“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” – Winston S. Churchill
Some of my closest friends approached 2016 with the words: ‘This will be a game-changing year.’ No kidding.
A week on from another extraordinary election in the clearly ‘not-so-United’ States of America, and an aftermath of both dismay and exultant joy, I am starting to wonder whether anyone understands that this is actually how democracy works. Newsflash: it’s not the doorway to a Utopian society after all. This appears to be a shock to a huge proportion of the Western world who have been taught that this is the pinnacle of all governmental forms – at least when voting goes their way. Yet, seeing what’s happening in some communities currently you would be forgiven for thinking it is perhaps more dystopian… No wonder international rumblings are heating up. By the way, it has always remained an irony to me that democracy can be ‘imposed’ on other nations – isn’t that an oxymoron?
Now it feels as though Brexit was just a warm up for the triumph of Trump across the pond. There’s the same response as we witnessed in the UK: an unleashing of hatred and vitriol spilling out on buses and streets, in shops and Uber cabs, and spewing itself in ugly contortions across social media with a single, often ill-thought through, ‘click’. It’s out there, weaving its web of rage and disappointment, of infectious loathing and disgust with such livid, quivering, unbridled, visceral energy that you may well find yourself responding physically: stepping back from your screen; momentary loss of equilibrium; breathless shock.
I read an interesting article which questioned whether the underlying emotion of these unsettling phenomena might actually be responses birthed from deep grief rather than mere repugnance (http://charleseisenstein.net/hategriefandanewstory/). There is no doubt that people who yearned for one particular outcome are overwhelmingly crushed to find that their future will look somewhat different from that for which they had hoped; especially those who, perhaps wearing their rose-tinted spectacles, are yearning for the recreation of life as they knew it fifty years ago. We are not well equipped to deal with grief, or even acknowledge it in almost any form, but it’s probably a good place to start; examining and exploring our disappointments might give us more clarity and better tools for moving forward, not as fragmented individuals but as communities, nations – just people. Someone recently pointed out that when we die all of us have white bones – a reference to biological decomposition rather than race, creed or culture. There is still more that unites us than divides us. As soon as we start talking about ‘us’ and ‘them’ we find ourselves on rocky ground. Blaming others for current world affairs usually fails to take into account the years of history, cultural consensus, our widely different worldviews – all based on completely different philosophies, and serves only as a vain attempt to make us feel better about ourselves.
All this feeds into another article I read on the same day, in which the writer lays out some objective realities that seem to have got lost somewhere over the last twenty years or so (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-10/7-harsh-realities-life-millennials-need-understand ). Basically if things don’t go ‘your’ way – or ‘my’ way then we must learn to deal with that, not by throwing our toys out of the metaphorical cot, but by picking ourselves up and heading into our alternative future with resolve, passion, determination, focus, and fresh motivation to somehow be the difference in our sphere. It’s not just a message for ‘millennials’. That’s too simplistic.
Big changes are afoot. The West seems to have pressed the self-destruct button while the nations of the East are rising to new levels of economic influence and investing in developing nations. I’ve been told that in the last ten years, China has bought areas of agricultural land in Africa equivalent to the entire agricultural area of Europe. I can’t corroborate that statistic, but it isn’t difficult to find evidence for the USA accusing China of the same sins of the European past: land-grabbing foreign soil for resources. (http://www.businessinsider.com/map-chinese-investments-in-africa-2012-8)
Ordinary people are rejecting the corporate, faceless, we-know-better-than-you politics and a growing, yet palpable, desire for justice, for social, economic, health and educational overhauls of broken systems; these are being verbalised and frankly, I think most are long overdue. All this feels too big for me, yet I refuse to give in to the lie that one person cannot make a difference. An African proverb alerts me to this: ‘If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try spending the night with a mosquito’! History backs it up; check out Rosa Parks, Ghandi, Mandela; each initiated revolutionary changes in their countries and cultures, from which we all benefit. But none was as revolutionary as Jesus who, not content merely with outward changes in practice and policy, challenged individuals to radical change not of lifestyle or preferences, but of heart. Lasting change starts right there regardless of my preferred political system.
dancingthroughchaos 