How is economic inequality undermining our democratic systems? In what ways is social media reshaping political landscapes and democracy? Can we design political institutions that adapt to rapid social and technological changes while remaining stable? How is journalism critical for the health of our democracies?
Arash Abizadeh is the R.B. Angus Professor of Political Science at McGill University. His research has focused on democratic theory, including topics such as immigration and border control. Abizadeh also specializes in 17th and 18th century philosophy and has recently published the book Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics. He is currently working on a book about social and political power and is the Associate Editor of Free & Equal: a Journal of Ethics and Public Affairs.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Tell us a little bit about your upbringing and your educational journey. What drew you to study political philosophy? How do you feel your upbringing influenced the way you view the world?
ARASH ABIZADEH
I had a tumultuous upbringing as a kid. My parents moved around quite a bit. I was a child in North America for many years, and then we went to Iran for five years. We were there during the revolution, so I saw a lot of political activity and a lot of tumult as a young child. Then we came back to Canada where I grew up. The experience of escaping a dangerous political situation is definitely something that has marked me as a child and drew me to thinking about issues of social justice, political stability, and different types of political regimes.
As a political theorist or a political philosopher, we think very hard about empirical questions in social science and the foundational philosophical questions. That's something that really drew me to this field. Philosophical investigation is a discipline that trains people to think analytically, clearly, and rigorously. It's the kind of thinking required in all domains of the sciences, in all domains of the social sciences, and in many aspects of life to be able to think critically.
For example, some philosophy graduates go on and go into business. They're hired by corporations because they know that these are people who can think critically, analyze a problem, take it apart, and look to see how they can find solutions to the problem. This is about training the mind to think rigorously. Then, in the academy itself, there are a lot of different fields of philosophy that are central to the investigations in other fields, including scientific fields.
Philosophy and Society
One of the branches of philosophy, for example, is ethics. Everybody cares about the ethics of artificial intelligence now. Everybody cares about ethics in the realm of medicine and public health. These are all questions that philosophers are trained to grapple with in the most rigorous fashion, and they're not disconnected from all of the other fields that people may be interested to pursue. Another example is artificial intelligence. A lot of the thinking that has gone into the development of these large language models comes not just from computer science and mathematics but also from philosophical reflections on the nature of language, linguistics, and philosophy of language.
To think that we can have a research university to believe that we can advance scientifically without also, at the same time, investing in these different branches of human knowledge is just a fundamental mistake. It's to not fundamentally mistake the nature of the development of human knowledge. In the 17th century, to take the example of Hobbes, when he was living, people were not so specialized. If you were a John Locke, who was a political philosopher. He also wrote about the philosophy of language, but he was also a medical doctor, such as they were in the 17th century. He attempted to heal people and things. So, in other words, the same thing with Hobbes, right? He not only dealt with political philosophy and ethics but also mathematics, physics, and so on. They were all interested in all these branches of human knowledge. That's no longer possible because our knowledge has advanced so much that in order to just master one field, we have to specialize a lot, but what has not changed is the fact that these different branches of human knowledge depend on the advancement of the others as well.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
You discuss the need to make our institutions both stable and adaptable in the face of rapid societal and technological changes. What are some specific ways we can reimagine and restructure our institutions to achieve this balance?
ABIZADEH
One of the things that I've come to believe, and this is through a reading of the history of political theory, and also contemporary social science, is that there is a tremendous tension between democracy, healthy democracy, and deep economic inequalities. I don't think that, in the long run, democracies can survive in a healthy way unless we address the problem of economic inequalities. If we have individuals who are living day to day, on the one hand, and we have other individuals who are billionaires in our societies, on the other hand, it will be very difficult for us to have a genuine democracy.
Because behind the scenes, there will be a lot of manipulation of the political process by those who have economic power, but also because when there's a tremendous amount of inequality, it's very hard for people to have equal standing and status in the social realm together and to be treated as equals, and economic inequality leads to political instability.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
So, in light of events like the January 6th Insurrection – where we have people in the US challenging the legitimacy of an elected president– what do you make of the fact that the public seems to be losing faith or disbelieving democratic procedures like voting?
ABIZADEH
States can remain stable on the basis of various kinds of pillars. One of those pillars is repression. For it to work, people lose that commitment. If they fail to see that, the alternatives are civil war, violence, and repression. That's one of the wonderful things about democracy—it gives people an opportunity to resolve social conflicts in a nonviolent, peaceful fashion because of the costs of violent conflict resolution.
One of the sad things that we're seeing today is that many people have been left behind in their own countries, even if their own country is doing well. For example, a wealthy country like the United States, globally speaking, can still have people who feel left behind.
Sortition as an Expression of Political Equality
Sortition, which is the use of lotteries for selecting political officers, would see to it that a legislative body would reflect the nature and composition of the society at large, from rich to poor, and whatever your background is or whatever position you occupy. It's a tremendous expression of political equality.
Social Media and Society
There's a tension between what democracy needs for a public sphere in order to sustain our democratic institutions and our liberties over the long run and what for-profit commercial corporations need to do to maximize people's time on social media to increase their profits. We know that some of the algorithms that, for example, Facebook was using tend to make prominent posts that engage people the most, often appealing to a sense of outrage, fear, or anger. This can affect the health of the deliberative public sphere.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
What are your reflections on the future, the environment, and the kind of world we’re leaving to future generations? What would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?
ABIZADEH
We're on a fairly bad trajectory in terms of contaminating our planet and rapidly changing its climate, which will probably wreak a lot of havoc in the years to come and create suffering for human beings and non-human creatures.
Human beings are adaptable and ingenious in the ways that we're able to adapt. I would like to hope and think that we will have ways of trying to grapple with the crises that we're bringing upon ourselves in the future and that there are ways forward. But my worry is that this ingeniousness and industriousness will be available only to the well-off and not to the destitute and poor on our planet.
As a Canadian, going out into nature is part of a regular practice that brings a tremendous amount of joy and pleasure. It's something that we should all cherish.
