To win at the cost of a single human life is the model of pre-cognitive man
Taking an issue like a global pandemic and turning it into a platform to enhance political power shows the shadow of politics. The same can be said of climate, health care…the list goes on.
An elected official is a representative of the people. They have a duty of care to people, paid for by people. They speak for the better lives of people, all people. Not the corporations, not the elite.
The moment an elected official makes it about them, or the party they have been elected under, or the corporation that paid for their ticket into politics, they have relinquished their responsibility to their people.
We citizens conflate the voice and actions of our politicians with addressing issues. Most are simply invested in remaining in power.
A few are genuinely invested in supporting greater opportunity for all citizens and Earth.
Around the world, our global political systems are failing the people. The evidence is clear. Decades of ‘minus inflation’ wage stagnation. Decades of erosion of public assets and commons. Decades of striping out public health, education, social services. And the rise of monopolies that occupy and colonise our minds while making a very few obscenely rich. And now, in 2020, the rise of the authoritarian dictator, so infected by hubris and narcissism that they see nothing but their own glamour.
To turn towards what we, the people, can do, how we can effect change, to recognise that evolution and (r)evolution is in our hands, to never relinquish our power to those who are failing to really speak for us, is to begin to turn towards the future we want.
And for those living lives of privilege, who have never known what it means to fear making it through next week, those who have never known what it feels like to have war tear your home apart, to live under regimes of suppression and daily fear, to consider, long and hard, that your privilege comes with responsibility…we all live on Spaceship Earth, this is our home planet…and to win at the cost of a single human life is the model of pre-cognitive man. We can do better.
Photo taken September 11th 2020
