The Starting Point For Not “Returning To Normal”
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With pandemic restrictions lifting in the small town where I live (note: again, originally written in June 2020), and with important human rights / environmental protests continually filling streets around the world (kinda an ongoing evergreen thing), and with daily collective discoveries that the foundation our society is built on is quite bloody & bogus & bs, I wrote a post over on 95EH’s FB about how I don’t think “returning to normal” is something we should be aiming for (ie. for way too long we’ve been normalizing way too many things that shouldn’t be considered normal). Which got my brain fixated on some thoughts, so I wanted to try to get down on paper the much harder part to communicate—the how we might go about setting a new normal—which is a lot easier said than done, given just how big the official list of ‘Societal Messes In Need Of Clean Up’ is (ESPECIALLY since we seem to be adding/uncovering new problems to the list every day/week/month).
I think the challenge is that we tend to think of each problem and its supposed solution on an individual basis, but because everybody cares about and/or is affected by certain issues more than others, and because you often can’t solve one problem without unilaterally solving another (& another) first, oftentimes creating new issues in the process (ESPECIALLY when we try to capitalism our way out of capitalism problems), so we all end up becoming so overwhelmed by this never-ending game of whack-a-mole that we give up on trying to fix ANYTHING and instead just learn to live with everything being on fire all the time as we’re motioned down the path of least exhaustive resistance. Which is exactly what those at the top want us to do.
And, so… here we are still/again/forever.
But if you stick with any societal issue long enough, and if you avoid the urge to try slapping on a quick temporary fix rather than digging to the root, you will eventually find that almost all of our problems can be traced back to the fact that we’ve all bought into the idea that caring more about ourselves than others is the only way to survive. And we’ve let our entire world be built around this selfish idea. To the point where we knowingly let millions of people live in manufactured poverty, all while knowingly destroying by wasteful overconsumption the only habitable planet we have to live on –which is a pretty rubbish ‘2 birds with one stone’ scenario to be so willingly going along with (and that’s only listing 2 of the MANY birds being stoned on the daily).
It’s not something that most of us easily admit, but if you examine our daily actions and inactions, the reality is that we’ve all allowed an isolating limit to be placed on how far outside ourselves we let our natural compassion & empathy reach. And once they’ve got each of us only giving a damn about ourselves and our small circle of families and friends and people who look/think exactly like us, that makes it an open market for society to collectively not give a damn about ANYONE at anytime, because now we’re all just a ‘not my problem’ to someone else somewhere else.
Divided meet conquered.
Photo from Unsplash by Micheile Henderson
I mean, we’ve gotten to the stage where most of us don’t even think twice about the starving and homeless in our own communities & countries, good luck trying to get westerners to scale out even further and acknowledge all the humans around the world that have been forced to live in abject poverty so that we can continue to feel the temporary glow of empty consumerism at throwaway prices (and that’s not even addressing the fact that we’re doing all this from a North American base that was built upon genocide & slavery & stolen land/resources). And just because most of us reading this paragraph are probably doing so from a place of pretty decent comfort, don’t think you won’t be just as expendable when the sh*t starts to really hit the fan over the next couple decades (y’know, that whole ‘climate change tipping point’ stuff a CONSENSUS of SCIENTISTS keep warning us about, the evidence of it already happening being literally all around us… you’ve heard/seen this too, right?).
So, what’s the solution?
What I propose as the starting point for creating a new “normal” is something that’ll probably sound too simple and naive at first, BUT, I promise there is nothing simple about putting what I am proposing into practice in your daily life + it’s rooted in ancient wisdom… so that kinda cancels out the naive part. Also, it doesn’t seem like throwing out complicated and contentious solutions has been getting us anywhere, so maybe just hear me out: Before we can start coming up with plans of action that we can collectively agree on, what we all need to do first is strip ourselves down to the very core and decide whether or not we individually believe that someone else should be left to suffer unnecessarily when we collectively have the means to make sure everyone has the basics of survival. And this needs to be a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ belief —there can be no “Yes, but/except…” waffling allowed anymore (or we’ll continue to never properly deal with anything).
Because, if you believe somewhere in your heart/head/gut that all humans are created equally and should be treated as such — BECAUSE, as a fellow human, you are aware of the need for your basic needs to be met + you know how you would like to be treated by others — YOU need to grab that universal truth and hammer it down as your main anchor value, something you can continue to return to and remind yourself of OVER & OVER AGAIN as we begin walking the more complicated minefield of how to go about deconstructing/rebuilding our broken systems and politics and economies and communities and et cetera.
Because as long as we refuse to accept excuses like we have in the past, as long as we refuse to make compromises like “well, maybe it’s ok that a few kids over there don’t have any food, or a few families over there don’t have a roof over their heads, or…”, we can start reconstructing our society in ways that will naturally start solving so many of the other problems that we’ve been told are unsolvable from the people who benefit from all those problems continuing to exist (ie. income inequality, systemic racism, poverty, pollution, crime, waste, etc).
Because so much of the hold we’re all under comes from the manufactured scenario that there isn’t enough for everyone to have their basic needs met in the first place (ie. in the pyramid scheme that is our current life, they’re trying to hold as many of us as they can in the basement of Maslow’s Hierarchy).
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Which is why every decision we make going forward needs to first meet that foundational anchor value of NOBODY should be left to suffer unnecessarily (especially when we could be using technology and innovation to solve ‘basic needs related’ problems instead of continuing to enrich small groups of narcissists), otherwise we’re just going to continue shuffling around who is suffering at the bottom while we all continue to fall for the same selfish sales pitch that promises a content life of pulling ladders up behind ourselves while never breaking from our constant craving for outside validation & attachment to material things as we continue to help prop up a demonstrably corrupt & exploitive system that has a history of stepping on whoever/whatever gets in its way of taking even more wealth/power for its ruling class.
So take a moment and check-in with yourself to figure out whether you want to work towards a future that uncompromisingly cares about others OR if you fancy yourself more a middle-manager position with The Empire (aka: the BAD GUYS in Star Wars)?
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And I’m sure this is the part where a lot of folk’s trained “ok, but how are we going to pay for this fantasy world?” reflexes start to kick in, so it is here that I would just like to assure people that the money is out there. We don’t even need to get into the fact that money and its value is a made up construct (I mean, just look at all the fake value the stock market “makes”… and let’s not even get started on crypto). In order to start transitioning to a better world we just need to stop fighting amongst ourselves over the crumbs that fell from the table and start looking up & realizing how few people are hoarding so much.
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We have to start getting more upset about the millions and billions of taxpayer dollars that get handed out as subsidies and bailouts and tax loopholes to corporations/rich people every year.
We have to stop being complacent with stats about how 26 individuals can own more wealth than 50% of the world’s poorest (that’s 26 people > 3.8 billion people) or how CEOs can make 287 times more than their employees or how Jeff Bezos is on pace to become a one-person trillionaire (and how that single bald-headed narcissist already has enough wealth to end world hunger right now and still be a billionaire, but instead we have to watch the “news” fawn over the idea of him racing other billionaire man-childs to space).
We have to stop letting people be called ‘unskilled labour’ so that we can justify paying them unliveable wages, especially after a global pandemic has shown us just how many of those ‘unskilled workers’ are actually more essential to society than most non-essential higher paying white collar jobs (and we need to have conversations about how so much of the work we’ve been dedicating 40+ hours a week to is actually not necessary, especially if everybody’s basic needs were being efficiently met instead of held hostage by a system designed around manufacturing scarcity).
We have to stop wasting billions of tonnes of food every year. We need to stop filling landfills and wasting resources on products intentionally made to not last long just so we all have to keep buying more of the same stuff we don’t even need just to keep shareholder profits always going up. We have to stop letting our brains be filled with the lie that we can just consume our way to feeling content or that our fate is not directly connected to the fate of the rest of the natural world.
We have to stop treating our corrupted political parties like sports teams that we back no matter what. We need to realize that both sides have been working for the same interests & lying to all of us for generation after generation (although, it’s important to note that one political side exists to keep pushing things further and further in a fascist direction — BUT — we also need to be honest about how the “other side” mostly exists these days to pretend that they’re trying really hard to stop the bad faith actors, while in reality both sides just continue to openly serve the same big money interests, as they have been doing since as long as you want to go back checking the tapes). We need to demand better, we need to stop being complacent with broken promises and we need to quit waiting for someone else to do something about it. We need a shared individual integrity that can than be organized into collective actions (and, unfortunately, we need to do this while also trying to navigate our lives around on a rigged board game).
Honestly, for the most part, we all just need to stop being such easy marks for this blatant grift. It’s sad. Especially in this Trump era of late stage colonial/imperial consumer capitalism, it doesn’t even feel like they’re trying to be sneaky anymore. Or maybe the internet has just made it so they can’t be sneaky anymore (ie. we find out about more stuff now), but since they know how truly rigged society is in their favour, and how much control they have over the rigging, they know that they don’t actually have to bother with trying to be that sneaky about their true intents. They can just openly exploit and hoard and oppress and contradict and lie and steal and continue to call our bluff that we’re actually going to wake up & get organized enough to do something about it before it’s too late (not sure if you’ve noticed, but the lighting most things are presented in is very gas).
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Which brings us back to the importance of nailing down and returning regularly to that anchor value of “everyone deserves the basics of life” (or rather, what kind of “society” doesn’t prioritize working together to make sure all members have their basic needs sustainably met, ESPECIALLY at this stage of where our collective knowledge is at).
Because none of the atrocities of the last few rambling paragraphs — paragraphs that could have rambled on forever with even more examples — NONE of those things would make it pass the sniff test if we actually put our collective feet down and re-focused our work and energy on re-building our systems and infrastructure around meeting the goal of EVERYONE having access to food and shelter and health care and etc, accepting no excuses/compromises until we get there. That should be the finish line we start working towards (as opposed to our current plan of working towards ‘infinite growth’ on a finite planet).
A society organized around meeting everyone’s basic needs should be the new social contract demanded.
Because we have the technology and capabilities and resources and know-how to restructure society this way, but the will to do better needs to start on an individual level first — because it’s only after enough of us have adopted an unshakeable shared foundational value of ‘EVERYONE deserves the basics of life, no exceptions’ that we’re ever going to get any real progress done. If you don’t believe me, just look around at the state of the world and tell me how well accepting exceptions & compromises on other people’s suffering has been working out for us all so far (ps: if you fancy reading an even longer blahg, I recently wrote about how Buddhist wisdom offers a lot of helpful individual tools for developing the needed mindset for tackling a Capitalism/Consumerism brainwash addiction).
And something tells me we’ve got the numbers on our side (as most humans seem pretty human when you actually talk to them on an individual basis about all this stuff… instead of always trying to unskilfully slam dunk on them in the comment section’s of the interwebs), we just need that one common foundational thread to stay united on and connect all the different solutions we’re gonna need for all the different problems they’ve laid out for us to get overwhelmed by.
And I think the major connecting thread that anyone who isn’t a self-serving asshole can get behind is: ‘EVERYONE deserves the basics of life’ (think of it as another way of remembering the old Golden Rule of ‘treat others how you would want to be treated’, except apply it more to the real world reality that EVERYBODY needs food & water & shelter to live). But first we gotta start holding our ground and stop allowing all of this pain & suffering & greed & oppression to be so normalized.
Photo from Unsplash by Alex Radelich
So imagine there’s a line drawn in the sand — one side believes that everyone deserves the basics of life and the other side does not — and then decide which side you want to be known to have stood on.
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If you choose the side that thinks we need to care about EVERYONE equally, you need to make that value your North Star going forward. It can’t just be something that you say you believe in. Stand up. Speak up. Get involved. Don’t accept excuses. Don’t fall for conversation redirects. Vote based on your values — at the polling station and, more importantly, every day with your wallet, time and energy. Educate your ignorance. Trade in your apathy for empathy. Turn off the news and focus on what’s happening in the actual world you interact with in person. Diversify your social feeds. Step outside your bubble. Use your voice/platform to stand up for things that are important, even if it goes against the uncontroversial “personal brand” you’ve been told to always be selling. Check in on your ‘EVERYONE deserves the basics of life’ anchor value on the regular and make sure you are working more on sorting out your own contradictions/hypocrisies than you are on calling out everyone else’s. Be honest and transparent. Practice compassion with yourself as much as you practice it with others. Slow down. Breathe. Stop craving stuff you don’t need. Be thankful for getting to be alive right now. Remember that if the universe is infinitely expanding in every direction, that means you literally experience your life as the centre of the universe, just like EVERYONE else. So treat others how you would want to be treated & stand up for others being treated the way you wouldn’t want to be treated (and don’t just only notice when someone isn’t treating you how you want to be treated). Be humble. Be helpful. Be kind. Be open. Be present. Be good. Because there’s a pretty full life that can be lived while staying on this side of the line (especially the more of us who are openly standing over here).
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If you choose to be on the side of the line that knowingly puts a limit on caring about others, if you really feel there’s a need to embracing greed/inequality while chasing after never-enough external validation in an impermanent world, you need to own that choice. And plenty people do (just ask certain folks in ‘Merica).
But I’m talking more about the people who would never want to admit it out loud (the “I’m not racist/sexist/homophobic/classist/elitist, but…” people). You can’t keep pretending you care about the horrible things being done by the very system you defend & benefit from when suddenly you feel oppression coming towards something that personally effects you (or an outrage is trending and it feels wrong to not say something in support of while everyone else is doing it, despite personal actions/politics that contradict). I mean, obviously people can pretend whatever they want to pretend (this is just a rambling blog post that most people have stopped reading a long time ago), I more mean that the side of the line these people are actually standing on becomes more clear once the line is drawn at ‘EVERYONE deserves the basics of life’.
This doesn’t mean that people ‘just trying to live their lives’ in the imperial/colonial capitalist system imposed on them are responsible for every horrible thing done in the past or for the systemic issues done outside of their personal control (besides, that blame/shame game isn’t helpful for staying focused on just dealing with the agreed-upon problems in front of us currently, as well as working on their present day solutions, which is where the focus needs to be) — BUT — there’s a certain limit to how much people can keep playing the ignorance card going forward and expect everybody else to bite their tongue so as not to be rude (I believe they’d call that “idiot compassion” in Buddhism).
And that doesn’t mean people need to start being even more rude to each other than we currently are, getting more into finger-pointing than everybody already is, it’s just that we all know too much about what has gone on & what is going on… and everybody’s eyes are going to roll out of their heads if we don’t start addressing the hypocrisies/contradictions in our individual & collective actions.
And this becomes easier to address once people figure out at what point they’re ok with other people suffering/dying unnecessarily and then let the rest of us know where that is (and, hopefully, some people will have some realizations while they look internally to figure out where to say they stand, out loud & publicly).
Because if you find you have personal stances that become hard to admit out loud, because doing so would kinda make you sound like a sh*tty human (and you can recognize the sh*tty-ness yourself, hence not wanting to admit it out loud), maybe that’s a sign you’re choosing the wrong side of the line to be standing on?
So maybe choose again.
Remember, we’re just talking about treating others how we would want to be treated here (and even Jesus was down with that idea, which I only bring up because of the supposedly ‘christian-centric’ worldview of the continent I live on). Because it’s 2̶0̶2̶0̶ 2̶0̶2̶1̶ 2022 2023 now and we’re still in the middle of a global climate change viral economic collapse and the cracks of a corrupt & cruel colonial/imperial capitalistic system are showing EVERYWHERE (for those that look, but even for trying their best not to look).
You’re allowed to do a personal reset. You can change your mind to better reflect your heart. You can acknowledge reality. You don’t have to keep shining boots on the Death Star. You don’t have to keep making excuses for empire. We can work together towards a different future than the one that those who benefit from us not changing anything have mapped out for us to continue propping up.
Photo from Unsplash by Eric Ward
Because we have an important opportunity right now for doing a complete rethink on how our current and future society is run. It won’t be quick and it won’t be easy, but for far too long we’ve been normalizing way too many things that shouldn’t be considered normal and we have the power to stop all that BS and start doing things better. Because the past is over and we don’t need to keep grandfathering in all the oppression & injustice into our present (and future futures).
And instead of being asked to sacrifice our lives in some multinational bloody resource/class war in order to become known as one of those ‘greatest generations’ that the white-washed history books like to celebrate, all we need to really sacrifice is our own complacent selfishness (and, for the most part, we’ve really just been acting out other people’s selfishness for THEIR benefit of our exploited labour anyways, and that’s a pretty lame thing to want to keep doing & defending). But ‘EVERYONE deserves the basics of life’ has got to become the foundational value that enough of us aren’t willing to immediately compromise on, individually AND THEN collectively. That’s the first/main move, as far as I can see it (the rest we figure out as we go about living together with more foundational integrity).
Or, we could also just continue being the idiots that ignored all the warnings and cries for help and let a bunch of heartless jerks drive the this whole bus straight off the cliff. Life is full of infinite possibilities, I suppose.
So… which side of the line in the sand are you trying to live on?
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JEREMY / @HI54LOFI
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