The Paradox of Democracy
All democratic communities are held together not by a shared conception of truth but by a commonly recognized experience and a commitment to active dialogue.
Zac Gershberg • The Paradox of Democracy
There is no democracy without an open process of deliberation, and there is no democracy whose processes of deliberation escape the hazards of persuasive rhetoric.
Zac Gershberg • The Paradox of Democracy
To this we can add, there is no well-functioning democracy in which the public cannot collectively harness the attention to deliberate and address an issue of pressing concern.
Yet conflating democracy with good government would be an intellectual and historical mistake. Democracy, from the Athenians to today, has never promised good government. It has only promised—it can only promise—a freedom of deliberation among citizens and their representatives, with rhetoric as the key tool with which to exercise such freedom.
Zac Gershberg • The Paradox of Democracy
Technologies changed media that changed communicative styles that changed culture that changed thinking and interaction. How we centered ourselves as individuals and the relationships we had to culture, institutions, and the nation-state all transformed.
Zac Gershberg • The Paradox of Democracy
We’re now confronting the greatest structural challenge to democracy we’ve ever seen: a truly open society. Without gatekeepers, there are no constraints on discourse. Digital technology has changed everything. Consequently, reality is up for grabs in a way it never has been before.
Zac Gershberg • The Paradox of Democracy
We’re told about the world before we see it, we imagine things before we experience them, and we become hostages to these preconceptions. These narratives give us an ordered picture of the world, to which our tastes and stereotypes and values are anchored.
Zac Gershberg • The Paradox of Democracy
with so much noise on social media and so many news outlets disseminating contradictory information, citizens are justifiably confused and cynical. Many find it easier to retreat into echo chambers and share misinformation than discern what’s real amid the chaos of the public sphere.
Zac Gershberg • The Paradox of Democracy
In his 1922 opus, Public Opinion, Lippmann poses a straightforward question: Can citizens achieve a basic knowledge of public affairs and then make reasonable choices about what to do? If the answer is no, then the entire democratic project is at best a folly.
Zac Gershberg • The Paradox of Democracy
technological maelstrom that saturates our own cultural environment