Rainer Mausfeld

Power pushes for more power and wealth pushes for more wealth – a dynamic that endangers the cohesion of a society and threatens to destroy it: this is one of the earliest insights in the history of civilization. Power therefore always requires robust containment. The most important protective instrument for the civilization of power is the egalitarian guiding principle of democracy.

Rainer Mausfeld shows along historical lines that the concept of democracy has been robbed of its original meaning and is now misused as democratic rhetoric for the purposes of domination. In recent decades, this has led to a de-civilization of power, the psychological, social and ecological effects of which threaten human civilization as a whole.

Rainer Mausfeld, professor emeritus of psychology, taught and researched in Mannheim and Kiel. He sheds light on anthropological and cognitive aspects of democracy.