Ah yes. The beginning of another year. The time for a New Year resolution. But all is not well. I am sitting in my study pondering why I am less optimistic about the immediate future for humanity than at any other time. It could be my advancing years of course. But let us imagine for a few moments that something else, less personal and more universal perhaps, hangs fire. What is that? And what is it trying to tell us? Will the world end with a bang or a whimper?
Every day, during breakfast, my first task is to review the latest news - usually from a variety of sources. This morning I awoke to the hilarious headline that our rogue royals - Prince Harry and his wife Meghan - want to discard their royal status. The thought of an abdication, 78 years after the last one, brought a chuckle. I nearly choked on my croissant. It shows exceptionally good sense from a couple in the entitled class. Who in their right mind would want to be a part of such a circus anyway - unless it were to get some kind of covert pleasure from airing your dirty linen and mad family capers in public via a Netflix special?
A Ukrainian commercial jet was shot down killing all those on board. The US immediately blamed Iran before Iran eventually admitted culpability and then blamed the US. No surprise there, in spite of a hint of something more covert and sinister going on in terms of the context. The bushfires continue to ravage Australia, accompanied by happy-clapper politicians frothing at the mouth while digging themselves ever deeper into a bottomless pit of climate denial. One third of adults living in Hong Kong report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. A female senior executive from the Murdoch press confessed to the misinformation and lies routinely fed to Australian citizens in her letter of resignation. Meanwhile, in the US, the House of Representatives voted to curb Presidential powers to take military action without the support of Congress. A non-binding resolution, so effectively a paper tiger...
There were the usual whines of a dying empire in the form of tweets from Donald Trump. Quite fascinating in a bizarre kind of way - a warped narcissism trying to distract and direct our attention to other, less important, issues... There was sport of course. Entertainment too, including Ricky Gervais’s scorn-laden performance at the Golden Globes. But that was that.
Although I sifted through several online news sources, I could find no deeper inquiry or questions into anything of any consequence. Every bit of news seems to be normalized. Sanitized. Abbreviated and scrubbed clean for our increasingly scant attention spans. Illuminating if you are in an induced coma perhaps, which many of us seem to be.
It is probably apparent from this description of my daily routine that I do not much like the world we have made, nor the media's theatrical malaise in the way it renders the state of the world. It revels in overreaction and hype - routinely conjuring momentous ballyhoo from scraps of trivia and choreographed scandals in a tortured non-language that seeks only to shock or amuse. Tittle-tattle and expose has replaced real news. So-called investigative journalism barely punctures the surface. As for the world itself, it lacks the calm optimism, the expectation of a sustained peace and civility, as well as the promise of a better future for more people, most of us believed would surely follow the end of the second world war.
Around 70-85 million people perished in that deadliest of military conflicts. Yet almost nothing those bravely naïve souls fought for remains intact today. That which is left vanishes by the day. We are not sufficiently attentive, nor yet particularly alarmed, concerning that which we are so intent on destroying.
Australia is spending $500M to upgrade the War Memorial in Canberra. Yet all that those combatants fought for - freedom, prosperity, and the Australian way of life - which they themselves would surely regard as their true commemoration, is under attack. While federal government bunglers offer us their thoughts and prayers, it is left to private citizens to fund the help so desperately needed to deal with the current firestorms. Political dithering in this situation is contemptible and also beyond comprehension. As Australia burns I can imagine the dead asking what on earth they fought for all those years ago. Their sacrifice would seem hollow. If we truly believe their aim was to see a grand monument, housing a museum, in the capital, we are fooling ourselves.
The clues as to why we should be so deluded are hidden in full view. Surface has become content. Trivia is awarded a gravitas it does not deserve. Disconnection and separation have become our practice. Economic growth our myopic panacea and our long-term obsession. We behave like most other mammals. But the effects of our incredible inventiveness reveal us to be barely more conscious than apes playing with fire.
It troubles me that those with slightly more confidence, or perhaps born with a dash more guile than the norm, are able to bully, buy and charm their way into positions of power. It used to be called leadership. We no longer know what leadership means. The purity and vocational nature of leading has been defiled by (mostly male) sociopaths around the world who brazenly serve their own best interests. Those few individuals who are able to sustain a semblance of personal integrity are marginalized or scorned. Either way they cannot fight deep-seated corruption in a system that, intuitively and so rapidly, detects any kind of deviant moral impulse and moves instantly to neutralize it.
It concerns me that we are addicted to material possessions, to the extent that an unbroken cycle of desire and consumption prevents any sane reinvention of obsolete business models and practices. Advertising has become the pervasive Pied Piper we follow in a sort of mesmerized fervor. If we are unhappy, then we must buy more stuff. Continue with this unending dans macabre. Buy, buy, buy. That is the only advice we hear. But marketing-induced mania must inevitably take a toll. We are depleting the world of its incomparable treasures, while fewer and fewer people benefit from what should be our common wealth. And we are actually unhappier. Dissatisfied, fearful, and feeling more unfulfilled than ever.
With 7.7 billion people on the planet all seeking a higher quality of life it should come as no surprise that our most life-critical systems are at risk of collapse. We have put so much CO2 into the atmosphere, destroyed the soil with our chemicals, polluted the oceans with plastics, and killed so many other species, that we have become the agents for our own imminent extinction. Our only recourse is to blame each other for this situation. But blaming others is counterproductive and leads to more and more lonely, anxious and depressed individuals. And the solution to all of that? Listen to the tunes of the Pied Piper. They tell us to buy more stuff. You will be happy, they pledge. Except we are not. Joy seems even more elusive. And yet, like the hypnotic charm of the Piper's tunes, the cycle of desire and consumption, a prison of our own invention, becomes ever more ingrained.
It is demoralizing to think that human nature holds us in a cognitive gridlock from which escape seems improbable. Our animal-like response to confrontation of any kind is to strike out first and to ask questions later. Indeed, these days, old empires delight in declaring their self-righteousness, while committing unspeakable atrocities as they force themselves on others, extorting untold suffering and destruction in the process. What used to be totally unacceptable - in the form of preemptive violence, an utter disdain for the rule of law, a lack of compassion, keeping citizens compliant through the use of lies and propaganda to justify any immoral act - has somehow become acceptable. Indeed expected. How did we lose our humanity in this manner? Money. Envy. Greed.
I am saddened by the amount of money we spend on wars and conflict as well as by our seeming inability to link that budget with environmental damage. The enormous cost of the military machine in the US alone gives the lie to claims that dealing with the climate crisis is unaffordable. For example, around 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending in the US, a total of $600 billion, is spent on war-related activities and the production of weapons. That is eight times the amount spent on education. The results are too dire to dwell on them for long. The burden too heavy for any single individual to carry in their mind.
Above all I am anxious about the future my children and grandchildren will inherit. What work will be available for them? How will they remain motivated and positive in an era of sterility, suppression and consent, if that political future cannot be avoided? How will their lives be changed under constant surveillance from the ruling powers? Will the smart robots that run society be kind to them? Will the natural world regenerate before human numbers fall to what they were the year I was born? Around 2.3 billion people...
Nobody knows. The only thing we can be certain about is that structural economic, political and social change is now much more of an imperative than at any other time in human history.
I do not normally make New Year resolutions. But if I did, my resolution for 2020 would focus on just one principle: Hope. Hope is everything. We must never stop dreaming. Never give in to lies. We must always act in the knowledge that anything is possible.
Unlike most commentators I believe increasing civil disobedience and community activism, calling out the truth to corrupt powers, and sharing resources for a mindful uprising, will be the inevitable consequence of a world dynamic and world-system that no longer works for the benefit of the human family. If it feels as though our world is spinning out of control it is because it is. Today our actions continue to invite more pain. We see it everywhere we turn. But perhaps more torment is what we need in order for ordinary citizens to wake up to the realities we ourselves have encouraged, and in which we have become complicit actors.
There is still time to escape the seemingly inevitable. But we must really want a new world, as individuals and as a collection of societies, much more than maintaining old ways. That is the code for our survival and future prosperity. It must also be our resolve.
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