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What can I know (if trust in knowledge has been lost)? | 41
dissatisfaction of its own subjects, with the nuisance of environmental
activists, with the protests of human rights and peace movements or
with the expositions of investigative journalists as long as it is able to
securely hold the judiciary and the armed forces. This comes with
significant competitive advantages — not for nothing do investors favour
authoritarian countries. The cessation of the dominant role of Western
democracies can be seen in the restructuring of the international balance
of power as well. The majority of newly emerging great and middling
powers are characterised by authoritarian rule, which fits their historical
traditions better as well. The expansion of openly or veiled — i.e.,
maintaining a parliamentarian exterior — totalitarian systems is not in
itself a sign of a crisis of democracy. It merely shows that in the countries
that have not previously undergone the process of the development of
the middle classes and the path of social modernisation that the Western
style societies did, the adoption of certain elements of modern
technology, the market economy and the Western way of life do not
necessarily entail the presence of a constitutional democratic state.
When evaluating the global phenomena of our age, we need to take
account of the incredible proliferation of the researchers, commentators
and think tanks studying and interpreting the changes. Further, the
pressure to publish, as well as the competition for public attention
appreciates, overanalyses and overvalues all novelty. This applies also to
the theories which conclude from the phenomena of global integration
to the development of some kind of global society. For the moment, it
appears that the border-transcending flow of information, money and
goods has truly effected such a fundamental change only in the life of
the elites and in the way that power is exercised. Though the borders
between local societies have indeed thankfully become permeable, the
overwhelming majority of the peoples of the world still experience the
frantic transformation of the physical and cultural environment in one
place, in their own way and respond to these challenges as the local
conditions allow. The hundreds of millions of immigrants and guest
workers actually conserve the social conditions of their countries of
origin: they relieve the insupportable internal tension arising from the
overpopulation or impoverishment that triggered the migration.
Moreover, migration removes exactly the mobile, enterprising people
who could be the motor of the rejuvenation of local society. (The effects
of this are felt strongly in Hungary, where this migration-induced
adverse selection has decimated every generation in the past hundred
years.) As regards the host countries — especially the European ones —