Democracy 3.0: The Consilience Project
A week ago, in “Democracy 3.0: Chaos Before Order,” I concluded with an image provided by Albert Murray, a “mainstream fed by an infinite diversity of tributaries,” as representative of the soul of a pluralistic American character. This week I’ll highlight the work of an organization whose work I believe is essential to transitioning to the next phase of 21st century democracy.
Why is this crucial? The stakes are high, as populism, tribalism, illiberalism, and authoritarian ideologies battle against a fragile liberal democracy.
The Consilience Project
In a virtual dialogue with Dr. Sheena Mason released yesterday, “An Omni-American Future: Let’s Talk Culture with Greg Thomas,” I mentioned, in passing, how media enables what progressive activists call “cultural appropriation.” I used the example of a jazz orchestra leader in the 1920s, Paul Whiteman, a nominally white man, called in the press “the king of jazz.” Since the founders of jazz were Black Americans, such media publicity, I felt, enabled unjust appropriation. Mind you, I also “problematized” the notion of cultural appropriation itself by riffing on Ralph Ellison’s point that culture in a modern context always appropriates from a range of sources, and that as long as the originators of a cultural form are given credit and honor, then it’s okay, since cultural expressions become a gift to the world.
Yet the problems of media in 2021 go far beyond such concerns. The power of mainstream and exponential technologies such as social media are one of many threats to democratic life in an open society.
That’s why the work of The Consilience Project, for which I serve as an advisor, is imperative. The founders of this project explicitly point to the need for “catalyzing a cultural renaissance” to counter the existential risks humanity currently faces. The opening message on the project’s home page reads:
Our mission is to facilitate the emergence of new forms of collective intelligence and governance to strengthen open societies, which are essential for a civilization capable of employing and safely directing the power of exponential technologies. We are developing content to inform and empower people to help design viable future systems to progressively increase meaningful quality of life for all.
Daniel Schmachtenberger
According to the founders of this vital project, our current social institutions are ill-equipped to address our contemporary predicaments. Democratic citizens in an open society require disinterested information and multiple contexts to grasp “humanity’s current risk landscape, the inadequacy of existing social institutions, and the theoretical basis of the social technologies of the future.”
Currently, these technologies are being developed and deployed primarily by authoritarian nation-states and corporations. Authoritarian states are using this technology to make exponentially more powerful authoritarian states, enhancing mechanisms for state surveillance and population control. The largest digital corporations are using this technology to further their own interests in ways that are often directly detrimental to open societies. What has emerged is a new type of technologically-empowered feudalism in which there is little regulation or accountability.
Open societies are not applying exponential technologies to make more effective open societies. Instead, the most prevalent uses of such technologies have advanced institutional decay and eroded public sensemaking. At the same time, they have increased outrage and tribalism. Beyond effects on social cohesion and stability, the same exponential technologies are increasing the probability of the emergence of a growing number of global catastrophic risks.
Among several initiatives by The Consilience Project is a series of interconnected articles called the Consilience Papers. This rich content base will serve as an educational and civic curriculum for concerned citizens, decision-makers, and cultural influencers.
The articles fit within three thematic areas:
Foundations: social theory and history to understand and address our current problems
Essay examples include: “Democracy and the Epistemic Commons”; “An ‘Infodemic’ Plaguing the Pandemic Response”; “Challenges to Making Sense of the 21st Century” and “We Don’t Make Propaganda, They Do!”
Situational Assessments: clear overviews of consequential current events occurring around the world with deep insight and analysis
Examples include: “China’s Risky Soft-Power Push in East Africa”; “Taiwan’s Digital Democracy”; and “Deindustrialization and the American City.”
MetaNews: analytical and computational tools to clarify what happens when news breaks. “It analyzes thousands of stories in order to understand important moments in recent news cycles, producing a detailed analysis of representative stories from across the political spectrum.”
Example: “Were Pallets of Bricks Planted at Black Lives Matter Protests”
Who are the people behind The Consilience Project? Among them are two persons whose names and ideas have been mentioned on these pages: Daniel Schmachtenberger and Zak Stein. But the larger staff and advisory group round out the picture of a serious collection of people dedicated to preserving and advancing our democracy.
In part three of this series on Democracy 3.0, we’ll continue our exploration into organizations and models for confrontation, imagination, and generative engagement.