Democracy Struggles in an Era of Mistrust and Upheaval

World|In an Era of Mistrust and Upheaval, Democracy Seeks a Path Forward

The Athens Democracy Forum this year contemplated the meaning of “A Moment of Truth.” It was an intriguing theme. In one sense this is clearly not such a moment, for misrepresentations, deepfakes and outright lies abound. The term “fake news” has entered the global lexicon.

But of course “moment of truth” is a metaphor for a turning point, or a time of critical decisions, roughly what the ancient Greeks called kairos and is being referred to now as an “inflection point.” Much of humanity, it seems, feels the world is building toward some overarching crisis, induced by war, or the rapid advance of A.I., or climate change, or the isolating impact of technology, or the unbearable acceleration of life, or some combination of them all.

This is a time of disquiet, even anguish. For many, the planet seems lonelier and more menacing.

Of course, as human beings, we tend to exaggerate the uniqueness of our times. Many previous generations have believed they faced “a moment of truth” or even the moment of truth. Sometimes they failed the challenge and calamity ensued.

But even after catastrophe, the night sky, the light from distant stars and the vast universe were still there; and so were the awe, the uplift, the quest for universal understanding and the sense of humility they summon from the human spirit.

The Athens Democracy Forum, a gathering of global leaders last week in association with The New York Times, was inhabited by a particular sense of unease. Inevitably there was talk of the stubborn war in Ukraine and the spreading war in the Middle East. Their terrible toll cast a pall. As after 9/11 two decades ago, the world has changed since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack and Israel’s devastating retaliation against Palestinians in Gaza.

Across the world, the gathering acknowledged, mistrust advances in the cacophony of social media. Compromise, without which democracy struggles, has been one victim of this clamor. We live increasingly in an all-or-nothing culture. The uncertainty surrounding a close-run American election, and the fracture in many Western societies between the connected living in the “somewhere” of the knowledge economy and the forgotten living “nowhere” in industrial wastelands and rural areas, undermine the West. It finds itself in a moment of relative weakness as other powers, including Russia and China with their authoritarian systems, push anti-American agendas.