Clayton Christensen on safeguard of Western Democracy is Religion - Singularity University GS

20 Nov 2021 · 3 min

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In a Singularity University panel, the moderator asks how leaders should consider the moral, ethical, and human impacts of the innovations they pursue, citing workforce displacement from automation and disruptive platforms like Uber. Clayton Christensen (Speaker B) shares an anecdote about a Marxist Chinese economist who, during a Fulbright fellowship in Boston, discovered that religion is a critical foundation for democracy because it encourages voluntary obedience to laws through a belief in divine accountability. The economist warned that without such religious underpinnings, attempts to install democracy abroad lead to chaos. Christensen echoes this concern, noting that America’s religious influence appears to be waning, which could undermine democratic stability. The discussion highlights the intersection of technology, leadership responsibility, and the sociocultural pillars that sustain democratic societies.

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that I could take if there was something interesting going on. So this is for both of you, and this is a fundamental, fundamentally important question to those of us at Singularity and in Silicon Valley, and I think the world today. How should leaders think about the impact of the innovations that they choose to pursue? The moral, the ethical, the human implications. Workforce displacement from automation is a clear example. Uber would be another example of disruption sort of unmoored from organizational Ethics. What are your thoughts on that?
I had a gentleman come to see us a number of years ago. He was a Marxist economist from China, and he had received a Fulbright Fellowship to come to Boston to study religion and democracy, of all of the strange topics. And Christine and I got to know him quite well while he was in Boston. And before he returned home, we asked him if he learned anything that he just never anticipated before. And without any hesitation, he said, yeah, I had no idea how critical religion is to the functioning of democracy. And I had never put these things together in my mind, but this guy just comes in from Mars and parachutes into Boston. And what he described as the reason why religion is so critical for democracy is that religion causes people to voluntarily choose to obey the laws because they believe that society can't hold them accountable, and they believe that God ultimately will hold us accountable for doing what's right. And so in America, because most people most of the time voluntarily choose to obey the law, and it's rooted in our religions, He said democracy works. But if you look around the world where Americans have tried to install democracy and you don't have a foundation of it, of not any religion, but a religion that causes people voluntarily to choose to obey the law, all you get is chaos.
Yeah.
And he said, I worry about America. Because your religions are going off the cliff and losing their ability to cause people voluntarily to do what democracy requires. And I worry about that.
As do I, as do I think