Henry Giroux, McMaster University via The Conversation Canada.

According to famed anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, the central question of our times is whether we’re witnessing the worldwide rejection of liberal democracy and its replacement by some sort of populist authoritarianism.

There’s no doubt that democracy is under siege in several countries, including the United States, Turkey, the Philippines, India and Russia. Yet what’s often overlooked in analyses of the state of global democracy is the importance of education. Education is necessary to respond to the formative and often poisonous cultures that have given rise to the right-wing populism that’s feeding authoritarian ideologies across the globe.

Under neo-liberal capitalism, education and the way that we teach our youth has become central to politics. Our current system has encouraged a culture of self-absorption, consumerism, privatization and commodification. Civic culture has been badly undermined while any viable notion of shared citizenship has been replaced by commodified and commercial relations. What this suggests is that important forms of political and social domination are not only economic and structural, but also intellectual and related to the way we learn and teach.

One of the great challenges facing those who believe in a real democracy, especially academics and young people, is the need to reinvent the language of politics in order to make clear that there is no substantive and inclusive democracy without informed citizens.

Democracy Demands Questions

It is imperative for academics to reclaim higher education as a tool of democracy and to connect their work to broader social issues. We must also assume the role of public intellectuals who understand there’s no genuine democracy without a culture of questioning, self-reflection and genuine critical power.

As well, it’s crucial to create conditions that expand those cultures and public spheres in which individuals can bring their private troubles into a larger system.

It’s time for academics to develop a culture of questioning that enables young people and others to talk back to injustice. We need to make power accountable and to embrace economic and social justice as part of the mission of higher education. In other words, academics need to teach young people how to hold politicians and authority accountable.

All generations face trials unique to their own times. The current generation of young people is no different, though what this generation is experiencing may be unprecedented. High on the list of trials is the precariousness of the time — a time in which the security and foundations enjoyed by earlier generations have been largely abandoned. Traditional social structures, long-term jobs, stable communities and permanent bonds have withered in the face of globalization, disposability and the scourge of unbridled consumerism.

Rallying Cry: Youth Must Stand Up to Defend #Democracy https://t.co/5WoZvUf7Y7 #cdnpoli via @ConversationCA

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 14, 2017

Social Contract Shrinking

This is a time when massive inequality plagues the planet. Resources and power are largely controlled by a small financial elite. The social contract is shrinking: war has become normalized, environmental protections are being dismantled, fear has become the new national anthem, and more and more people, especially young people, are being written out of democracy’s script.

Yet around world, the spirit of resistance on the part of young people is coming alive once again as they reject the growing racism, Islamaphobia, militarism and authoritarianism that is emerging all over the globe.

They shouldn’t be discouraged by the way the world looks at the present moment. Hope should never be surrendered to the forces of cynicism and resignation.

Instead, youth must be visionary, brave, willing to make trouble and to think dangerously. Ideas have consequences, and when they’re employed to nurture and sustain a flourishing democracy in which people struggle for justice together, history will be made.

Youth must reject measuring their lives simply in traditional terms of wealth, prestige, status and the false comforts of gated communities and gated imaginations. They must also refuse to live in a society in which consumerism, self-interest and violence function as the only viable forms of political currency.

These goals are politically, ethically and morally deficient and capitulate to the bankrupt notion that we are consumers first and citizens second.

Vision is More Than Sight

Instead, young people must be steadfast, generous, honest, civic-minded and think about their lives as a project rooted in the desire to create a better world.

They must expand their dreams and think about what it means to build a future marked by a robust and inclusive democracy. In doing so, they need to embrace acts of solidarity, work to expand the common good and collectivize compassion. Such practices will bestow upon them the ability to govern wisely rather than simply be governed maliciously.

I have great hope that this current generation will confront the poisonous authoritarianism that is emerging in many countries today. One strategy for doing this is to reaffirm what binds us together. How might we develop new forms of solidarity? What would it mean to elevate the dignity and decency of everyday people, everywhere?

Young people need to learn how to bear witness to the injustices that surround them. They need to accept the call to become visionaries willing to create a society in which people, as the great journalist Bill Moyers argues, can “become fully free to claim their moral and political agency.”

Near the end of her life, Helen Keller was asked by a student if there was anything worse than losing her sight. She replied losing her vision would have been worse. Today’s young people must maintain, nurture and enhance their vision of a better world.

This was adapted from a recent commencement address given in Glasgow, Scotland, by Prof. Giroux, named one of the top 50 educational thinkers of modern times

Henry Giroux, Chaired professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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This is a guest post by Alex Himelfarb, director of the Glendon School of International and Public Affairs and a former Clerk of the Privy Council. It originally appeared in the Toronto Star.

Samara recently published yet another study showing that Canadians, especially young Canadians, are profoundly disengaged from formal politics.  Not only are citizens voting less and participating less in political parties, they are not writing, reading or even talking with friends about party politics. While many are still donating money and time to causes, they don’t have much use for politics.

Of course this is not the first such study. With every passing year, we get more evidence that trust in politicians, government and our democratic institutions is in sharp decline. Every election seems to bring a new low in voter turnout and, inevitably, a flurry of opinion on what needs to be done – elevate politics, renew democratic institutions, strengthen accountability and transparency, motivate disengaged citizens. And yes, these are all worthy goals but despite the studies, despite all the talk, nothing much changes, things just seem to get worse. Maybe we’re missing something.

Social trust

A growing body of international research, most notably by Sweden’s Bo Rothstein and, in the US, Jong-Sung You, points us to what may be the underlying factor we’ll need to address if we are to turn things around: the decline of social trust.

By “social trust” is meant something more than whether we trust our neighbour or others in our community or in similar circumstance. It is rather the generalized belief that most people in a society can be trusted, including those quite different from ourselves.

Social trust is not the same as political trust, but where it is high people are readier to trust their democracy, more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to government when something goes wrong, and less likely to see the latest scandal as indicative of the entire class of politicians. Even when governments perform so badly as to make political trust impossible, where social trust is high, citizens still participate, still try to make things better. Because they trust the future and their ability to influence it, they are still capable of outrage rather than the indifference or fatalism of the jaded.

High social trust implies solidarity, the sense that the members of a society share a common fate and mutual responsibility and this is reflected in greater commitment to helping others. Individuals take responsibility not only for themselves and those in their social milieu, but also for the stranger, and for the direction of their society.

Contrary to the Margaret Thatcher view of the world, we are or at least can be more than isolated, atomized individuals fiercely pursuing our self-interest. We live in relationships with others, we live in society, and the strength of those relationships and our fellow-feeling matters profoundly. High trust societies work; they have less crime and corruption, more effective governments, and stronger economies.

Trust and Inequality

According to the research, the most important factor in determining the degree of social trust in a society seems to be its level of equality, both economic equality and equality of opportunity. In highly unequal societies rich and poor live such fundamentally different lives that it’s impossible to develop the mutual empathy essential to building trust and a sense of shared fate. When this is coupled with lack of opportunity for economic progress we get conflict, politics as a zero-sum game and a downward spiral of distrust. Highly unequal societies are also characterized by widespread corruption, which undermines all manner of trust.

Equality, it seems, not civic participation, not the efficiency of government, not diversity, is the key determinant of social trust. You’s work shows that where equality is high solidarity more easily coexists with cultural and ethnic differences, debunking the notion that equality is only possible in homogeneous societies.

Public policy matters

The research also shows that how governments design and deliver social and labour programs is key to achieving both greater trust and greater equality. In this age of austerity and tax cuts, many governments are doing exactly the wrong things, exacerbating inequality by undermining wages and weakening the programs that reduce inequality and alleviate its consequences, moving from universal to narrowly targeted approaches or starving the programs that the research shows make the biggest difference. What Rothstein’s work demonstrates is that universal programs – universal healthcare, childcare, education, income security, and access to justice, are the most effective by far in promoting equality and social trust. They are inclusive and not subject to arbitrary income cut offs and often degrading means-testing where officials decide who’s in and who’s out. They bring people together across income and cultural differences. Because they belong to everyone, everyone has a stake in their quality.

I can hear the howls of protest. Unaffordable. Unsustainable. Impossible. Many of these programs, while demonstrably efficient and effective, do require significant public funds and that means higher and more progressive taxes, obviously an increasingly hard sell. Not surprisingly the countries with the highest social trust are also those with the highest taxes – for example, the Scandinavian countries. They also have strong economies and impressive productivity, a reminder that we do indeed have choices even in the hyper-competitive global economy.

Social Traps

Which brings us to the final conclusion one can draw from the research. In countries where social trust is low and inequality high, it is awfully hard to reverse direction. Even when people know what’s needed, there’s not enough trust to get it done. This is the classic social trap. Absent trust, people are not willing to pay the necessary taxes; each worries that they’re being ripped off by the other, those at the top effectively secede from society and those at the bottom withdraw believing that the game is rigged. It is almost impossible in those cases to imagine big new social programs or even strengthening existing ones. And so inequality and distrust grow; solutions seem increasingly out of reach.

Where’s Canada?

Over much of the post-war period, with some exceptions, most notably our shameful treatment of Aboriginal people, Canada did pretty well in both social trust and equality, tucked in just behind the Scandinavian countries and Netherlands. The last couple of decades, however, have seen a sharp decline in social trust and an accelerating increase in income inequality, and while mobility is still pretty high it won’t stay that way if income inequality continues to grow. We are in better shape than many but are moving in the wrong direction.

Canadians are rightly proud of our universal medicare but we are allowing it to erode. Public funding for education is in decline so more of the burden and related debt fall to students and their families. Wages are under assault – witness the attacks on collective bargaining and the abuse of the foreign workers program. Fewer than forty per cent of unemployed Canadians have access to employment insurance. Our income support system is fragmented and inadequate – and too often demeaning. Huge gaps – childcare, civil legal aid, pharma- and home-care – exacerbate inequality. Old fault lines are deepening and new ones are emerging, particularly with respect to constrained opportunities for young Canadians. We are squandering the Canadian advantage.

The problem of disengagement, then, is not simply one of governance or style, however important these are, it is in the substance of our public policies, in the fallacy that we can focus on the economy as if it were disembodied from human relations and nature. Nothing will work to engage the disengaged, no reforms however worthy will make the difference, unless and until we reverse growing inequality and the loss of trust this yields. Only by bringing humanity back into public policy will we bring people back into politics.

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