Illiberal democracy, a new theory of elites, not just fake information but fake people too, the not so United States of America.

Two women, old friends, fiercely intelligent women, each side of the world, women who looking back admit they didn’t spot the very blowing up. These two women share what they hear rumbling now, on its way to thunder.

This is the first of four episodes on the zeitgeist as the 24 women on the expedition set off. By the time the expedition is complete let us hope the rumblings have not turned to thunder.

Julia Middleton 0:01

Julia Middleton 2:52

Yes, thank you, Anna. Thank you also Anna for carrying on and volunteering to be a guide, as you remember, guides are people, women all over the world, who volunteer to take the calls of the members of the expedition and and share their insight, share their knowledge, share their stories share everything to help the members of the expedition develop their thinking. As Anna said, Julia, you mentioned in the last podcast that someone wanted to speak to a woman who's brought people together across cultures, I navigate cross cultural groups daily. On one show, we brought a cast and crew from 36 countries together to create a $250 million dollar aquatic show in Macau a complete melting pot, and sometimes a meltdown. I would be happy to talk about this. Thank you, Anna, I'm going to put you in touch with Fatima, who I know is very, very eager to talk to you as a member of the of expedition, who is fascinated by this issue. Please, please, please carry on sending the messages. You know, we all create our own bubbles, and the expedition can turn into its own bubble as well as anybody else. And there's a real danger that it does. The noises around the world need to be to be listened to by the members of the expedition. We can't disappear.

Julia Middleton 4:16

It's a great word, isn't it? That word zeitgeist? I love that word zeitgeist. I love saying it. I looked it up on Google. It says the equivalent of it's the spirit of the age. That doesn't sound as good as zeitgeist. Zeitgeist apparently, is an invisible agent or force dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in world history. I'll say that, again, an invisible agent or force dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in history. I think we need to just think about what is the zeitgeist, what is the context in which the women are setting off on the expedition? And so there'll be four episodes on this, no attempt to be comprehensive, just to pick up some interesting things. The titles of the four will be firstly, illiberal liberalism. The second one will be the lost rule of law. The third is called the hunger games. And the fourth is called I am angry. This first episode, illiberal liberalism, has two very remarkable women who have agreed to talk to each other about illiberal liberalism. They've known each other for years and years and years, one in Singapore, the other in Silicon Valley, Sue Ann, whose background is in defence, and now works in a think tank, and Nicole, who is a foresight specialist. Not an expression I've heard before, but having interviewed her, I now want to meet as many foresight specialists as I possibly can. They're going to talk about illiberal liberalism, they're going to talk about the theory of elite and how it has to change. They're going to talk about chicken rice, and dinners in Singapore, they're going to talk about a famous photograph in Indonesia, that can always be relied upon to fan anti Western thinking in Indonesia. They're going to talk about local versus global, and the need to have a more healthy balance between the two. And they're going to talk about AI and deep fake, and many other things. I have no doubt, this was not an easy interview to do. It goes on quite a long time. They are fascinating. But it's hard going. Because there are two certainly women infinitely brighter than I am who touch on so many subjects. And my head hurts listening to them. But the truth is that in the days after I'd listened to them what they said kept on coming back into my mind and framing it slightly different. So definitely zeitgeist here, have a listen.

Julia Middleton 7:00

Nicola and Sue Ann, this is fantastic. This is the first in our series about sort of zeitgeist the context that the winds in the air around the world as we start on this expedition, you used a beautiful expression to me, which was about you could hear rumblings, rumblings that sort of were in the air, were a precursor, no doubt to thunder. You didn't reckon we got to thunder yet. But you could definitely hear rumblings and the expression you use Sue Ann was in illliberal liberalism, help us understand.

Sue Ann 7:37

Yeah. So I really do think we're living in urgent and very strange and pivotal times. And I'm feeling a lot of distress and unease. And it has to do with the sense that the liberal order that we've been living in, the one that we've benefited from, and prospered from has both broken down and has become increasingly oppressive, tyrannical and intolerant. And if people like me who have been the beneficiaries of the current system are feeling this way. It must mean that actually the rumblings are getting louder and louder, and it's becoming much more palpable, even amongst the elites is what I'm saying. And if I were to ask myself, well, what has made me feel this way? I think it has to do with the experience we've had with COVID, the cancel culture that we're starting to see take root in a lot of western liberal countries, and even the current war in Ukraine. And in all of this, we're seeing the breakdown of international cooperation, multilateral order in very stark terms. So we see supply chain disruptions, we see that when the when the pandemic broke out, there was vaccine nationalism, with now the rising food prices and inflation, we're seeing food nationalism. So Singapore had our supply of live chickens cut from Malaysia because they had shortages. And so for a while there are people in Singapore wondering what are we going to do about our chicken rice? You know, and there was a real sort of issue there. But Malaysia said, well, we are short of chickens ourselves, so it will take us some time to sort out that but in the meantime, we're stopping the export of chickens to you. We're also seeing the coercive powers of countries and international organisation in a way that we never thought we would. So you know, during COVID, we saw lockdowns, we saw vaccine mandates, vaccine passports and so forth. For those of us who never really felt like our liberties were in any way crimped and generally felt free. We've suddenly now witnessed the awesome power of surveillance technology and really just what the government's can do if they really want to take away your liberties. And so I think it's really a very strange time that we, you know, it's a time that I certainly have been saying to myself, I never thought I would live to see these days.

So when we actually met with the beginning of this unravelling, we didn't know it then, you know, in the late 90s, you know, in Southeast Asia, the Asia financial crisis hit and I do think those were some rumblings some hints that this liberal order was was not going to play out like we thought it would, right. So you know, we were maybe young and naive and benefiting from being part of this cosmopolitan globalising world. What have we taken for granted about the liberal orders, what we

then didn't see and which is now becoming palpably clear is that this idea that everyone would benefit from globalisation is actually false. It's a lie. The trickle down, economics did not happen. And actually only the elites benefited and gotten really rich and wealthy from the globalised system and actually huge swathes of people were left behind, they felt stagnant. They didn't really feel like they were moving ahead. And and things just got more and more expensive. I

think COVID is making those fractures more more visible now. Right.

So Right. So I mean, if you just wanted to put it very crudely, we were the elites in our bubbles were the same people who did not see why Trump would have been elected. Exactly, and why the rise of the extreme right would have taken root in Europe, right? And we would we would look at that and go crazy people what's what's wrong with them, right? And we were in our bubbles.

We didn't want any unintended consequences of what we were doing. Because we were benefiting, you know, from these things, right? You're not

just seeing the collapse of liberalism, you're saying you can see the rise of illiberal liberalism. What does that mean?

So I think the reason why so there's an aspect of illiberal liberalism that has become the reason why it can be illiberal is because it has become all pervasive at some level, right? I mean, globalisation really just the global economic order, just spread its tentacles and its rules globally. And so there is a sense that if you wanted to move ahead in the world, you had to conform to certain global rules and norms, right. And so actually, people in Indonesia felt this most palpably in 1998 already. And the picture that Indonesians really took issue with was the time when the rupee plunged in the financial crisis. And Indonesia had to suffer the indignity of, you know, signing on to IMF programmes. And there was this picture of the former Suharto, President Suharto, sort of signing something with the president of the IMF standing over him with his arms folded. And that was a picture that resonated very deeply with Indonesians and, you know, triggered, you know, till today, you could probably trigger a lot of anti West nationalistic sentiments by by just re invoking that picture. Right. So, but then I'm saying that, you know, the reason why it's become a liberal now is that because those rules have become far more pervasive. And it's, and it's not just in the economic realm, I think it has also come up to for even in the cultural sphere, right, you know, this extreme progressive, the extreme left that we're sort of seeing in the US now, and the cancelled culture that comes when people feel that, you know, the moment you've offended me, you know, you know, the political correctness, that is now in actually liberal universities, like in Harvard, the level of political correctness is quite scary people are censoring themselves to avoid offending somebody. So, you know, to the extent that it's become all pervasive, and the values have just turned on its head to become intolerant of people who don't share certain sets of progressive values. I think that's, that's why it's become a liberal. Well,

liberal liberalism was never an ideology, per se. It was a framework, it was a framework that allowed lots of diverse people with different cultures, different value systems to work together. Right. And it worked for a while it worked for a while really well right now. Now it did kind of graft off of imperialism and and there were beneficiaries and people who love who were losers of that order, for sure. And the losers now are starting to come up and say no, you know, we want our Are our worldview to it's the tribalism so I do think was able to keep a cap on some of these deeper human natures. Right. The darker side, you know are lesser angels. And those lesser angels are narrowing their heads.

You're in Silicon Valley and Nico. It's a beautiful place. Why is it so important?

Well, it's been the birth of some of the most important forces we've ever seen. The computer, social media, Facebook, Google's here, they were, like state centre themselves, in many ways. They're more powerful link governments, right? And they've shaped how we think they've shaped the modes of communication. And they're also contributors to this illiberalism, there has been unintended consequences like we created these little Frankenstein's not only can you do surveillance capitalism very well, you know, naively, the Western elites thought, oh, China is inevitably going to become like us, because technology is going to just, you know, take down these hierarchies, they never thought in a million years that they would reinforce hierarchies, right, and that they would just make it easier to quell dissent. And it kind of you once use

an expression to me of we need a new theory of elites, what did that mean?

It means a lot of things. So, you know, Suanne loot alluded to earlier that a lot of what has happened is, is in to use a wonky political science term elite capture, you know, elites had had been benefiting and making gotten very rich out of our system, and they continue to do leads around the world, it actually those people have a lot more in common. Whereas before, elites used to have some kind of moral code. So in the United States, the corporate elite fractured right when globalisation was starting to take off because then they had no, they had no local feedback loops anymore. They had no moral accountability, right. And they still did very immoral things back then. But there was some consensus then. And some aware self awareness of their responsibility. What is so interesting right now is the people who have awareness of some self responsibility feel quite powerless. And the one and the elites that are not aware that they are elites are in our very powerful are not even aware, or not even aware that they're elite. So here in Silicon Valley, where we have this myth of meritocracy, which has been, it's become very toxic. A lot of them don't even realise that this is the responsibility that they have, like, they don't even see themselves as elites, right. And of course, elites don't like to be talked about because as soon as you make them visible, they get very uncomfortable, right. And so there's some really uncomfortable conversations, actually, that have to happen. And maybe they're happening in places like Davos, sort of the elite, a forum that happens in Davos, Switzerland every year, like that was supposed to be a place where these elites would have these conversations. But this year, a lot of people were just like, they've lost all moral authority, they've lost their they've actually failed. You know, there's these conversations are like, Well, why are we meeting anymore? Like, look what we've done, like things are falling apart, and it's become, it's a place where you go and want to rebrand your identity and its place for PR firms, right? It's lost, its lost its purpose, and people are looking around and going, where are those new meeting places? Where are the new conversations happening? This is the interesting question to ask. And they are happening there is the as a foresight specialist, I think it looks the time looks very bleak and uncertain. And underneath all of this, there's a lot of political innovation that is going to come out of this, because what all these forces have shown us is just how fragile democracy is how fragile, practical problem solving in a democratic way is like, like what that requires is hard work. We were very complacent. I think we're in the we were in the age of complacency. And that age has now just blown up, right. And now we have to get we have to roll up our sleeves. And I think the youngers are showing us and are energising us in that direction. There's going to be I think, a multi generational collaborative push that we will see once we recover from this moment. And I do think we will meet we might recreate liberal liberalism in a new way for our time, I think we have to

so I actually know, you know, good friends who are on this journey. And it seems like part of the solution really goes back to community building, just at the grassroots level. Because what is necessary in in this age of alienation is really just authentic connections again, and actually peering

connections and caring if the pandemic shows anything. Is that really the carrying economy? Yeah,

well, well, the other thing that sort of like troubles me from from a tech perspective and I this is also the issues that I've been looking at, in in the think tank that I'm working with because I look at media tech and society is really this whole issue of the pervasiveness of amplified messages that are fake, right. So you know, whether it's disinformation, misinformation, the role of social media, but the crux of it is that people are really now confused about what is true and what is false. And it's only going to get worse, as you read about the trajectory that AI is going to take. We think that we've got a problem now with trying to figure out what is true and what is false just from the social media news feeds that we're reading, we're soon going to have a have trouble figuring out whether it's really me right now talking to you, or if it's just some animation that's somehow managed to capture my voice and my, my gestures and pretend like I'm speaking to you. And so my answer to all of this is that you're gonna have to just build your networks at a local level, build community, you know, in flesh and blood, and almost go hyperlocal. Again, you and

I, but I don't think I don't think localism is gonna work either. I do believe we have to rebuild our community and and think better, how do we be better groups instead of individuals, right? But but we're not going to navigate all of the challenges around climate change. And some of the things the bigger things if we just stay local. So I think it's a better balance between top down and bottom up,

perhaps I am a classical liberal, meaning that the liberalism that I want to see restored is a liberalism, where there are just common rules of the road where people with diverse beliefs, convictions, cultural backgrounds, and very fundamentally different views are able to come around and sit at the table at the public and to give a cogent argument as to why they view things the way they do and and respectfully listen to someone who has a very different set of convictions and beliefs, and somehow are able to facilitate some sort of negotiation and agree in a very civilised manner. Right. So I mean, that was essentially the essence of classical liberalism, it was a way to facilitate and bring about a plural societies that could keep the peace. And this was actually the fundamental value of our international global system, right, or of

any creative culture, Silicon Valley would not have been possible without those values, you know, there's a direct line from the hippies to the computer,

there are no hippies left on in Silicon Valley.

We've all been pushed out. And so there's a there's a big existential crisis here about the very creative, you know, diverse, pluralistic view, where we had amazing artists and musicians and alternative ways of living and being all of that was the rich environment, creative environment that allow computers to be invented in the first place, right. And the computers were not just invented by that there was a whole defence culture here, a lot of military funding of this semiconductor industry and stuff. But all those places were allowed to swim and be together and intermix and, and even now things there's a really big worry that that that culture is dead, because before will it

be more women in this new theory of elites,

there has to be, but unfortunately, in the short term, no, we're seeing a record drop off of people of women of all leadership capabilities. And it happened was happening before COVID. Women were like, we're giving these impossible choices between working these really, really intense jobs and being mothers right and forcing us to like find work life balance, like whoever invented that idea. That was ridiculous. There's never never balanced, it's it shouldn't be a system, it should be an integrated system that allows us to do both. But I do think on the grassroots level, as it always has been as women will come back and this time, I hope we renegotiate the rules of the game. Yeah. And I do think the crises that are continuing to hit us and will hit us will force that I think, I think there's gonna be a forcing function that we are interdependent that we are dependent on each other, that we need each other that we need to care about each other in new ways. And I do think that at the root cause that will help fight the liberalism that we're seeing this reconnection to caring will, I think help us and curiosity. Yeah, carry curiosity.

I think what what has contributed to the intolerance and liberalism is is the artificial pneus of the polarisation that you see on social media, right, and then it just gets people angry because you think that that thing is real.

I do think, you know, around the innovation aspect, there's no A better future until we figure out what are the new rules of the game for social media? How do we put in some rules of accountability? There's an immaturity here, this is still a very young place. These are new technologies. And part of that immaturity is a lack of self awareness. I think in many ways. They don't want to be self aware, because then if they are aware, they have to be admit some sort of responsibility. And I do think we need we need like that good big sister energy back. It's like, Come on, guys. Let's all Let's all sit at the dinner today to table now, you know, let's let's let's get back to the dinner table, we're missing that big sister energy,

I am thinking about how the world is essentially grappling and coming to terms with the state that the United States is in right now. Because it is it is a superpower, not just from an economic military point of view. But as Nicole has been talking, I mean, it has been the home of a lot of the tech that rules the world. And so actually what happens within the US the political debates and polarisation happening in the US, even the culture wars that are happening in the US now they have a global influence, because

these conversations when you have different parts of the world having this conversation, usually have the word hypocrisy in them quite quickly.

Explain that? Well, because if you just move away from the ideals of liberal democracy as as a political ideology and ideal and if you just look at real politics, and you take a realistic view of what has really happened in the world, and in international affairs and world affairs, you will see that it is often just the naked pursuit of national interest that drives the actions and calculations of powerful countries. And so in Asia, and in former colonies, they understand this very well, because to the extent that they have been colonised by the West, they have seen an experience the realities of what that inequality, structural inequality of power actually looks like. And so for all of the talk about human rights, and all of that the actions don't fit the words. And you know, so I think hypocrisy double standards has been something that resonated very strongly when we when you look at actually with puzzlement, a lot of the Southeast Asian countries reaction to the war in Ukraine, and we were really surprised, you know, why is it that there's so much like pro Russia pro Putin narratives resonating genuinely in Southeast Asia? And to a certain extent, yes, I mean, we, we've seen that, you know, the Russian trolls and bots and info ops, you know, suddenly had a field day amplifying some of the sentiments. But the fact that they resonated was because people really cheered on Putin and Xi Jinping for that matter when they took on the west, and when they called out the West for hypocrisy and double standards. So it's a very real and significant theme out here in Asia.

With the emir, it's a really interesting time because, again, looking at look at the state of the world right now, how fragile our ecological places are. So on the one hand, United States might be accelerating its decline and fragmenting and it might be fragmenting within a decade like if row path if row gets if these fundamental human rights get dismantled in the in this country, then we're just going to be not so United States where California is going to become more California and in so forth, right? Is that going to benefit the world because the United States was co leaders in creating this order in the first place. After World War Two, it was in their interest, it was in their self interest to do this, but it was, it was such a revolutionary idea at the time, the Marshall Plan all of these ideas to that we have to invest in each other's futures to because we are an independent world we'd like was a big deal. And, and we need that actually that understanding of our independence more than ever now. And so if the United States does fail, however hypocritical they may be, or and or maybe this is a time to reset, you know, and and a lot of women are looking around and we're just exhausted on the one hand from the moment where we've been in, but I do think, you know, the youngers are moving up. And I know that's my job now is to enable the right constellation of younger leaders to take that mantle and we have to do it together. So I think the other mindset shift is this multi generational collaboration model. And I think as women we get it, it's in our it's in our how we grew up in our families, right. And so we don't have to learn that And I see a lot of my male colleagues having to learn that and learn that very badly or very painfully, right. And so so it's a moment of multigenerational collaboration of vision, but women are good at managing uncertainty because we for our entire lives, and for many, many generations, we've not we've not we've been in many situations where we've not known what to do, right. So we've had to improvise. We've had to bootstrap

what you said about like, intergenerational leadership resonates with me and And insofar as women, I guess, are a little I hate to overgeneralize, right, because I, you know, women are also very ego driven. But insofar as women have the ability to synthesise and see things more holistically, or have the ability to empathise a little bit more than maybe then I would sort of see say that that's, that's kind of like what women can bring to the table, right? The ability to sort of like hold things, intention, and deal with complexity and market us.

Thank you. So Anne, thank you, Nicole, your friendship is lovely to listen to, you feel no need to agree with each other merely to take each other's ideas forward. It's a joy to listen to. The leadership lessons out of my head has been full of it. The the obvious one, the Be aware of the photograph opportunities, that idiotic man who stood with his arms crossed behind the signature, a photograph that no one will forget, I think the concept of a fact no longer being clear whether it's true or false is tricky. But of course, the thought that you don't know if it's true or false, that you're actually talking to another human being is going to be pretty tricky. And and it's a thought for those of us who have come out of COVID thinking we're going to do much less travelling, and we don't actually need to meet face to face. Maybe, maybe not the theory of elite is very interesting. I hope there's going to be a lot of women in the theory of elite where we come together. Interesting again, where will people come together for new ideas? And will it be enough women around the table, and then I haven't got my head around really what Sueann saying about cancelled culture, but certainly thinking through the impact of cancelled culture, not just on the people in the middle of it, but the people observing it. I think that's worth thinking about. So that's the first of the Zeitgeist. Enjoy next week. I think I'm going to change the order. I think we're going to have Hunger Games first. I think you'll enjoy it.

Thank you for listening to the podcast. We would love you to follow the expedition and provide your own stories and perspectives. You can do this by subscribing to this podcast and joining the women emerging group on LinkedIn where you can have your say