World faces big challenges but ‘we can be better’, Obama tells Glasgow audience

Barack Obama has told an audience in Glasgow that hope is worth fighting for despite the big challenges facing the modern world.

On Wednesday evening the 44th president of the United States addressed an Ovo Hydro crowd of approximately 12,150 people in a conversation with British journalist and author Sathnam Sanghera.

He reflected on his time in the White House and examined the political and social challenges facing the United States and the wider world.

Mr Obama said he saw the budding internet as a beacon for hope during his presidential campaign in 2008 when social media and technology was just gaining traction.

But he said it turns out that the same positive forces and tools that could mobilise people around democracy or human rights, could also be used by hate groups.

“It connected people for good, but also for ill,” Mr Obama said.

He observed that there has been a shift in recent years on online platforms.

“It turns out that the reptilian side of our brain really gets attracted to anger, fear, resentment and the sense that someone is out to get you,” he said.

“So a lot of social media and a lot of our information is informed around that.”

But Mr Obama said that this drift towards extremism is “not inevitable”.

Mr Obama said: “After World War two, at least in the United States and certainly in Europe as well, the federal government said ‘we’re going to set up some rules because we’ve seen what propaganda can do in the hands of somebody like Hitler. We can see how big lies and misinformation can distort and enrage and incite violence. So we’re going to hold these folks responsible’.”

“We have not chosen to do that.”

There is a “critical balance” that must be struck between free speech and regulation, but the 65-year-old said that the world and its leaders are going to need to find mechanisms and new institutions that allow the world to have rigorous debate and disagreement while helping people sort out basic facts.

“If I had a blame pie for why politics is so polarised and why we’re seeing a rise of populism in many places, it’s because of that information that is going into our brains every day,” Mr Obama said.

“It’s part of the reason why young people can feel discouraged. It’s not a healthy diet that our brains are on at the moment, and it’s about to get even more troubling with AI where it’s going to get even more difficult for us to distinguish between what is true and what is not.”

He added: “It’s hard for democracy to function if we can’t at least agree on the facts.”

Speaking about hope, Mr Obama was asked if he still believed in a Martin Luther King Jr phrase he quoted years ago about the arm of the moral universe being long, but ultimately bending towards justice.

The former president said that he still stands by the quote and argued that hope is an active “almost theological” choice people must make.

“It is a decision about how do we face and embrace this finite amount of time we have on the planet,” Mr Obama said.

He told the crowd that he believe it is healthier for people to believe that change is possible.

“I think when we act on that basis, it doesn’t always work out, but over time things do get better,” he said.

After the Second World War, Mr Obama said the world collectively agreed to put some guardrails in place and guard against tyranny and power conflicts.

“The question then becomes how do we remind ourselves of those victories and defend them,” he told the crowd.

He said there seems to be a cycle in humanity where people forget the lessons learned from the past and start to take things for granted.

“We start thinking ‘maybe using language in public from our politicians that fosters hatred and scapegoats certain people – immigrants, Jews, or blacks or gays – that’s just talk, it’s humour’,” Mr Obama said.

“We forget what that leads to when it becomes a common habit and we normalise it and we start thinking ‘democracy is not that important’, and we forget what authoritarianism leads to and we become less vigilant in our defence of our core values and we become less tolerant.”

He told the audience that the world is going to be dealing with “big challenges”, but he said he thinks “we can be better”.

“When we choose, when we make that decision, I do believe – and there is evidence for this – that the world gets incrementally better, and that is a worthy goal and it’s worth fighting for.”

The Glasgow show formed part of a three-night UK tour. The former president also visited Belfast on Tuesday night and he will be in Manchester on Thursday.