Globally, we are seeing a side-effect of COVID-19: political violence.1 This effect usually shows itself in three steps: denial of scientific evidence, judgement of the intentions of political decision makers as a conspiracy, and civil disobedience and street violence.
This dynamic embodies violence on an intellectual, institutional, and physical level. Intellectual violence tends to break the trust between the scientific world and public opinion, institutional violence aims to divide politics from society, and physical violence shatters civil coexistence. In other words, it is the best strategy to destroy the idea of basic democracy, as recalled by Josiah Ober.2
It is fair to ask why this trend is developing in the democracies of high-income countries. However, it seems important to us to comment on these data with the following three hypotheses, keeping in mind the 2017 World Economic Forum report:3 the crisis of the democratic system in high-income countries already existed before the COVID-19 pandemic; political anti-establishment manifests a contempt for politics that arises from ethical scepticism (politics according to Aristotle was in fact the highest form of ethics4); and post-truth political debate makes information too fluid and unreliable, leaving room for fake news.5
If these hypotheses are correct, then the therapy should be independent of the pandemic crisis and based on trust in scientific evidence that is capable of proposing knowledge, ethics, and politics regarding human ecology. This multidisciplinary approach requires as broad an anthropological agreement as possible that recognises human ecology as a source for policy decisions. Ober's vision of democracy is welcome when it refers to the need to respect personal autonomy, natural rights, and social justice.2 But if we want to overcome this anthropological crisis, we should elucidate what we mean by human, natural, justice, and the place of humans in society. To define these terms requires going beyond procedural thinking to recover critical and systemic thinking, which requires a deep and hard anti-disciplinary effort. The systematic approach will increase confidence in science and medicine, improve societal compliance, and promote good governance in global health.
Acknowledgments
We declare no competing interests.
References
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