Does the spectacle at Davos represent a defense of your future, or just a turf war between elites? I dive into the ‘Magic Mountain’ to ask why our economic destiny is being bartered in rooms we cannot enter, and why the ‘Old World Order’ is failing.
Is the ‘Magic Mountain’ a Platform for Dialogue or a Fortress of Exclusion?
I have been thinking a lot about the physical elevation of Davos. It feels metaphorical, doesn’t it? As the private jets descend and the motorcades wind their way up the Alps, there is a literal leaving behind of the common earth. It reminds me of the disconnect Christopher Lasch identified years ago, where the new aristocracy becomes completely untethered from the consequences of their actions. I find myself asking: when they speak of ‘global challenges,’ whose challenges are they actually solving? Yours, or the challenges to their own retention of power?
The new elites... regard the earth as a market, not a home.
– Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites
We are told this summit is necessary for stability. But looking at the current landscape—threats of tariffs, the attempted purchase of Greenland, the warnings from Mark Carney—it seems this isolation breeds not clarity, but a dangerous form of groupthink.
Does the Clash Over Tariffs Represent Genuine Sovereignty or Performative Theater?
You might see the headlines about Europe’s ‘United Front’ against American pressure and feel a sense of relief—finally, someone is standing up for stability. But I urge you to look closer at the texture of this resistance. Is it a moral stance? Or is it merely the friction of two tectonic plates of power grinding against one another? The true crisis is not the tariffs themselves, but the fact that our economic destiny is bartered in a room we cannot enter. The debates happening there are about how to manage us, not how to empower us. It is a spectacle of sovereignty, where national leaders posture for the cameras while the real decisions—the ones that determine the price of your heating or the security of your job—are made in the hushed tones of the VIP lounge.
Can the ‘Old World Order’ Be Resurrected, or Are We Witnessing Its Formal Autopsy?
Mark Carney’s admission that the old order is dead is perhaps the most honest thing to come out of the summit. But the terrifying part is that they have no replacement. They are clinging to the ghost of 20th-century neoliberalism because the alternative—admitting that the world is tragic, unpredictable, and fiercely local—is too frightening to contemplate. They fear the loss of control.
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
– Simone Weil, The Need for Roots
The anxiety at Davos stems from this rootlessness. They have built a system that floats above the nations, and now that the nations are reasserting themselves, the architects are panicking. They want to put the genie back in the bottle. They want a world that fits into a spreadsheet.
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Where Does the Citizen Stand When Nations Become Corporations?
So, where does that leave you and me? If the ‘Magic Mountain’ is a place of delusion, then the truth must be found in the valley. We need to stop looking to these summits for salvation. The defiance we need isn’t the defiance of a European bureaucrat against an American president; it is the defiance of the citizen against the idea that we are merely economic units to be managed. The ‘Third Citizen’ does not wait for permission from Davos to build a meaningful life. We must recognize that their confusion is our opportunity to rebuild something real, something tangible, and something human, far away from the thin air and empty promises of the peaks.