Our democratic institutions our media
whether it's through legal corruption
called lobbying or whether through
outright corruption we are seeing this
and that's undermining the sense of
democracy so how do we make sure that we
control this power secondly how do we
make sure that we deal with the
inequality that is being divided its
being seen as huge inequality and that
was another area when to increase the
ancient Greeks Aristotle and Plato
talked about they said well two things
undermine democracy any inequality where
there are divisions and polarization
we're seeing that in many countries and
polarization and leading to possible
violence or but we would call populism
today and demagoguery which also leads
to false promises basically people being
frustrated and then also creating major
conflict within societies and the two of
the remedies that the ancient Greeks had
one was the redistribute of capacity of
society so that yes the rich do have to
have a social contract with the rest of
society and therefore yes there will be
richer people but there will also be
people with basic incomes basic needs
covered time to actually be part of
society an education education to fight
as a through a critical mind to be able
to think critically towards Authority
towards what you hear which is somebody
else is telling you today maybe fake
news critically be able to assess
through education and therefore the
development of theater of arts of games
is very much part of learning but even
more so participating in politics in
ancient Greek citizens over their life
at least twice took on public roles
either through lottery or elected and
they learned through participating
through taking our responsibilities
through owning the process and therefore
it became much less to be
swayed by a demagogue so I think these
are lessons we could we could we could
take from the ancient Greeks and I could
add I could add more i when I was Prime
Minister I was inspired by what ancient
Greeks did with by they posted every
expenditure that was that the polis the
city did but they did it of course it
didn't have the Internet they put it on
stone I decided why don't I use the
Internet and use it as a wall where you
just post everything there all our
expenditures so I just passed a law that
said no expenditure is legal unless it's
posted on the Internet and that way
we've brought in a lot of transparency
which is very important for democracy
and for citizens to be able to hold
politicians and government accountable I
think also another idea of the Agora
where everybody got together to discuss
and then decide that was one spot today
we have the internet but it's splintered
people go into their own little tribes
and their cocoons and don't really
discuss with each other but against each
other could we create a a forum a
government forum of the fourth branch of
government in once in a one sense which
is allows and gives the right everybody
to deliberate on the laws and on the
issues that have to be decided by our
legislature or by our executive and in
that way
bring everybody together in one space
where they have to debate with the other
side and somehow that is a moderating
force but also will be a force in
helping look for solutions rather than
just finding an enemy so these I think
are some ideas we should go back to and
think through and see how they apply to
our world today.
