[Music] transition period that's maybe the way how in 100 years from now the manuals of history will describe our lifetime it's not an easy time to live in right not easy and you know it's not only that we are in between the centuries what sometimes happens to people you know but we are also between the second and third millennium wow it's even worse for us very interesting times polarization we feel in democracies that something is wrong somewhere i just wonder uh if you felt the same 30 years ago i remember it was more or less
the same time 30 plus when the soviet bloc collapsed i was a teenager there and my country poland got back got back democracy and i thought we all shared these emotions that this was it i mean we are so happy and the history was just in front of us and this was an experience of a lifetime you know soviet union collapsed precisely 30 years ago 1991 and i thought many people thought oh that is it that's history nothing else happens we know how to live everything is in order democracy won cold war ended we have
our system we love the system we know everything was so simple and we were so wrong 30 years after today what are your feelings yeah we feel that something is going wrong somewhere in our own place in our country in our europe in our mind polarization we are very polarized deeply divided but you know what it's not necessarily a bad thing for democracies because polarization means divisions and divisions means that we have a lot of points of view a lot of opinions a lot of people who also want to act and be active in short
run it makes us weaker you know like the virus the virus in the short run makes us weak but in the long run maybe it will bring us resilience it will bring us somewhere the future is unknown but it gives us many more options you know why because we have choices authoritarian regimes don't have choices people don't have choices in these kind of systems and if this is true that in this transition period we are entering another bad time you know after 30 years we are back to the square one we feel back to the
square one democracies and authoritarian regimes fight who knows how this will end we are in democracies do we want to keep it do we think it's a value or we hear these voices already in poland in europe in the united states or maybe that's not a really a good system democracy is sick are we sick we have pandemic we are all sick you know but it's a double meaning are we double sick we have a virus inside our system it's a virus in our system what can we do to get rid of it can we
let's look at our emotions well i can compare also my emotions 30 years ago and i remember that i felt security i felt order and we felt also solidarity didn't we especially in this country poland solidarity has this special meaning because we had solidarity movement which helped us to get democracy back now where is this where is our solidarity forget poland where is the solidarity in europe where is the solidarity of the west what is really the west we are really lost that's the feeling about politics but how do we feel about our own private
life we are very confused don't we aren't we why well we got this internet that's great we got the social media it's even better fascinating two billion seven hundred million people have accounts on facebook well many of them fake two billion people use what's up are you among them two billion one billion people uses instagram one billion 350 million people use twitter especially politicians they love this to twit we are lost you know we thought when we get more information we will get more knowledge now what we feel we are completely confused more we get
less we understand some authoritarian regimes who are not wishing us well help us to be confused they disinform us and then we don't even know that we you know copy paste and we misinform the other people and that's only the beginning you know because information war is there we are in the middle of it and europe is a battlefield for this because we are having polarized society we are able to express whatever we want we are democracies so everyone can base whatever he or she wants in the internet so we are at the beginning of
the era of information wars based not only on fake news deep fake is coming meaning that we will not be able to recognize at all if this is real of this is fake we'll hear the politicians in interviews they've never given we will see the photos of the places or people who don't exist are we prepared for this reality in democracies because you know authoritarian regimes solve these problems easily they cut off the internet or they block the sites whatever they don't have a problem with polarization they don't have a problem with differences of opinion
we do so let's look at some numbers how deeply we are polarized you know poland we always say a deeply paralyzed country very very deeply divided we remember last year we had presidential elections and you remember the results right more or less 10 and a half million polls voted for one candidate and then the 10 million polls voted for the other one half half almost 51 percent to 49 well but many people voted around 67 percent not bad but still many people didn't vote at all but forget poland look look at the united states much
more important country for the world the presidential elections last year do you remember how the americans voted joe biden how many americans supported john biden 81 million 81 million which was the best ever result in the history of presidential elections in the united states wow but how many people voted donald trump 74 million wow quite a high number which was the best ever result in the presidential elections in the united states after joe biden america is deeply divided it's not easy to you know solve this but many americans voted much more than recently the best
ev result in 100 years around 68 percent of those who are eligible to vote so it's good but still many americans didn't vote that's bad democracy you know we it's everything in our hands we have choice still so look at the numbers how divided is the world we have around 195 countries some countries some places in the world are not you know the status is not clarified but let's see around 200 countries and we have an index democracy index which monitors most of these countries and we found it's from this year that we have only
23 countries on the globe who have full democracies which gives us the number of eight and a half percent of people who live live in democracies full democracies europe is on the lead european countries especially nordic countries are the best scandinavia norway but also some countries who are western but not are not in europe for example not the united states new zealand new zealand and countries like taiwan but we also have authoritarian regimes we have 57 full authoritarian regimes but we also have countries who are in the middle well who are democracies we call them
democracies but something is wrong in the system it's not full proper democracy by the way the united states are in this group so all together we can say that if we count both full democracies and democracies with some problems then we can say that the the world is divided by half-half a little bit less than half of the world population lives in democracies or half democracies and the other half in authoritarian regimes so the question is where do we want to be it's the high time to do something about it we know of course at
the political scene we have joe biden who uh mentioned that that openly that it's a new war now between democracies and authoritarian regimes and he would like to convince all the democratic countries to join this coalition to prove that democracies can work in difficult times because of course you know authoritarian regimes tell us the other uh the other truth what do they tell us democracy is good for nothing pandemic are you kidding me you don't you don't handle it well you are not able even you know to organize your vaccination process properly democracy doesn't work
it doesn't work especially in difficult times you should think more about pandemic pandemic gives us a lesson what lesson can we take well for the pandemic if we follow the experts the doctors they say if you get vaccinated and if you get vaccinated by the way vaccination is not mandatory still it's your option right you can do it well it would be good if you do it please do it what can i do to convince you to do it but it's not mandatory uh doctors say that if more than 70 percent of the population gets
vaccines we are safe because we get resilience resilience to the virus why can't we follow this example this lesson to the democracy and say okay let's get vaccine if 70 percent of those people who live in democracies gets it maybe we are safe maybe we get resilient to fight against authoritarian regimes the virus is inside it's not only outside right the virus is in the middle of our own system that would be a good idea the big question mark is only what could be this vaccine how to vaccinate the population i would stress the education
factor smart education like you know we political scientists discussed that we in the era or of a new cold war may be called war to zero which is now discussed you know that we are in this moment authoritarian regimes and democracies will again go back to fight or it's happening so in this cold war to zero maybe we should have democracy at the different level upper level and political scientists discuss already democracy to zero democracy to zero would be using i.t and new technologies for democratic processes we even went further we discussed democracy 3-0 which
would be use these tools to create new forms of democracy new forms of some ways we do we implement democracy because actually you know it's very strange that we stay closed in the system and in the institutions created in 17th and 18th century hello we are in 21st century but maybe on the only on on paper you know in our politics in our way we implement democracy we are still not in 21st century at all so why can't we propose democracy for zero which will be to use all this but to be much more active
and to be much more aware to self-educate let's not waste wait for the state to give us everything let's just work on ourselves we call it media literacy media literacy is a new term used to be aware in the internet in social media what we do and how we behave right just to avoid try to not to fail in traps given by disinformation try not to misinform the others it's difficult because we have a problem in distinguishing what is true what is false some people say that the truth is no more interesting who knows what
this truth do we need really to know the truth well i don't know if we need to know the truth all the time but at least we should not follow the bad examples and we shouldn't follow also those politicians who made polarization deeper who give us easy answers to difficult questions if the problem is difficult the solution will never be simple it's a complex solution so those who give us easy answers let's be aware let's have this red light you know in italy when you cross when you see red light they say okay it's just
a suggestion well let's treat it seriously and let's try to get vaccine and let's try to do it ourselves without waiting for anybody in any government to help us smart education a very uh how to say being careful in the internet and social media and then if you don't know what to do you know if you just don't know what to do use your common sense common sense you know if somebody somebody will tell you that this will fly just use your common sense no it doesn't so coming back we are living in a transition
period to what we don't know like in every transition it's not an easy time to live in who knows what will happen but one thing is certain we live in democracies and we still have a choice the choice is in our hands in authoritarian regimes there is no choice so let's choose well and at least until the moment we still have a choice [Applause] [Music] you
