The Democracy in Crisis Film Series

Overview

We can't do it alone. We need your help in implementing the research ideas presented here.

Our world has entered the crisis stage for solving its most important problem, climate change. Democracy is in crisis because it's unable to solve its most important problems.

With the election of authoritarians like Donald Trump and his subsequent actions to NOT solve the climate change problem, it's easy to conclude that there is no longer any rational hope the climate change problem can be solved and that civilization is doomed, due to environmental collapse.

We at Thwink.org would like to offer an alternate conclusion, as embodied in these films. The thwinkers at Thwink.org strongly feel that careful structured analysis of the problem, using the right tools, will probably lead to solutions that have never been tried before in a focused, sustained, large-scale manner. As Film 1 explains, this begins with asking The Right Question.

(NOTE - These are Vimeo videos. Some browsers may have trouble running the videos. If that occurs try Chrome. Or you can watch the YouTube versions.)

Film 1 - The Right Question

Democracy is in crisis because it's unable to solve a host of important social problems, like those shown below. Going deeper, we find that the hate-based authoritarianism problem is the key problem to solve because it prevents solution of all the other unsolved problems.

Film 1 - Important Social Problems

How can we best solve that problem? The same way scientists do, by asking the right question, at the deepest and most universal level possible. The film presents what this question must be.

Film 2 - The Right Tools

The second film begins by answering the question posed by Film One. The film then presents the tools activists need to switch to if they are to become able to solve the unsolved problems. These are known as The Right Tools. Together they form The Foundation of Activism.

The film contains an Intermission half way through. Pause if you like.

Film 3 - The Real Problem to Solve

The third film presents the analysis results from using the right tools. The biggest surprise of the analysis, by far, was discovery that the list of unsolved problems are all symptoms of the same deeper problem, the Broken Political Ssytem Problem. This is the real problem to solve.

The film contains an Intermission half way through. Pause if you like.

Here's the key image from Film 3. It explains so much. Click on it to see the larger version. This image is what we use to explain the main points of the Thwink analysis. (Click the image see it full size.)

Summary of analysis results with problems

 

Special Note - The film series was produced in the Summer of 2017. While the general theme and findings are still highly appropriate, the ending in Film 3 (starting at 52:25) is now out of date.

We are no longer looking for small local problems to analyze and solve. Instead, our main emphasis since late 2019 has been the global democratic backsliding problem. The main root cause of that problem appears to be low political truth literacy. This is the same main root cause of subproblem A, how to overcome change resistance. Subproblem A is described in Film 3.

For more on this work see:

1. Paper - The detrimental effect of low political truth literacy on democratic systems

2. Paper - Truth Literacy Training: The core solution element for resolving the main root cause of democratic backsliding

3. The Democratic Backsliding Analysis Project

A promising solution element for resolving much of the root cause is Truth Literacy Training