Hope. It can be a slippery fish. Hard to cling on to as it fights to get away. If I’m honest, it often feels hard to keep a good grip on it, despite a consistent and irrational optimism I seem somehow to maintain. But there are times when, more than usual, it seems about to escape.
Now, it feels, at least for me, is one of those times. And I know I’m not the only one.
I remember times before when it seemed to be on the wane. There have been acute moments, a memorable one being the coming to power of George W Bush in the US, surrounded as he was by a panting cabal of neo-conservative psychopaths bent on global, and outer space, domination. That was definitely one of the acute ones.
There have also been the moments that gradually emerged, unnoticed at first. Those feelings of seeming chronic decline of hope, with no particular occasion to pinpoint. Just a dawning realisation that for some time, hope’s been taking a battering. The rise of the ‘conspirophile[1],’ from the dark corner of an internet café to seeming ubiquity, that’s one of those for me.
Now, I never let go of hope. It tries to get away. It wriggles with the news, but I cling and I cling. But I think I am one amongst a great many now, and a growing many at that, who feel it fighting harder than ever. There seems to be a crescendo. A perfect storm. A polycrisis. An end-of-days feeling. A collapse. Call it what you will. Whatever else it is, it is unnerving.
In short, there appears to be a rapidly developing loss of faith in the type of society we in Britain have come to recognise as the norm. To a large degree, that’s reflected in a deepening crisis of faith in democracy. Back in the 2000s, when I was in my thirties, around two-thirds of people my age were satisfied with democracy. Now, less than half of people aged thirty feel satisfied with it.[2]
An Ipsos Mori study in December 2023 found that “just over a quarter of people in the UK (27%) are satisfied with the way democracy is working, with three in five (61%) saying it has worsened in the last five years.” And that’s not exclusive to the UK. Across European counties studied in that report, “approximately one in two people [were] dissatisfied with the way democracy [was] working in their country” [3] Meanwhile, a poll published in January 2025 found that one in five people aged between 25 and 44 thought a strong, unelected leader would be a better system for running a country effectively than democracy.[4] Of course, it’s important to note that that poll asked people to focus on the effectiveness of models of government, not on which they would prefer to live under. But it’s striking anyway.
I’ve lost count of the conversations I’ve had with people recently that feel that democracy doesn’t work, or even that it’s against us. An enemy. But is it really any surprise people feel like this? There is scant evidence that the systems set up to govern the Western world are delivering for people in any way that feels meaningful to them. We live lives of relative luxury, but we feel powerless, exploited and surrounded by decline. Decisions are taken above our heads, by governments that are obsessed with growth, whatever that is, and who are at the servitude of enormous, sociopathic corporations, and eye-wateringly rich, sociopathic individuals. Jobs are less secure, prices seem only to rise, communities feel fragmented, disconnected and distant.
There’s only one game in town, and it’s capitalism, delivered through a structure called globalisation. We watch as the rich get richer, now so much so that they no longer feel they have to pretend to be embarrassed. It’s now just a game of overt, gluttonous gathering. We all see it but I think now, we all feel it too. We feel what is being done to us. And it angers us. It causes that hope to toss and to turn.
This globalisation thing. It’s letting us down.
The news, meanwhile, draws our eye away, and towards other threats. More immediate ones. Ones that are easier to shout at. Dangers from people of this sort or that, coming from here, or from there. From the left, from particular communities, from the shoreline.
And online, well, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re in an enormous satire. Not only do we discover there’s a network of Satan-worshipping paedophiles running a surprisingly flat world, spraying chemicals on us from a sophisticated, global network of jumbo jets. But worse, we discover we actually know people ourselves that believe this to be true. It’s enough to forget what those corporates and disinterested governments are doing to us all. Almost like they distract us on purpose. Now that would be a conspiracy.
But one of the most worrying trends in all of this, is a tendency to blame democracy for the damage wrought by capitalism and globalisation. To argue that democracy is dead, because of the agonies of capitalism. To suggest the two are interchangeable and that the removal of democracy is the solution. To argue that it is tolerance and relative freedom that is hemming us in. It’s a tendency that is reflected in the statistics earlier and it’s perhaps obvious why it’s happening. Democracy is the delivery framework for society. If society doesn’t feel like it’s working, we understandably blame the framework.
But to reject the fundamental idea of democracy, because the democracy you’re in isn’t delivering, is to go on hunger strike because you didn’t like your dinner. It is to stab hope in the heart.
In democracy lies our ability to speak, to write, to argue, to complain, but more fundamental than anything else, the ability to organise ourselves. In democracy lies the route to somewhere new. And in democracy lies the ability for us, as people, to work that out between us. It may not be this version of democracy we need, this piss-poor, unrepresentative, weak cordial of a democracy, but it is a version of democracy. A kind that can stand up to, and dismantle, globalised capitalism.
Increasingly lashed to the same noose as democracy is a collection of ideas that have, until recently, felt familiar and inherent too. Ideas we often call western, although you find them all over the place. They’re often called liberal too. They are ideas like fairness, altruism, equality, civil rights, the scientific method of enquiry, the right to consent.
Yet somehow, a growing number of people are feeling a pull to elsewhere. An urge to blame these ideas, and this concept of democracy, so poorly delivered so often, for the frustrations and pains of exploitation. Instead, we’re urged, there are alternatives. Two in particular. And like two flies stuck in the same web, they are connected to the same fundamental problem.
One such alternative is found in the plunderers of capitalism. The egotistical, extroverted and gigantically rich victors of a system that has bred such insecurity and dissatisfaction further down: the billionaires. Riding in on stallions shaped like jumbo jets, private yachts and space rockets, from the East and the West, they promise a new dawn. They blame democracy, they blame liberal ideas, they blame foreigners. They blame the Earth’s delicate balance, the scientists that observe that balance, and the thinkers that don’t agree with them. Sitting atop piles of gold that would make Smaug jealous, they declare a love for the ordinary folk. All they need, to solve their problems, is a scale of political power to match their economic power. What could go wrong?
God help us.
Well maybe he will. As the second alternative we’re being sold, that’s certainly the promise. The failure of the west, we’re told by anyone from the Pope to Russel Brand, is a failure of secularism. We’ve lost the god and in doing so, we’ve lost our moral compass. We’ve lost the meaning behind it all. We’ve lost a purpose in something greater than ourselves. Blame Richard Dawkins if you like. Or go for Christopher Hitchens. He’s easier because he can’t answer back.
Without the Christian god, we’ve become obsessed with the individual, with woke, with gender, with rights, with equality. We care for ourselves, but we have lost a reason to care beyond that. Our church now is the shopping centre, our god is the dollar. Or so it goes. A return to that particular god (not to any of the others around, mind), to Jesus, to faith, is all we need.
This god, who demands our love like a dictator, who approved scripture that records his genocides, his psychopathy, his self-obsession. Who, not unlike the first alternative, seems to favour the domineering male. And who doesn’t appear to have much time for democracy or the scientific method either.
One, or both of these, is our alternative to that terrible democracy. But imagine this. Imagine that the solution is not that we need a vicious, self-centred, psychopathic, chauvinistic and offensively powerful male at the helm, be that a human one or one in the form of a deity.
Imagine if the solution lies, quite simply, if more messily, in us. The fundamental problem, which connects our two sickly alternatives earlier, is our lack of belief in ourselves. What lies beneath our discontent is our loss of faith not in gods, but in humanity’s potential, and a lack of confidence in our ability to do anything about it.
For as long as we have been thinkers, we have had within us the ability and the drive to work together, to struggle, argue and try solutions. To debate, consider and trial frameworks for our societies that work for people. And to rise up and fight when we are being oppressed.
We are, lest we forget, social animals. We need much more democracy, not much less. More democracy means more routes for us to organise, to be heard, to debate, to shape and to have faith in ourselves, as these smart beasts, to identify and own our futures together, not just as individuals, but as communities of people. We don’t need this democracy, we need far greater democracy.
Our democracy needs to be much more intensively localised, placed much more at the heart of our communities, which themselves need to be better connected and genuine. Communities in which economies are localised, enterprise is independent, corporations are history and people are welcoming and integrated.
The solution lies not in a belief in god, nor a faith in billionaires, but in the belief that we can sort this out ourselves. More confidence, less following. An understanding that it is in community, connection and humanity that the alternative lies. The radical realisation that the solution lies in every one of us.
There is an idea that speaks to this solution already. They call it humanism. It’s the simple idea that we as humans have everything we need within us to create just, equitable, progressive and kind societies, if we’d just get on with it.
But by god it needs a reboot. Too often, it feels like it lives in the dusty corridors of a university philosophy department. Speeches about David Hume, articles about Charles Darwin, explanations of how quantum mechanics might answer questions of existence. A lot of talk of logic, and philosophy, and the renaissance. All great stuff, but hardly the ingredients for a revitalising of society.
There are people out there with zeal and the bit between their teeth. They are energised, they are focused, they are thriving. But they are the armies of the billionaires and the gods. Where are the armies of humanists? Where is the zeal and energy of those that understand we must sort this out from within, with dignity, empathy and compassion as our tools? Where is the urgency that we see on the other side? It’s too quiet for times like these.
The humanists are out there, I’m certain of it. But it feels a little like Humanism has settled into old age. It’s turned the armchair towards the fire, pulled the blanket up over its knees, picked up the cocoa and sighed. Just tick along now. Go to one of those innovative, non-religious weddings we do, flick through the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, watch another one of those fantastic debates with the Hitch.
It’s no one’s fault, I suppose and it’s not for wont of trying by those with the Humanist pin badges. Humanists UK, for example, has energy, dives in where it can, and runs great campaigns, no doubt with tiny resources. But movements are more than their representative NGOs, or at least, let’s hope they are.
There is, within this simple idea one of the fundamentals of the solution to our predicament. A radical, confident, belief in the power of humanity. In there, lies the potential for a new, visionary explanation for a way out of this pickle. Not to turn to the skies, or the gilded towers of New York, the Kremlin or Silicon Valley, but to look within ourselves, our communities and our species, for everything we need to find. And a belief that, in more powerful, localised and vibrant democracies, the framework can exist that enables that potential to be realised.
Humanism is needed. It is necessary. It is key, in fact, to our future, if we are to resist a return to domination by one authority or another. But we seem not to realise it. It’s time to shake off that blanket, rediscover our youth and welcome a shot of urgency and purpose into the arm.
Less obsession with science and more obsession with change. Less about David Hume, Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Bertrand Russell, Brian Cox. But maybe a bit more of the energy of the Hitch. It’s time to channel his spirit, if he doesn’t mind me using that term. Radical, fiery, energised, passionate, determined, confident, bold, urgent, combative.
In the face of the threats to democracy, kindness, humanity, even intelligence, it’s time for humanists to get out of their chairs. How we might do that will doubtless be one recurrent theme of this site.
[1] I struggle to bring myself to use the term, “conspiracy theorist.” You have to work hard to develop a theory. Gravity, evolution and quantum physics, those are theories. I’m not sure flat-earth, contrails or QAnon deserve equal billing.