politics
Although we are all culpable for creating the unfolding global catastrophe, it is the governments and their accomplices who are by far the worst examples of humanity; they have the lives of billions of people – and all those that are yet to be born – in their hands, and are about to deny them life because of their insatiable greed.
Rather than elevating us to become intelligent custodians of this astonishing planet, celebrating the remarkable experience that life should afford everyone, and safeguarding it for the future, they are knowingly and deliberately managing its destruction.
it is a crime like no other
As a means of governance, our political systems are dysfunctional. From our perspective, they serve as a social distraction and an entertainment, nothing more. But behind that façade, they have declared war on life itself. The global environmental crisis is a reality, one that will deliver frightening implications for all of humanity in the very near future, as it already has for millions of people across the world. And the fact that it is not the most pressing concern for our governments, should evoke a sense of panic in us all.
It makes sense to assume that those who assert themselves as ‘being in charge’, by definition, take on the mantle of responsibility, and that they would be appropriately qualified to justify that position. And so, if governments are responsible for our welfare and our future – which ought to be their fundamental tenet – then there would be evidence that those very real dangers that global warming present, are receding. But the truth is that the crisis is escalating exponentially year on year. What little has been achieved in an attempt to save humanity from the failings of our leaders, has been resultant of pressure from committed organisations who actually do care about our survival. This perverse situation, where governments and their leaders need direction from ordinary people before they even consider doing the right thing, demonstrates what an unacceptable system we have. Sadly, politics has become the stage on which the shameful ambitions of megalomaniacs and extremists are indulged, at our expense.
Whilst governments pose as the ‘responsible adults’ in the social dynamic that we inhabit, we, having submitted to their authority, are told that voting is how we can actively direct our destiny. But the belief that we’re influencing the political process by voting, is illusory, because all we’re really doing is giving an obscene, divisive, and pernicious system the validation to continue with its agenda; namely being a smoke screen behind which the corporations can continue to profit from the destruction of our planet, whilst leaving us powerless to do anything about it.
Everything in politics that we might think of as change is contained within a tight boundary of carefully managed ebb and flow, just enough to give us the impression that politics is accommodating and responsive. That’s why the spotlight is on the participating personalities – the players – because they do change, and with them, we naively think politics does too. The phrase, ‘rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic’, couldn’t be more apposite in this context, as we witness ourselves sinking into the grip of extinction whilst being hoodwinked into believing that politics is the mechanism by which we will be saved. The real issues that governments ought to address, namely the climate crisis and our future, will currently only be considered if they can capitalise on it; how much profit can it generate their corporate bosses, or whether they themselves can elicit political advantage from the opportunity.
The stuff of politics that feeds our social discourse is nothing but a superficial distraction built on the same binary premise as sport, with two competing teams vying for first place, along with simplistic rhetoric, polarising arguments, petty dramas, and sensational gossip, designed not only to keep us engaged, but satisfied too, revealing how our neurological development has been seriously repressed by the cultural programming we receive. This alarmingly low expectation is no accident, but a tried and tested method to control and pacify the masses. We, as the common people, stupidly take voting seriously, hoping that the personality we backed wins the race. There is no meaningful substance beyond one’s subjective judgement of those personalities that we can properly deliberate over, because politics is there to maintain the status quo.
The truth is that we don’t actually need leaders to properly manage ourselves, as leadership necessitates power over others, i.e., hierarchy. Power has to have tangible expressions to be realised, and the simplest demonstration of that is physical strength. Crediting strength with authority is a huge mistake, because that’s where the notion of ‘might is right’ stems from. It really is just a form of abuse, in that it is fundamentally bullying. And, of course, the only real demonstration of power is to destroy something. From a global perspective, power equates to weapons, and so the most obvious demonstration of power is going to war and using those weapons – an all too familiar reality. Peace is incompatible with hierarchy.
If we had a system that didn’t see power as an objective, weapons would be pointless. Power structures are endemic in every aspect of society. It’s how we’re conditioned to think, yet our natural sense of morality suggests that bullying is inappropriate. Despite the many examples of alpha male competition, and competing groups within many species, the brains of modern humans evolved to supersede such primitive behaviours, favouring egalitarianism, compassion, generosity, and altruism, because they were far more conducive to our collective survival. The deliberate suppression of those higher brain adaptions, coupled with a relentless diet of sport, competition, and violence, has reduced us all to an immature, self-serving shadow of what nature intended. Our own part in the political farce is to support the side that we think benefits us personally. We vote for self-interest, which is completely at odds with the notion of a society (community).
Democracy, despite most of the world mindlessly accepting it to be an expression of liberty, is the system that is propelling us into obscurity. As a demonstration of democracy, ask a class of children to decide what they’re all going to have for lunch by exercising the idea of majority rule. Each child chooses one meal option and one drink from the menu, and whichever of those has the most votes, that’s what everyone gets to eat: mixed vegetable stir-fry with tofu, pepperoni pizza, or chicken nuggets and fries, with either water, coke, or fruit juice.
The ‘democratic’ result is that all the children are given a glass of coke with their nuggets and fries. The issue isn’t just one of naivety, in that the children are not yet mature enough to know what their nutritional needs are, nor the negative consequences of a high fat, high salt, high sugar diet, but that in this case, despite their ignorance, they were given the responsibility to choose what they ate. The upshot is that the least educated majority impose their ill-informed and detrimental will onto all the others.
Democracy is a celebration of ignorance and argument, with no greater purpose beyond pursuing a limited perspective that satisfy one’s own selfish interests.
With politics, just like sport, our engagement as spectators is limited to that of taking sides. But taking sides unavoidably creates divisions, and divisions cause conflicts. A proper system of governance should strive for consensus – the antithesis of political aspirations – and should not be established on the limited self-serving opinions of egotists, but on the sum of our combined knowledge and understanding, with the fundamental purpose of allowing us to survive in peace with one another, in concinnity with the vital ecosystem of the Earth, and to maintain that ideal indefinitely.
Against the backdrop of all the wars and power struggles that continue to define our history – as if we are incapable of thinking beyond the primitive and appalling mentality of solving problems through violence and conflict – it is important to recognise that this mentality is deliberately cultivated, and that the political systems we have are the instruments of its ongoing execution.
May 2023
The current enthusiasm for public/popular assemblies, referendums, citizen’s assemblies and the like, as an attempt to increase people’s participation in the political process, are just as flawed and ineffective for establishing real solutions to the real problems we are collectively facing, as is voting for centralised government. Majority rule (democracy) is nothing but an indulgent celebration of subjective, self-serving opinions, engaged in a battle to win the argument through popularity rather than substance. Consensus happens when everyone is fully informed, and collective-interest is the motivation. It is not about winning an argument, but satisfying an understood objective.