Publisher's Synopsis
In this series of essays and commentaries, mostly published over the last five stormy years, David Howell picks out the areas where a more realistic but less negative picture can be discerned. The anarchy so often predicted, both international and within societies, and linked with the widespread loss of trust and respect, the shrivelling of deliberative discussion and compromise on which the democratic 'bargain' depends, and the loss of faith in liberal capitalism itself, may nonetheless have a positive side. When it comes to facing the feared chaos ahead, the forces holding our societies together may be stronger, if properly harnessed, than the forces tearing our societies, and our world apart.
But for things to go this way, he explains, we have to first recognize that we are not just in troubled times but, thanks to the tiny silicon microchip, at a key point in human history affecting the very the pattern of human relationships and the evolution of human institutions.
