If we look at political systems, international disputes, or the use of technology, we find that the opportunities and possibilities for people to exercise free choice and free speech and expression have undergone a noticeable decline. I view this to be the result of moving further away from relying on persuasion and discourse and resorting more to coercive means.
This view is backed up by evidence. Global violence and war – the main means of hard coercion – are at their worst level since World War II according to Vision of Humanity. it is a sad and disappointing state for humanity that almost eighty years after the founding of the United Nations neither the inviolability of national borders nor the rules and laws governing the conduct of war and the protection of civilians and human rights seem to carry any sway.
Conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Kongo, Sudan, Ukraine, and the Middle East have seen disturbing and disastrous patterns of violence against civilians. But even the core causes of the conflicts themselves betray a lack of willingness to settle country or ethnic grievances through negotiation and dialogue. In all cases, there is an absence of global cooperation as to how to stop atrocities and bring parties to negotiations. What we see instead is the opportunistic and most often the selective application of rules as countries coalesce into partisan groups.
Turning to the global state of the freedom of expression, the Global Expression Report finds that freedom of expression through speech, the press, and the internet, which represent means of persuasion, has experienced a decline in recent years. As a result, 5.6 billion people live in “crisis” or highly restrictive environments as the Report puts it. The same Report ranks the US 21st, whereas a look at One World Data reveals that in freedom of expression the US lags most western democracies.
The good news is that a majority of people still value the right to free expression. In a survey of 35 countries (all with democratic systems) by the Pew Research Center 61% of respondents consider freedom of the press, speech, and internet very important. However, only 35% of the respondents believe these freedoms fully exist in their respective countries. Thus, there is “a freedom gap” between the aspired and realized freedom of expression.
The decline in the perceived loss of freedom of expression is mirrored in the retreat of civil rights, protection from the state, the conduct of free and fair elections, and civic engagement. According to One World Data, this reality is reflected even in surveys in Europe, the US, and South America, where most people live under democratic governance.
When people realize that basic freedoms and rights are restricted their faith in democracy starts to crack and weaken. In surveys of 12 western style democracies, including the US, the Pew Research Center had found that in 2017 equal percentages of people (47%) expressed satisfaction and dissatisfaction, respectively, for democracy. In 2025 the responses had swung decisively, with only 35% of respondents expressing satisfaction while 64% expressed dissatisfaction. In the US the percentage of dissatisfied respondents was 62% vs 37% of those satisfied with the state of American democracy.
Very tellingly, the above survey found a strong correlation between dissatisfaction with democratic governance and negative feelings about the economy. Very likely, the responses concerning democracy are influenced by the feelings of discontent driven by a lopsided distribution of income and wealth that favors a few at the expense of the many.
Economic woes, cultural issues, and feelings of nativism are mostly responsible for the polarization in many western democracies. Thus, both soft and hard coercion is on the rise as ideological groups resort to it to dominate and silence their opponents. Filled with grievances fueled by the perceived dominance of liberal and elite groups, conservatives and religious groups have responded by enlisting the force of the state as a way to redress the imbalance. This pattern has engulfed even the US where free speech and dissent, academic freedom, as well as evidence-based science and medicine have been encroached at the state and the federal level.
However, the most dangerous and tragic escalation in the use of coercive means is the resort to physical violence against human life. Regrettably this country has a sad record of politically-motivated assassinations or attempts against the lives of opponents. From Lincoln, to John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, all the way to the string of violent and fatal incidents of the past five years – Charlie Kirk being the latest victim – American democracy has paid a huge price in blood.
Our world is getting richer, at least at the aggregate, and more technologically advanced than ever before and yet it seems to me the humanistic urges of our species are in retreat. As we are tested again and again we seem to choose coercion over persuasion. Even the brilliance behind AI may end up to become one more tool in the service of coercion than of enlightenment and persuasion.
Unless we reexamine our private and political lives, we are likely to let political, social, economic and technological structures make persuasion and freedom impossible to survive.
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