The risks and dangers of military and ecological de-
struction are now so great that they threaten human
civilisation par excellence. The challenge of creating a
good, liveable and well-ordered community is more
urgent today than ever before. But the only means on
which hope can be founded is de facto no longer avail-
able to us today: democracy. The cognitive psycholo-
gist Rainer Mausfeld argues that democracy has be-
come an empty word: while democracy was once an
instrument to contain elite depravity, the guiding civili-
sational idea of democracy has been expropriated
from us, distorted, and turned into its opposite: the
rule of elites. In a broad sweep, Mausfeld shows how
this devastating development could have come about
and what we must do to escape the civilisational
abyss.