Marshall McLuhan wrote of media as extensions of human abilities that increase the efficiency and capacity of those innate abilities in ways that ultimately transform the nature of being human in fundamental ways.
For example, the invention of the written language and the alphabet helped humans to outsource memory to the written word. The texts became sacred as we invested our own creations with divine status that raised our own creations to the stature of idols that required study, devotion, and allegiance to inerrancy and infallibility that defied reason and rationality.
Divine and legal texts have become the sacred cows of social orthodoxy, justifying injustices on a global scale that the world is seeking ideas to raise awareness, language to describe, and voices to decry their irrationality, abuses, and destructive force on civil discourse and society.
As corporations, human inventions of legal fiction that have been imbued with personhood by proclamation of long-dead monarchies, run unchecked around the globe, enlisting militarized police forces to violently defend their rationalizations for dominance and power, the world burns to fill their coffers with ill-gotten gain. They are modern pirates, terrorizing the globe and inspiring unquestioning fear from a cowed and oppressed labour force, who willing acquiesce their power to help siphon the world’s resources to the top of the pyramid scheme of corporate empire.
On November 21, 2019, the Samara Centre for Democracy was proud to partner with CBC Radio’s Ideas to present In Defence of Democracy, a fireside chat between bestselling author Anand Giridharadas and acclaimed journalist Nahlah Ayed in front of a live audience in Toronto.
This thought-provoking and wide-ranging discussion tackles pressing questions on power, philanthropy, and the future of democracy. Known for his unapologetic and provocative critique of the global elite’s efforts to “change the world,” Giridharadas forcefully makes the case that decisions for the public good should be in the public’s hands.