"The main contribution of modern liberalism and democracy was to try to agree to disagree; that different people can have very different concepts of what a good life is, and they can still live together in the same society, agreeing on some very basic rules of conduct. And the challenge was always that people who think they have the absolute answer to what is a good life try to impose it on others,"
"And even more unfortunately, in many cases, it seems that it is easier to impose it on others than to do it ourselves. If we take the original crusade in medieval Christian Europe, you have all these people who can't live a Christian life of modesty and compassion and love your neighbour, but they are able to travel thousands of kilometres to kill people and try to force them to live according to these principles."
People have debated how to live a good life for millennia. Modern liberalism and democracy introduced the practice of agreeing to disagree, allowing diverse conceptions of the good life to coexist under shared basic rules of conduct. A persistent challenge is that individuals or movements claiming absolute answers attempt to impose those answers on others. Ideologies often include the impulse to make everyone adopt a single standard, and practicing those standards personally can be harder than enforcing them externally. Historical episodes such as the medieval crusades exemplify violent imposition of moral claims. Contemporary anxieties include the rise of AI, democratic fragility, and geopolitical realignments.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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