of war that the manufacturing elite confirmed their powerful status.
In a fiery display of arrogance, to disguise their insecurity, the powerful were willing to sacrifice the lives of millions to hold on to their waning influence. In times of significant change, for as anxious as those at the precipice are, there is an equal amount of excitement among those who are looking up the slope. The fissures provide room for those with enough forethought to instate themselves into positions of influence. Perhaps histories finest example of this type of phenomenon occurred at the time during and after the Black Death. The bubonic plague spared neither young nor old, slave nor free, rich nor poor; everyone was susceptible to the fatal effects of the disease for which there was no cure. But just as the bodies piled up, so too did the opportunity for the plague’s survivors. People stuck in the lowly position they had been born into could now realistically escape their class and seize new ground, literally and figuratively. (For those with few or negative dollars in the bank account try not to curse COVID-19 for being so comparatively mild.) During this period the influential who survived were able to increase their share of land and capital. Still, fissures opened unlike any that been seen for decades before – not unlike our current circumstance.
How then do this topic of change relate to the insecurity of democratic systems that were alluded to earlier? To return to more recent history the post-enlightenment democracy project was tried during the World Wars with the result being an astounding victory for democracy. Whether many or few of the then-popular fascist and communist ideologies were integrated into the western democratic experiment is a topic for another essay, but at least in substance democracy, dominant in the pre-wars era, maintained it’s dominance post-wars even while it changed forms. The democratic principles and their inseparable economic assumptions continued to inform (by choice and by force) the development of individual nation states and overarching international bodies of governance.
We are currently in the longest antebellum period in centuries if not millennia; no major powers have been engaged in hot, non-proxy war since the Postdam Conference. The possibility of this relatively miraculous 77 year gap coming to an end is at one of its most anticipatory points, only surpassed by the Cuban Missile Crisis. Democracy’s enemies – the oligarchic Russian Federation and the communist People’s Republic of China – are comparatively weak but emboldened as is clear in the case of the War in Ukraine and the increasing threat of war in Taiwan.
Similar to the catalytic Industrial Revolution humans are experiencing a technological revolution that is changing the way we operate. Even while the impacts of the Industrial Revolution are still being felt, a growing majority of the globe hold access to almost as much information as is humanly available – all in the palm of their hand. It is no wonder that in this increasingly informed, but not necessarily educated, world that the earth is shifting, and quickly. Any person with a reasonable grasp of how to surf the internet can, and regularly does, find information that reveals the true nature of the plates under our feet, so to speak. Libraries worth of this information reveal the true nature of those who have been most politically involved over the antebellum period. One book by Vincent Bevins Jakarta Method is particularly telling. Crucially this information reveals the inherent contradictions and hypocrisy of democratic powers of whom many presumed were the most moral of nations. Ironically, the nations that are democratic allow for the most free and unfettered access to information that is abetting in the collective loss of trust.
The effects of the change in the conscious understanding of the true nature of the world brought on by the Information Revolution has recently been added to by a pandemic, war in Europe, and climate change, to say little of shocks that are causing a global shift. All things considered democracy is as strong as it’s ever been for as long as it can continue withstand the current quakes. For all people who continue to trust in its precepts or even those that are cynical of them, democracy is not about to leave but it is ready to adjust to the 21st century demands – speak up and make a difference.
Up to this point I have set the scene for what in future blog posts will explore the future of democracy. For those of you academically inclined enough to have read this far, I presume that there are some frustrations about my use of concepts and histories whose definitions are debated at least; I see you. If my semantics seem vague to you or if you think that my reasoning is flawed, I want to know about it. Email me rowanfroese@gmail.com if you’d like to dispute my claims or even better if you think there is something I missed that would help to substantiate the argument even further. There is a lot left to write, and I will write more on this in the future, but I hope that before then some of you will take the opportunity to put these ideas through the fire.
Becoming Superhuman 
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