Is disillusionment a feature of democratic politics, not a bug?

Democracy is often lauded as a peculiarly just and effective form of government — one that enjoys the benefits that flow from twin virtues of popular engagement and political accountability. And yet the effectiveness and resilience of democratic politics depends on the trust voters have in political institutions.When those institutions are felt not to be responsive to the needs and fears of citizens, when politicians seem not to represent those who voted for them (and seem instead to serve their own interests or the interests of ulterior “others”), or when governments seem impotent in the face of geopolitical tensions, global supply chains or complex market realities, such conditions can provide a breeding ground for disillusionment.In such circumstances, voters may be more inclined to punish incumbents than to invest their replacements with some democratic mandate — so beginning the electoral cycle of organised popular disaffection.Can a democracy like Australia break that cycle, or is democratic disillusionment an inevitability?

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first federal election to be held in Australia after the passage of Senator Herbert Payne’s private member’s bill, which made voting compulsory. In 1922, only 57.95 per cent of registered voters turned out. Payne’s home state of Tasmania had the poorest showing (45.93 per cent), whereas Queensland — where voting in state elections had been compulsory since 1914 — saw the highest (82.66 per cent). As Judith Brett writes:“It was clear that Queensland’s compulsory voting for state elections had carried over to the federal sphere, perhaps from habit, perhaps because Queenslanders didn’t distinguish between state and federal elections and thought they would be fined for not voting. Or perhaps, as advocates of compulsory voting hoped, it was because being forced to vote made people more politically aware and engaged.”Whichever reason best accounts for the enviable voting behaviour on the part of Queenslanders, the prospect of making Australia’s federal elections more truly representative — and therefore, ideally, endow its governance with greater legitimacy — overcame lingering fears in some quarters about the violation of individual liberties.When Australians went to the polls on 14 November 1925, not only did voter turnout jump to 91.39 per cent, but the requirement to vote did not lead to a rise in informal voting. Voting is part of our cultural fabric, and compulsory voting — along with preferential voting and a non-partisan election commission —  has saved Australia from some of the anti-democratic distortions we’ve seen in other nations.But because voting is what Australians do, how often to we reflect on what we’re doing when we vote, and what we’re communicating about power, accountability, ourselves and our aspirations for Australia?

If there is ever a time when politicians should be able to expect a fair share of the public’s attention, it’s during an election campaign. After all, this triennial event is when they can demonstrate to the Australian public that they’ve been attentive to their aspirations and concerns for the future, and have developed a series of policies able to address those hopes and fears.And yet Donald Trump’s reckless bluster and punitive tariffs have sucked most of the air out of Australia’s federal election, and the unpopularity of the US President has succeeded in blowing the campaign of at least one political party off course.Trump may well be unavoidable, but is the attention he garners inevitable? Are the differences between US-style politics and Australia’s well-functioning democracy now so vast that we can better appreciate the preciousness of our own rather more modest democratic way of life?

This is the second of two episodes recorded in front of a live audience as part of a special “Week with Students”, a collaboration between Radio National and ABC Education.Over a short period of time, AI has become pervasive. Immensely powerful platforms have placed artificial intelligence at our fingertips, and more than two-thirds of Australian students admit to using AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot.But as with any technology, alongside the convenience and new capabilities come certain risks and unforeseen consequences. The debate is raging over what it would take to ensure that AI’s power can be made to serve the common good.Is education and greater technological literacy part of the solution?

This is the first of two episodes recorded in front of a live audience as part of a special “Week with Students”, a collaboration between Radio National and ABC Education.Of the three great dystopian novels published on either side of the Second World War — Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” (1931), George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (1949) and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” (1953) — it is Bradbury’s vision of a future without books that can lay legitimate claim to being the most prescient. It is certainly the most relevant to us.“Fahrenheit 451” is, ultimately, a story about education. It tracks the moral awakening of an unthinking, drone-like fireman named Guy Montag, whose occupation it is not to protect properties against flames but to incinerate books.And yet the disappearance of books did not happen, in the first instance, because of state action. It all started with the steady reduction of the size of texts and a rapid increase in the rate of publication. (Bradbury might as well have been describing social media.) After that, it didn’t take much for books to be permitted to disappear altogether due to their irrelevance to the way people live. Why would you need censorship when distraction and disinterest will do the trick?But after a series of encounters with witnesses, teachers and guides, Montag is led out of darkness and into enlightenment; away from the flames that burn and toward the fire that gives warmth, companionship, sociability; away from distraction and inner-emptiness and toward contemplation, curiosity and wonder.

We arrive, at last, at the end of our Ramadan series — and the second of our pair of positive responses to radical disappointment with the world. For some, hope is untrustworthy, amounting to little more than dreaming or wish-fulfilment. For others, hope can turn into kind of bad faith demand, leading to dishonest politics (in the name of being up-beat or staying positive) or even to habituated practices of avoidance.But hope can also galvanise a community to work together for an otherwise uncertain future, in a way that mere optimism cannot. One immediately thinks of someone like Martin Luther King. Jr. But there is another example to draw upon. In his book Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, about the last great Chief of Crow Nation, Plenty Coups (1848 – 1932), the philosopher Jonathan Lear writes:“Plenty Coups was able to lead himself and his people forward into an unimaginable future committed to the idea that something good would emerge. He carried himself and his people forward, committed to the idea that it was worthwhile to do so, even while acknowledging that his own local understanding of the good life would vanish. This is a daunting form of commitment: to a goodness in the world that transcends one’s ability to grasp what it is … There may be various forms of ethical criticism one might be tempted to level at this form of hopefulness: that it was too complacent; that it didn’t face up to the evil that had been inflicted on the Crow tribe. But it is beyond question that the hope was a remarkable human accomplishment — in no small part because it avoided despair.”Hope, then, can emerge from loss, from mourning, from the experience of devastation. But this raises the further question of whether an anchor “out there” is necessary to sustain communal action. Can the impetus not also come from inherent value of the work itself — work that would be good and right to do, regardless of the outcome?—Upcoming live events:In the first week of April, as part of a special “Week with Students” — a joint initiative by Radio National and ABC Education — Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens will be recording two episodes of The Minefield with an audience of Year 11-12 students, parents and teachers.-1. ARE WE ON THE BRINK OF A WORLD WITHOUT BOOKS?The irony is unavoidable: a novel that imagines a world in which books are banned — and in which entertainment has swallowed up education — has earned a stable place on the Australian high school curriculum. For this live recording of The Minefield, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens are leaning all the way into that irony and will discuss Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451” with students, parents and teachers at the Parramatta Library. The future Bradbury imagined in 1953 has never felt closer; is it too late to heed his warning?WHEN: Friday, 4 April 2025. Arrive at 5:30pm for a 6:00pm start.WHERE: Parramatta Library, 5 Parramatta Square, NSW.Register your interest on Eventbrite.-2. IS AI A TECHNOLOGY TO BE FEARED OR A TOOL TO BE TAUGHT?Over a short period of time, AI has become pervasive. Immensely powerful platforms have placed artificial intelligence at our fingertips, and more than two-thirds of Australian students admit to using AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot. But as with any technology, alongside the convenience and new capabilities come certain risks and unforeseen consequences. The debate is raging over what it would take to ensure that AI’s power can be made to serve the common good. Is education and greater technological literacy part of the solution?WHEN: Saturday, 5 April 2025. Arrive at 10.30am for an 11:00am start.WHERE: ABC Ultimo, 700 Harris Street, Ultimo, NSW.Register your interest on Eventbrite.

For the last two episodes, we’ve been discussing what might be called negative or aversive responses to radical disappointment with the world — even though, as we’ve seen, both despair and fear have characteristics which commend them. In the next two episodes, we’re turning to rather more positive responses.There is little doubt that pessimism enjoys a certain cultural cache these days. It is easy to say that things are bad and getting worse. And yet such a claim can have a corrosive effect on the democratic bonds on which the very possibility of change depends.Likewise, the demand on the part of some to be optimistic — whether that is the meliorist appeal that “it’s not all that bad”, or the political pledge that “the guardrails will hold”, or the techno-utopian promise that “technology will save us” — can act as a pressure-release valve on our moral emotions. At worst, such optimism can function as what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the “tranquilizing drug of gradualism”.So does optimism absolve us of moral agency, or is a tempered optimistic disposition — what we could call a certain “cheerfulness” — the condition of possibility whereby we are willing to rely upon one another and entrust ourselves to each other’s care?—Upcoming live events:In the first week of April, as part of a special “Week with Students” — a joint initiative by Radio National and ABC Education — Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens will be recording two episodes of The Minefield with an audience of Year 11-12 students, parents and teachers.-1. ARE WE ON THE BRINK OF A WORLD WITHOUT BOOKS?The irony is unavoidable: a novel that imagines a world in which books are banned — and in which entertainment has swallowed up education — has earned a stable place on the Australian high school curriculum. For this live recording of The Minefield, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens are leaning all the way into that irony and will discuss Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451” with students, parents and teachers at the Parramatta Library. The future Bradbury imagined in 1953 has never felt closer; is it too late to heed his warning?WHEN: Friday, 4 April 2025. Arrive at 5:30pm for a 6:00pm start.WHERE: Parramatta Library, 5 Parramatta Square, NSW.Register your interest on Eventbrite.-2. IS AI A TECHNOLOGY TO BE FEARED OR A TOOL TO BE TAUGHT?Over a short period of time, AI has become pervasive. Immensely powerful platforms have placed artificial intelligence at our fingertips, and more than two-thirds of Australian students admit to using AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot. But as with any technology, alongside the convenience and new capabilities come certain risks and unforeseen consequences. The debate is raging over what it would take to ensure that AI’s power can be made to serve the common good. Is education and greater technological literacy part of the solution?WHEN: Saturday, 5 April 2025. Arrive at 10.30am for an 11:00am start.WHERE: ABC Ultimo, 700 Harris Street, Ultimo, NSW.Register your interest on Eventbrite.

Throughout the month of Ramadan, we are examining the range of emotions that arise in response to radical disappointment with the state of the world. Last week, we looked at the centripetal emotion of despair — a response that can cause us to withdraw into ourselves. This week, we turn to the centrifugal emotion of fear — which can take the form of paralysis, but most often is directed outward toward some threat.There are few emotions that are more natural than fear. While fear might be necessary for survival, it is not an emotion we can live comfortably with. We prefer to live without fear, which most often means eradicating what we imagine to be the source or cause of that fear. And therein lies the problem.

The political climate over the last six months in much of the world has been undeniably dark. It’s little wonder that so many people seem to have given in to despair.The causes of this prevailing condition are numerous — they include the ongoing death and destruction in Ukraine and Gaza, the devastating return of dead Israeli hostages, the rising tide of antisemitic and Islamophobic violence, the tearing of Australia’s social fabric, the ascendancy of anti-democratic forces in the world’s advanced democracies, the seeming impotence of international and constitutional law to safeguard our ideals of justice and accountability, the waning of political determination to address climate change.Our despair stems from a sense of radical disappointment with the state of the world. It is not only that the world seems impervious to our collective aspirations for justice, peace and the protection of the vulnerable — it is as if the world rewards mere force and a casual indifference to the fragility of human life.Over the four weeks of the month of Ramadan, we will be exploring some of our responses to this radical disappointment with the world — beginning, appropriately, with despair itself. Should despair always be avoided? When it gives rise to resignation and a kind of nihilist inaction, yes. But despair can also be a morally fitting response to the preciousness of what it is that is lost or under threat.Could it even be, as Henry David Thoreau recognised, that despair can be “the slime and muck” out of which hope, like a water lily, can grow?

As the results of the recent German election came in, a familiar pattern took shape. A broadly unpopular centre-left political party was voted out — due, in no small part, to its immigration policies and perceived economic failures — in favour of a centre-right party who pledged to adopt a “stronger” approach to borders and migrants, and to restore the nation to its former prosperity.Lurking in the wings, meanwhile, is growing far-right movement that cannot overtly be courted by the governing parties, but whose popular appeal is implicitly acknowledged in the way they frame their policies and rhetoric.For decades, the “firewall” (die Brandmauer) has stood between the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), on one side, and the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and the centre-left Social Democratic Party, on the other. But forces from with without, and political tactics from within, seem intent on testing whether that non-cooperation agreement should continue to hold.So is a “firewall” — which seeks to limit the parliamentary influence of the far-right — the right way to defend a constitutional democracy, or does it undermine claims of democratic legitimacy?