I had another dream last night, one where I was standing on a ledge of a building in New York City re-establishing a symbol for peace and community. I was alone in doing it, but I knew I was not alone in the sentiment of it.
With the dream came the distinct sense that the power is, genuinely, with the people. We may not believe it, our ‘leaders’ may spend all their time subtly telling us it isn’t true, but if we live in a democracy power absolutely is vested in us. Those we elect into office are our servants, not the other way around. And those we do not elect into office but still deem themselves fit to tell us how we should live and behave…we equally have a power over them as well. We are much stronger than as a collective than we think we are. The one thing politicians and those who bankroll them have in common is the lust for power, based on the mistaken belief that they are in a position to take it when it fact, we give it. We relinquish our power by allowing others to tell us, to convince us, that we have none. By allowing them to disconnect us from each other. And they do this by sowing the seeds of division amongst, by polarising us from each other through a frankly artificial political discourse. When the reality always is – we are one, we are intrinsically connected to each other. Always.
The simple truth is that democracy in the Western world is on a precipice. We cannot seem to find a decent political leader anywhere in the western world, one who has vision and true leadership skills. One whose vested interest is in making their country better for the people who inhabit it. To help them live lives where they thrive, not survive. Who don’t have a vested interest in keeping us scrabbling around for every penny so we don’t take any notice of what they are doing as we attempt to survive the fallout of their policies. Whether it is taking handouts from wealthy donors or attempting to take over sovereign nations for their minerals to repay their wealthy donors. Instead, we turn to corrupt octogenarians, technocrats, and/or people who have barely held a job outside of politics or the public sector. Who have no true understanding of the people they ostensibly serve, and even less interest in them. In their eyes, they are right, their policies are right (even if they demonstrably are not), and you the people are not clever enough to be considered let alone enter into a discourse with. And we have allowed ourselves to be treated in this way, but we can stop it. We can say no. We are not the servants.
I have never been one for a conspiracy theory. I have always pooh-poohed them as the ramblings of people who have nothing better to do than find a problem in everything. Like the lab leak from Wuhan. I didn’t believe that, I laughed when people circulated the quote from the fiction book at the start of the pandemic (I can’t now remember the author or the book but it was a thriller if memory serves), and jumped on the conspiracy bandwagon. Well, it turns out that in all likelihood it was true and what’s worse is that the lab concerned had lashings of western funding to boot. Follow the science was the mantra throughout the whole period, and we did. I believed in the science for one. And it seems as though it was the science that led us down a rabbit hole that is now consuming the West at least. I suspect further afield (I doubt Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a coincidence), including in a China where its population ended up flexing its muscles over the constant lockdowns to the point where the government had to give in. A government like the one in China is always going to look for distractions from its relatively-speaking dire economic state as a result of Covid and its population’s unrest, and it’s finding it in sabre-rattling over Taiwan and its support of Russia. For the West, it seems there has been a sense that the public are controllable (lockdowns) and should continue to be controlled in all aspects of their lives just falling short of it being overt. I don’t know if the lab leak was deliberate or not, but the impact of it has been seismic.
There have been other conspiracy theories I have derided, and they have turned out to be true as well. Like the Nigel Farage de-banking furore. I dislike what the man stands for, and I didn’t believe that an old establishment bank such as Coutts had de-banked him for his political beliefs and public utterances. I don’t agree with them, but I believe that we are all entitled to our opinions and it is not up to banks to decide to close our accounts down because those working in the institution do not agree with him. This is the opposite of Freedom of Speech, which is the cornerstone of democracy. We may not like what people say, but they have the right to say it without fear of any form of persecution or censure. When Farage came out and claimed he had been de-banked for his beliefs, I did not believe him and thought it was a conspiracy theory peddled by him. But, it turned out to be true. And it turned out that a lot of other people, charities, and organisations were being or had been de-banked for the same reasons. Until Farage spoke up about it, people fought the issue in silence and alone usually unsuccessfully. No one has ever explained what gave the banks the belief that they had the right to do this, that they had the right to determine what their clients should or should not think. Clients who were from the taxpayers whose money was used to bail them out when their financial eyes got too big for their bellies leading to the fallout of 2008.
What is my point in all this and what relationship does it have to my dream? Well, my point is that there appears to be a sense from societal ‘leaders’ that they have the right to treat the majority of people with complete disdain. As though they are stupid. As though they can act with impunity. But the truth is, they cannot. People are not prepared to tolerate it anymore, they are growing wise to their antics and appalled by their behaviours. But they still feel powerless to deal with it, when the opposite is true. Because our ‘leaders’, underneath their bluster and hyperbole are actually in fear of the majority. Which is why they are trying with increasing regularity to control the majority. The majority’s reaction to it does not have to be violent, far from it. Violence helps no one, it just begets more violence and gets to the point where no one really knows what they’re fighting for anymore. And there is never a true peace after because too much damage is done. No, violence is not the answer.
So, what is? It’s the collective voice which is what I think my dream was about -standing on a ledge re-creating a physical symbol of peace and community (it was a tree statue). Because I was standing on the building of the United Nations. Now, I think that was purely symbolic, I’m not saying the UN has the answers because I actually don’t think it does unfortunately. Not anymore. But the symbolism of being united in voice is what I think it meant. Of us all, regardless of background and race or country, speaking the same thing is what will make the difference. Because this is a global issue so if that big a collective comes together, it can’t be wrong can it? And it has more power than the voices of the few. If we are connected, if we act in community towards a future where we are heard, where we thrive whatever that looks like for us, we cannot fail ultimately. If we are as one, then we cannot be divided.
I am not talking about a socialist utopia here akin to Animal Farm and I am no Old Major. No one wants a Napoleon character to rise up either. And while I am talking at a global level, I am not talking about removing the culture of the individual countries which are what we identify with. No, I am talking about a society where the rights of all are respected, the opinions of all are respected even if they are not agreed with, and they are respected fairly without recourse to bullying, fighting, and suppression. A society that is unified around the notion that we are all one, we are all connected, and we are all allowed to be who we want to be. I was going to say here that of course it has to be within the (existing?) legal parameters. But if we do all recognise each other as being part of the wider, and unified, whole, will those legal parameters shift? There is a whole discussion here about the attitude we take to the ego versus the collective consciousness and its implications on people…but that’s for another blog.
All I am saying is, let us be connected with each other and to a future that we create. One in which we as a collective thrive. And you never know, the ‘accident’ of all that could be a better earth altogether.
Louisa Simpson 