Tuesday, September 9, 2025
At the moment we live in a pivotal time that will determine the future of democracy. What we see in the various political crises is that we are truly experiencing the ‘democratisation of democracy’, but in a way that needs urgent reflection. Up to the 90’s of the previous century much of the media and political decision making were ultimately in practice determined by a relatively small group of people. Those heading political parties, those in business boardrooms and those in editorial boards were usually the people who mediated opinions and power. This was accepted as they usually had a real popular base for their parties or media that was anchored in one of the large ideological or confessional leanings as most of the population would adhere to one of them. People would for example count themselves as labour or liberal, conservative or Catholic or protestant. They were usually politically mobilized on that basis. This has changed fundamentally with the coinciding popularization of postmodernism and the rise of internet and social media. ‘Everyone his/her own truth’ became accessible for everyone and possible for everyone to express. However nobody lives in a pure sum of facts. We are inherently story tellers, ‘homo narrativus’ (the storytelling man) as this is the way to deal with the multitude of (often contradicting) facts. Postmodernism is in practice that everyone declares his or her narrative as the truth as everyone is seen as an autonomous individual. This is distinctive from the previous situation in which the personal truth was not an autonomous choice but one that was aligned with and derived from a given truth (ideological or confessional). Also the personal narrative was interwoven with this ‘bigger truth’. As said, these narratives are the way for people to arrange the facts that they encounter. Moreover these narratives shape how people deal with other people. However if a narrative is purely a matter of personal choice without a bigger external truth, sooner or later facts will be seen purely from the viewpoint of this personal narrative. If there is no bigger external truth, there is much less capacity to deal with facts and narratives and people who are contrary to the personal narrative or ‘my own truth’ (postmodernism). As a consequence unwanted and uncomfortable facts are ignored and tolerance for people with a different opinion decreases. Of course, people are not really capable to fully shape their own narrative. They will ultimately adopt narratives or a narrative from their immediate (online) environment. The result is a narrative without any mechanism for dealing with any ‘external reality’. Subsequently we end up with ‘absolute personal truths’ of small bubbles that allow people to ignore both facts and people who contradict their narrative. These ‘personal truths’ are simply too small to deal with external realities. This development has real and tangible effects at politics. We see this in the whole political spectrum. Both on the left and the right there is a growing inability to deal with facts and people who contradict the own narrative. The problem is that after any election you always end up with a Parliament that represents many opinions and narratives from all corners of society. The other problem is that at the level of policy making, it is not possible to ignore facts without making political choices that will have consequences for someone. Many realities are too big to ignore at the political level. Politicians increasingly feel the pressure of the fallout of this mixture of postmodernism and social media. They may have been elected based on the sentiments of bubbles, they cannot ignore facts in the same way as many of their voters. If there is no notion of common good and common interest or even external reality, it is very difficult or even impossible to explain to their voters any unwelcome choices or the lack of possibilities to deal with an issue and the need of compromise with others. A darker twist to this development is that in some corners this leads to violence. Any unwelcome fact or anyone with a contradicting opinion or decision is denied or attacked with some form of abuse or violence. This is not new. The totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century did the same but then through the absolute power of the state. Today we still see the same characteristics in extremist ideologies that deny human dignity. The troubling reality is that the post-truth or postmodernity can equally lead to denial of human dignity if ‘the other’ does not ‘fit’ in ‘my truth’ (‘my narrative’). It is no coincidence that there is an overlap between the extremist ideologies of the past and extreme bubbles of the present. The answer of postwar and post communist Europe to both nazism/fascism and communism was human dignity which is the foundational notion of the EU. We see this rooted in Christian faith that shaped Europe but as notion it is accessible and applicable to everyone. Human dignity also offers a way forward for democracy at this moment. Only the notion of a relational understanding of human dignity can build the essential bridges between bubbles and can demonstrate that there is a common ground between this wide diversity of people, regardless of their opinions. That can also restore some sense of shared reality of facts. Without this shared understanding of humanity, many narratives will override facts and people. It is a matter of urgency that politicians incorporate human dignity into their political narrative.