Overview

Across cultures, democracies struggle with intolerant groups, misinformation, social media conspiracies, and extreme populists. Egalitarian cultures cannot always withstand this swing towards the irrational. In Irrational Publics and the Fate of Democracy Stephen Ward combines history and evolutionary psychology for a comprehensive view of the problem, arguing that social irrationality is likely to occur when social tensions trigger a person’s enemy stance: ancient extreme traits in human nature such as aggressiveness, desire for domination, paranoia of the other, and us-versus-them tribalism. Analyzing eruptions of public irrationality – from apocalyptic medieval crusades and Nazi doctors in extermination camps to suicidal cults – Ward presents his evolutionary theory of public irrationalism, demonstrating that human nature has both extreme Darwinian traits promoting competition and sociable traits of cooperation and empathy. The issue is which set of traits will be activated by the social ecology. Extreme traits, once adaptive when humans were hunter-gatherers, have become maladaptive and dangerous. Catalyzed by intolerant media and demagogues, the swing towards the irrational weakens democracy and may lead to human extinction through nuclear holocaust. Irrational Publics and the Fate of Democracy concludes with practical recommendations on what society should do to resist the engines of unreason within and without us.

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“Ward offers original insights into what increasingly appears to be a systemic crisis of Western democracies, demonstrating the imperative need to call on the humanities to untangle the multilayered, complex emergencies of our times.” François Heinderyckx, Université libre de Bruxelles

Author Information

Stephen J.A. Ward is professor emeritus and Distinguished Lecturer in Ethics at the University of British Columbia and award-winning author and editor of 13 books on ethics and media ethics, including Objectively Engaged Journalism: An Ethic.

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