I call out to those who feel the same way as I to come forward and begin our sharing of new and old ideas alike. But I make a plea we do so from a spirit of loving construction not hateful dismantlement. Throughout history, the building of one idea has too often been falsely protected by mechanisms of attack toward all other ideas. I contend this has been so for the false democrats and neoliberals. A failed and so pretend democracy and also its inheritor the marketplace have both become monocultural, and intellectually flacid. So may we not please make the same mistake. May we welcome our diversity, our differences of oppinion, our chaos even. And may we be children in this, and simply play our way through new and old ideas. I plea we be much less the cynical political theorists than the innocent and open-minded fools, and so simply ask ourselves from the deepest centre of our present ignorance -
WHAT IF???
Are you a part of the 50 percent?
Do you concede the impotence of a democracy engaging only half its population? Do you think your vote makes little or no difference to the huge and global changes presently necessary? But are you frustrated by your lack of political involvement? Do you acknowledge the political supremacy of the globalised marketplace? Do you acknowledge the impending and already present catastrophes of environmental degradation, but do you also submit the supreme marketplace cannot solve them? If you answer yes to these questions, then yes too, you too are a part of the rational and idealistic 50percent, and must without ado join us in our vigorous pursuit of alternative ideas -
May we welcome all ideas, and even the ideas of our enemies. May we not come from left, right, black, red, this faction or that, but from all of them, and from a simple and heartfelt yen for different ways of living. If our child's untainted logic leads us, as it does, to dislike dead-democracy and the marketplace, then may we still please follow the way of peace as we grow. May we call our enemies our better friends to teach us, and rather condemn their actions than their persons. May we please, when choosing to hate the sin, still love the sinner.
Thursday 8 March 2007
Wednesday 7 March 2007
a brief introduction to the new politics of a 50 percentile
Across the more developed democratic world, voting systems are in crisis. In the UK and US, we are not far off seeing 50 percent of the eligible electorate stay away from the ballot box, and these trends are increasing across the international board, and without any inbuilt demographic potential for reversal. The young and affluent -a society's trendmakers - are even less likely to vote than the the old and poor, and so the speed and cultural kudos of this behavioural trend appears only likely to increase. Democracy - for whatever reason, and with whatever type of voting-system (First-Past-The-Post, or PR etc) one employs to deliver it - is dying. This is our first essential premise.
Our second premise:
The 50 percent of non-voters is not, as might be contended by previous generations of democratic-idealists, ill-educated and depoliticised, but the reverse. It is rational and idealistic. Rationally speaking, the 50 percent has grown up through two generations of consensual politics, and sees little of interesting debate between the various factions of democrat/republican/labour/conservative. During the formative years of the 50 percent, the language of the once-left and once-right has converged and hybridised to the point of political banality, and so the 50 percent sees nothing of inherent interest in granting any one faction its vote. Rationally speaking, the once-left and once-right has enacted over two generations' worth of the same agenda: to neo-liberalise the marketplace, handing power straight from the elected representatives of the majority people to the unelected shareholders of a minority corporate body. In so doing, the once-political politicians have reduced their own role to that of economic tinkering and media-management, while the once-voting majority people have become non-voting consumers. We consume because at least our purchasing power promises achievable ends. We may not like the marketplace, but we dislike much more the hypocrisy and emptiness of spin-doctory and false debate. It is not the 50 percent that lacks idealistic ambition, but the political elite that created them.
Our third premise:
The Ideals of the 50 percent have yet to be truly decided on. There is reticence on the part on the 50 percent to truly begin its own necessarily naieve debate. We are tabula rasa, but daren't yet start drawing up our agenda. The Twentieth Century (a century of soured ideals, and big political divisions) still hangs its deathly shadow over this early and exciting part of our new century. We are the grandchildren of fascists and communists, and believe the very act of political idealisation to be murderously dangerous. Our parents -thank the gods of once-democracy- waved the white flag on political idealisation, and so allowed their children, us, a golden period of peace and prosperity previously unimaginable to any. We would surely be mad to open this pandora's box of ideals once more. And yet we also know that the most pressing problems of our time - chiefly the degradation of our environment - cannot be solved by the now omnipotent neoliberal marketplace. The Marketplace cannot exist without constant economic growth, and yet the environment cannot be saved from its degradation without immediate retraction. The Marketplace will fail where Democracy has failed, because constant economic growth is simply and scientifically incommensurable with a reversal of our global environmental catastrophe.
THE PANDORA'S BOX OF TRUE AND VIGOROUS POLITICAL DEBATE MUST BE RE-OPENED (and the 50 percent - the idealistic and rational 50 percent - already knows this).
Our second premise:
The 50 percent of non-voters is not, as might be contended by previous generations of democratic-idealists, ill-educated and depoliticised, but the reverse. It is rational and idealistic. Rationally speaking, the 50 percent has grown up through two generations of consensual politics, and sees little of interesting debate between the various factions of democrat/republican/labour/conservative. During the formative years of the 50 percent, the language of the once-left and once-right has converged and hybridised to the point of political banality, and so the 50 percent sees nothing of inherent interest in granting any one faction its vote. Rationally speaking, the once-left and once-right has enacted over two generations' worth of the same agenda: to neo-liberalise the marketplace, handing power straight from the elected representatives of the majority people to the unelected shareholders of a minority corporate body. In so doing, the once-political politicians have reduced their own role to that of economic tinkering and media-management, while the once-voting majority people have become non-voting consumers. We consume because at least our purchasing power promises achievable ends. We may not like the marketplace, but we dislike much more the hypocrisy and emptiness of spin-doctory and false debate. It is not the 50 percent that lacks idealistic ambition, but the political elite that created them.
Our third premise:
The Ideals of the 50 percent have yet to be truly decided on. There is reticence on the part on the 50 percent to truly begin its own necessarily naieve debate. We are tabula rasa, but daren't yet start drawing up our agenda. The Twentieth Century (a century of soured ideals, and big political divisions) still hangs its deathly shadow over this early and exciting part of our new century. We are the grandchildren of fascists and communists, and believe the very act of political idealisation to be murderously dangerous. Our parents -thank the gods of once-democracy- waved the white flag on political idealisation, and so allowed their children, us, a golden period of peace and prosperity previously unimaginable to any. We would surely be mad to open this pandora's box of ideals once more. And yet we also know that the most pressing problems of our time - chiefly the degradation of our environment - cannot be solved by the now omnipotent neoliberal marketplace. The Marketplace cannot exist without constant economic growth, and yet the environment cannot be saved from its degradation without immediate retraction. The Marketplace will fail where Democracy has failed, because constant economic growth is simply and scientifically incommensurable with a reversal of our global environmental catastrophe.
THE PANDORA'S BOX OF TRUE AND VIGOROUS POLITICAL DEBATE MUST BE RE-OPENED (and the 50 percent - the idealistic and rational 50 percent - already knows this).
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