Fake News, Citizens’ Simplism and the Dangers to Democracy

When we see a big family on a festive day at the restaurant and we do not hear any conversation going, but we see everybody, from grandparents to the smallest child, compulsively hacking on smart phones, we feel that a reflection is needed. Just as when in front of the Mona Lisa we see that the majority of visitors, instead of pausing to admire her beauty, of wondering who this woman was, in what time she lived, who was the artist who portrayed her, limit themselves to a hurried selfie and away they go. We wonder, without wanting to dramatize, how citizens, especially young people, can possibly acquire an objective, critical, but above all well-reasoned understanding of the world in which they should take part. How can they, if their vision comes mostly from the internet and social networks, contribute to the formation of a new society and get the maximum benefit from the advancing revolution? How, instead of suffering its negative effects and remaining on its margins, can they become its main actors? These and other questions are the ones Tom Nichols, an American intellectual, posed himself observing and analyzing the evolution of the current American society in a very detailed and documented way. In his recent book entitled “The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters”, looking at the deep crisis that is engulfing American society, he tries to identify the behaviors that can aggravate it, endangering the survival of the democratic system. But he also tries to give an answer: what is necessary to do concretely to counter this dangerous involution. He observes that, in American society, there is a new trend, in his opinion very dangerous, which, if not stopped or at least countered with force, can seriously endanger democracy. In the last fifty years, social changes have broken the old barriers of race, class and sex. But instead of producing an increase in the level of education and competence, in the United States a cultural involution has occurred whose most evident effect is a highly critical attitude, a detachment from experts, intellectuals, scientists, seen as enemies. A rejection of hierarchies and skills, an attitude present especially among the new generations. This opposition of the“laymen”to the“experts” does not recognize the role and opinions of the latter, to which they oppose theses and solutions based on feelings and fears, rather than on real data. The importance of formal education and experience is challenged: “disinformation drives knowledge away”. Nichols states that the relationship between experts and citizens has always been based on trust. If this collapses, democracy goes into crisis. Everyone can intervene. Everyone has the right to be treated on an equal footing. Aspirations are placed in the context of a more general “rejection of inequalities”. A problem that, to find a solution or at least a mitigation, must be tackled on a political level and set itself the goal to pursue, at a global level, a different Tom Nichols The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters Oxford University Press, 2017