What does democracy feel like?
European Center for Limbic Sovereignty · Association FBAB · France
A research lab for the nervous system of democracy.
Our research asks a question that may seem strange: how does a felt state — calm, anger, fear — pass from one person to another, or from a machine to a person?
When that passage is orchestrated, we can speak of limbic capture: a response is triggered before reflection has even begun. Its opposite is what we name and defend: limbic sovereignty — the right to know when your attention is being captured, how, by whom, and whether you consented. Read the founding paper →
We are determined to protect the conditions in which good deliberation happens.
Our hypothesis
Calm creates better democratic deliberation.
Why this center exists
To identify and understand the moment a person stops being captured by fear or anger and starts thinking clearly again.
Limbic capture can come from AI, from social media, or from another human being — and it always travels through language. This center studies how it happens, and what we reclaim when we take that ground back.
Democracy relies on an informed citizenry able to make its choices calmly, in measured ways. Limbic capture works directly against that foundation.
Citizens’ assemblies
The more we study limbic sovereignty, the more citizens’ assemblies look like a response: calm, clear, representative deliberation, protected from outside parties seeking to disrupt the reflection democracy asks of us.
Never has so much information circulated about citizens — but most of it now belongs to digital platforms. Every click, every pause on a video, every share teaches them what calms us, worries us, or makes us angry.
Democracies must find another way to hear us.
Our ethical compass
FBAB — For the Benefit of All Beings.
These are implementation constraints, not slogans:
- Human dignity preserved.
- Meaningful consent.
- No covert manipulation.
- Transparency of system influence.
- Proportional accountability.
Doors
Newsletter
Dispatches from the Last Frontier
Weekly essays and field notes from the human–AI interface.
Founding paper · SSRN
Limbic capture & limbic sovereignty
The paper that sets out the two ideas at the heart of the center.
The founder · ORCID
Greg Rowe-Pasos
Clinician & researcher — publications and research record.
Looking for collaborators
This lab is just opening its doors, and we are looking for kindred minds.
Researchers, practitioners of deliberative democracy, clinicians, technologists — anyone working on how feeling, attention and language shape our capacity to decide together. If this work speaks to you, write us. A conversation is the door.
Write the center