The Twilight of Democracy

A very seasoned prize-winning journalist, with deep roots in Europe and America, writes a fascinating personal narrative on how individual players get involved in responding to and often inadvertently co-creating endlessly repeating cycles of authoritarian takeovers in human societies, with special emphasis on the divide and conquer model leaders use, often leading individuals to change political sides dramatically, old friends becoming new enemies. Unfortunately, her view of this cyclic historic process is ultimately pessimistic, with only slim hope that we will ever get beyond it, despite the best efforts of new generations. As an evolution biologist and futurist who sees us as creatures of biological Nature within a larger, ultimately spiritual, Living Universe, I wish she, too, could learn from Nature's cycles, in which cooperative maturity has triumphed over hostile youthful competition in surviving species for billions of years. It is that which gives me the optimism that the human era of authoritarian empire building is coming to its chaotic end now, as we see the real possibility of our metamorphosis, of integrating peacefully and undestructively into Nature. Not easy, but doable, and so the light at the end of the tunnel she herself longs for, but cannot see.