People miss the forest for the trees here. Democratic society needs a way for people to communicate freely. Those ways are dying out fast.
In modern life, people don't discuss politics in townhalls, pubs, or whatever anymore. Online communication is by now far too siloed and supervised to the point of being unusable. Media are one-way streets, pushing the agenda of billionaires.
But you need to be able to have controversial discussions about "heavy" topics without fear of being ostracised. You need to have a back-channel to give feedback to "higher ups". Etc.pp.
A society where the individual is degraded to a mere drone (even if only loosely via framing) controlled by the "hive mind", without any recourse to voice constructive criticism is a lot of things, but certainly no democracy. There looms a dystopia on our doorstep.
To be honest, I think you've got at least part of it backwards.
> But you need to be able to have controversial discussions about "heavy" topics without fear of being ostracised.
Uh, why? People should have freedom of speech, but it feels like a lot of people want freedom from the consequences of the their speech. If anything, I think a lot of our current social disharmony is a direct result of the extremely recent development of people being able to mouth offline with very little social constraints.
Mike Tyson probably said it best: "Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it."
In modern life, people don't discuss politics in townhalls, pubs, or whatever anymore. Online communication is by now far too siloed and supervised to the point of being unusable. Media are one-way streets, pushing the agenda of billionaires.
But you need to be able to have controversial discussions about "heavy" topics without fear of being ostracised. You need to have a back-channel to give feedback to "higher ups". Etc.pp.
A society where the individual is degraded to a mere drone (even if only loosely via framing) controlled by the "hive mind", without any recourse to voice constructive criticism is a lot of things, but certainly no democracy. There looms a dystopia on our doorstep.