Socio-cultural postmodern foundations in the widespread of post-truth and decline of public: Rethinking democracy starting from political sustainable values

In this proposal we address the question of post-truth in the digital age starting from the socio-cultural foundations of this phenomenon, which seems to condition the public scenario both from a political and an individual point of view. The intent is to show that the digital innovations may have favored but not initiated or founded the peculiar phenomenon of post-truth and the decline of trust in the public (and in democracy), as they have spread in advanced societies. Rather, it is because in the post-modern era there is a socio-cultural shift both in values and beliefs and in social and political practice, that the phenomenon of post-truth and the collapse of the public are attested as central dynamics also in the digital debate. To understand this, it is first of all necessary to delve into the characterization of the current era, both digital and postmodern, and the path that it borrows from some twentieth-century philosophical reflections, which have questioned both the truth and the social role of the individual. The process of individualization, connected to ever greater personal freedom, has in fact led to a series of changes in values (from materialistic to post-materialistic ones), practice (consumption habits and expectations of well-being), politics (neoliberalism) that digital technological advances have only attested and fostered, not originated. So it will be possible to better understand the dynamics that have transformed the single horizon of the public and the participatory conflict, typical of a certain modernity, into a set of "publics" and into the problem of isolated (swarming) dissent, which instead seems to characterize today's politics. Even on this, in fact, it must be shown that, although the themes of polarization, of echo chambers and filter bubbles, are typical of the digital scenario, the same ICTs have on the other hand allowed a series of connections and openings to other people's ideas that the modern scenario prevented. So the most recent question relating to the critique of a "technological determinism" also for the political scenario seems appropriate, and we have to investigate the socio-cultural foundations that have led to certain technological achievements and related reactions to them. In this way can we try to rethink a democracy which can be sustainable for the future. Sustainable certainly from a social point of view, namely through the need and possibility of fostering new horizons of trust and common beliefs, and therefore an open and shared public space, devoid of the call for censorship in an attempt to counter falsehoods. But at the same time sustainable from the point of view of safeguarding and lasting the human world, first of all in environmental terms, namely such that it would be capable of facing the social threats and the uncontrolled risks that now present themselves as global. This, first of all, by promoting a step backwards from post-materialistic and individualistic values to materialistic and collectivist ones, at an institutional and educational level, so as to limit at the origin the spread of post-truth and public’s decline.