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An uncertain world and the search for paths forward
Peter Ford
Today鈥檚 stories include the first in the Monitor鈥檚 鈥淣avigating Uncertainty鈥� series, waning confidence in the caucus system, a clarifying look at fears surrounding coronavirus, a search for justice for Flint, Michigan, and a selection of podcasts that promote compassion.听
Surveying the world in 1930 鈥� from the prison cell where Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had put him 鈥� the Communist thinker Antonio Gramsci came up with a pithy observation.听
鈥淭he old is dying and the new cannot be born,鈥� he wrote in his diary. 鈥淚n this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.鈥�
Today, nearly 100 years later, a similar sense of uncertainty besets the world, and in today鈥檚 海角大神 Science Monitor we launch an ambitious series of articles exploring the reasons for that. Even more ambitiously, we suggest a few possible paths forward.
Our reporters have been searching for solutions in all sorts of places 鈥� from a boardroom in France where the bosses are rethinking capitalism to an underground bar in Brazil offering political听refuge for activist opponents of the country鈥檚 strongman president.
For me, as a journalist covering international affairs, it is hard to miss the alarm felt in many capitals about the shape-shifting nature of geopolitics at the moment.听
But citizens far from the corridors of power have other worries: What will artificial intelligence do to jobs? Could a strongman leader win votes by offering answers to problems that听less decisive democratic politicians don鈥檛 seem able to find?听How are the immigrants who just moved into the neighborhood going to change its identity?
At the heart of all the problems that beset us 鈥� and many of them are interconnected 鈥� is the issue of trust. Increasingly, governments don鈥檛 trust each other, citizens don鈥檛 believe their governments or experts, and often people don鈥檛 even have faith in their neighbors.
We hope the series that starts today will give you pointers to places where people are pushing back on that, building a sense of common purpose, trust and direction. Because we all have to start with ourselves.
